I stand there for a long time. When I left him here, it was with a sense of being interrupted, of something being incomplete.
I was right.
But I was wrong about what, exactly, was supposed to happen next.
TWENTY-ONE
Elias
It takes me a long time to wake up. I claw my way toward consciousness, slowly realizing that I’m cold and uncomfortable. I’m sitting up. My head is heavy, hanging.
When I get my eyes open, I find myself staring blearily at my own naked thighs under harsh light. The chair under me is metal. My wrists and ankles are bound to it with padded cuffs. The floor under my bare feet is cold and hard, and I feel the edge of a drain. My thoughts are too sluggish for panic.
When I manage to lift my head, I register cold, gray emptiness—and a dark form.
My vision slowly clarifies until I see a man sitting in a chair ten feet from me, a concrete wall at his back. He’s wearing black pants, a black t-shirt, and a skull mask. He’s completely still.
My heart thuds as though under a heavy blanket. I try to think back. Events are fragmented and blurry. The sex club. The blindfold. Him, holding me.
“Wha …” I can’t finish the word, much less the sentence. My tongue is thick. My thoughts break apart.
My stalker gives me nothing. He doesn’t move at all.
My heartrate picks up, pumping blood and adrenaline through my system. I look around, but all I see is concrete walls and, over my shoulder, a steel door.
Goosebumps tighten my bare skin. My breathing shallows as I wake up more and fully register that I’m naked and bound to a chair in a cell.
I didn’t write anything like this into my fantasy.
“What’s going on?” I manage thickly.
“If you had to guess why you’re here, what would you say?” my stalker asks with the familiar rasp of the voice modulator.
“I … didn’t ask for this.”
“Didn’t you? Isn’t this exactly where this game was always going to end?”
My thoughts drag together.
Thisispart of my fantasy. I didn’t ask for this, didn’t write it, but, on some level, I have always wanted him to do this.
I know that he’s genuinely dangerous. Iamafraid—but I want to be. That’s the point. I want to be chosen like this. To be fixated on like this.
I know he might hurt me. I know he might kill me. I still want it.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what sickness I have. But even as I tremble in the chair, cold and frightened, I’m euphoric.
Whether he loves or hates me, he does, most definitely, see me.
And I see him too. He didn’t think I would. Unlike me, he didn’t want to be seen. But I see him, despite the mask. My monster. He’s always wearing a mask, even when he’s not. But he can’t hide from me.
“Why are you smiling?” he demands.
“Because I love you.”
He jolts. I do too, a little. I didn’t know I was going to say that. I didn’t know I felt that. But I do.
He unfolds himself from the chair. He stalks my way, his footsteps thudding a measured beat across the cold, hard floor. He crouches in front of me. His hands settle on my bare thighs. They slide upward. Inward. His thumbs stroke my balls and my hardening cock.
