Chapter 18: The Longest Night – Eighteen Collared Girls Bound Without Break, Oiled, Stretched and Denied Until the Edge of Morning

Rain fell steadily against the hostel windows, a constant soft drumming that sealed the room off from the rest of the campus. Most of the other residents had left for the weekend. Arjun’s room had been stripped to its essentials: the two mattresses joined into one wide platform that covered almost the entire floor, eighteen lengths of soft rope laid out in a precise row, the leather belt and wooden paddle hanging side by side, and three full bottles of coconut oil standing open. Four thick candles burned at the corners of the mattresses, their light low and steady.