He still remembers the order not to disturb the neighbors, so his outcry is somewhat strangled and cut short, but his whole body tenses and releases, his eyes squeezed shut.

"You may move your arms and legs," she tells him, when she's caught her breath, and then she plops her head on his shoulder and snuggles up.

He uses that freedom to hug her, snuggling up too.

Mmmmmsnuggles.

Yesss snuggles with his delicious—well, a delicious dom.

It takes him a while to try and fail to come up with a plausible non obvious meaning for these words, so he furrows his eyebrows and asks, "Ma'am?"

"I think you might be slightly underdressed." She trails her fingers across his throat. "What do you think, lovely?"

Oh. Oh! "Y—you may be right."

"Well, I would want you to be sure, pet."

"I'm sure," he says earnestly. "I'm very sure!"

She nuzzles his throat. Bites it. Then rolls off of him and goes rummaging in her drawers and comes up with a box.

He sits up to watch her, fidgeting a bit, a stupid grin on his face.

She sits next to him. She sets the box on the bed beside her. She pulls his head to kiss his hair. And then she says, "I'm trying to think of a less cheesy way to ask my question... hmmm... no, it may just be inherently cheesy. Tell me what this would mean to you."

Blink. "Um. That's a bit broad. What do you mean?"

"Why do you want it? What will change, in your head, while you've got it?"

"Well... I want to belong to you," he says, looking down, a smile on his lips. "Nothing will change, compared to these past few days, in my head. It's not like I've been secretly hedging my bets or something. Compared to before, well... I won't be anyone else's, dom or sub. You'll be my safe harbor, someone I can share everything with, someone I can give my entire self to. And, that may be the switch in me speaking, but I'd be there for you, too, take care of you as you do me, and be close, and talk about everything and anything, and spend time with, and I'm reduced from nice and poetic to rambling."

He makes a very undignified noise of glee, but let's be honest here, he's been making those all evening.

"On your knees, lovely."

He obeys, grinning. "I love it when you call me that. And pet."

"Good." She picks up a little key and unlocks the padlock. She settles the collar around his neck and locks it. "Do you want to keep one of the keys?"

"Mm yeah, sounds sensible. Not that I'll be, like, taking it off all the time, but if I ever need to."

"That's the idea." She puts a key in his hand. And then she kisses him, hard.

And he returns the kiss, and stops the kiss to giggle helplessly. "I'm Isabella's," he singsongs, giggling some more. "I'm yoooooours!"