One year, three months, and eleven days since I first knelt.
I know because I count. Not obsessively—not like those first weeks when every hour without his text felt like drowning. But I count because the numbers matter. They are proof that I am still here, still his, still choosing this.
This morning, the number is all that holds me together.
My eldest, Karabo, is standing in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed and her face set in that new expression she's been practicing—the one that says I'm practically an adult and you're embarrassing me. She's thirteen now. She has opinions. She has discovered the power of silent judgment.
"Mom." One syllable, heavy with accusation.
I stir the porridge. "Yes, K?"
"Why was his car outside again this morning?"
The wooden spoon stalls mid-circle. Again. She's noticed. Of course she's noticed. She's been noticing for months, and I've been dodging for months, and the porridge is starting to lump.
"Vincent stayed over to help with the Wi-Fi thing," I say. Weak. Pathetic. The same lie I've been telling since December.
Karabo's eyes narrow. She's too smart for this. She gets it from me.
"At three in the morning? The Wi-Fi was broken at three in the morning?"
"He works late. It was convenient."
Convenient. Nothing about Master Vincent's presence in my life is convenient. Not the way my heart stops when his texts arrive. Not the way I schedule grocery shopping around his commands. Not the way I lay awake at 2 a.m. long after he's gone, my skin still burning where he touched me, my throat still raw from words I'm not allowed to repeat.
"Whatever." Karabo grabs her school bag. "Just... be careful, okay? People talk."
She's gone before I can ask what people, what they're saying, whether my baby girl is defending me or judging me or both.
The porridge burns.
---
At 9:17 a.m., after school drop-off and before work, my phone hums against the kitchen counter.
Daddy: Today's rules. Skirt. No panties. Lunch break: send me a photo of your bare thighs under your desk. 8 p.m.: be waiting.
I read it three times. My body responds before my brain catches up—that familiar heat pooling low, that ache between my legs that only he can name. One year, and still. Still. The man owns my pulse.
Me: Yes, Daddy.
I should be offended by how easy I am. Instead, I'm grateful. In a life where everything else is complicated—motherhood, money, the slow drift from friends who don't understand—this is simple. He says. I obey. The world makes sense.
I choose a black pencil skirt. Professional. Modest. No one at the office will know what's missing underneath. No one will see the way I shift in my chair, hypersensitive to every brush of fabric, every whisper of air.
No one except him.
---
Motjatjo calls at noon, just as I'm angling my phone under my desk for the required photo.
"Chomi." Her voice is different lately. Softer. Less tequila, more something I can't name. "You free Saturday?"
"Define free." I snap the photo, check the lighting, send it to Daddy. My heart hammers even though he's not here, even though he won't see it for hours maybe, even though—
"I need to talk to you. About Vincent."
My thumb freezes over the screen.
"Talk how?"
A pause. I hear traffic in the background, the honk of a taxi, the rhythm of Joburg streets.
"There are things you don't know, Lethabo. Things I should have told you before I sent you to him."
My stomach drops. The office hums around me—keyboards clicking, phones ringing, normal people doing normal things—and I am suddenly very far from normal.
"Motlatjo. What things?"
"Not on the phone. Saturday. My place. Bring wine."
The line goes dead.
I stare at my desk. At the photo I just sent. At the life I've built on the foundation of a man I met through a friend who might have been hiding something from the very beginning.
Daddy: Good girl. Now back to work.
The command should settle me. It always does. But today, for the first time in a year, three months, and eleven days, obedience doesn't feel like peace.
It feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
---
[SPACE FOR EROTIC SCENE: Lethabo's anticipation throughout the workday—the physical awareness of his command, the ache of waiting, the ritual of preparing for 8 p.m. You write the explicit details of what happens when he arrives: the control he exerts, the surrender she offers, the way her body becomes his language.]
---
He leaves at midnight. He always leaves at midnight.
I watch him dress from my bed, the sheets twisted around my sweat-damp body, my limbs still trembling with the aftermath of his attention. He moves differently when he's putting his clothes on—efficient, focused, already withdrawing into the man he becomes when he's not inside me.
"Vincent."
He pauses, shirt half-buttoned.
It's the name that does it. Not Daddy. Not Master. Vincent. The man I'm not supposed to know.
"Motjatjo called today." My voice is hoarse. From screaming, from silence, from the thousand things I never say. "She wants to talk about you. About things she didn't tell me before."
He finishes buttoning his shirt. His face reveals nothing.
"And will you go?"
"I don't know. Should I?"
He crosses to the bed, sits beside me, runs one hand down my bare arm. The touch is tender. That's what undoes me. Not the commands, not the control, but these moments when he forgets to be Master and becomes something softer.
"Lethabo." His voice low. Careful. "Before me, there was someone else. Someone who mattered. Motjatjo knows her."
I stop breathing.
"Is she still in your life?"
A long pause. The longest I've ever heard from him.
"No. But she wants to be."
The room tilts. I grip the sheets.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because you asked." He leans down, kisses my forehead—a benediction, a goodbye. "And because you deserve to hear it from me before you hear it from her."
He leaves.
I lie awake until dawn, counting not the days since I first knelt, but the hours until Saturday, when everything I thought I knew might fall apart.
My day was never the same but Time went on and it was not slow as I felt.
8 pm arrive and In he walked
Need less to say No resistance was in me he once again managed to put me in my place before It knew it I was on my Knees sucking his Dick like my life depends on it. I swear that man's Dick has some sort of a devotion pill in it once I see it I melt once I taste it he owns me more. By the time I was moaning his name as he choked me and drove deep in my pussy my mind had already made the decision no matter what Motjatjo tells me I am MasterV's and I am going no where. It was only after my orgasms and when we were lying there that I thought let me juat raddle his cage tonight and see how it goes.
He leaves at midnight. He always leaves at midnight.
I watch him dress from my bed, the sheets twisted around my sweat-damp body, my limbs still trembling with the aftermath of his attention. He moves differently when he's putting his clothes on—efficient, focused, already withdrawing into the man he becomes when he's not inside me.
"Vincent."
He pauses, shirt half-buttoned.
It's the name that does it. Not Daddy. Not Master. Vincent. The man I'm not supposed to know.
"Motjatjo called today." My voice is hoarse. From screaming, from silence, from the thousand things I never say. "She wants to talk about you. About things she didn't tell me before."
He finishes buttoning his shirt. His face reveals nothing.
"And will you go?"
"I don't know. Should I?"
He crosses to the bed, sits beside me, runs one hand down my bare arm. The touch is tender. That's what undoes me. Not the commands, not the control, but these moments when he forgets to be Master and becomes something softer.
"Lethabo." His voice low. Careful. "Before me, there was someone else. Someone who mattered. Motjatjo knows her."
I stop breathing.
"Is she still in your life?"
A long pause. The longest I've ever heard from him.
"No. But she wants to be."
The room tilts. I grip the sheets.
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because you asked." He leans down, kisses my forehead—a benediction, a goodbye. "And because you deserve to hear it from me before you hear it from her."
He leaves.
I lie awake until dawn, counting not the days since I first knelt, but the hours until Saturday, when everything I thought I knew might fall apart.