Chapter 10 #2
"What are you doing here?" The words tumble out before my brain catches up to remind me that I'm not supposed to speak without permission.
Shit.
He sighs—a sound that manages to convey disappointment, exasperation, and the kind of tired patience usually reserved for dealing with particularly slow children.
His gaze travels over my naked body with clinical assessment, and I feel like a failed science experiment under a microscope.
"You didn't bathe." His voice cuts through the darkness like a blade. "You didn't dress."
The accusation hangs in the air between us, and suddenly I'm eight years old again, being scolded for forgetting to brush my teeth.
Except this is infinitely more fucked up.
"Oh, I'm sorry," I snap, exhaustion making my filter malfunction spectacularly.
"I was too busy recovering from your psychological warfare masterclass to remember basic hygiene protocols.
Maybe next time provide a fucking itinerary so I know which human functions are mandatory versus optional in your little torture chamber. "
The words pour out like acid, each syllable dripping with the kind of sarcasm that used to get me detention in high school. "Should I have also done a few jumping jacks before bed? Maybe some yoga poses? Written a thank-you note for the stale bread and surveillance?"
I'm building up steam now, exhaustion and fear combining into a cocktail of pure snark. "Forgive me for not immediately understanding that 'eat, bathe, dress, sleep' was actually a divine commandment rather than—"
I stop mid-sentence, blinking hard.
What the hell am I doing?
This man could break me in half without spilling his coffee. This man who spent eleven hours systematically dismantling my dignity with the precision of a Swiss watch. And I'm standing here naked, eviscerating him over my customer service expectations?
Survival instincts finally kick in, but it's too late to take back the verbal assault.
Master steps closer, and I instinctively try to back away, but there's nowhere to go. My spine hits the concrete wall, and the cold seeps through my skin like judgment.
He reaches for my hand, and I jerk away automatically. But his grip is iron wrapped in velvet—too firm, too controlled, the kind of hold that says I could hurt you, but I'm choosing restraint.
"Come," he says simply, and the single word carries more authority than most people manage in entire speeches.
He leads me toward the bathtub, and I follow because what's the alternative? Making this situation worse than it already is?
Master turns on the water, and steam begins rising from the faucet like incense in a very fucked-up church. The sound echoes off the walls, amplifying in the small space until it feels like being inside a waterfall.
He points to the tub with the kind of gesture that means get in without requiring translation.
I stare at the slowly filling basin, confused. There's barely enough water to cover my ankles—not exactly what most people would call a bath. More like a very shallow, very public foot-washing ceremony.
But arguing seems like a poor life choice at this point.
I step into the tub, and the warm water feels like a small mercy against my feet. The rest of my body, however, is now fully exposed to the cool air, even when I sit, and within seconds I'm shaking uncontrollably.
The water level isn't rising fast enough to provide any real warmth, and I'm starting to wonder if hypothermia is part of the evening's educational agenda when something unexpected happens.
Master's hand touches my arm—gentle, careful, nothing like the controlled force from moments before.
"Relax," he says, and his voice has shifted completely. Gone is the bark of command, replaced by something softer, almost... kind? "Breathe."
I watch in shock as he removes his gloves, revealing hands that are both covered in tattoos and surprisingly elegant for someone whose job description apparently includes Professional Intimidation Specialist.
He picks up a cup from beside the tub and begins pouring warm water over my shoulders, and the sensation is so unexpected that I nearly sob with relief.
"What are you doing?" I whisper, because this gentle care feels more surreal than anything else that's happened today.
"Aftercare," he explains, continuing to pour water in steady streams across my skin. "It's mandatory after such a difficult day."
The word mandatory sits strangely in this context. Like required kindness or obligatory comfort—concepts that shouldn't exist but apparently do in Giovanni's twisted universe.
"Giovanni didn't put you to bed properly," Master continues, reaching for the unscented soap. "Or you would be clean and dressed."
The soap creates suds in his palms, and then—oh fuck—his hands are on my body, washing me with the kind of care usually reserved for something precious and fragile.
"I wrote a poem in my journal," I admit, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "It pissed him off. He stormed out."
Master doesn't comment, just continues his methodical cleansing. His hands move over my arms with surprising gentleness, massaging the soap into my skin like he's performing some kind of ritual.
When his soapy hands reach my legs, I try to convince myself this is purely medical. Clinical. Professional Dom providing aftercare services as outlined in some underground manual of best practices.
But when his hands move to my breasts, carefully caressing them with suds, my body betrays me completely.
Heat floods my core. My breathing hitches. I start squirming like a teenager experiencing her first makeout session, and I can feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment.
"It's okay," Master says, his voice maintaining that unexpected gentleness. "It's normal."
Normal?
Nothing about this situation qualifies as normal by any reasonable standard.
"I'm not supposed to be touching you like this," he continues, hands still moving with that maddening combination of care and sensuality. "But this is what Giovanni gets when he ignores basic protocols."
His thumbs graze my nipples, and I bite back a sound that would definitely qualify as inappropriate given our current circumstances.
"If Giovanni is too caught up in his own head to deliver your well-earned aftercare," Master says, his hands never pausing in their thorough ministrations, "then I'll handle it myself."
I'm holding my breath, trying to decode what handle it himself means in this context, when his hands move to my inner thighs.
Oh.
Oh.
That's what it means.
"Lean back against the tub," he commands, and I comply because apparently my brain has officially clocked out for the evening.
The tub is angled in a way that makes reclining surprisingly comfortable—like someone actually designed this torture chamber with ergonomics in mind. Which feels very on-brand for Giovanni's penchant for meticulous insanity.
Master's hands continue their methodical massage along my thighs, and when his fingers brush against the sensitive folds of my pussy, my entire body goes rigid.
