Chapter 11
No—that's inaccurate.
I'm not "like" a voyeur.
I am one.
I rub my eyes. Sleep has been an unreliable ally since Rico's body hit the floor. Three hours of restless turning before I gave up and came down here wearing nothing but a hard-on and some black boxer briefs.
The surveillance room is my sanctuary—everything visible, nothing hidden, complete control from a distance.
I love it.
Little Miss Take fills the screen. Yesterday's footage plays out in clinical detail. Her posture as Jino trains her. The trembling in her thighs as she holds Position Two. The mathematical precision with which she struggles to maintain her composure.
I fast-forward, frame by frame, watching the deterioration of her resistance. It's like watching metal fatigue under pressure—invisible until it suddenly isn't.
The feed switches to the desk cam. Here it is: the journaling. I adjust the volume, check the time stamp: 6:17 p.m. The finale of a full day of instruction.
I study her face. She has her back to me in the actual room, but the camera captures what I couldn't see. Every slight movement of her eyes. The tightening at the corners of her mouth. The way she holds her breath before putting pen to paper.
She's frowning. Not the performative frown of someone who thinks they're being watched, but the unconscious pull of concentration. Her eyebrows draw together over the bridge of her nose, creating a small valley of focus.
I lean closer, increasing magnification. Why? Why is this woman consuming my attention when I have LaRiccia problems that could level a city block? She's just pretty. Conventionally attractive in that standard-issue, Instagram filter way. Clean skin, proportionate features. Statistically appealing.
But statistics don't explain the way my cock hardens when she defies me. Statistics don't account for the tightness in my chest when she looks me in the eyes.
On screen, she grunts suddenly—a sound of frustration. Her hand stops writing, and she begins tapping the fountain pen against the page in a rapid, irritated rhythm. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Four beats, pause. Four beats, pause. Like she's trying to summon the right word through percussion.
I didn't notice this when I was behind her in the room. My focus had been elsewhere—on the curve of her spine, the tension in her shoulders, the way her hair fell in tangled waves down her back.
Then—there it is. A nearly silent chuckle escapes her lips. A sound of victory. She's found it: the perfect word. Her hand moves with renewed purpose across the page, the pen flowing smoothly now.
I find myself smiling. Against my will. Against every calculated move I've made. She just outthought herself, won a battle against her own brain, and is quietly celebrating.
This is why she's dangerous. This is why I can't look away. She's alive in there. Even after hours of Jino's conditioning, even sitting naked on a wooden chair, her will hasn't diminished. It's just redirected into a poem about submission—a poem that revealed more than I first suspected.
I wanted it to be you who—
That unfinished line. What did she want from me? To train her? Touch her? Break her? All of it, probably. The possibilities have been repeating in my head all night, playing on an endless loop that's keeping me from sleep.
I focus on the camera that looks down on the throne and zoom in on her poem, reading it again. Analyzing the structure—terza rima, of course. It’s our thing now, isn’t it?
These poems are incredibly hard to write. A chain forced to carry forward, each stanza dragging the next, no line allowed to stand alone. Break one link and the whole structure falls. A prison, forcing its captive forward. No pause, no relief, no escape but through.
The way I left last night was sloppy. Undisciplined. I shoved her—actually put my hands on her and pushed—like some fucking street thug. Pure reaction.
That’s not who I am. That’s not how I operate.
Tonight will be different. Tonight I’ll have control.
Of myself, of her, of every word between us.
I'm satisfied now. Dominance restored. The room is quiet except for the hum of the surveillance equipment. My breathing has finally slowed.
I need sleep. The black leather couch across the room looks almost inviting. I’ve got about fifty minutes before Jino arrives to start day two of Emmaleen's training. Enough time to reset.
But as I start to get up, something catches my eye.
Little Miss Take is disobeying my direct orders.
Eat. Bathe. Dress. Sleep. Four simple commands that even a child could follow.
After eating the bread and sausage, she simply collapses onto the bed. No bath. No nightgown. Just straight to sleep like my instructions were optional suggestions.
Small defiance. Insignificant in the scope of things. Yet the sight of it crawls under my skin like a splinter.
And now it occurs to me—much too late to matter, that I failed her last night. I let emotion get the best of me, and in this weakness, I forgot that feeding, bathing, dressing, and putting her to bed were my responsibility.
