Marquessa Lévrière bowed down – carefully, like a lady inspecting lacework – as she drew my leash tighter with a neat, practiced loop. The pink leather cord unfurled from her wrist like ribbon from a gift box, then snapped with a single, purposeful tug. She never tired of that collar. Her diamond monogram glinted against my throat like a brand, caught the light like the clasp of a handbag she'd never lend out.

"Look up." Her command floated on a sigh, absentminded, as if noting tea gone tepid. One gloved knuckle guided my chin upward. "There we are. Chin up, petal. Eyes soft. Lovely." She watched me with the cool attentiveness of a woman selecting perfume. "Now hold. No fussing."

A faint stain bloomed at the corner of my mouth; perhaps rouge, perhaps the remnants of whatever pathetic dignity I'd tried to swallow. Her sigh carried the weight of a thousand disappointments.

"Oh, no no. Tsk." Her sigh was theatrical, laced with disappointment, not surprise. From the sleeve of her gown, she conjured a handkerchief the color of a powdered blush. "We don't do smudges, pet."

She pursed her lips, spat into the fabric, and then dabbed at the mark on my cheek with ladylike precision.

"Now, let's have a proper look-see," she trilled, sinking into a graceful demi-plié that made her diamond-encrusted petticoats sigh against my knees. With a gloved finger under my chin, she tilted my face left, then right, inspecting her handiwork with the exacting eye of a couturière adjusting a bodice's final stitch. "Ahhh," she exhaled, breath warm and sticky as caramel, "there's my good boy. Presentable at last."

The leash went taut. She reeled me a hair closer with the inexorable pull of a tide claiming shore.

"And pet?" she added. "If I hear a sound from you tonight—" her finger traced the dip of my Adam's apple, her nail gliding just beneath the collar's edge "—just one uninvited sound... if you so much as perform a little throat-clear in there, I'll have your lips embroidered shut. Pale pink thread. Cross-stitch." She punctuated the threat with a patronizing pat-pat to my cheek. "Bankers should be seen, not heard."

She pivoted towards the mirror. The leash remained looped in her wrist as she flicked her fingers. Her maid emerged, pale and polished in lace-trimmed uniform, gliding with the quiet assurance of a woman long since broken in. She knelt, velvet case in hand, as though offering communion. With one hand still holding my leash, Marquessa dipped the sable brush into pearl shimmer and traced it along her décolletage, slow and indulgent, as though her collarbones were relics to be anointed.

Beyond the double doors, the sound of strings and laughter swelled - as if the party, sensing her arrival, had begun to arrange itself accordingly.

She glanced at me kneeling behind her through the mirror. Her expression shifted with slow delight, like a hostess discovering the table has been set just so.

"Disappoint me tonight," she said, plucking an earring from a mirrored tray, "and you'll take your place in the vestibule; right between the broken harpsichord and that dreadful Flemish tapestry." She fastened the gem to her lobe with a sound like a gilded cage latching "Though you'd make such a darling ottoman, wouldn't you? Gilded legs, padded in the finest blush mohair. We'd have the maids buff you with lambswool every morning until you gleam. A proper footstool should be soft where it counts."

With a final, mocking kiss blown toward her reflection, Marquessa pivoted on her rose-velvet heels. The leash gave its ritualistic sigh, not a yank, but the barest suggestion of pressure, like a lover's fingernail trailing down a spine.

"Showtime."

The doors parted in obedient unison on cue. Her procession began.

The leash slithered behind her in indolent pink coils, a satin serpent drowsing in her wake. Until—

A flick of her wrist. No more than a seamstress adjusting a thread. No louder than a corset lace catching its final notch. The leash snapped to attention.

No glance back. No command. Just the rustle of petticoats and the ribbon's silent decree:

Crawl.