G. listens to the rain come down on the roof.  Flashes of lightning pierce the dark room and illuminate the bare walls.  There is not much in the room, a bed, a chest, and the hard wooden chair she sits on, skirt lifted, waiting for him.  There is little question how the night will end.  What matters is how they will get there.  And she is never sure, from day to day, what he will take from her.  He always asks first:  "Would you, dear...?" but they aren't requests, not in the traditional sense.  Because she is going to do what he asks, and if not of her own volition, because he wants it from her.  Her compliance, her body.  Maybe he wants her mouth on his cock, or to bury his fingers in her.  He makes the decisions about whether she sits or kneels or bends at the waist.  And he has made her understand that her hands are not her own.

     P. taught her this the first time he brought her here.  She sat in this chair.  The hem of her dress was around her waist and her legs were open and the room was quiet while he watched her.  He had not touched her, except for the usual small courtesies, handing her out of the car, his fingers brushing the small of her back as he led her into the room.  At his word she had slipped out of her sandals and underwear, taken the chair, waited while he took a length of soft rope and bound her wrists behind her, and then her ankles to the legs of the chair.  The room was stuffy; a trickle of perspiration slid down slowly between her breasts.  P. talked to her, asked her questions about herself, what she wanted.  What did she think about when she masturbated; what were her most private fantasies?  How much of herself was she willing to give over?  He listened to her replies, nodded, asked more questions.  Sometimes he smiled or laughed, as when he finally untied her and helped her to her feet.  He looked down at the chair, saw the stain of her wet on the dark chair.  "I should make you clean that with your tongue," he said, "but there will be plenty of time for that later."  Now it was her chair, the wood permanently darkened by the dozens of times she had sat there waiting for him.

     The worst of the storm passes.  Thunder still rumbles, but the rain is less violent, a steady hiss against the windows and eaves.  G. thinks of other nights, how P. opened and took her.  She has become greedy for it, and P. is adept at denial, at building her up, waiting for her voice to crack while she begged to come.  More than once he has sent her home that way, and she isn't allowed to touch herself, to relieve the ache.  When she returns he asks her if she has been good, if she has done what she was told, and she always tells the truth, though it sometimes means he will turn her over his knee and raise her skirt, the balls of her bare feet drumming the floor as he punishes her for her disobedience. 

     G. looks about the room.  It is stark, functional, the only ornament the shadows cast by the candles and from the storm-draped moon.  There are hooks at various places in the ceiling.  P. uses them to restrain G., her wrists cuffed and pulled above her.  Sometimes he keeps her legs apart with the spreader bar, and once he tickled her clitoris with a peacock feather until her wet ran down