I force myself to meet his eyes.
"And that's the problem. It was too good. So good that my brain couldn't reconcile how much I was enjoying it with everything I've been taught about what enjoying something like that means. The shame was eating me alive even while I was coming, and the only way my mind could handle it was to shut down completely. To black out. To escape into unconsciousness so I wouldn't have to face what I was feeling."
The admission hangs between us, raw and ugly and more honest than anything I've ever said to another human being.
"I was going to lose time again," I whisper. "Like I did at Christmas. Because my shame was too big to hold, and disappearing was easier than admitting how much I wanted everything you were doing to me. And I didn't want to do that. I don't want to watch myself experiencing your expert domination. I want to live it. I want to remembereverything."
He's quiet for a long moment, his thumb still tracing gentle circles on my cheek, his eyes never leaving mine. Then he shifts slightly, adjusting his hold on me so I'm cradled more securely against his chest.
"You're beautiful," he says, and his voice is different now, softer somehow, like he's telling me something important instead of just offering a compliment. "Your face, the way your expressions change when you're processing something. Your body, the way it responds to my touch, the way your skin flushes, and your nipples harden, and your pussy gets wet when I'mbarely touching you. Your tits, perfect handfuls that fit in my palms like they were made for me."
He pauses, and when he continues, his voice is even quieter.
"But the sexiest thing about you right now isn't any of that. The sexiest thing about you is that you just did the hardest thing a person can do. You looked inside yourself, found something ugly, and shameful, and terrifying, and you told me about it anyway. That takes more courage than anything I made you do on that cross."
I stare up at him, not quite believing what I'm hearing.
"I know what it feels like," he says. "The shame. The sense that something inside you is fundamentally different from everyone else, fundamentally wrong. I grew up dreaming about delivering justice to people who escaped consequences. Not fantasy justice, not courtroom justice, butrealjustice. Permanent justice."
My brain registers what he's actually saying beneath the careful euphemisms.
He's talking about killing people.
He's talking about the way he killed Derek, tortured him for hours before dismembering and burning his body, because Derek raped me during a power exchange relationship and walked away without consequences.
I should be horrified.
I should be screaming, fighting to get away from this confessed murderer who's holding me in his lap like I'm something precious.
But I find myself leaning closer instead, pressing my ear against his chest to hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
He senses that I'm listening, really listening, the way he listened to me. And something in his posture shifts, like he's been waiting for permission to tell me this, like my attention has unlocked something he's been holding back.
"It's called… The Scales. And it's… for me, anyway—" he's looking right into my eyes now, "—it's…bliss.
Chapter 11
Caleb
Scarletta's looking at me in a way no one has ever looked at me before.
Not with fear, though she should be afraid.
Not with judgment, though I've just handed her every reason to condemn me.
She's looking at me with recognition, like she's found a puzzle piece that finally fits into the jagged hole she's been carrying around her whole life.
I understand her shame because I've lived with my own version of it since I was old enough to understand that the thoughts inside my head weren't normal.
"I always knew I was different too," I tell her, and the words feel strange in my mouth, foreign, like a language I stopped speaking years ago. "Even as a kid. The other boys were obsessed with baseball cards, and video games, and whatever cartoon was popular that week. I was obsessed with the news."
Scarletta's lips curve into a small smile, the first genuine expression of lightness I've seen from her since she safe-worded. The sight of it does something complicated to my chest,a warmth spreading through tissue I'd assumed was calcified beyond repair.
I find myself returning the smile, which is its own kind of revelation. Smiling is not something I do. Smiling is a social performance, a mask people wear to signal approachability, and I've never had any interest in being approached.
But this smile happens without my permission, pulled from somewhere deep by the simple fact of her amusement.
"Yes, fine," I admit. "A child obsessed with the news is objectively strange. I'm aware of how that sounds. But it wasn't the politics that drew me in, though there was certainly a political component to what I was noticing. And it wasn't the crime itself, though crime was at the center of everything."