A long sigh escapes. She frustrates me. And this frustration leads to mistakes.
See. This is why I can’t keep her. She unsettles my perfectly organized world. Rips it to shreds with a few well-chosen words. Flips the tables, scattering my thoughts and desires in all directions.
She’s not good for me.
And what’s not good for me is even worse for her.
She is, in fact, a fucking thorn in the side of our mutual long-term survival.
Adrenaline courses through my blood, the peace that was beginning to settle, once again scattered. There’s no rest now. Not with that poem running through my head. Not with my mistakes gnawing away at the edges of my confidence.
Have I royally fucked up?
Have I miscalculated so badly that this game will backfire?
Unknown. Yet. There’s still time. It was day one. We were finding our footing, that’s all. Today will be smoother and—
On the monitor, Emmaleen sits up in bed.
I lean in. What the fuck? Did something wake her?
The bedroom door opens. It's Jino.
What the hell is he doing?
I increase the volume, catching his words mid-sentence: "—bathe. You didn't dress."
I watch with amusement as something snaps inside Emmaleen and suddenly, words are spewing out of her mouth like a scene from The Exorcist. She verbally berates Jino, calling him Master in a mocking way. Asserting her own self agency.
Jino barely contains his smile.
I don't even try. Classic Little Miss Take right here.
After a full minute of verbal vomiting, her little outburst has burned itself out.
I expect shame, silence, obedience. Instead, I watch her retreat.
She flinches when Jino takes her hand—tries to pull away—but he doesn’t let her.
He grips her tight. Firm, measured, commanding.
The kind of touch reserved for something you own.
“Come,” I hear him say, pulling her across the room.
I narrow my eyes. What’s happening?
“Relax,” he murmurs, softer now. He's filling the bath. The camera angle doesn’t miss a thing: the water turning on, steam curling into the air, his hand gesturing toward the tub as if it were his right to order her body anywhere.
She hesitates, then obeys. Steps in. She’s shivering, shaking, exposed, but when he lays a hand on her arm—gentle, deliberate—her shoulders drop.
I blink, unsure I'm seeing this correctly. Jino—my cousin, my consigliere—is running bathwater for my submissive after I explicitly ordered her to self soothe.
Never mind that it was my job and I didn’t do it. I ordered her to self soothe.
"Aftercare," Jino explains, pouring water over my sub’s body like it belongs to him. "It's mandatory after such a difficult day."
He has no right. I zoom in on Emmaleen's face as she processes what he's telling her. It's confusion, then… is that relief?
"Giovanni didn't put you to bed properly," Jino continues. He reaches for the bar of industrial soap. "Or you would be clean and dressed."
The muscles in my jaw clench so hard I feel my teeth might crack. Didn't put her to bed properly? He dares to critique my decisions in front of her?
I watch, paralyzed with disbelief, as Jino's fucking hands—bare fucking hands—slick with soap, begin to glide over skin that doesn't belong to him. Over breasts that aren't his to touch. Between thighs where his hands have no right to be.
His movements aren't clinical. They're attentive. Deliberate. The kind of touch designed to leave an impression.
The kind of touch reserved for a king.
The audio catches her breathing change—quickening, then catching. Her body responding to him. To his hands. To his attention.
"It's okay," Jino says, his voice much too gentle. "It's normal."
Normal?
He's betraying me and he has the nerve to tell her this is normal?
"I'm not supposed to be touching you like this," he continues, outright caressing her seductively now, and I nearly come undone. I nearly rip the whole bank of monitors off the wall and throw them across the room. "But this is what Giovanni gets when he ignores basic protocols."
His thumbs slide over her nipples, making them rise up into tight peaks. Emmaleen grunts, like she's biting back a whimper of pleasure.
"If Giovanni is too caught up in his own head to deliver your well-earned aftercare," Jino continues, twisting the fucking knife in my back as he slides his fingers between her legs, "then I'll handle it myself."
What. The fuck. Is happening here?
I rewind. Play it again. Her small gasp when his fingers brush between her legs. The way her head falls back slightly. The fucking surrender in her posture.
My cousin is seducing my fucking sub!
It's… unheard of. A complete betrayal of my trust.
"Keep your eyes closed," Jino whispers to Emmaleen. "Just experience the sensations."