"Cocky."
"Confident." He retrieved a warm cloth, cleaning me with careful attention. "You haven't wanted to leave for weeks. Haven't even thought about it except in abstract terms. This is home now. I'm home now."
The truth of it settled into my bones like the milk in my belly—warm and nurturing and undeniable. He was home. This room, these games, this careful dance of dominance and submission. All of it had become more real than the life I'd lived before.
"I hate you," I said, but there was no heat in it.
"I know." He pulled me against his chest, arranging us like puzzle pieces that had been cut to fit. "I love you too."
And there it was again. That word that was too big and too real and too true to examine closely. But I was tired of fighting truth. Tired of pretending I hadn't been falling for weeks, maybe from that first moment he'd looked at me and seen something worth keeping.
"Five more weeks," I said against his chest.
"Five more weeks."
"And then?"
"Then forever." He pressed a kiss to my hair. "If you'll have me. If you'll let me keep you the way you've kept me—completely, obsessively, permanently."
"That's a long time."
"It's not enough time." His arms tightened around me. "Not nearly enough to learn every way you break. Every sound you make. Every thought that passes through that brilliant, twisted mind."
"You make me sound interesting."
"You are interesting. The most interesting thing that's ever walked into my life and spit in my face." He laughed, and I felt it rumble through his chest. "My angry little bunny who became everything I never knew I needed."
"Your experiment."
"My salvation." The seriousness in his voice made me pull back to see his face. "I was dead inside before you. Going through motions, following protocols, studying human behavior like I wasn't human myself. You changed that. Changed me."
"By being a brat?"
"By being real. By feeling everything so intensely it leaked through your defenses. By fighting even when you wanted tosurrender." He traced my face like he was memorizing it. "By making me feel things I'd trained myself not to feel."
"Like what?"
"Need. Want. Possessiveness so intense it scares me. Love so complete it rewrites everything I thought I knew about myself." He smiled, wry and honest. "You ruined me, baby. For other subjects. For clinical distance. For any life that doesn't have you in it."
"Good," I said fiercely. "You ruined me first."
"We ruined each other." He pulled me back down, tucking my head under his chin. "And now we get to build something new from the wreckage."
"Something with baby bottles and contracts?"
"Something with trust and choice and yes, probably baby bottles." His hand found mine, threading our fingers together. "Something real, even if it looks nothing like what either of us expected."
I thought about that—about expectations versus reality. I'd expected to endure twelve weeks of humiliation for money. Instead, I'd found myself. Found him. Found a version of happiness that required kneeling and collars and calling a man Daddy while he did unspeakable things to me.
"I want to keep the collar," I said suddenly.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. It's..." I touched the metal at my throat, warm from my skin. "It's mine now. Part of me. Like you are."
"Then you'll keep it." Simple as that. "Keep anything you want. The clothes, the toys, the name. Whatever feels right."
"Even Mr. Hoppy?"
