Chapter 16
Brendon
Iwake up waiting to hate myself.
That is the first clear thought in my head when my eyes crack open, and the ceiling comes into view.
For a minute I just lie there, staring at the water stain on the ceiling, waiting for shame to hit me the way it always does after I do anything even remotely stupid.
Because if there was ever a night that should’ve triggered it, it’s the one where I drove out to a serial killer’s cottage and begged him to take his bloodlust out on me.
I wait for the disgust or the nausea. For the mental slideshow where every sermon I’ve ever heard about perversion, sin, and lust plays on fast-forward in my head, and I’m left lying here, wanting to crawl out of my own skin.
It doesn’t come.
I throw an arm over my eyes, because apparently my brain has decided that if the drop isn’t going to show up on schedule, it’s going to replay things in 4K instead. I hear my own voice in my head, ruined and breathless and unrecognizable as mine, saying that stupid word like I was born to
Daddy.
Never would have thought watching porn once would have that word stick with me. I should be full-body cringing into the mattress. Instead, all I feel is… warm, and satisfied in a way I have never felt in my entire life.
I have Dominic’s taste on my tongue, his cuff on my wrist, and I fell asleep without saying a single word to the God I have spent my whole life talking to.
That should scare me more than it does. Even more than the gay panic I am not feeling.
My alarm starts shrilling on the nightstand and I groan, rolling over to slap it quiet. My throat protests, scraping from the noise, and I wince.
“Okay,” I mutter to myself, voice hoarse because of… reasons. “Consequences. There they are.”
Jericho jumps up onto the bed with the offended dignity only a black cat can manage, and steps right onto my stomach, then my chest, then my throat.
“Traitor,” I rasp, pushing him away gently. He gives me a slow blink that clearly says ‘you did this to yourself,’ and settles at my feet instead, tail twitching.
I roll onto my side and look at the clock, then at my phone. Our texts from last night sit at the top of the screen—my “inside” message sent with shaky fingers by my front door, like he told me to. His three-word reply came a minute later.
Dominic: Good boy. Sleep.
There was a second one five minutes after that, when I was already half under, the screen lighting up my dark room with his name.
Dominic: Eat in the morning.
I didn’t answer, but his voice sat in my head anyway. So I drag myself up for toast and coffee before showering because apparently, if Dominic Volkov tells me to maintain my blood sugar, I start structuring my day around it.
In the bathroom mirror, my face looks more or less normal; maybe a little pale, maybe a little hollow-eyed, but nothing screaming ‘you put a killer’s cock in your mouth less than twelve hours ago.’
By the time I’m on campus, backpack over one shoulder, the familiar concrete of the law building rising in front of me, I’ve already spent an hour scanning myself for those signs Dominic listed in that maddeningly calm voice in his kitchen.
Low mood, emptiness, random crying, intrusive guilt. The works.
I grip the little silver cross under my shirt as I walk, thumb running over the edges until they press a dull ache into my skin. There’s a weird lightness instead: not exactly happiness, but something similar to the absence of static.
Con Law starts, and my brain slots into autopilot. Normally, this is where my mind wanders to lists—assignments, errands, who needs notes, which undergrad I promised to tutor, what emails I haven’t answered—but today, every time it strays it goes straight back to him.
Dominic’s face twisted in pleasure above me, his mouth open on a curse, his hair falling out of its tie in damp strands around his face.
The sound I made when his hand tightened in my hair, or when he called me ‘Little Sin’ in that voice that makes it feel less like name-calling and more like a title.
Three classes in, and the drop still hasn’t hit.
My body feels pleasantly used, my knees complaining a little when I sit down too fast and a faint ache in my jaw when I yawn, but emotionally I’m weirdly steady.
I keep doing little mental checks between lectures, as if I were a hypochondriac checking a symptom list.
Am I sad? Am I numb? Am I disgusted? Am I about to cry? Nothing.
At lunch, I sit on a bench outside the law building with a sandwich I’m not really tasting, watching people move across the quad in familiar patterns.
Undergrads with backpacks too big for their shoulders, athletes in team gear, sorority girls laughing too loud as they film TikToks by the fountain.
My phone buzzes on the table, and my stomach jumps before I even flip it over.
Dominic doesn’t text like normal people—he texts like he’s kicking a door open.
