CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The first thing I feel is the ache.
A slow, throbbing reminder between my legs, in my wrists, in the base of my spine where I’d arched too hard.
The second thing is the cold.
Not the kind that comes from air.
The kind that comes from absence—like something essential has been removed and the space it left behind is still expected to function the same way.
I am still bound.
Leather cuffs bites into my skin—looser now, but still fastened. My arms are above my head, legs splayed and held open by straps that haven’t been loosened. The blindfold remains, pressing too tight against my eyelids, making the dark stretch forever.
But he is gone.
The warmth of his body…gone.
The low, dangerous breathing that had wrapped around me like a leash… gone.
The weight of his hands, the gravity of his presence…gone.
Only the silence remains.
It pulses around me like a second heartbeat—louder with every breath I take .
I tug once, testing the bonds. They don’t budge. My breath hitches. Not from fear exactly—but from something worse.
Uncertainty.
What is this?
Is it punishment?
Is it aftercare, his way?
Or is it the part of the game where I learn what it really means to be owned?
A tremble slides through me. Sweat cools along the curve of my spine. My thighs are still slick, still parted, still available. And I hate—hate—that I can feel myself clenching around the memory of him, even now.
“Sir?” I whisper.
“You remember your place, Starling?” he asks, voice low, commanding—not harsh, but steady in that unsettlingly sure way, like he’s asking because he already knows the answer and just wants to hear you say it.
The blindfold is still tight over my eyes, but I can feel him walk behind me—close, solid, heat radiating off his body like fire in a cage. His fingers brush against my wrists, and I flinch before I realize what he’s doing.
The first cuff releases with a click. Then the second.
My arms fall forward, heavy and trembling, blood rushing back into my limbs in a slow, tingling wave. My ankles come next. One, then the other. The straps slide away with a whisper of leather.
But the blindfold stays.
He could do anything to me now.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
Fingers skim my jaw, tilting my face upward toward him. His thumb drags slowly across my lower lip.
“You remember your place, Starling?” He asks again, quieter this time—but no less dangerous.
I swallow hard. The name—Starling—slices through me like a hot blade, carving out the parts of me that still think I’m free. Somehow, it makes everything more real. More dangerous. More mine.
“Yes, sir,” I whisper. Because what else can I say?
Defiance still lives somewhere in my chest, curled tight like a dying star, but it's getting harder to tell where the fear ends and the desire begins.
“Good girl,” he murmurs.
Those two words are a leash made of velvet and steel.
Then, softly—dangerously—he adds, “On your knees.”
I hesitate only long enough for him to notice.
A warning silence wraps around us like smoke. Then his hand slides into my hair—gently this time. No pull. No pain. Just the weight of his fingers at the nape of my neck, guiding me down.
I sink.
Knees to the floor. Bare skin on cold tile. Arms loose at my sides. Chin lifted slightly, just the way he taught me.
My breath comes slower now. Heavier.
The world is still dark behind the blindfold, but somehow, I see everything.
“That should not have been your punishment,” he says, voice low and calm, but edged with something harder beneath. “You weren’t meant to get any pleasure at all.”
He circles me slowly, the soft pad of his steps just audible against the floor. I feel his presence move behind me, then to the side, then around again—like a wolf deciding where to bite.
“You had my name on your tongue when you came,” he murmurs, stopping just behind me. “Do you know what that does to a man like me?”
His fingers trail down my spine—just once. Barely there. Enough to make me shiver.
“Now…” his voice lowers, warm and deliberate, wrapping around me like a silk noose. “I want to play another game with you.”
His fingertips brush my shoulder, feather-light, teasing. “I want to remind you why your body responds to me. Why you’re mine.”
I let out a shaky breath as his hand tilts my chin up. The blindfold remains, but I feel his heat—his dominance—pressing down on me like a weight I can't lift.
“You're so beautifully obedient when you stop pretending to hate it.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he silences me with a single word: “Hands.”
I raise them, uncertain, trembling. He steps closer.
“I’m going to let you touch me,” he says. “Just this once. My face. No mask. No lies. But only when I say so. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
A pause. Then—
“Now.”
