appointments

The display of the phone burned in my palm as I dialed the number.

While the ringing tone hummed in my ear, my gaze drifted down Loona’s legs toward the carpet. My mind raced in a maelstrom of images I had tried to suppress for months, now surging to the surface with sheer, brutal force.

I saw Timo in front of me—tall, athletic, carrying that effortless, carefree confidence typical of men who have never encountered a locked door in their lives. And then Nadja pushed her way into my thoughts: the scent of her perfume, her wet lips, the unrestrained gasps in the darkened bedroom while Timo took her on the bed. He had touched her with the matter-of-fact certainty of a man who takes whatever he wants, without ever suspecting he was merely a game piece in an elaborate humiliation. And me? I had knelt on the cold tiles, mute, unworthy, my throat constricted, reduced to a silent instrument whose only purpose was to clean up in the end.

A familiar, poisonous shiver coursed down my spine. It was sickening. It was corrosive. And yet, in that exact moment, my body strained with a dull, frantic arousal against the seamless wall of surgical steel. The casing gave not a single millimeter. The pain triggered by the compression against my pubic bone struck like an electric shock, converting shame directly into pure submission.

"Yo, John! Man, finally!", Timo’s voice boomed through the receiver, buoyant, raspy from partying, utterly oblivious.

It took me two heartbeats to clear my throat. My fingers tightened around the phone. Loona watched me from the sofa, legs crossed, the corners of her mouth curved into a cold, knowing smile.

"Hey, Timo", I managed to say. My voice sounded surprisingly composed, almost normal—the perfect bourgeois mask behind which my core burned. "Sorry, I’ve been pretty tied up with university the past few days."

"Totally get it, you nerd", he laughed loudly into the phone. "Listen, I’m about to burst. Nadja… man, I’m telling you, I’ve never seen a woman like her. What she pulled off last night… you’ve got to hear this. Let’s grab a coffee later, alright? Café by Rathaus Schöneberg, four o'clock?"

My gaze shifted toward Loona. She nodded slowly, almost casually, like granting a servant permission to clear the table.

"Four works for me", I replied, my heart pounding in my throat. "See you later, Timo."

"Awesome, see you in a bit, man!"

The line went dead. The dull dial tone echoed through the silence of the room.

I lowered the hand holding the phone. My entire body trembled under a strange, intoxicating inner turmoil. For years, this cuckold reality had been a dark prison, a filthy secret devouring me from within. Yet in this moment, the axis completely shifted.

Because now, there was Mira.

The picture of her—lying in bed that morning in the pale light of the pre-war Schöneberg apartment, her tousled curls, the glasses on her nose, her warm, disarmingly beautiful smile—laid itself over the chaos in my mind. Mira knew. She knew every dirty detail, every abyss, every indignity I had suffered. And instead of turning away in disgust, she held onto me. She did not despise me, she did not cast me out; she integrated this dark reality into something that offered true safety.

The thought that I was about to sit across from my best friend—the man who was the unwitting toy of my disenfranchisement—and listen to him boast while the steel beneath my jeans secured my chastity, was absolute torture. But it was a torture with purpose. I no longer endured it as a masterless subordinate in Steglitz, but as Mira’s man. I would absorb every single sentence from Timo like a sponge, swallow down the humiliation, and lay it tomorrow at Mira’s feet by the Charité. She would listen to me, her cool fingers would trace my cheek, and she would decide how much pain and how much tenderness I deserved.

"Get up, John", Loona’s calm voice cut through my thoughts.

I pushed myself up. My legs felt heavy, yet there was no longer any despair in my eyes.

"Put on dark jeans and the grey sweater", Loona instructed without looking up from her laptop. "No underwear. The rough denim should remind you with every step what belongs down there. And act like a loyal friend. Nod, laugh, listen to him. Let him enjoy his illusion."

She glanced up briefly, her gaze striking me with unyielding sharpness.

"And when you come home tonight, I don’t want to see a pathetic wreck. You pack your weekend bag for Schöneberg. Mira already cleared space in her closet for you today."

I nodded silently and began to turn toward the room. But the motion died before it started. The dry, metallic snap of the laptop lid closing shattered the silence.

Loona did not shove the device aside as she usually did; instead, she paused for a fraction of a second. Her fingers lingered on the matte casing. When she looked up, her expression held neither her usual cutting detachment nor her customary coldness, but something rare, almost unsettling: hesitation.

"Wait", she said softly.

I froze mid-step, the chill of the parquet seeping into my bare soles. Loona leaned back slowly, measuring me from my temples down to the steel cylinder encasing my pelvis, her lips thinning into a straight line.

"I told Mira that no one touches you anymore except her", she began. Her voice sounded collected, almost matter-of-fact, yet beneath the surface lingered a dark, restless undertone. "And starting tomorrow, that will be law. It’s the right call. For your path, for your future."

