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)
My heroic kidnapper—security expert, philosophical spiral machine, dom-in-recovery—has cuffed me to his bed and immediately fell asleep.
What. The actual. Fuck.
I wait.
Any second now.
Any second, Lorcan's going to wake up. He's going to roll over, realize there's a horny, desperate, submissive woman cuffed to his headboard, and do something about it.
His hand will slide across the sheets, fingers finding the hem of these borrowed sweatpants, and he'll push them down my hips to discover exactly how wet I am.
How ready, how fucking aching for someone to touch me.
Or he'll climb on top of me. Pin my free hand above my head. Shove his cock into my mouth and make me gag on it while tears streak down my cheeks.
Or he'll flip me onto my stomach, yank my hips up, and fuck me from behind while I'm still cuffed to his bed, helpless and wanting and finally, finally getting the release I've been denied.
Any second now.
Any second.
Another snore rips through the darkness.
Deep. Rattling. Completely fucking oblivious.
He's out. Gone.
I stare at the ceiling. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, my wrists, between my legs. The heat is unbearable—a feverish flush spreading across my skin that has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with five weeks of conditioning that taught my body to expect release after arousal.
Giovanni always finished what he started.
Always.
Even when he was punishing me, even when I was crying and begging and certain I couldn't take anymore—he gave me what I needed at the end. The circuit completed, the tension released, the desperate ache satisfied—even if it was by failure.
Demerits cleared.
But not last night.
I'm sweating now. Actually sweating. The borrowed henley clings to my back, damp and uncomfortable. My skin feels too tight, like I've been wrapped in plastic.
My free hand twitches at my side.
I could just...
No.
No, I can't.
Article VI of the Bavga Doctrine: No self-touch. No scratching, fidgeting, or grooming without permission. Absolutely no masturbating without permission.
The rule echoes in my head with Jino's voice. Calm. Methodical. Absolute.
The heat shifts to chills. Goosebumps race down my arms, my stomach, my thighs. I'm shivering suddenly, teeth chattering, even though the room isn't cold.
Then the heat comes back. Worse than before. A flush that starts in my chest and spreads everywhere, turning my skin pink and sensitive.
I feel sick.
Actually, genuinely sick even as my clit throbs with every heartbeat. The ache between my legs is no longer pleasant—it's painful, a deep cramping need that makes me want to curl into a ball and sob.
Please, I think, and I don't even know who I'm begging to. Please, someone, anyone, just—
Lorcan snores again.
9
I'm standing at the window in my bedroom suite facing the garage. It's almost dawn and one of the garage doors is open. Lights blazing inside like a crime scene.
Jino's in there, hitting the heavy bag.
I can hear it from up here, a rhythm so consistent it could be a metronome.
He's been at it for two hours.
The bag swings. Jino adjusts. Strikes again.
I should go down there. Talk to him. Tell him some of the details, but none of the specifics.
But I won't.
The bag takes another hit. Then another, as last night replays in my head like surveillance footage I can't shut off.
Jino and Lorcan are not friends. Lorcan has no use for peripheral people. He's a loner. So even though Jino spent a lot of time with us during school breaks when we were teenagers, he was more of an annoyance than a sidekick.
He wants to know why I'm not acting right now. Why I let Lorcan break into my home, take my woman, and have nothing, absolutely nothing, to say about it.
He wants to know why we're not already in motion. Why I won't give him the green light to mobilize every resource at our disposal and drag Lorcan back here by his perfectly groomed hair.
Because to Jino, Lorcan Ó Fearghail is no one.
A high school friend from St. Augustine's.
Some Irish mob operator, not even Mafia, not even connected to our world in any meaningful way.
He hasn't been around in years. Lives six-hundred miles away in Boston now, running docks for his uncle's operation.
He is no one to us.
No one who matters.
No one who warrants hesitation.
No one to us. No one to us. Jino kept repeating this phrase last night like a fucking mantra. Like he was trying to drill the words into my skull. Like if he said it enough times, with enough conviction, he could make me believe it. Make me act on it. Make me give the order he was waiting for.
But it's not true.
It's never been true.
The last time Lorcan Ó Fearghail was 'no one' to me was the exact moment before we became roommates at St. Augustine's Military Academy when we were thirteen years old.
We became friends the way all boys do at that age—thrown together by circumstance, bonded by proximity and the shared misery of dawn formation drills and inspection-ready bed corners.