Page 58 of Safe Word

Me: Wouldn’t he want to test her limits?

Another pause.

Then:

Cain: Testing limits doesn’t mean violating trust. A good Dom stretches – never snaps. Anticipation is power. The first insertion should be more about what she imagines than what she feels.

I threw the laptop onto the sofa as though it had bitten me, and leapt off the seat, cushions flying everywhere.

That did not read like a man fucking Googling advice for a manuscript.

I paced left. Paced right, glancing at the closed door of my walk-in wardrobe where pieces of Scarlett slept. I suddenly imagined her sniggering behind that door – at me. At how little I knew about this.

I shouldn’t write anything else.

Not after what I’d been through these last few days.

As I sat back down, I reclaimed my machine.

Quick and crisp, I typed back on my phone:

Me: Thanks. I’ll adjust the tone and language accordingly.

His reply was instant:

Cain: Sure. Tomorrow. Go to sleep.

A command.

I stared at the words. No emoji. No signature. Just three short syllables that landed like a palm against the small of my back.

I exhaled slowly, the screen’s glow catching the soft tremble in my fingers. It shouldn’t have affected me. But it did. Maybe it was the hour. Maybe it was him. My limbs were heavy, my skin still taut from everything I hadn’t written.

I closed the laptop like it was the only boundary I had left, then slid into sleep – not one filled with dreams, but with a pulse still echoing in Ghost’s voice.

My room in the penthouse was always steeped in silence in the morning, broken only by the faint hum of the air conditioning and the distant sounds of the city stirring to life. My body was heavy against the rumpled sheets.

I stared at the ceiling, replaying every moment, every sound, every tremble of Scarlett’s body from last time. She was hypnotic, not just in her submission but in her ability to strip away the darkness that clawed at the edges of my mind.

But now, with the room hollow and the quiet creeping back in, the ugly reality returned.

I hadn’t slept. I hadn’t even tried. Sleep was a fragile thing, and I knew it wouldn’t come. Not with the new threat looming over me – the man who had once terrorised my childhood, now awake from the blissful silence of the coma – one I’d graced him with.

And still, somehow, the ghost of his voice had followed me here – into my new home, my office.

Ezio D’Angelo.

The name tasted bitter, even in my thoughts. The image of his face, lined with age and softened by years of stillness, haunted me in a way I hadn’t expected. The past few days had been a haze of resurfacing memories and old wounds reopening with the force of a hammer. His words, in those familiar though aged notes, played on loop in my mind.

I pushed off the bed, the late spring air licking at my damp skin. The looming summer had done its worst last night – leaving me drenched in sweat and disgraced, like some unwanted lover. And considering my activities last night, that shit was as true as the pain between my temples.

With a sigh, I muttered, ‘Bloody season’s changing.’ And wiped myself off on a towel. But then decided I needed something more thorough.

By the time I stepped into the shower, the scalding water did little to wash away the tension that festered in my chest. Reluctantly, I scrubbed away the remnants of the night, but the thoughts clinging to me were far harder to cleanse.

Yanking on my long-sleeved T-shirt and light jeans, I realised the rising heat might not play ball with long sleeves and denim.

I stepped out on the terrace and found the air was cool.