But he doesn't linger. Just continues the massage like he's working out knots in my shoulders instead of... well, whatever the hell this is.
"Close your eyes," he instructs.
I do, because following orders has become my default setting today, and honestly? I'm too exhausted to fight anymore. As soon as my eyelids drop, something inside me just... releases.
Fuck it.
This isn't the man I want—that honor belongs to the emotionally unavailable mob boss who stormed out with my poetry in his head like some kind of literary thief.
But Master's attention is exactly what I need right now.
His hands are careful and thorough and completely focused on me, which is more consideration than I've received from another human being in longer than I care to calculate.
This is manipulation. I know it's manipulation. He's probably following some step-by-step guide from The Dominant's Handbook: How to Fuck with Your Sub's Head in Seven Easy Steps.
But I don't care.
If someone wants to touch me like I'm worth something for once in my goddamn life, then fine. I'll take it. I'll take whatever twisted version of care is on offer in this basement palace of psychological warfare.
So I let him do whatever he wants to my body, and I let myself enjoy it.
His hands move with practiced efficiency, working tension from muscles I didn't even realize were knotted. When he massages my feet, I actually moan—a sound that would have mortified me an hour ago but now just feels like honesty.
"Keep your eyes closed," he says. "Just experience the sensations."
His hands explore me in every way possible. Smooth motions along my slippery skin. Firm massaging over tired muscles. And every once in a while, a little slip. A swipe down my pussy. A twist of my nipple.
Except it's not a slip, is it? It's entirely on purpose.
Little by little, minute by minute, his touching stops being something we’re pretending is accidental and turns straight up provocative.
Jino begins to arouse me on purpose. His hand slips between my legs—not a fleeting movement, either.
But a lingering one. He flicks his finger against my clit, and all the pent-up tension—all the held in desire for Giovanni—builds to a peak. I bite my lip, holding it in.
I will not embarrass myself by letting him make me come.
I can only imagine the demerits I’d earn for that. Even without Master’s explicit instructions to contain my release, I hold it in anyway. Defying him?
No. Obeying his rules. Giovanni is my King, not this stranger with his fingers probing between my legs.
But I feel the heat in my cheeks. The moans come out, no matter how hard I try to contain them.
When he begins to massage my tender breasts, I have to ask.
Because I want him to finish me off and I can’t let it happen without permission.
"Why do you keep touching me like that?"
Immediately, I regret it. Because he stops his ministrations and begins washing my hair, his fingers working through the tangles with infinite patience.
"To make you love me," he answers, his voice completely devoid of emotion. Like he's reading ingredients off a cereal box. "To confuse your brain so you see your Master as love, not pain."
Well. That's... refreshingly honest in the most disturbing way possible.
"If you were my sub," he continues, still working shampoo through my hair, "I'd be fucking you slowly tonight. Telling you sweet things. I'd make you come many times to take away the sting of the day."
I scoff, because the absurdity is too much. "I have thirty-five demerits."
"That's irrelevant," he says, like I've just informed him the sky is blue. He begins rinsing out the shampoo. "The entire purpose of this lifestyle is to make each other feel good."
"That's not what this game is about," I counter, because clearly we're playing by different rulebooks.
"I know," he agrees, and there's something almost sad in his voice.
"Giovanni is using it in all the wrong ways.
" His fingers pause momentarily in my hair, as if he's considering the full weight of what he's saying.
There's a heaviness to his admission that catches me off guard—a hint of genuine regret threading through his customary coldness.
For just a moment, I can glimpse the professional Dom beneath the enforcer, someone who actually believes in rules and boundaries for reasons beyond mere control.
Someone who sees Giovanni's game as a perversion of something he respects.
He finishes rinsing my hair and pulls the drain plug. The sound of water rushing down the drain feels weirdly final, like the end of something I can't quite name.
"Stand up," he says, offering me his hand.
I take it, because standing in a slippery bathtub while exhausted seems like a recipe for a concussion, and I've hit my quota of indignities for one day.
He helps me out of the tub, then proceeds to dry me off with what can only be described as the world's most inadequate hand towel. It's barely large enough to cover a dinner plate, let alone a full human person.
"Why such a small towel?" I ask, because the logistics are baffling.
"So that I'm forced to touch every inch of your body," he explains matter-of-factly. "So that my touch will be the only thing you dream about tonight."
Jesus Christ. These people don't do anything by accident, do they? Even the bathroom linens are part of some elaborate psychological operation.
He works methodically, patting down every surface of my skin with the tiny towel, his hands following behind to ensure nothing's missed. It's intimate and clinical simultaneously, which pretty much sums up this entire experience.
When he's finished, he picks up a comb and begins working through my hair until every tangle is gone and it's mostly air-dried. His movements are patient, gentle—nothing like the controlled force from earlier.
Then he produces the nightgown that wouldn't pass for clothing in any reasonable society. It's practically transparent and barely covers anything important, but he slips it over my head like he's dressing a doll.
He leads me to the bed, and I follow because walking feels like a reasonable request at this point. Everything else has been so much more complicated.
He helps me lie down, which feels unnecessarily considerate given that lying down is generally something I can manage independently. But when he pushes my hair out of my eyes with gentle fingers, I don't protest.
Then he leans down and kisses me.
No tongue, no aggressive claiming, no performance for hidden cameras. Just his lips on mine, soft and warm and completely present.
It's the most erotic kiss I've ever experienced, which makes no sense because it's also the most restrained.
When he pulls away, my head is crashing out like a freshman sorority pledge at a frat party and my body is humming with want.
He leaves me there, pussy throbbing like a heartbeat, mind spinning, thoroughly confused, and me… completely fucked.
Because all I want right now… is to be fucked.
And all I can think about is how badly I hope that happens on Day Two.