I stop fighting.
My fingers find my clit, and the pleasure is so sharp it almost hurts. I’m soaking wet, have been since he touched me in the training room, and the slide of my own fingers feels like relief and surrender and betrayal all at once. My skin is hypersensitive everywhere—my nipples aching where they brush against the sheets, my inner thighs slick with want, every nerve ending screaming for something more than my own inadequate touch.
I think about him.
I don’t want to—I try to think about anything else, anyone else—but my mind keeps returning to Karax. The way he looks at me with those ancient eyes. The way his hands feel on my body, so big I disappear inside them. The way he saysgood girllike it’s both a reward and a promise.
The way I felt with his hand around my throat. Helpless. Owned. Safe.
My fingers move faster.
I imagine him here, in the bed, watching me touch myself. Imagine the hunger in his golden eyes as he sees what he’s done to me—how desperate I’ve become, how much I need something I refuse to ask for. Imagine him pinning my wrists above my head with one hand while the other explores my body, touching me wherever he wants because I can’t stop him.
Because I don’t want to stop him.
“That’s it,”dream-Karax murmurs.“Show me how much you want it.”
I bite my lip to keep from moaning out loud. My hips rock against my hand, chasing a pleasure that feels just out of reach. I need more. Need to be filled, stretched, claimed. My fingers aren’t enough—they’re too small, too gentle, nothing like the thickness I’ve felt pressed against me through our clothes.
“You’re so wet, little warrior. So ready for me. But you’re not going to come until I say you can.”
My fingers falter. Even in my fantasy, he’s controlling me. Even in my own head, I can’t escape the conditioning that’s been rewiring my responses for weeks. And the worst part—the part that makes me want to scream—is how good it feels to be controlled. How right it feels to wait for his permission.
“Ask nicely.”
“Please,” I whisper to the empty room, my voice cracked and desperate. “Please let me come, Alpha.”
“Good girl.”
The orgasm crashes through me like an avalanche—so intense I see stars, so overwhelming I forget to be ashamed of what I’m doing. My body convulses around my fingers, my pussy clenching desperately around nothing, needing something bigger and thicker and more.
Needing him.
The pleasure fades, and the shame rushes in to fill the space it leaves behind.
I just got myself off to fantasies of my captor. Called him Alpha. Begged for his permission to come.
I stare at the ceiling of his bedroom—our bedroom—and try to remember what it felt like to be free.
I can’t.
He knows.
He doesn’t say anything the next morning, but I see it in his eyes when I walk into the training room. The satisfaction. The hunger. The absolute certainty that I’m breaking exactly the way he planned.
“You slept well.” It’s not a question.
My face burns. “Well enough.”
“You smell different today.” He moves closer, and I force myself not to retreat. “Sweeter. More satisfied.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” He circles behind me, and I feel his breath on the back of my neck. “You touched yourself last night. Thinking about me.”
I don’t answer. I can’t—my throat has closed up with humiliation and something else I refuse to name.
“There’s no shame in it,” he says, and his voice is almost gentle. “Your body knows what it needs. Fighting those needs only causes unnecessary suffering.”
