Is that progress or delusion?
A soft knock interrupts my spiral. Not demanding. Almost... hesitant?
I could hear them earlier—Giovanni and Mas—Jino. God, I need to stop calling him Master in my head. It's like my brain is already capitulating.
I was too busy unraveling my own psyche to eavesdrop properly. Now I wish I had. Maybe then I'd know what's coming next in this sick little play.
What am I afraid of more? That they'll tell me to go? Or ask me to stay?
If I leave, I get my freedom and enough money to last a year. Not to mention a new name. I could start over. Somewhere warm, maybe. With palm trees and no basements.
If I stay... what? More humiliation? More confusion? More moments where I hate myself for wanting what I shouldn't want?
Or something else? Something I can't even name yet?
Another knock.
I sigh, loud enough to be heard through the door. "Come in," I call, my voice steadier than I feel.
Jino enters. Not Master, but Jino now—names matter when your dignity's in shreds. I study his back as he walks to the end ofmy small room. The tattoos across his shoulders shift with each step, a morbid animated flipbook of skeleton saints and Latin prayers I can't translate. He stops at the bathtub, looking down into its empty basin.
The memory floods back unwanted—his hands on me last night. How careful he was. How methodical. The way his fingertips skimmed my skin like he was reading braille, finding every tension point and soothing it away. Clinical, almost. Except it wasn't clinical at all.
I asked him point blank why he was touching me like that.
His answer was so maddeningly honest, it stole my words away.To make you love me. To confuse your brain so you see your Master as love, not pain. If you were my sub, I'd be fucking you slowly tonight. Telling you sweet things. I'd make you come many times to take away the sting of the day.
The bath as behavior modification. Tenderness as tactical advantage. The care itself was part of the conditioning—he'd admitted it to my face, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And my body had responded exactly as programmed.
Jino turns to face me, his split lip from the fight with Giovanni adding a strange vulnerability to his otherwise controlled expression. His eyes lock on mine.
"Did you sleep well after I left?"
I pull my legs up, suddenly aware of how visible I must be through this nightgown. Then realize with horror, I'm flashing him my pussy. I quickly put my legs down. "Like a baby after its first exorcism."
"Did my presence in your room upset you?"
"Living in a sex dungeon upset me. You were just the cherry on top of my trauma sundae."
"Did the bath comfort you?"
"Are you seriously asking if your manipulation worked? That's next-level gaslighting, even for this place."
His expression doesn't change. "I'm guiding you through confusion. Nothing more."
"Well, consider me thoroughly guided into Stockholm Syndrome. What's next on the abuse itinerary?"
"That's your prerogative to interpret it that way," he says with infuriating calm.
"My prerogative?" My voice rises. "Was it my prerogative to be stripped naked? To be debased and humiliated? To be treated like an animal for training?"
Jino tilts his head slightly. "Did you feel humiliated last night after I put you to bed?"
The question stops me cold.
Did I? The bath had felt... good. Necessary. His hands had been gentle, his voice soothing. Even when his fingers slipped between my legs, I didn’t feel violated. It felt... inevitable. Right.
And that terrifies me more than any crop or command.