The shift in Rose's tone doesn't go unnoticed by Pearl. A whimper fights its way out of her throat, pathetic and grateful, and she cranes her neck to push her head lightly into the soothing hand. Desperate for the contact, lost in the fantasy.

It's a highly impractical one, of course, but no less hypnotic for that. Pearl imagines it (she's imagined it). To be in Rose's thrall every hour of every day. To live in that collar like Rose's warm fingers curved around her neck in a gentle but unrelenting grip, her obedience a quiet given. To be in her service: to cook hot, fragrant dinners and be elegantly hand-fed like a cherished pet, the good girl Rose loves to spoil. Do her dishes and mop her floors (unremarkable things, of course, but oh, just imagine doing them for Rose) and then curl up at her feet at the end of the day for a sweet reward, have her hair stroked absently while Rose writes a paper for class...

It's both absurd and utterly mundane. And hot: hot as hell. Pearl trembles all over and rolls her hips into the stream of water. Lips parted, she mouths slowly at Rose's thumb, remembering to barely graze a knuckle with her teeth, her tongue stroking against the tender pad of the skin. Her eyelids flutter shut, their lashes damp with condensing steam.