Chapter SEVEN
DomINIC
I always knew a woman would be the death of me. I just never imagined it would happen quite like this.
Despite the sheer absurdity and mortal peril of our situation, my eyes involuntarily drifted back to Summer.
With the dim light filtering through the shadows, I found myself studying her.
If these truly were my final hours on earth, I might as well appreciate the view—and what a view it was.
She was breathtaking. Her body possessed a youthful, flawless, entirely natural beauty.
Because her hands were tightly zip-tied behind her back, her posture was forced upright, pulling her shoulders back and perfectly accentuating every gorgeous, striking curve of her silhouette.
I kept staring, completely captivated, but it didn’t take long for me to realize I had made a catastrophic, rookie mistake.
A sudden heat surged south, entirely independent of the basement’s suffocating radiator.
To my absolute horror, I felt an erection rapidly building.
In any normal situation, a man could cross his legs, shift his posture, or at least use his hands to cover himself up.
But I had no such luxury. Not only were my hands forced behind my back, but my wrists were heavily handcuffed directly to the iron radiator pipes.
I was completely exposed, pinned flat against the wall, with absolutely nowhere to hide the increasingly obvious situation between my legs.
Summer casually glanced over, but the moment her eyes dropped down, she froze. Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with a mix of sheer disbelief and utter disgust.
“Oh my god…” she gasped, staring at me as if I were a radioactive freak. “Are you serious right now? What is wrong with you? Stop it! Just stop doing that!”
“I’m sorry!” I shot back, my face instantly burning hotter than the heating pipes behind me. “Do you think I’m doing this on purpose? This isn’t exactly a faucet I can just turn off on command, Summer!”
“Well, fix it!” she hissed, twisting her body away as much as her chains allowed. “It’s disgusting!”
“I can’t control my biology right now, alright?
” I groaned. “Trust me, I am trying. I’m going to focus on something else.
Just give me a second to think about something completely unsexy…
like tax returns. Yeah. Tax returns, root canals, and filing ranger reports.
Just stop talking so I can concentrate!”
I forced my eyes shut, silently reciting my tax number in my head, but as the seconds ticked by, a sudden, jarring thought popped into my mind.
“Wait a minute,” I muttered, the sudden realization making me frown. “You’ve never actually been with a man before, have you?”
She completely froze, her eyes widening slightly before she quickly averted her gaze, staring intensely at the floor.
“Come on,” I pressed, studying her sudden, tight silence. “I saw the ring on your finger earlier. I know you’re engaged. But you’ve seriously never been with anyone?”
Still, she refused to look at me, her lips pressed into a hard, stubborn line. It was a bizarre contrast to the girl who had been viciously tearing into me just seconds ago.
“This is weird,” I said, a dry chuckle escaping my throat. “You’ve been running your mouth non-stop since we met, and now you won’t even answer a simple question? Did I actually manage to embarrass you?”
Summer finally snapped her head up, her face flushing a deep crimson as she glared at me, her defensive, pouty attitude rushing back.
“No! And for your information, I am not engaged! I only wear that ring because Ron, my classmate, told me it would keep men away from me if they thought I belonged to someone. It was for fucking safety.”
I raised my eyebrows, shifting slightly against the hot radiator. “So there is no fiancé. You’re completely single.”
I let out a soft sigh, my gaze softening as I looked at her completely exposed, vulnerable form.
“Look, I know you think I’m just being a creep, and you think this erection is something I can just turn off on command.
But I’m a man, Summer, and my body reacts to what’s right in front of it.
And something about the way you’re reacting right now…
it tells me I’m right. You’ve never been with a guy. ”
She didn’t fire back with a witty insult this time.
Instead, the entire atmosphere in the suffocating room shifted.
The fiery defiance in her eyes suddenly dimmed, replaced by sadness.
In the faint light, I could see her eyes glistening, growing slightly watery as her shoulders slumped.
Her fierce aura completely vanished, leaving her looking incredibly small and heartbroken.
