They do, I console myself, as I stumble over to the desk like someone who's been drinking for three days straight but the only thing I'm drunk on is humiliation and whatever hormone cocktail my brain keeps dumping into my bloodstream every time leather touches skin.
I practically collapse into the tiny chair, and for one blessed moment, the relief of sitting down almost makes me break again.
Jesus. Get it together, Rourke. You signed up for this. Literally. With a Mont Blanc pen and everything.
"Remember, slave. You're being watched every moment of the day."
Of course I am. Because privacy is apparently another luxury I forfeited along with my dignity and my ability to walk in a straight line.
A pathetic little hiccup of sound escapes me. It echoes in this stone chamber like an admission of defeat.
Master comes over, crouches down. “Look at me.” His eyes behind that ski mask are unreadable, but there's something almost... gentle? No. Not gentle. Professional. Like a doctor delivering a diagnosis. "The key to the door is hanging on the wall."
My eyes slide over to it. That brass skeleton key, hanging there like the world's most obvious metaphor. Door number one. Freedom. Dignity. The chance to walk away from this insanity before it swallows me whole.
"Your little case of money and freedom are still waiting for you on the other side."
Thirty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars times two. A signing bonus, apparently. Double or nothing money, Giovanni’s version of me losing. A new passport. A fresh start. Everything I thought I wanted when I first walked into Giovanni's restaurant apartment and started this journey to sex-slave enlightenment with a pair of stolen So Kate’s.
"There is no shame in quitting, Emmaleen. Not everyone deserves a King."
And with that devastating little truth bomb, he leaves.
Not everyone deserves a King.
The words hang in the air like incense, heavy and suffocating. I sit in this ridiculous child's chair, hands flat on the desk like a good little soldier, and think about the key. My escape route. My get-out-of-jail-free card.
All I have to do is stand up. Walk over. Take it. Leave.
Simple.
So why does the thought of walking away feel like dying?
The tears continue. Big, fat drops that plop onto the desk like period marks at the end of sentences I never got to finish. Each one feels like a small surrender, and I hate myself for it.
Is this really all it takes? One day of naked Simon Says with a side of psychological warfare? Circuit training for masochists with the promise of... what exactly? Sex as a reward for good behavior? A gold star sticker that says "Congratulations, you've successfully debased yourself"?
Pathetic doesn't even begin to cover it.
The door opens above me, and I hear footsteps on the stone stairs. Heavy. Measured. Familiar.
My spine straightens automatically—muscle memory from hours of crop-assisted posture correction. Even my tear ducts seem to pause, waiting.
Giovanni appears in my peripheral vision like some fever dream of everything I simultaneously want and should run screaming from. Shirtless. Because of course he is. Because the universe has decided that today is National Kick Emmaleen When She's Down Day, and apparently that includes parading around half-naked men with the kind of bodies that should come with warning labels.
And yes.Yes.That's exactly what it takes to break me.
This man with his impossible green eyes and his stupid perfect torso and his... Christ, is he actually hard right now? Like, visibly, obviously, aggressively erect? Because that's just fantastic. Absolutely stellar timing, Universe. Really outdoing yourself today.
I sigh before I can stop myself. A long, shaky exhale that sounds like a white flag being raised.
The want hits me like a freight train loaded with bad decisions and daddy issues. It's immediate and devastating and completely inappropriate given that I'm currently sitting naked in a basement dungeon having just spent the better part of theday being systematically humiliated by his leather-clad dungeon master.
But there it is anyway. Want. Pure, and simple, and utterly mortifying.
My heart does this stupid little skip-beat thing as he moves toward me. He's coming over. Finally. We're going to talk—really talk—like we did in the car during our twisted road trip game of Lie, Lie, Truth with Trauma. We'll banter and trade insults like intellectual foreplay, and then we'll fuck each other senseless like we did in the pool house.
Giovanni will make this right. He'll crack some dry joke about my performance today, maybe tease me about crying, and then he'll erase every one of those demerits with his hands and his mouth and that ridiculous cock that's currently making its presence very known through his pants.