Command voice.
Not rescue voice. Not concerned-citizen voice.
Command.
"Where'd ya come from? Before Giovanni."
"Cleveland, originally. But I was staying at New Beginnings Women's Shelter in Riverview when Mr. Bavga offered me employment."
But I'm watching him now.Reallywatching.
The way his gaze tracks over my bare shoulders. Then down again, to my breasts. Which are showing off in a most spectacular way at the moment.
Tight, peaked nipples.
Firm, round shape.
The tension in his jaw that reads less like righteous anger and more like restraint. The way he's sitting—weight shifting again, hands flexing and unflexing at his sides like he's physically stopping himself from reaching out.
Is he?—
Is Heroic Kidnapper actually turned on right now? Bythis? By me sitting here in Giovanni's collar, speaking in my carefully trained submission voice, displaying all the visible evidence of my conditioning?
The hypocrisy would be funny if it weren't so perfectly on brand for my life.
Man rescues woman from sexual servitude, gets visibly aroused by her conditioned obedience, probably tells himself it's different when he does it.
Sure, buddy. Your boner is the ethical boner. The rescue boner. The boner that knows the difference between exploitation and… whatever you're telling yourself this is.
I should feel something about this. Anger, maybe. Or vindication—proof that he's no different from Giovanni, that the only thing separating "saint" from "sadist" in the family tree of fucked-upness is which side of the trunk you're on.
Instead, I feel that familiar low heat starting to pool between my thighs.
Because my body recognizes authority when it sees it.
And Heroic Kidnapper—with his command voice and his dilated pupils and the visible bulge forming against his jeans—is absolutely, unquestionablyauthority.
In this moment of dual silent introspection, this moment of absolute tragedy masked as modern existentialism, a song begins to play.
Rihanna's voice cuts through the cabin—Eminem's track about monsters. The kind that live under beds. The kind you befriend instead of fight because they understand the voices in your head better than anyone else ever could.
People try to save you. Think you're crazy. Never stop holding their breath, waiting for you to get better.
But you don't get better.
You just get more honest about what you are.
Heroic Kidnapper doesn't move. Doesn't reach for the phone. Just sits frozen while the chorus plays and all the color drains from his face.
He knows who's calling.
And suddenly, so do I.
5
The phone is vibrating in my pocket as Rihanna's voice cuts through the cabin—she's friends with the monster under her bed—and I already know who's callin' without lookin'.
Except I do look, don't I, because apparently I'm a glutton for psychological torture.
