I see myself spread out on this bed, wrists bound to the iron headboard with those beautiful leather cuffs. Lorcan standing over me, shirtless, those Celtic tattoos on full display as he studies me with that intense gray-eyed focus. His fingertips trailing down my ribs, my hips. His hands spreading my thighs apart while he tells me in that gorgeous Irish accent to stay still, to be good, to take what he gives me and not move until he says?—
"Emmaleen."
I blink. Lorcan is suddenly right in front of me, close enough that I can smell him—fatigue mixed with the lingering scent of cologne, something woodsy and masculine.
He's holding those cuffs.
"Give me your wrist." He says this quietly, but with absolute authority.
My hand lifts without conscious thought. Conditioned from weeks of training with Giovanni and Jino. When a dom gives a command, I obey. It's automatic now, wired into my nervous system like breathing.
Lorcan wraps the leather around my left wrist like he's done this hundreds of times. The padding is soft against my skin, the buckle clicking into place with a sound that sends electricity straight down my spine.
Then he attaches the other cuff to a loop welded into the headboard—industrial, permanent, clearly installed for exactly this purpose.
Experimented in my youth, my ass!
I'm bound to his bed.
By BDSM handcuffs he found in his closet.
Attached to a welded loop of metal that doesn't come standard on headboards.
My pulse is hammering so hard I can hear it in my ears. Heat pools between my legs, slick and insistent. I wait for him to crawl over me, to cage me in with his body, to give me that look—the one that says I'm about to be taken apart piece by piece.
Instead, Lorcan walks around to the other side of the bed.
He kicks off his shoes. Climbs onto the mattress on top of the covers, fully clothed, settling onto his back with a long exhale that sounds bone-deep tired.
"Lights off," he says to the empty air.
The entire apartment goes dark. Voice-activated controls. Of course he has those.
I'm still processing—still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his hand to reach across the bed, for literally anything to happen—when I hear it.
A snore.
Not a fake snore. Not a teasing, performative snore meant to make me squirm with anticipation.
No, I'm talking about a real, deep, utterly unconscious snore. The kind that rattles from a man who hasn't slept in forty-eight hours and just hit the pillow like a tree falling in the forest.
My heroic kidnapper—security expert, philosophical spiral machine, dom-in-recovery—has cuffed me to his bed and immediately fell asleep.
What. The actual. Fuck.
I wait.
Any second now.
Any second, Lorcan's going to wake up. He's going to roll over, realize there's a horny, desperate, submissive woman cuffed to his headboard, and do something about it.
His hand will slide across the sheets, fingers finding the hem of these borrowed sweatpants, and he'll push them down my hips to discover exactly how wet I am.
How ready, how fuckingachingfor someone to touch me.
Or he'll climb on top of me. Pin my free hand above my head. Shove his cock into my mouth and make me gag on it while tears streak down my cheeks.
Or he'll flip me onto my stomach, yank my hips up, and fuck me from behind while I'm still cuffed to his bed, helpless and wanting and finally,finallygetting the release I've been denied.
