The Madame
"She collects beautiful men. He refuses to be collected—unless it's by her alone."
The boy won't perform.
Three clients in two weeks. Three complaints. Three refunds I shouldn't have had to give, because I don't give refunds—I run the most exclusive companion house in Neo-Paris, and my boys are trained to please.
Except this one.
I watch him through the two-way mirror, pacing his gilded room like a caged panther. He's exquisite—six foot two, sculpted muscle under golden skin, hair like black silk falling past his shoulders. The kind of beauty that makes people forget how to breathe. I paid two hundred thousand credits for his contract at the Marseille auction, outbidding three megacorp heiresses and a tech billionaire.
He was supposed to be my crown jewel.
Instead, he's my problem.
"Send him in," I tell my assistant.
She hesitates. "Madame Beaumont, perhaps you should let me—"
"I said send him in."
My office is designed to intimidate.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Seine, which glitters with the reflected light of holographic advertisements. Pre-Collapse art on the walls—real paint, real canvas, worth more than most buildings. A desk the size of a small car, behind which I sit like a queen on her throne.
I am Claudette Beaumont. Forty-eight years old. Two hundred and seventy pounds of flesh poured into a custom-designed corseted gown, my dark hair pinned in an elaborate updo, my brown skin glowing against burgundy silk.
I've been running the House of Roses for twenty years. I've broken stallions far wilder than this one.
The door opens.
He walks in like he owns the place—shoulders back, chin lifted, those dark eyes finding mine without a flicker of submission. He's wearing the silk robe I provided, but it hangs open, showing off the chest I paid so much for.
Insolent.
"Sit," I say.
He remains standing.
Fine.
"You have been here for three weeks," I say, keeping my voice pleasant. "In that time, you have refused to serve three paying clients. You have cost me significant revenue and, more importantly, damaged my reputation. Explain yourself."
"There's nothing to explain." His voice is low, rough, accented with something Eastern European. "I don't perform for them."
"You were sold as a pleasure companion. Performing is your purpose."
"I was sold against my will." His eyes flash. "My family's debts are not my sins. I will not spread my legs for strangers to pay for their mistakes."
"Then you will be resold. Perhaps to someone less gentle than I am." I lean back, let my eyes travel down his body. "The Siberian mines are always looking for strong backs."
Something flickers in his expression. Fear, maybe, quickly suppressed.
"Or," I continue, "you could simply do your job. My clients are wealthy, clean, generous with tips. Many of my boys enjoy their work."
"I am not your boys."
"No." I rise, move around the desk. He watches me approach, and I see it again—that involuntary flicker. Not fear this time. Something else. "You're not, are you? You're something different."
I stop in front of him. Close enough to touch.
"Tell me, little wolf." I reach up, trail one manicured nail along his jaw. He shivers—tries to hide it, fails. "Is it really about your principles? Or is there another reason you won't perform?"
His jaw clenches. "I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do." I step closer still, until my body—all two hundred and seventy pounds of it—is inches from his. I feel the heat radiating off his skin. See the rapid flutter of his pulse at his throat. "You've been watching me. Through the cameras, through the windows. Every time I walk past your room, your eyes follow."
"You're imagining things."
"Am I?" I press my palm flat against his chest. His heart pounds against my hand like a caged bird. "Your body says otherwise."
And it does. Through the silk of his robe, I can see the unmistakable evidence of exactly what he's been denying.
He wants me.
Specifically me.
His name is Nikolai.
I learn this over the next week, as I visit his room every evening instead of sending clients. He's twenty-eight. Born in Neo-Moscow, raised in poverty, sold to pay his father's debts when he was twenty-three. Five years of being passed between owners who saw only his beauty—never the intelligence behind those dark eyes, never the iron will beneath that sculpted surface.
He hated them all.
But he doesn't hate me.
"Why?" I ask one night. We're in his room, sharing wine, maintaining a careful distance that neither of us quite believes in. "What makes me different?"
"I don't know." He stares into his glass. "When the other owners looked at me, I felt like... meat. A body to be used."
"And when I look at you?"
He meets my eyes. Something raw and vulnerable surfaces in his expression.
"Like you're trying to see what's inside the body," he says quietly. "Like you actually care whether I want this."
"I do care."
"Why? I'm property. You bought me. You could order me to perform and have me punished if I refused."
"I could." I set down my wine. "But I didn't build the House of Roses by brutalizing my boys. I built it by making them want to serve. By creating a space where pleasure is given freely, not taken by force." I pause. "I won't order you to serve my clients, Nikolai. But I would like to understand why you'll look at me like you're starving, and still refuse to eat."
He's quiet for a long moment.
Then he crosses the room and drops to his knees at my feet.
