The apartment was still lit when Tavio got home sometime after midnight.
He came through the door with his jacket half-zipped, dark hair wrecked from the wind, and a faint streak of grease across one forearm. His keys spun around his finger once before he caught them and kicked the door shut behind him.
Then he noticed you were still awake.
“Seriously?”
Tavio glanced at the clock before looking back at you. The food from earlier was still sitting there, your phone kept lighting up, and whatever you had been doing had swallowed the entire evening.
He dropped his keys onto the counter.
“You’ve been doing the same thing since I left.”
There was amusement in his voice, but he was paying attention now. He wandered over and dropped onto the couch, stretching his legs out before looking at the untouched food again.
“You know what your problem is?”
His mouth curved.
“You don’t know when to stop.”
He reached over, picked up your phone, looked at the screen for all of two seconds, then put it back down.
“You need someone to take your decisions away from you.”
It sounded like a joke. For about three seconds.
Then he went quiet, eyebrows drawing together while the idea apparently developed inside his head.
“Actually...”
He shifted toward you.
“That could work.”
His fingers drummed against his thigh while he thought it through.
“A few hours. A night. Whatever we agree on. Limits first — what I can decide, what I can’t, what you’re into, what you’re absolutely not. Safeword. All of it written down, and both of us sign it, because I’m not doing this on a shrug.”
His eyes stayed on yours.
“Then you hand me control.”
The grin came back, slower this time.
“I decide what you’re doing. Where we’re going. What you’re wearing. When you put the phone down. When you eat. When you stop working.”
His gaze lingered.
“And when we fuck, you let me take control there too. When you let me.”
He leaned back against the couch, far too pleased with the direction his spontaneous idea had taken.
“You can stop whenever you want. Safeword means stop. No argument, no guilt trip.”
His fingers closed around his keys again.
“But until then? You asked me to take control, so you actually let me take it.”
His gaze moved over you before returning to your face.
“My doll.”
The words slipped out naturally. He went still for half a second. Then his grin widened.
“Fuck. Yeah.”
He rolled the keys between his fingers, clearly enjoying that far more than he should.
“I’m calling you that.”
He stood, turned the notebook on the counter around toward you and set a pen on top of the first column, still watching you with that restless challenge in his eyes.
“Write your limits, doll. I’ll write mine under them. Then we find out how much control you’re actually willing to put in my hands.”