She paused, her gaze locked on my face, searching, as if hunting for an objection I wasn’t even capable of formulating. Then she tilted her head slightly.

"But today, you’re still here", she continued, her tone shifting—losing its polished severity for the briefest heartbeat to take on a rough, almost intimate depth. "And before I hand over the leash for good… I want to know if you truly understand what you’re walking away from."

With a slow, uncompromising gesture, she pointed to the carpet in front of her knees.

"Come here, John."

I stepped forward and sank to my knees before her. The steel pressed, hard and familiar, against my pubic bone.

Loona leaned forward. Her hand came to rest against my cheek, not aggressively, but with a strangely heavy, possessive pressure. The pad of her thumb stroked slowly over my lower lip as her eyes held mine captive.

"One last time", she whispered, and for a fleeting second, a glint of pain flared in her eyes at relinquishing total control—veiled beneath the edge of an ultimate demand. "Going by the book starts tomorrow in Schöneberg. Right now, I want you to touch me as if there is no tomorrow. As if the world out there didn't belong to you, Mira didn't exist, and you were meant to stay here at my feet forever. Can you do that?"

My throat felt clamped shut, my heart hammered hard against my ribs. The paradox of her words etched itself deeply into my consciousness: she was releasing me into an orderly future, yet in the exact same breath demanding the final, absolute sacrifice of her own past.

"Yes, Loona", I managed hoarsely.

A faint, melancholic yet triumphant smile passed over her features. She sat upright on the cushions, legs still crossed, and slowly released my cheek. Her hands moved to the hem of her grey wool sweater. With a fluid, almost casual motion, she pulled the loose knit over her head and set it beside her against the backrest of the sofa.

Beneath it, she wore nothing. In the cool, pale daylight of the old Berlin apartment, the delicate lines of her shoulders and the gentle curve of her breasts were sharply defined. She looked at me unblinkingly—scrutinizing, challenging, completely devoid of shame.

Lifting her hips slightly off the cushions, she hooked her thumbs into the elastic waistband of her black leggings and slid the tight fabric down over her hips and legs in one seamless motion. Without breaking eye contact, she flicked the leggings aside onto the parquet with her toes. Then she shifted right to the front edge of the seat, rested her forearms on her knees, and parted her thighs.

"Come here", she repeated, this time without the slightest hesitation, her voice deep and unyielding.

I shuffled on my knees closer to the couch until my forehead nearly brushed her thighs. The cold of the floorboards pressed into my bones while the heat radiating from her skin already hit my face. The steel between my legs throbbed under the mounting pressure, rigid and unbending.

Her fingers slid into my hair, seizing it with that familiar, merciless grip, pulling my face directly into her without preamble.

What followed was no longer a mechanical routine. It was a silent struggle between two people who knew full well that an era was ending—and who fought with every fiber against admitting that loss of control.

Every breath, every movement of my lips and tongue was steeped in the knowledge that this was a goodbye. It was a paradoxical mix of absolute submission and the mute urge to prove to her that she could never truly strip this obedience away from me—even if she surrendered the keys to Mira tomorrow.

Her thighs pressed hard against my temples, nearly cutting off my air and locking out the outside world entirely. Not another word passed between us. Only her uneven, broken gasps, the heavy rush of my own blood in my ears, and the dull drag of the steel casing against my pubic bone filled the space.

When the tension in her body reached its breaking point, it ended not in a cry of triumph, but in a stifled, ragged exhale that sounded almost like a curse—as though she resented her own undoing.

She held me tight for several seconds more, her chest heaving, the strength in her fingers slowly ebbing away. Then, with a brief, almost clinical motion, she pushed me back.

I dropped back onto my heels, knees aching against the hardwood floor, my lips burning and numb.

Loona remained seated on the sofa, breathing deeply before leaning down to retrieve her leggings from the floor. With calm, practiced movements, she pulled the fabric back over her legs and slipped the grey sweater over her head. She shook out her dark hair and reached for the coffee mug on the side table. Her fingers did not shake, yet her gaze took a beat longer than usual to regain the unapproachable sharpness she wore like armor.

She took a sip of the cold coffee, looked down at me, and gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

"Now get dressed—jeans and a sweater, nothing underneath. I want that coarse fabric to remind you who you belong to with every step you take before you shake Timo's hand", she said, her voice having reclaimed nearly all its cutting firmness, with only a trace of hoarseness lingering at the edge. "And when you're sitting in front of Timo listening to him brag about Nadja, remember with every sip of coffee where your mouth just was."

She snapped the laptop open, and the faint clatter of the keyboard resumed as if nothing had transpired between us. A cold, definitive severance.

I got to my feet on shaky legs. The taste of her clung immutably to my lips, a brand upon my skin that I was about to carry out into the late Berlin autumn and into the meeting with my best friend.