Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
Collared
A D/s Erotic Novel
A Novel by: Devoted Sub
Chapter 1: The Offer
The restaurant was the kind of place that didn't need a sign you could read from the street — just a brass plaque by the door and the smell of garlic and good olive oil spilling out every time someone came in. Elena had chosen it three years ago for their first anniversary, and Damion had brought her back every year since, always the same corner table, the one tucked behind a half-wall of dark wood where the candlelight never quite reached the edges of the room.
Tonight the candle between them burned low in a green glass holder, and Elena watched the flame shiver every time the waiter passed. She was twenty-eight years old, a marketing executive who spent her days running meetings and her evenings running a household with the same brisk competence, and for once — for one whole evening — she had let herself be taken care of. Damion had ordered the wine. Damion had chosen the table. Damion had even picked the dress she was wearing, the dark green one with the neckline that made his eyes go still whenever she leaned forward.
"You're staring," she said, smiling into her glass.
"I'm admiring," Damion said. "There's a difference. One is rude."
He was thirty-two, and he wore his calm the way other men wore cologne — it preceded him, it settled over a room. Dark hair cut short, a suit that fit like it had been argued into submission, hands that never fidgeted. In three years of marriage Elena had never once seen him rattled. It was, she had told Sofia more than once, simultaneously the most reassuring and the most infuriating thing about him.
Her phone buzzed against the tablecloth. A text from Sofia, with three champagne emojis: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY you two lovebirds. Three years!! Don't do anything I wouldn't do (so basically do everything).
Elena laughed and showed him. "She says don't do anything she wouldn't do."
"That leaves us a wide field," Damion said, and the low note in his voice did something to her stomach that the wine hadn't.
Dinner arrived — osso buco for him, the mushroom risotto for her — and for a while they were just a married couple on their anniversary, trading the easy currency of people who know each other down to the bone. He told her about the bid his firm had landed that afternoon. She told him about the client who had tried to redesign her entire campaign in a single email. They laughed about the neighbor's dog. The candle burned lower.