Page 104 of Maksym

She was bare beneath it. Not displayed like an object. Presented as a person who had agreed to be seen.

The wolf slid the robe from her shoulders and folded it over one arm before placing it on a small stand near the bench. Then he touched her face with the backs of his fingers. She leaned into the contact. Only then did he guide her down.

Knees onto the lower pads. Forearms into place.

The wolf fastened the brass cuffs around her wrists first, then her ankles. Each buckle was checked, then checked again. Two fingers beneath the leather. Not too tight. Not careless. He murmured something to her; I could not hear. She answered, and though the word did not reach me, her mouth shaped green.

My legs shifted. I uncrossed them. Then crossed them the other way.

I realized I had done it only after Maksym’s gaze flicked down and then, with discipline so rigid it was almost funny, back to the stage.

Heat climbed into my face.

“I saw that,” he murmured.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Of course.”

I meant to sit back. Instead, I found myself leaning slightly toward his shoulder, close enough that the sleeve of his jacket brushed my arm. I did not move away. Neither did he.

Below us, the witch lay restrained and still on the leather bench. The wolf stood behind her, one broad palm resting in the center of her back. Bohdan waited at the edge of the light, the silver cutting his suit into clean lines, his expression warm and unsparing.

Obsidian held its breath. So did I.

The first touch of the flogger made almost no sound at all. It crossed the witch’s back in a soft fall of leather, more whisper than strike, and her breath changed before her body did.

I heard it because I was listening too hard.

The wolf stood behind her with his feet planted, shoulders loose, one hand holding a short-handled flogger made of black leather strands so soft they seemed to pour rather than swing. He brought it down again, this time across the upper curve of her buttocks. The leather kissed her skin with a muted slap.

The witch exhaled. Not pain. Release.

Her fingers flexed once inside the brass cuffs.

Bohdan’s voice entered the space between strike and response. “This is not punishment. Not yet, and perhaps not at all. The first stage is calibration.”

The flogger fell again. Across her thighs this time, low enough that I felt my own muscles tense in sympathy.

“A skilled dominant reads the body before asking more of it,” Bohdan said. “Breathing. Muscle tension. Skin response. Sound. Silence. The way a submissive leans toward sensation or retreats from it. This is the map being drawn in real time.”

The wolf did exactly that. He did not rush. Flogger to shoulders. Pause. Palm to the place he had struck. Flogger to buttocks. Pause. Fingers smoothing over the reddening skin.

It should not have fascinated me. It absolutely fascinated me.

There was a discipline to it that my brain understood before my body admitted interest. Procedure. Baseline. Escalation. Check response. Adjust accordingly.

And then he ran his palm down her spine. Slowly.

From the nape of her neck, between her shoulder blades, over the dip of her lower back, down to the cleft between her cheeks. He paused there. His fingers slid lower, not hidden from view, not vulgar in the way I expected explicitness to become vulgar. The angle of her body, the light, his massive frame—everything made the touch both public and strangely intimate.

The witch arched into his hand. A sound left her. Low, open, unashamed.

My thighs pressed together.

Bohdan’s commentary softened around the edges. “Sensation wakes the body. Anticipation wakes the mind. But surrender often begins when the submissive realizes they are being attended to with more care than they offer themselves.”

The wolf’s fingers moved again. I could see the shine when he withdrew them, slick in the silver light. My brain, traitorous and over-educated, supplied the fact before modesty could object: wet.