I hesitate, then lift my hands and reach forward. My fingertips find the sharp edge of his jaw first—strong, defined. I trace upward, to the slight scruff on his chin, the curve of his lips—warm and parted. He’s breathing just as hard as I am.
My thumbs brush over his cheekbones, smooth and high. I trace the slope of his nose, a faint scar beneath his eye and I gasp and pull away.
“No…”
“Starling,” he grabs my hands and places them back on his face.
“Sir, please, I…can’t,”
“You will.” He holds my hands in place until I start moving them again.
There is a deep scar along the bridge of his nose and another on his upper lip which makes me breathe a little easier.
Then, finally, my fingers skim over his brow, memorizing every line, every contour. He's beautiful. And human.
“You're not what I imagined,” I whisper.
He leans into my touch, just barely. “And yet…I’m exactly what you need.”
My breath catches.
There’s so much I want to say. So much I should say. But all that escapes me is a truth I hate.
“I won’t forget this.”
“I don’t want you to,” he says. “That’s the point.”
And then he steps back. The warmth vanishes. The space between us grows cold again.
“You’ll earn this again. With obedience. With honesty. With surrender.”
I lower my hands, still burning from his skin.
“Yes, sir.”
And somewhere deep inside me, a truth takes root that I can’t pull free:
I want to feel him again.
I hear the soft tap of his boots against the cold floor as he moves behind me. There’s a shift in the air—a warning and a comfort, both.
Then, fingers—warm, steady—brush against the knot of the blindfold. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. I feel the tension in the fabric give way. The cloth falls loose, fluttering into my lap like a quiet surrender.
I blink slowly, eyes adjusting to the low light. The room is dim, but no longer suffocating. Still, it feels like I’m breathing someone else’s air.
He gestures for me to stand as he holds his hand out to mine.
My body obeys, shaky but upright, and the moment my bare feet lift off the cold floor, I feel it—a reminder of him. That warmth in his hands, the calm steadiness in his presence, the way he doesn’t yank or demand but guides.
It hits me like a ghost brushing my spine—an old reminder I didn’t know I was still carrying, rising just long enough to make me question what I thought I’d buried.
Captain Shoomaker.
My chest tightens.
He was the one who found me. Pulled me out of the compound.
Ushered me to the van wrapped in nothing but his uniform jacket.
He never asked me to speak once we got in the van.
Never forced me to explain. His hands were warm, even then—steady and sure as he pressed a water bottle into my palm and said, “You’re safe now.
I’ve got you. None of those men can hurt you anymore. ”
And for a time, I believed him.
I wonder where he is now. If he knows all the things I went through after. If he even got my email. If he is trying his hardest to rescue me from yet another hell.
Did he regret handing me over to the system? Did he think he failed me?
Or was I always meant to be rerouted—redirected—right back into another gilded cage?
“You’re somewhere else,” the Warden says behind me, his voice softer now. Not mocking. Not cruel.
I don’t answer. I can’t. Because at that moment, I’m not standing in his room. I’m seventeen again, barefoot in a dirty cell of a room, staring up at a man in uniform who looked at me like I was still human.
And now I’m here, facing a man who treats me like I’m not—but somehow feels the same.
How is that possible?
How can two men touch me with the same hands and feel like fire in two different ways?
“You're thinking about that man, aren’t you?” The Warden asks.
My spine stiffens. “You don’t know what I’m thinking, sir.”
“I don’t have to,” he says, stepping closer, his breath brushing the back of my neck. “Your silence always tells me everything I need.”
I close my eyes. Not because I want to block him out—but because I’m afraid of the answer forming inside me.
It isn’t that I miss Captain Shoomaker.
It is that the Warden keeps pulling me back into memories of two men I can’t reconcile anymore—two versions of safety that never lasted long enough to become real.
Two men who each, in their own way, reached for something in me they couldn’t hold onto.
Two men who didn’t stay.
And I am left carrying the echo of both—caught between what felt like rescue and what turned out to be loss, unable to separate what was real from what I needed it to be to survive.
And the worst part is…neither of them are here now.