When the last vicious spasm finally fades, I slump forward, gasping and trembling, fingers still buried knuckle-deep inside my twitching, oversensitive pussy. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Reality trickles back in slowly, cruel and unforgiving.
I just came harder than I ever have in my entire life—violently, messily, shamefully—fantasizing about the man who kidnapped me. The man who admitted to stalking me for years. The man who put his fist through the wall six inches from my face and then looked at me like that was the least of what he was capable of.
And the worst, most fucked-up part? I still want him. Even now, with my pussy still fluttering and pulsing around my soaked fingers, my thighs sticky with my own cum, my body still twitching from aftershocks…
I still. Want him.
Worse than before.
The admission lands like a stone in my gut. I squeeze my eyes shut, desperately trying to summon the version of myself who sits across from traumatized children and adults every single week—the calm, rational Sophia Sinclair who knows the boundaries, red flags, and preaches self-preservation like it’s gospel.
This man is every warning sign I’ve ever memorized. He’s violent, damaged, hidden behind scars and secrets and that fucking mask.
I’ve sat across from women who fell for men exactly like him, trying to justify why their bodies betrayed them. How fear and desire can twist together until they’re indistinguishable. Why trauma bonds feel like love but are just survival wearing a prettier mask.
I studied the science. I know the patterns. I’ve said the words a hundred times.“Your nervous system is just trying to keep you alive. It’s not your fault.”
And yet here I am—heart racing, thighs still sticky, pussy still throbbing—because the same man who terrifies me also makes me feel more alive than I ever have in my life.
None of my training is working. None of the late-night sessions dismantling dangerous attachments or the careful language I use to pull people out of the dark can touch this.
How is it possible that everything I’ve learned and studied gets annihilated the second Reth looks at me like I’m the only thing in his universe? How the fuck does desire get to win when logic is screaming?
I don’t have an answer, and that scares me more than he ever could.
I wipe my fingertips on the edge of my cotton underwear, drawing back a shaky breath. The aftershocks are still rolling through me in slow, traitorous waves, but the high is already collapsing, leaving something hollow and ugly in its place.
My skin is still flushed hot, my core still twitching around nothing, but none of it feels good anymore. The image of him—his voice in my ear, his hand forcing mine deeper, the way he growledgood girllike he’d been waiting years to say it—won’t leave my head. It clings like smoke.
A wave of embarrassment crashes over me, so sudden and violent my stomach twists. Then the guilt follows, thick and choking, because I didn’t just come thinking about my kidnapper. I cameharderthan I ever have in my life. I begged him in my mind. I spread my legs like a desperate slut for the man who stole me. And the worst part—the part that makes my chest cave in—is that some broken piece of melikedit. Wanted it.
Still wants it.
I sit there on the stool, spent and aching in a way that brings completion but no peace. My thoughts and my body feel like two completely different people sharing one terrified heart, and I don’t know which one is winning.
A tear tracks hot down my cheek. Then another. And another. I don’t bother wiping them away. Call it embarrassment. Guilt. A complete fucking absence of self-preservation. All I know is whatever this is, it’s splitting me wide open from the inside, and I’m terrified there’s no putting me back together after this.
He’s supposed to be the villain. He’s not supposed to be a man I want.
Finally, I wipe my face with the back of my wrist and stand. I need a goddamn drink. Pretty sure I saw tequila in the kitchen cabinets, and right now I would drink it straight from the bottle without a single regret.
I pull the door open.
My heart stops.
He’s right there. Reth. Directly in front of me, filling the entire doorway like he materialized out of the air, like the universe decided the hallway needed a six-foot wall of mystery and sin and didn’t consult me first.
I slam a hand against the doorframe to stop myself colliding with him, my breath leaving my body in one sharp hit.
He doesn’t move. Doesn’t step back. Doesn’t apologize for being exactly where I didn’t expect him to be. He’s just there, still, his presence sucking all the oxygen around us.
My hand is braced on the doorframe, my heart trying to exit my chest through my sternum, because the way he’s looking at me…Jesus.I never knew blue eyes could burn like this.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
He doesn’t speak either. And the silence does what it always does between us. Expands. Fills. Presses against my skin until I’m aware of every inch between us and nothing else.
