Nico’s pace turns frantic. He’s panting against my neck, a heady smell coming off him as he chases his release. Hair brushes the side of my head. When he pushes up to look at me, his eyes are glazed over. Lips red and swollen. Hair mussed from my fingers. He usually keeps his emotions so locked down that it’s impossible to know what he’s feeling, but right now, he’s so open I can see everything. All the fear that had been there is gone, replaced by a consumingwanthe’s doing nothing to hide. He’s so beautiful. So perfect and beautiful and wrecked andmine.
I clench my walls around him, doing the one thing I can to make him feel good that the Game Master can’t see. The groan I pull out of him is loud and completely unfiltered.
His eyes narrow on mine in challenge before he buries his face in my neck and pulls that soft piece of skin behind my ear between his teeth. He bites down hard.
I topple over the edge.
The orgasm rises from deep inside me, ripping through me in pulses I can’t control. My walls clamp down around him in waves that keep coming, each one stronger than the last. The pleasure is so overwhelming it almost hurts.
A scream tears from my throat. I pour every ounce of rage and fear I have into it, kicking out even as my body betrays me with wave after wave of devastating pleasure. My good hand claws at Nico’s back. I buck my hips trying to throw him off, butit just drives him deeper and sends another aftershock through me.
Nico drives into me one final time, burying himself so deep I feel it in my chest, and comes with a sound caught between a groan and something more broken. I feel the pulse of him inside me, feel the warmth of his release, and then nothing.
The world goes quiet except for our ragged breathing. We stay locked together. Nico’s forehead drops onto my shoulder, both of us trembling, both struggling to breathe.
He pulls out slowly. The loss cracks something open deep within me. His hands shake as he tucks himself away, his eyes fixed anywhere but on me.
I want to wrap my arms around him so badly my fingers twitch. Want to tell him I’m okay.Morethan okay.
Slow clapping echoes through the bathroom. My walls crumble, and the fog of pleasure burns away in an instant.
“Bravo,” the Game Master says. “That was quite the performance.”
I tug the elastic of my bra back down over my breasts then fumble with my jumpsuit, trying to pull it back up over me and get my arm looped through even though my whole body feels like it’s made of overcooked pasta.
Nico turns away from me. He scrapes a hand over his face, and his shoulders hunch like he’s trying to fold in on himself. Why isn’t he looking at me? He has to know how that felt for me.
“Well?” the Game Master urges. “You know how to finish her.”
I pull in as much air as I can through my nose and then release it in a long exhale to calm myself. My nose is running and partially blocked, and breathing through it is as hard as sucking in air through a coffee stirrer. My lungs are still working overtime from the sex, and knowing I only have seconds to catch my breath is making them burn in anticipation.
I went down a rabbit hole after the murders where I read all about holding your breath, in case Stanley Daniels ever came back. I wanted to be prepared, as illogical as that was. I used to lie awake in my bed and practice, taking a ton of tiny gasps to flood my blood with oxygen so I could hold my breath for longer. My record was three minutes. As soon as I started to panic, it was over, so I’m not going to panic now.
What if Nico can’t bring himself to make it convincing enough? What if the Game Master sees through it and finishes the job himself?
Or what if Nico makes ittooconvincing and actually kills me by accident? I push the thought away immediately. He won’t.
Nico turns back to me, and the look on his face makes an ugly sob work its way up my throat. His eyes are wild and empty at the same time. He can’t hold my gaze for more than a second before his eyes slide away, landing somewhere over my shoulder.
He hauls me up into a sitting position by the shoulders. A fresh bolt of agony shoots through my hand, and I yelp.
“I don’t know what I expected.” His voice is loud. His words are not for me. “It was always going to end this way.”
I take in as big a breath as I can.
His hands grasp my throat.
The pressure starts so gradually, I wonder if he’s going to cut off my air at all. His thumb rests against my windpipe like he’s checking my pulse.
Energy surges through me. I shove the panic down with everything I have, forcing my racing thoughts into something resembling calm.
Closing my eyes, I pull myself away from the bathroom until I’m back in my old foster home, lying on that lumpy twin mattress with the springs that dug into my back and the popcorn ceiling I’d stare at while holding my breath, countingthe seconds, training myself for something I prayed would never happen even if my anxiety tried to convince me it would. My lungs would start to compress, begging for air, but I always made it to the other side where everything went calm and floaty.
Wet drops fall onto my face. I open my eyes to find tears streaming down Nico’s cheeks, mixing with blood and creating pink tracks through the grime.
His grip tightens. His hands dig in so hard I cry out in surprise, but the sound catches on his fingers.
The pressure builds slowly enough that my body doesn’t panic immediately, but I can feel it coming, that response clawing its way up from somewhere primal that doesn’t give a shit how much I trust him. I can’t expend my energy fighting him. I need to let it happen.