Dominic: How’s the throat, Little Sin?
Heat rushes up my neck. I glance around automatically, as if anyone nearby could be reading over my shoulder, even though the message preview was tucked safely behind the lock screen. I swipe the phone open with fingers that are only shaking a little.
Me: Sore. Thank you for asking, I guess.
Dots appear almost immediately.
Dominic: That ‘thank you’ sounded suspiciously like sarcasm.
Dominic: Need me to kiss it better?
I make a strangled noise in my throat, that definitely does not help said throat, then slam my lips together and type with slightly too much aggression.
Me: You already did enough.
Me: And I have class.
Dominic: You had class last night, too. Look how that turned out.
My lungs forget how to work, and there it is—the flash of shame I’ve been bracing for.
It rises, hot and prickly, and then collides with the image that’s been living rent-free behind my eyes since it happened—Dominic between my legs in the kitchen, pressing food into my mouth and telling me I’m not broken. That this is chemistry, not damnation.
The shame dissipates weirdly fast, as if his voice eats it before it can latch on. The only things left are embarrassment and a spark I’m starting to recognize as my brat waking up.
Me: You’re texting me a lot today, you know.
Dominic: Observation skills on point as usual.
Me: Seems like somebody’s needy. You feeling needy, Daddy?
There is a dangerous thrill in sending that and poking at him, in hearing my own heartbeat in my ears as I wait for the fallout.
Dominic: Keep talking like that, and I’ll remind you how fast I can shut that smart mouth up.
My skin prickles. I picture his hand at the back of my neck, the pressure, the way my jaw opened on command. My knees feel weirdly unsteady when another message pops up.
Dominic: Any drop?
I sag back against the bench, surprised all over again by the fact that he’s asking—it would be so easy for him not to. To reduce last night to be a thing that happened, and is now filed away under conquest. For me to be file number thirteen in a cabinet of bodies.
Instead, he’s checking. Following up. Doing exactly what he said he would do.
Me: Not really.
Me: Was waiting for it.
Me: Just feel… tired.
Me: And stupidly calm.
Dominic: That’s still the high. You might get hit later tonight. Or tomorrow.
Dominic: You remember what I said?
I do. Eat. Water. Text. Don’t believe the lies your brain tells you when you’re empty. I tap my cross once against my sternum, and ignore the tiny voice whispering that I should probably be talking to God instead of the campus serial killer.
Me: I remember.
Me: You’ll get your tech support call if I start having a religious breakdown.
Dominic: You already had a religious breakdown. You just aimed it at my zipper.
Me: You’re vile.
Dominic: Takes one to know one, Little Sin.
I hesitate, thumb hovering over the keyboard. The next message sits on my tongue and in my fingers at the same time—too big and heavy and ridiculous to send, but also right there, demanding out.
I chew on my lower lip.
Me: Thank you, Daddy.
Me: For taking care of me last night and after.
The second I hit send, my soul leaves my body and my stomach drops straight through my asshole. I stare at the word on the screen. At the little blue bubble. At the fact that I just did that, on purpose, and in broad daylight.
Dominic: You’re welcome.
Dominic: You’re mine. Remember that.
The possessiveness should make me bristle; instead, it makes something warm and terrifying unfurl in my chest. Dear God. I don’t have a healthy response to anything anymore.
Dominic: I have practice now, so behave yourself for the next two hours.
I grin, wrap my fingers around the phone anyway, and think about his voice in the kitchen, telling me to text if I started spiraling.
The thing is, I’m not spiraling. I’m sitting here, feeling more grounded than I have in months, and the only thing that feels like it’s going to send me to Hell is how much I want to see him again when I’m not required to.
Which is how I end up at practice an hour later.
It’s a stupid idea; I know it before I even veer off the path toward the stadium, instead of cutting across to the library like I usually do.
He told me what we have stays between us; that no one else needs to know about what we have because it’s private and might impact both of our lives negatively.
He didn’t say I can’t sit in a crowd of students and watch him do what everyone thinks is the only thing that defines him.
There’s a part of me that wants to know if seeing that version of him—the golden boy, the campus god, the quarterback with a face made for ESPN—will knock any sense back into me.
Maybe if I watch him around other people, I’ll remember that I’m just another body on his roster, that whatever intimacy I think I felt last night is something he can manufacture with anyone.