And I cried.
Real tears, not the angry ones from pain or the frustrated ones from denial. These were something else. Something that had been building since the day I signed that contract, since the first time he called me good girl, since I realized I didn't want to leave even when I could.
He gentled his touch, working me through the aftershocks while I fell apart in ways that had nothing to do with orgasms. When I finally stilled, he pulled back, looking up at me with those storm-grey eyes that saw too much.
"Why are you crying, baby?"
"Because—" I hiccupped, trying to find words. "Because you're the first person to ever really see me. Not Lilah the bartender or Lilah the friend or Lilah the ex. Just... me. The messy, needy, broken parts I've been hiding forever."
"And what do you see when you look at yourself now?" He gestured to the screen where the video had paused on my face mid-orgasm.
I studied that image—me but not me. Someone who'd given up control and found something better. Someone who'd stopped fighting herself long enough to feel. Someone who looked... free.
"I see what you made," I said softly. "But also what I chose. What I became. What I maybe always was underneath."
"There's my smart girl." He rose gracefully, pulling me up with him. "Starting to understand that creation and revelation can be the same thing."
He held me while I shook, this man who'd taken me apart so carefully and was putting me back together in shapes I didn't recognize but couldn't deny felt right. The video screen went dark, but the images were burned into my memory. Evidence of transformation. Proof of becoming.
"What happens when the twelve weeks are over?" I asked against his chest.
"What do you want to happen?"
"I don't know." But that was a lie. I did know. Had known for weeks maybe. "I can't go back to being Lilah. Not after this. But I don't know how to be Bunny in the real world."
"Then we'll figure it out together." He pulled back to meet my eyes. "If you want. If you choose to stay."
"You'd want that? To keep me?"
"Baby," he said softly, "I've been trying to figure out how to keep you since week two. You're not the only one who's been transformed here."
"You seem pretty much the same. All control and calculation."
"Do I?" He laughed, but it was edged with something raw. "I've broken every protocol. Violated my own ethics. Fallen in love with a subject who should just be data. You've ruined me for normal research. For normal anything."
"Good," I said fiercely. "You ruined me first."
"I prefer to think of it as renovation." He kissed my forehead, gentle as butterfly wings. "Taking something beautiful but neglected and restoring it to its full potential."
"With orgasm denial and public humiliation?"
"With patience and persistence and occasionally questionable methods." He smiled, and it transformed his face. "Though you have to admit, they've been effective."
I thought about arguing, but what was the point? The evidence was clear. I'd walked in as Lilah—angry, closed off, going through motions that looked like life but felt like drowning. Now I was Bunny—still complicated, still struggling, but feeling things. Wanting things. Admitting to needs I'd buried so deep I'd forgotten they existed.
"They'd really see what you made," I said quietly. "If that video got out. They'd see someone you transformed through patience and perversion."
"They'd see someone brave enough to change," he corrected. "Strong enough to submit. Real enough to cry when something finally breaks through all those walls."
"Is that how you see me?"
"That's how you are." He traced my collar, fingers lingering on his initials. "My brilliant, broken, beautiful girl who fights everything until she doesn't. Who makes me forget my own rules. Who turns what should be simple research into something complicated and necessary and permanent."
"Permanent?"
"If you want." The vulnerability in his voice made my chest tight. "Six more weeks of official sessions. Then... whatever comes next. Whatever we decide we are when the contracts don't matter anymore."
I thought about that. About choosing this—choosing him—without the excuse of signed papers and financial obligation. About being Bunny because I wanted to be, not because I'd been conditioned to respond.
