"Nothing comes next." But my hips lifted slightly, seeking pressure that didn't come.
"Doesn't it?" He leaned down, lips brushing my throat. "Tell me you don't want this. Tell me your body doesn't remember exactly how good surrender feels."
I tried. Mouth opened to form the words, but what came out was a whimper when his teeth found the spot that alwaysmade thought impossible. He bit down, not quite breaking skin, and my hands flew to his shoulders. To push away or pull closer, I didn't know anymore.
"That's my girl." The praise hit like a drug, flooding my system with warmth I didn't want. "Fighting so hard, but your body knows better. Knows who it belongs to."
"I belong to myself."
"Of course you do." He pulled back enough to meet my eyes, and his were dark with something that might have been hunger or ownership or love. Hard to parse the difference in his lexicon. "But yourself was shaped by my hands. Every response lovingly crafted. You belong to yourself, and yourself remembers me."
I was losing. Could feel resistance crumbling as he touched and talked and rebuilt every association he'd installed. My body was a traitor, greeting his hands like salvation while my mind screamed warnings.
"Gabriel." His name came out broken, plea and protest combined.
"Yes?" He paused, hands stilling. "What do you need, sweetheart?"
The question shattered something. Or rebuilt it. Three years of conditioning crashed over me in a wave—every time he'd asked that question, every time the answer had been programmed into my bones. I needed what he taught me to need. Wanted what he'd trained me to want.
"I need—" The words stuck, fighting their way past what was left of my resistance. "Please."
"Please what?" Patient as stone, but I could feel his control fraying. Hands not quite steady where they rested against my skin. "Use your words."
"I can't." Truth. I couldn't ask for what my body craved, couldn't voice the hungers he'd carved into my DNA. "You broke that part."
"Then I'll fix it." He moved again, hands working with terrible efficiency. Every touch designed to wind me tighter, push me higher, rebuild pathways that months away had only partially eroded. "Let me remind you how to want."
I shattered. Simply came apart under his hands, conditioning overriding consciousness as he played my body like an instrument he'd personally tuned. Tears streamed down my face—shame and relief and hatred and home all mixed into salt.
"Beautiful." He worked me through it, prolonging sensation until I was sobbing. "My perfect girl, responding exactly as designed. Do you think Nathan ever saw you like this? Ever touched the real you underneath the chemicals?"
"Shut up." But the words lacked force when I was still shaking, still arching into his touch.
"He saw what he expected to see. Broken asset requiring careful handling. But you're not broken, are you?" His hands gentled, soothing now instead of igniting. "You're exactly what I made you. Perfect in your responses. Exquisite in your surrender."
I wanted to argue, but my body was liquid, all fight dissolved in the chemical flood of release. This was always when I was most vulnerable—endorphins making me pliant, conditioning equating pleasure with submission. He'd designed it that way. Built me to crave this specific dissolution.
"Again?" The question was rhetorical. He was already moving, already touching, already winding the spring tighter. "Let's see how many times you can break before you remember who you belong to."
"I hate you." But my hands were in his hair now, pulling him closer even as I spoke rejection.
"Irrelevant." He caught my wrists, pinning them above my head with casual strength. "Hate me all you want. Your body still knows its maker."
The second wave built faster, conditioning stacking on conditioning. Each peak made resistance harder, thought cloudier, until I existed only in sensation and response. He was relentless, clinical in his precision, touching and talking until I couldn't parse where I ended and programming began.
"Please." The word escaped between waves, desperate and directionless.
"Please what?" Again. Always that question, always making me voice what he'd taught me to need.
"I can't—I need—"
"Say it." Command now, authority sharp in his voice. "Tell me what you need."
The words broke free, shame and conditioning making truth unavoidable: "You. Please. Need you."
"Good girl."
He shifted then, weight redistributing as his free hand went to his belt. The sound of leather through loops hit like a trigger, every trained association firing. How many times had that sound preceded—
