But something fundamental has shifted beneath the surface, like tectonic plates grinding against each other in the dark.
I don't do helpless.
I've never done helpless. Helpless is not a setting I come equipped with.
And yet.
Here I am.
Unable to act because the wrong person kidnapped my woman.
Or maybe he was the right person?
The only person, for sure, who could get away with it.
I head into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and stand there, waiting until the steam begins curling over the glass door, fogging the mirrors, turning the space into something soft and shapeless.
I step under the spray.
The water is scalding. Hot enough to remind me I'm still fucking alive even when every other signal suggests otherwise.
I brace one hand against the tile and let the water hammer down on my shoulders, my neck, the muscles that have been locked tight since I watched that footage last night.
This is usually when I take care of things.
Years of routine. Built into the architecture of my day like coffee or checking my phone. I get hard, I handle it, I move on. Efficient. Methodical. No different than shaving or brushing my teeth.
Before Emmaleen, the fantasies were generic. Faceless women bent over desks, kneeling on expensive rugs, spread across hotel beds in cities I can't remember visiting. The details didn't matter. Just the control. The power. The moment when resistance broke and surrender took its place.
The monster always provided the script.
But since she walked into my life six weeks ago it's only been her.
Emmaleen on her knees in the dungeon, eyes downcast, waiting for permission to breathe.
Emmaleen bent over the punishment bench, ass raised, counting strikes in that breathless voice that cracks on seven every single time.
Emmaleen straddling me on the throne, straddling my lap, whisperingyours, my Kingagainst my neck while I fill her so full she can't remember her own name.
I reach down.
I'm not even hard.
I wrap my hand around my dick anyway. Try to summon something. Anything. A flicker of heat, a ghost of arousal, the beginning of that familiar tightening that leads to release.
Nothing.
I close my eyes. Try to reconstruct last week—Emmaleen on the dais, wrists cuffed to the leather restraints, nipple clamps connected to her collar by a chain that forced her head down. The way she looked up at me when I told her to count. The way her pussy glistened when I dripped wax across her stomach.
Still nothing.
This has never happened.
Not once in twenty years of jerking off in the shower have I ever failed to performfor myself.
The water beats down. Steam rises. My hand moves mechanically, trying to force a response my body refuses to give.
I think about her mouth. The way she takes my fingers past her lips when I feed her, the way her tongue flicks against the pad of my thumb like she's tasting something sacred.
