"Bunny..."
"I need you to fuck it out of me." The words came out raw, desperate. "I need to feel something besides him. Please, Nathan. Please."
For a long moment, he studied my face. Then something shifted in his expression—that dark hunger I'd seen before, the one that surfaced when I begged, when I was desperate, when I gave him complete control over my body and my pleasure.
"Turn around," he said.
I obeyed. Faced the railing, my hands gripping the cold metal, the city sprawling beneath me like a promise. Behind me, I heard the soft sound of his sleep pants sliding down, felt his hands on my hips, his body pressing against my back.
"You want me to make you forget?" His voice was rough against my ear. "I'll make you forget."
He pushed the shirt up around my waist, exposing me to the cold night air. His hand slid between my thighs, finding me already wet—my body responding to his dominance the way it had been trained to respond, the way Gabriel had programmed it and Nathan had reinforced. I hated that I was wet. Hated that my body wanted this even when my mind was spinning apart.
"Please," I whispered. "Just do it. Just fuck me."
He didn't make me wait. He entered me with a single hard thrust, and I gasped at the sudden fullness, the stretch of him, the way he filled every empty space inside me. His hands gripped my hips hard enough to leave marks, and I welcomed the pain. Pain was grounding. Pain was real. Pain was something Gabriel hadnever been able to fully control, no matter how many sessions he'd put me through.
"Look at the city," Nathan commanded, his breath hot against my neck. "Look at all those lights. All those people. They can't see us, but we're here. We're right here."
I looked. The city sprawled beneath us, indifferent and eternal, a million lives being lived in the darkness. Anyone could look up and see us—a woman bent over a railing, a man fucking her from behind, two silhouettes against the night sky. The thought should have been humiliating. Instead, it felt like liberation. Like proof that I existed, that I was real, that I was more than just the sum of Gabriel's programming.
"Harder," I demanded. "I need to feel it."
He gave me harder. The railing bit into my palms, the cold metal a counterpoint to the heat building inside me. His rhythm was relentless, driving into me with a force that bordered on punishment. I closed my eyes and let myself fall into the sensation, let the physical overwhelm the mental, let the pleasure drown out the lullaby that still echoed in the back of my mind.
"There," he gasped. "Right there. You're so fucking tight—"
"Don't stop. Please don't stop."
He didn't stop. His hand found the small of my back, pressing me down against the railing, changing the angle until I cried out. The city lights blurred beneath me.The cold air burned in my lungs. The lullaby faded to a whisper, then to nothing.
When I came, it was with a scream that might have been his name or might have been wordless release. My body convulsed around him, waves of pleasure crashing through me, and for a moment—just a moment—I felt nothing but sensation. No fear. No doubt. No Gabriel. Just the primal, physical reality of being alive.
Nathan finished seconds later, his groan muffled against my shoulder, his body shuddering against mine. We stayed there, tangled together on the balcony, breathing hard. The city went about its business below us, indifferent to our drama, our passion, our small, desperate attempts to feel something real.
Afterward, he carried me inside. Wrapped me in a blanket. Made me tea with honey and held me on the couch while I sipped it, my hands still trembling from the cold and the adrenaline and the fading echoes of pleasure.
"Better?" he asked.
"Better," I said, and the word was almost true.
But when he fell asleep again—his head resting on my shoulder, his breathing slow and even—I realized the lullaby hadn't stopped. It was still there, buried beneath the silence, a whisper instead of a scream. Waiting.
And I realized something else, something more terrible than the lullaby or the cold or the fear that was becoming my constant companion:
I felt nothing.
The sex had been intense. The orgasm had been real. But the emptiness that followed—the vast, echoing emptiness that should have been filled with warmth or love or at least the satisfaction of release—was absolute. I'd used Nathan's body to chase away Gabriel's ghost, and it had worked for a few minutes, but now the ghost was back and the emptiness was back and I was sitting on a couch in the dark with a man I wasn't sure I loved anymore, humming a song I couldn't stop.
The performance was over. The mask had slipped. And underneath, there was nothing but ash.
I've been pretending to be happy,I realized.Pretending to be healed. Pretending to be his good girl, his equal partner, the woman he saved.
But I wasn't any of those things. I was a construct, a collection of conditioned responses and learned behaviors, a doll that had been passed from one handler to another without ever learning to hold her own strings.
The tea grew cold in my hands. The lullaby played on. And somewhere in the darkness, Gabriel was waiting, patient as stone, knowing that sooner or later I'd realize what he'd always known:
You can't escape what you are.
