He didn't mock her for failing. Didn't add punishment for the failure.
He just… waited.
Grounded her with his hand on her hip. Reminded her of the prayer. Let her collect herself before continuing.
That's not amateur hour. That's a Dom who understands the difference between breaking someone and building endurance.
I would've added strikes for losing count. Made it twenty. Thirty. Pushed until she used her safe word just to prove the point that shecouldn'thandle what I required.
Lorcan gave her space to succeed.
Infuriating.
I can't even get properly mad about the choking—though we're absolutely having words about that breach—because watching the footage, Lorcan was completely in control.
His hand on her throat wasn't rage or hunger. It wasprecision.
He pulled out of the choke at the exact moment to make her explode. Not a second too long. Not tentative or hesitant.
Perfect.
The kind of perfect that only comes from years of practice despite his protests about being reformed.
And Emmaleen responded like he'd unlocked something I'd been fumbling with for weeks.
She came so hard she went nonverbal. Just gasping, shaking, completely undone.
Have I ever given her the chance to respond to me like that?
Then there was the book talk. Of course they bonded over some Dan Brown wannabe—Vatican conspiracies, Celtic artifacts, Indiana Jones if he was Irish. She was lighting up like a fucking megalopolis over plot holes in a thriller I've never read.
Because what kind of serious person reads fiction?
I thought I'd have ammunition. Lorcan crossed the line—no safe word, just raw intuition and arrogance. I was ready to shred him for it, prove he's reckless, prove she's safer with me.
But every time her breath hitched wrong, he paused. Every time her shoulders tensed beyond arousal into panic, he grounded her. He didn't ask permission—he justknew. Read her body like I read contracts, like I catalog exits in a room.
He didn't need her to saywisteria.
He knew before she did.
Lorcan's got the whole romantic production—castles in Galway, that fucking accent that makes everything sound like poetry, the chapel with its theatrical bullshit, the copper tub, thebooks.
All I've got is a monster in a dungeon.
Lorcan makes punishment feel like worship.
I just make it feel like punishment.
I didn't even try to jerk off in the shower this morning.
My brain's too busy circling the problem, searching for the angle I'm missing. The solution that doesn't exist.
Emmaleen doesn't need two monsters.
And Lorcan's version—the one wrapped in Irish castles and prayer rituals and copper bathtubs—is objectively more romantic than mine.
I dress with mechanical precision. Charcoal three-piece suit, Italian wool, tailored to eliminate even the suggestion of a wrinkle.