It was almost rhythmic, the cadence of her voice and the stroking through his hair, her heartbeat a metronome for the rest of the world to follow. Try as he might to keep himself still and quiet in order to listen, it didn't help slow him down. At the very least, trying to obey her and pay attention as she told him to did force him to push back the weakening sobs still shaking him.

We're here for you, she said. He believed her, as he'd believed everything she said, and there was little else to do but accept that considering his circumstances. The hard part came when he tried to understand why; he simply couldn't fathom it. Not after what they had just gotten through establishing. His Dom said it wasn't real, yet it had all just happened and been proven for fact. There was no way to reconcile it and perhaps that was somehow the point. He was beyond thinking coherently by this point and merely tried to press his head toward the hand without removing it from his Mistress's shoulder.