"Because I don't want your clients," he says, looking up at me. "I want you. Only you. From the moment I saw you at the auction—the way you moved, the way you held yourself, the way you looked at me like I was worth something—I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That if I was going to belong to anyone, it had to be you." His hands find my legs—tentative, trembling. "Not as a commodity. Not as a service rendered. As yours. Completely. Exclusively."
My heart pounds.
This is dangerous territory. I don't take lovers from my stable—it creates jealousy, instability, the kind of emotional entanglements that destroy businesses. I've refused better offers than this. Colder, more calculated offers from men who thought they could manipulate me.
But Nikolai isn't calculating.
He's desperate.
And so, I realize, am I.
I pull him up from his knees.
His eyes widen, expecting rejection. Instead, I cup his face in my hands and kiss him.
He melts.
The hungry, feral energy of his defiance dissolves into something softer—something yielding. His hands find my waist, grip the abundant flesh there, and I feel him shudder against me like he's been waiting his whole life for this exact moment.
"If I keep you," I breathe against his mouth, "you're mine. Not for sale. Not for sharing. You serve no one but me. Understood?"
"Yes. God, yes."
"And you do what I say. When I say it. Without question."
"Anything." His voice cracks. "Anything you want."
I push him toward the bed.
He falls back onto the silk sheets, that glorious body spread out like an offering. I stand over him—all of me, every curve and roll and soft abundant inch—and watch his eyes darken with want.
"Look at you," I murmur. "So pretty. So hungry." I reach for the laces of my gown. "You have no idea what you're in for, little wolf."
I undress slowly. Make him wait. Make him beg with his eyes as each layer falls away, revealing more and more of the body that lesser men have dismissed and greater men have worshipped.
When I'm finally bare, he makes a sound—low, raw, wounded.
"Madame—"
"Claudette." I climb onto the bed, onto him, pinning his lean body beneath my weight. "When we're alone, you call me Claudette."
"Claudette." He says it like a prayer. "Please—"
"Please what?"
"Please."
I silence him with my mouth.
He learns to worship.
I teach him what I like—the drag of lips across my belly, the reverent grip of hands on my hips, the way my breath catches when he kisses the soft inner curve of my thighs. He's a quick study, driven by something deeper than technique.
Devotion.
He touches me like I'm precious. Like every inch of flesh is a gift he can't believe he's been given. When he buries his face between my thighs—spreading them wide, groaning against me like I'm the most delicious thing he's ever tasted—I understand that this isn't performance.
This is hunger.
I come three times on his tongue before I let him inside me.
And when I do—when I finally sink down onto him, my full weight pressing him into the mattress, my body enveloping his—he sobs.
"Thank you," he gasps. "Thank you, Claudette, thank you—"
"Shh." I roll my hips, feel him shudder beneath me. "You're mine now. You don't have to thank me for taking what's mine."
He comes embarrassingly fast the first time—too overwhelmed, too desperate, too young. I don't let him apologize. Just coax him hard again with my hands and mouth, and then ride him until we're both wrecked.
After, I lie across his chest, my weight pinning him in place. He doesn't try to move. Doesn't want to.
"The other boys will talk," he murmurs.
"Let them."
"Your reputation—"
"Is built on excellence." I trace a finger along his jaw. "And you, my little wolf, are going to be my greatest achievement."
The House of Roses adapts.
Nikolai becomes my personal attendant—a position I invent specifically for him. He accompanies me to meetings, stands behind my chair at dinners, kneels at my feet during parties. Everyone understands what he is. Hers.
The other boys don't complain. If anything, they seem relieved—one less competitor for the best clients, one less rival for my attention.
And Nikolai blooms.
The feral defiance doesn't disappear—I wouldn't want it to. But it transmutes into something else. A fierce protectiveness. A hungry devotion. The energy of a man who's finally found where he belongs.
"I love you," he tells me one night.
We're in my private chambers, wrapped in silk, the lights of Neo-Paris glittering beyond the windows. His head rests on my chest, his breath warm against my skin.
"You barely know me," I say.
"I know enough. I know you're strong, and kind, and you treat your boys like people instead of products. I know you could have forced me to perform and you didn't. I know—" He lifts his head, meets my eyes. "I know you make me feel like I'm worth something. For the first time in my life."
"You've always been worth something."
"No one ever saw it before. Just the body." He presses his lips to my throat. "You saw me. And I'll spend the rest of my life showing you how grateful I am."
I pull him closer. Let myself feel it—the warmth, the weight, the impossible miracle of being wanted so completely.
"Stay," I tell him. "Not because you're owned. Because you choose to."
"I choose you." His voice is rough. Certain. "Every day. For as long as you'll have me."
I kiss him.
And somewhere in Neo-Paris, a forty-eight-year-old madame with a body like a Renaissance painting learns that the most valuable thing in her collection isn't the one she bought.
It's the one who chose to stay.