Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95046 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Sartre—existentialism, Being and Nothingness, the whole "existence precedes essence" thing.
Stockholm syndrome—technically not named after a literary source, but he's using it metaphorically.
Foucault—power/knowledge, Discipline and Punish, panopticon theory.
It's like being lectured by a very attractive, very angry philosophy professor who moonlights as a kidnapper.
It's oddly… hot.
Then I notice something that doesn't quite fit the rescue narrative.
His gaze drops. Not to my eyes, but to my throat.
To the collar, I assume at first.
Except his eyes linger. Tracking the line of my collarbone. The hollow at the base of my throat where his hand pressed earlier when he pinned me against Giovanni's wall.
His pupils dilate.
Just slightly. But enough.
His throat works on a swallow he doesn't quite suppress. He shifts his weight, adjusts his position on the couch in a way that suggests physical discomfort of the specifically anatomical variety.
Oh.
When he speaks again, his voice has dropped half an octave. Landed somewhere in the register I recognize intimately from Giovanni's "you're going to do exactly what I say" tone and Jino's "position-three-now" instructions.
Command voice.
Not rescue voice. Not concerned-citizen voice.
Command.
"Where'd ya come from? Before Giovanni."
"Cleveland, originally. But I was staying at New Beginnings Women's Shelter in Riverview when Mr. Bavga offered me employment."
But I'm watching him now. Really watching.
The way his gaze tracks over my bare shoulders. Then down again, to my breasts. Which are showing off in a most spectacular way at the moment.
Tight, peaked nipples.
Firm, round shape.
The tension in his jaw that reads less like righteous anger and more like restraint. The way he's sitting—weight shifting again, hands flexing and unflexing at his sides like he's physically stopping himself from reaching out.
Is he—
Is Heroic Kidnapper actually turned on right now? By this? By me sitting here in Giovanni's collar, speaking in my carefully trained submission voice, displaying all the visible evidence of my conditioning?
The hypocrisy would be funny if it weren't so perfectly on brand for my life.
Man rescues woman from sexual servitude, gets visibly aroused by her conditioned obedience, probably tells himself it's different when he does it.
Sure, buddy. Your boner is the ethical boner. The rescue boner. The boner that knows the difference between exploitation and… whatever you're telling yourself this is.
I should feel something about this. Anger, maybe. Or vindication—proof that he's no different from Giovanni, that the only thing separating "saint" from "sadist" in the family tree of fucked-upness is which side of the trunk you're on.
Instead, I feel that familiar low heat starting to pool between my thighs.
Because my body recognizes authority when it sees it.
And Heroic Kidnapper—with his command voice and his dilated pupils and the visible bulge forming against his jeans—is absolutely, unquestionably authority.
In this moment of dual silent introspection, this moment of absolute tragedy masked as modern existentialism, a song begins to play.
Rihanna's voice cuts through the cabin—Eminem's track about monsters. The kind that live under beds. The kind you befriend instead of fight because they understand the voices in your head better than anyone else ever could.
People try to save you. Think you're crazy. Never stop holding their breath, waiting for you to get better.
But you don't get better.
You just get more honest about what you are.
Heroic Kidnapper doesn't move. Doesn't reach for the phone. Just sits frozen while the chorus plays and all the color drains from his face.
He knows who's calling.
And suddenly, so do I.
5
The phone is vibrating in my pocket as Rihanna's voice cuts through the cabin—she's friends with the monster under her bed—and I already know who's callin' without lookin'.
Except I do look, don't I, because apparently I'm a glutton for psychological torture.
The Monster.
The name glows on the screen like an accusation.
Right. So. Here's the thing about timin'—there's operational timin', which is what you plan for, the choreography of breakin' and enterin' and asset extraction.
Then there's philosophical timin', which is that Aristotelian concept about the right moment for action bein' determined by context and consequence rather than chronology.
And then there's Giovanni timin', which is when the universe decides to take a perfectly manageable clusterfuck and light it on fire just to see how you handle the flames.
I silence the ringer.
Then I silence Giovanni's number entirely.
Father Patrick's voice materializes immediately in my head: Lorcan, mah boy, yacan't avoid yer problems by ignorin' them.
Can't I though, Father? Because ignorin' this particular problem for approximately the next eight to ten hours while I work out what the actual fuck I'm doin' seems like the definition of operational prudence rather than cowardice.
This woman is a problem.
A very big problem.
And I need to think this whole thing through very carefully.
Now is not the time for mistakes.
I stand up from the couch—ostensibly to pace, but really to adjust my cock in my jeans because it's not hard exactly, but it was definitely headin' in that direction and I'm not havin' that conversation with myself right now.
There's a sex slave sittin' on my couch with perky tits and she's givin' off how-can-I-please-you-sir energy like it's her default factory settin', so yeah, my body's reactin' like any functional male mammal's would.