I have absolutely no fucking idea.
"I—I don't—" My voice cracks. "I don't know."
The silence that follows is so thick I can hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Shit shit shit I fucked up already?—
"It's alright, beloved," Saint Lorcan says, and his hand settles on my lower back. Warm. Steady. "Ya got lost in the pain and we took a tiny break so I could explain things to ya. It happens to the best of us, so I completely understand."
I let out a breath. He's very forgiving.
"We'll just start over."
My breath catches. "Start...over?"
"Aye." His palm slides down my spine, then back up again in a soothing stroke. "This time, you'll countandpray. One strike, one line of the prayer, one number. Simple as that."
There's no irritation in his voice.
No disappointment. No threat. Just... patience.
Who the fuck is this guy?
"You can fail as many times as ya want, lass," Saint Lorcan continues. "Lose count, forget the words, need a break—doesn't matter. We'll just reset and start again. No judgment. No consequences. Just you and me, workin' through it together until we get to seventeen."
His hand cups my hip, thumb stroking the bone there.
"Do ya understand?"
I nod against the wood, but my brain is short-circuiting because?—
Wait.
Wait.
"Every time?" I whisper. "I have to start over every time I mess up?"
"Aye."
The reality of that hits. If I lose count at strike fifteen, we go back to one. If I forget the prayer at strike twelve, we reset. If Ican't take it anymore at strike nine and need a break—back to the beginning.
Giovanni's spankings were controlled bursts—brutal, yes, butfinite. Thirty strikes with the crop and it was done. I could scream, and writhe, and white-knuckle my way through because I knew there was an endpoint.
Jino doesn't punish me at all. He tests. He trains. He edges, and denies, and builds arousal. And he'll correct me. Snap the crop against my nipples if I slouch. Stuff like that. But he doesn't deliverpainlike this.
This is something else entirely. This is more than endurance. It's more than precision. It's a… areligion.
This is Saint Lorcan telling me I can fail as many times as I want—but every failure costs me everything I've already endured.
Penance, Emmaleen. The word is penance.
Literally.
Panic claws up my throat.
"I don't know," I whimper. "I can't start over. I can't?—"
The words fracture into broken crying because my ass is alreadyon fireand the thought of doing this again, and again, andagainuntil I somehow manage to hold it together for seventeen consecutive strikes?—
