The kitchen goes blurry.
I'm thinking about octopi. About kneeling between his legs while I told him how they squeeze through impossible spaces, three hearts beating, liquefying themselves to fit where they shouldn't."That's me,"I whispered."I'm the octopus. Give me one crack in your heart and I'll squeeze through. Three hearts means I love you three times harder when I do."
He gripped my hair. Pulled my head back. "Shut up and eat."
But that night—after punishment, after he'd cleared my demerits and left marks I felt for days—he pulled me into his lap. "Ride me. Take whatever you need."
And while I rode him, he gave me new stanzas. His voice low and controlled even as he got close.
"An octopus, both graceful and arcane,
She writhes in intellect beyond his reach?—
A creature skilled in artful, subtle pain."
I came the moment he finished the verse. Shattered around his cock while he held my hair and watched my face, cataloging every expression. Then he filled me completely, whisperingmineagainst my neck.
And held me.
Just held me—his cock still inside, my face pressed to his shoulder while I tried to remember how to breathe.
I'm sobbing now in Lorcan's perfect kitchen, clutching the marble counter.
Because it's not Lorcan I want.
It's Giovanni.
Giovanni who wants to know what's inside my head. Who feeds me steak and won't let me suck his cock yet because I'm "not ready." Who killed a man for me and sat beside my hospital bed for six days writing demerits while I was unconscious.
Lorcan isgood. Thoughtful, romantic. He bathes me afterward, discusses books, lights candles symbolically.
That's what women dream about when they read dark romance.
But I don't want it.
I want the monster who tells me to shut up when I ramble about octopi. Who watches me on hidden cameras and catalogs my failures. Who wouldn't dream of bathing with me because that's not what wedo—Jino bathes me, Giovanni punishes me, and the system works.
Tyler threw me down stairs and blamed me for falling.
My parents loved me, but they're dead.
Giovanni murders people who hurt me.
I grab Lorcan's note. Read it again.
Tonight, I'm going to teach you Position Tertia...
It's beautiful. Thoughtful. Designed to give me pleasure wrapped in ritual.
And I'd trade it—all of it—for five minutes kneeling between Giovanni's legs while he ignores me and works on his laptop.
Just beingthere. Under his control. Waiting for him to acknowledge me.
That's what I want. Not romance. Not salvation.
The man who knows I'm already broken and decides to keep me anyway.
My reflection stares back from the window—pale, crying, wearing Lorcan's shirt and Giovanni's collar.
