"SHUT UP!"
I fought harder but the cold had sapped my strength. Could only beat weakly at his chest while he held me under water that felt like punishment and baptism combined.
"But I'm not leaving," he continued relentlessly. "Not going anywhere. Which means you have to figure out how to be loved without destroying it. How to be held without fighting. How to be yours AND mine without losing either part."
The fight went out of me all at once. I sagged against him, letting the cold water wash away the rage, the fear, the terrible certainty that I was too broken for even him to fix.
"There we go," he murmured, reaching to adjust the temperature. The water warmed gradually, like mercy after judgment. "Let it out. Let it all go."
I cried then. Not the angry tears of destruction but something deeper. Grieving, maybe. For the girl who'd thought numbness meant safety. For all the years of being half-alive. For the terror of being fully present now, with nowhere to hide.
He held me through it, soaked clothes and steady arms. When the tears finally stopped, he turned off the water and wrapped me in a towel that probably cost more than my entire former wardrobe.
"Better?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"Good. Now—" He pointed to the floor. "Crawl."
"What?"
"You destroyed your room. Threw furniture. Attacked me." His tone had shifted to something darker. "There are consequences. So crawl. From here to my bed. Show me you remember how to be good."
"I can't—"
"You can. You will. Because despite that impressive tantrum, you're still mine. Still wearing my collar. Still the girl who begs so pretty when she wants something."
My legs felt too shaky to walk anyway. I dropped to my knees, then hands, the plush carpet soft against my palms. The towel fell away but I didn't reach for it. Just started crawling, aware of his eyes on me. Of how I must look—wet hair streaming, skin pink from cold and emotion, moving on all fours like an animal.
The distance felt endless. Each movement reminded me of what I was, what I'd become. Not the angry girl throwing chairs but the one who'd chosen this. Who'd begged for exactly this kind of control when the world felt too big to navigate alone.
I reached the bed and stopped, unsure what came next. Afraid to look up. Afraid to see disappointment or worse, clinical distance.
"Up on the bed. Face down."
I climbed up shakily, pressing my face into sheets that smelled like him. Like us. Like all the nights I'd spent here learning how submission felt like coming home.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into expensive cotton.
"For what?" The bed dipped as he sat beside me.
"For—for losing it. For throwing things. For being too much."
"You're never too much." His hand found my hair, still wet from the shower. "Intense, yes. Complicated, absolutely. But never too much. Not for me."
"I couldn't stop." The words came muffled. "Once I started feeling angry, it just kept building. Like I'd opened a door I couldn't close."
"Because you've been keeping it locked for years. Maybe decades." His hand moved to my back, tracing patterns that soothed. "All that rage at a world that hurt you. At yourself for not being stronger. At me for making you feel it."
"I'm scared," I admitted. "Scared there's more. More anger, more hurt, more everything just waiting to explode."
"There probably is." Matter-of-fact, not minimizing. "And when it comes, we'll handle it. With cold showers or warm baths. With control or freedom. With whatever you need to survive the feeling without drowning in it."
"What if I hurt you? Really hurt you?"
"You won't."
"How do you know?"
