I suck in air, coughing. "A poem."
Silence.
Complete, absolute silence.
His hand is still twisted in my hair. My neck is still bent at an unnatural angle. My windpipe is still screaming.
But Giovanni has gone utterly, terrifyingly still.
Then he lets go.
I collapse forward onto my hands, gasping, my hair falling around my face in a tangled curtain.
Behind me, I hear his footsteps cross to the desk. The scrape of the chair. The rustle of pages.
I don't move. Don't look up.
Just kneel there, trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person instead of someone who just got choked by a mob boss in his sex dungeon.
"I didn't finish." My voice comes out hoarse, wrecked. I clear my throat and try again. "That poem I was writing you the first night. You stopped me before I was finished, so..." I blow out a long breath. "I kept writing."
More silence.
Then the sound of pages turning. Faster. Faster. Flipping through the notebook like he's searching for something.
I risk a glance over my shoulder.
Giovanni stands at the desk, the notebook open in his hands, his expression unreadable. He turns another page. Another. Another.
Then he stops. Looks up.
Stares at me.
"What the fuck is this?"
I blink. "I told you. My poem. For you."
"It's like..." He flips to the end, then back to the beginning, his brow furrowing. "A hundred fucking pages long, Emmaleen."
"I know, but..." I blow out a breath, suddenly feeling weirdly self-conscious about the whole thing. Which is absurd, considering I'm naked on a dungeon floor with his handprint still burning across my throat. "You're kinda complicated, my King."
For a moment—one that seems to stretch out far longer than it actually is—Giovanni just stands there staring at me, the notebook held loosely in his hands, his expression caught somewhere between disbelief and something I can't quite name.
Then he laughs.
Actually fucking laughs.
Not the cold, mocking sound I've heard him use on me at times. Not the sharp bark of surprise when I do something unhinged.
This is real. Unguarded. The kind of laughter that transforms his entire face, softening the sharp edges, making him look younger.
Almost... human.
"A hundred pages," he repeats, shaking his head. "You've been down here for all day, no instruction, no goals, and you decided to spend your time writing a hundred-page poem about how complicated I am?"
"Technically it's seventy-three pages." I pause. "But who's counting?"
His laughter fades, but the ghost of a smile remains. He closes the notebook carefully, almost reverently, and sets it on the desk. When he turns back to me, the monster is gone from his eyes.