The windowless room is . . . small, clean, pristine in a way that doesn’t match the rest of the house, like some outdated tech room. It’s crammed with shelves of old and new recording devices, stacks of VHS tapes, and a wall of high-tech surveillance screens—the cutting-edge kind that doesn’t belong in a place as old as this manor. Cables snake across the floor in tangled knots, and every inch of space seems to hum with a faint, subtle energy.
I move closer to the screens, my breath coming faster now, something curling heavily in my gut. “Why the fuck is there a surveillance room tucked away like this?”
Scratchy, low-res footage plays on one of the dimly lit monitors. A man is tied to a bed, his body bent in ways that make my stomach churn. His skin is glossy with sweat, marks and welts already forming on his back.
I swallow, my throat suddenly dry, when the camera pans just enough to reveal Adrian—and that fucking mask.
“Does he ever take the damn thing off?”
He toys with the poor bastard on the screen, pulling him apart piece by piece—for pleasure, for pain. Adrian fucks him with the same precision, the same fucking intensity that he used on me earlier.
I flinch, glancing away, especially when my dick twitches. But my gaze locks onto the tapes—so many of them. How many people have walked through these halls, completely oblivious to the cameras capturing their every weakness?
And then I see it.
A tape marked with today’s date.
My name.
“No fucking way.” I grab the tape, jamming it into an empty player with such force, I nearly break the thing. The screen flickers to life, crackling in and out, before finally settling on an all too familiar image.
Me.
In the mirrored room. The encounter from earlier. Everything from when he undressed me to when he restrained me in the immobilization stand, which forced me to watch myself come undone from every angle.
Fuck.
I watch myself, back arched, hair plastered to my forehead with sweat, panting and moaning as Adrian dominates me. I see the exact moment I fucking break, my body trembling as I give in, fucking myself on his dick.
But the worst part . . . when he commanded me to beg.
And I did.
“Please, fuck, please. Adrian, make me come.”
My face burns as I’m forced to relive every goddamn humiliating second. I look away, but it doesn’t stop the sounds—my voice. Utterly wrecked. Groaning, panting, begging.
He recorded it.
I hit the pause button and step back, nearly tripping over my feet as I crash against one of the shelves. My pulse hammers in my ears, my vision blurring around the edges.
“Motherfucker. Fucking, motherfucker!”
Is this what he wanted from the start? To drag me in, rip down my walls . . . just to put me in his collection of twisted, depraved bullshit?
Yeah, to hell with that bullshit.
I’m not some fucking toy to play with. No fucking way is he going to make me feel powerless, violated.
Fuck this, fuck him, fuck all of it.
I’m out. I’m leaving this damn place, and Adrian, and the haunting fucking eyes that follow me from every goddamn shadow.
Except there’s no way back from what already happened, no matter how far I run.
No way to undo what I’ve already given him.
Or . . . what he’s taken.
