Instead, I'm sitting here in Position One—knees together, hands on thighs, spine straight, chin slightly lifted—like I'm waiting for my Master to tell me what comes next.
Except this man isn't my Master.
He's myHeroic Kidnapper.
MySaint, apparently, according to the part of my brain that short-circuited the second his hand wrapped around my throat back in Giovanni's hallway.
That's the moment it happened. The exact second my nervous system tagged him as "Safe Authority Figure" and filed him away in the same mental folder as Giovanni and Jino. The throat grab did it—that confident pressure, the way he pinned me against the wall with just enough force to make my body go liquid and compliant.
My traitorous, thoroughly-reconditioned body looked at that grip and thought:Oh good. A Master. We know what to do with Masters.
Which means I'm "safe" with him.
Which isn't true.
Obviously.
But knowing and feeling remain two separate countries, and my body has already chosen which passport to carry.
So, to recap… my new life—my self-contained, perfectly scheduled fresh start filled with delicious edging and perfect demerits that earn out in orgasmic spankings—apparently comes with consequences such as limited ability to think in life-or-death situations.
This realization came to me during the hours-long ride in some beat-up car trunk that smelled so much like gasoline, I was almost certainly high on fumes.
Because I… blacked out.
Not the trunk part. I remember the trunk part with crystal clarity—every bump in the road, every turn, the way the spare tire dug into my calf, the chemical taste coating my tongue.
No. The blackout happened before that.
The memory tries to surface like something drowning in molasses. I can see Heroic Kidnapper's face—sharp jaw, those unsettling gray eyes, the kind of bone structure that belongs on Renaissance paintings of tortured saints. His hand on my throat. The wall against my back. His accent doing something complicated to my nervous system that I absolutely do not have time to process.
He said something.
What did he say?
"Won't let him kill another woman."
That part I remember. And then?—
Nothing.
Clean cut. Total blackout. My brain just… stopped recording.
One frame: pinned against Giovanni's hallway wall, Heroic Kidnapper's fingers pressing into my pulse points with professional precision.
Next frame: trunk lid slamming down, darkness absolute, gasoline fumes thick enough to taste.
Everything between those two moments? Deleted. Corrupted file. Content unavailable.
I should be terrified by this. The lost time, the missing memories, the fact that my brain apparently decided to take an unscheduled vacation during what was objectively a crisis situation.
I'm not.
That's worse.
I waited for panic to arrive like I was checking train schedules. Okay, fear should be pulling into the station anyminute now. Adrenaline's running late but it'll get here. Survival instinct is probably stuck in traffic.
Nothing came.
