Photos & Text: Badenov @_truthandbeauty_
The Submissive: Jack @withlovefromjack
The Mistress: Katherine @daughterofnoir

THE SUBMISSIVE:

I slipped away into the stairwell.

The party was loud, thick with bodies and perfume and voices, and I needed a breath. The stairwell was cool, its concrete walls bare, its light dim. I pressed my back against the railing and closed my eyes. For a moment, I could pretend I was hidden, outside of everything.

Then I felt her gaze.

It struck me before I even opened my eyes — the undeniable sense of being observed. When I looked up, she was there: tall, composed, her expression unreadable but her attention absolute. My chest tightened. I had not escaped. I had been found.

She did not ask me anything, not my name, not why I was there. She simply turned toward the stairs, her body moving upward with a kind of inevitability.

THE MISTRESS:

She thought she had disappeared into the stairwell

It was dark, quiet, and she leaned there as though the walls might swallow her. They always believe that. But I saw her the moment I entered. They can never truly hide. The ones who slip away are waiting, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

All it takes is my gaze. I let it rest on her until she felt the weight of it, until the truth surfaced in her eyes: she wasn’t invisible. She was prey that had already been claimed. I didn’t speak. Words are unnecessary at that stage. I turned and climbed the stairs. As expected, she followed. They always do.

THE SUBMISSIVE:

I followed. There was no moment of decision, no pause where weighed whether I should. My feet carried me after her as though it was the only possible path.

The upstairs room was drenched in daylight. The windows poured it in like water, catching the dust in the air. A sofa sat beneath the light, a table against the wall, and a camera already waiting on its tripod.

It felt staged, pre-pared, as though this scene had been set long before I arrived.

She moved behind the lens, her body silhouetted in the glare. I tried to appear calm, leaning against the table, but inside I was trembling. My heart hammered as though it wanted out of my chest. My body knew what my mind was too slow to name: I was already hers.

THE MISTRESS:

The upstairs space was stripped bare. Light poured in through tall windows, sharp and cold. It showed everything, even the smallest tremor in the air. A sofa, a table, a camera already waiting — the scene was perfect.

When I sat and gestured, she came quickly, without hesitation. My hand closed around her throat. No force was required.

The machine was useful, though not for its record. It gives them a narrative, a way to believe they are acting for art, for performance. In reality, the camera is only a prop. The true subject is obedience.

I stepped behind the lens and let her arrange herself. Pretending to pose gives them comfort, a fragile illusion of choice. It relaxes them, keeps them pliant. But I don’t need to direct much. Once they know they are seen, their bodies begin to write the script themselves.

THE SUBMISSIVE:

When she gestured, I obeyed. Her hand rose and closed around my

throat. She didn’t squeeze. She didn’t need to. The certainty in her grip rewrote me. My body softened under her touch, every muscle slackening into surrender. I felt smaller, lighter, and at the same time, more intensely alive than I had ever been.

I stretched across the sofa, head tilted back, lips parted.

The camera clicked in the background, capturing frames, but I wasn’t offering myself to the machine. I was offering myself to her. Each pose felt as though she had written it in advance, and I was simply discovering the script she had hidden inside me.

The longer it went on, the deeper the trance became. The world outside faded. The party downstairs, the city beyond, even my name — all dissolved into silence. There was only her, her gaze, her hand. I was material, pliant and open, reshaped by her will.

THE MISTRESS:

When I sat and gestured, she came immediately. My hand rose to her throat. No pressure was required. Pressure is crude, blunt. What I give is certainty — and that is far stronger. When the body feels recognized for what it is, it yields without struggle.

She laid herself across the sofa, stretching, tilting her head back, parting her lips.

To her it may have felt like performance, something staged for the camera. To me, it was something truer. Each gesture was a confession, each breath a surrender. The lens clicked, but I wasn’t recording her body. I was recording the obedience she had already offered.

I watched the hesitation melt, watched her dissolve into silence. What I captured was not an image, but the deeper record: the nerves under her skin, the weight of her exhale, the way her edges softened once she understood there was no need to resist. That cannot be photographed. It can only be lived.

THE SUBMISSIVE:

Later, when the camera was lowered, I found myself with my head in her lap. Her fingers slid through my hair in slow strokes. It wasn’t tenderness. It wasn’t comfort. It was claim. Every pass of her hand said the same thing: you are mine.

And I wanted nothing more than to be exactly that. I thought I had gone into the stairwell to disappear. But what I craved wasn’t invisibility. It was to be seen, fully, relentlessly, by someone who could strip me of every pretense.

In her gaze, I was found. And in her hands, I belonged.

THE MISTRESS:

Later, when the lens was lowered, I placed her head in my lap. My fingers combed her hair with deliberate care. Not affection. Not comfort. Possession. She understood. This was not reward. It was recognition — the confirmation that she had been claimed fully.

Control is never something I seize. I don’t need to. Control is given, yielded the moment I choose to see them clearly. And when I looked at her in that stairwell, I saw everything. She was never hiding. She was waiting.