Page 21 of Our Pain Our Pleasure
Home. Giovanni's estate. The dungeon that makes sense. Jino's methodical training sessions. Giovanni's unpredictable punishments. The reward notebook tallying my progress. The demerit system that gives structure to chaos.
I want to go back to the place where the rules are clear, and the consequences are consistent, and someone notices when I fail and when I succeed.
But Heroic Kidnapper here clearly thinks he's saving me.
From Giovanni specifically.
"Won't let him kill another woman."
Which means this man knows something. About Giovanni's past. About what Giovanni's done before. About the kind of person who keeps a fully equipped BDSM dungeon in his basement and calls it a rumpus room.
Heroic Kidnapper saw me—naked, collared, emerging from the library with the marks of restraint and the bruises of ecstasy—and his brain made the logical leap:captive, not willing participant.
So he rescued me.
Except I don't want to be rescued.
Which is fucked up to the nth degree, but that's minor in the grand scheme of things, because that's not what this is about.
This is about getting what I want.
No. Not just getting what I want, getting what Ineed.
My plan crystallized with perfect, elegant simplicity as I knelt in the trunk in position three.
Demonstrate that submission is my nature. Show Heroic Kidnapper that he's made a mistake.
In other words—use his assumptions against him by proving I don't need rescue by surrendering tohimcompletely.
The irony doesn't escape me—proving my agency by performing total compliance, asserting my choice by choosing not to choose, convincing him I'm free by showing him my chains.
But I file that away for later examination.
Right now, I need Heroic Kidnapper to understand that I belong to Giovanni. By choice. With full knowledge. With desire that's mine even if the conditioning isn't.
And the fastest way to make him understand is to be exactly what Giovanni and Jino trained me to be.
Perfect. Obedient. Eager.
His.
This makes sense, right?
Oh yes, Emmaleen. Absolutely. Flawless logic. A kidnapped woman's best strategy is definitely to seduce her kidnapper into believing she's too broken to save by being SO SUBMISSIVE that he… what? Gets bored? Feels inadequate? Realizes you're beyond help and drops you back at your sex dungeon like a defective Amazon return?
"Dear Heroic Kidnapper, we regret to inform you that your Rescue Victim arrived pre-conditioned and cannot be rehabilitated. Please accept this full refund and our sincere apologies for the inconvenience."
This is your plan. This is the plan you developed in a gasoline-scented trunk while high on carbon monoxide and post-orgasmic brain fog. You're going to OUT-SLAVE your way back to slavery. You're going to prove you don't need saving by demonstrating that you've been so thoroughly saved-from-yourself that saving is now impossible.
You've officially lost the plot. The plot has not just been misplaced, it's walked through some kind of portal-magic. Someone should file a missing persons report for your plot because it was last seen fleeing the scene approximately two months ago when you signed a contract with a mob boss who keeps a "consequence cabinet" in his basement.
I take a slow breath. The logic is twisted, but it's more like a long and winding switchback road that leads to the top of a mountain than a short-cut through the woods that drops you at your Grannie's house where she's been eaten by a wolf.
The plan stands.
Heroic Kidnapper starts pacing the room like he's auditioning for a production ofHamletwhere the lead role is "Man Experiencing a Crisis of Conscience in Real Time."
He mutters under his breath—fragments I can barely catch. Something about Father Patrick. Something about choices, and chains, and circles of Hell. His Irish accent gets thicker with each pass across the worn rug, consonants sharpening into edges.
