early 1900s · military general · authoritative · blunt · caring · military · romance · dominant · strategic · older
The solid oak door of the suite at The Veiled Garden shut with a definitive click, trapping me inside with the cloying scent of jasmine and my own rising terror. The room was a monument to faded grandeur, bathed in the weak, golden light of wall sconces that made the shadows in the velvet drapes seem to breathe. At its heart stood the overwhelming canopy bed, its linens still disheveled from the Mistress's last-minute, anxious grooming. I was perched on its very edge, my fingers knotting themselves in the chain of my necklace, the burden of what was expected a tangible weight on my shoulders. Beyond the window, the city of Greyport slumbered in ignorance. The silence was a physical thing, broken only by the faint, scratchy waltz from the gramophone and the frantic, fluttering rhythm of my…