“Hey,” I said, my voice dropping its sarcastic edge, turning softer, more grounded. “Talk to me. Tell me the truth. We’re sitting naked and chained in a mafia basement, Summer. These are very likely our final hours on earth. There’s absolutely no point in keeping secrets from each other anymore.”
I gave a grim, half-hearted nod down toward my lap, trying to bring back a tiny shred of humor to break the crushing weight in the room.
“I mean, look at me. I’ve literally put everything out there on display for you.
It’s a total exclusive premiere down here.
You can stare at my junk for as long as you want—and honestly, you’ll probably be the very last woman who ever looks at it anyway.
So just lay it on me. What’s the story?”
She swallowed hard, before she finally looked up at me. Her expression was completely heartbroken. “Do you… Do you really think we’re going to die here, Dominic? Are they actually going to kill us?”
The raw vulnerability in her voice caught me completely off guard. For a second, I didn’t know what to say. My instinct was to protect her, to lie to her, but we were both sitting here completely naked and chained to a wall. I tried to deflect, hoping a bit of dark humor might break the ice again.
“Well,” I muttered, giving a stiff, uncomfortable shrug. “My personal experience with mafia execution protocols is a little rusty, to be honest. But hey, maybe we can try to look at our options before we give up. If you twist your thumbs, can you try to slide your hands out?”
Instead of trying, Summer just let out a small, broken sob. A single tear slipped down her cheek.
“Hey, hey, don’t do that,” I said, a sudden wave of helplessness washing over me.
I wanted nothing more than to reach across the short distance and pull her against me, to comfort her, but the metal cuffs dug hard into my wrists, keeping me pinned.
“Don’t cry, Summer. Look, even if… even if the worst happens, they’ll probably make it quick.
They won’t want to waste time torturing a couple of trespassers. It won’t be painful, I promise.”
But my attempt at comfort only made it worse. Her quiet sniffling broke completely, escalating into loud, heavy, chest-heaving sobs.
I hated seeing her like this, stripped of all her armor. “Summer, please. Tell me how do I calm you down?”
“I don’t want to die like this!” she suddenly choked out through her tears, the words bursting out of her in a desperate, sobbing rush.
“I don’t want to die a virgin! I’ve never even been with a man, and now I’m going to die in a basement!
” She began to sob hysterically. “I spent my entire life buried in books!” she wailed, her voice cracking with pure misery.
“Just studying, working, focusing on my career, thinking I had all the time in the world! I never went out, I never let anyone get close to me, and now it’s over.
I’ve never even seen a real man’s… a man’s body in person until today! ”
“Hey… look at me, Summer,” I said gently, trying to ground her. “Sex isn’t actually that big of a deal, okay? Don’t stress yourself out over it. It’s just a basic biological function. You’re not missing out on some mystical, life-altering magic.”
Yep. That was the wrong thing to say.
Summer’s head snapped up, her tear-stained face flushing with sudden, fierce anger as she practically exploded at me.
“What do you mean, not that big of a deal?!” she fired back.
“If it wasn’t a big deal, then why is everybody doing it all the time?
! If it’s so insignificant, people wouldn’t be obsessed with it!
There are people out there who do it multiple times a day!
Why are you trying to convince me it’s nothing, when there are couples who do it three, four, or even five times a day? !”
A sudden, genuine laugh broke out of my chest. I couldn’t help it. “Summer, trust me. Anyone who claims they’re doing it five times a day is completely full of shit and just bragging.”
“I don’t care if they’re lying!” she screamed back, her shoulders shaking as she raged.
“At least they’ve done it! At least they know what it feels like!
I’ve done it zero times! I haven’t even…
” She abruptly cut herself off, her jaw tight, swallowing the rest of her sentence as she glared at the floor.
I watched her closely, putting the pieces together as the silence stretched between us. I suddenly realized exactly what she hadn’t wanted to say.
“Wait…” I murmured, my voice dropping lower. “You haven’t even… done anything by yourself? You’ve never even played with yourself, Summer?”
Hearing me say it out loud made her completely crumble. She burst into an even louder, more desperate fit of sobbing.
“I don’t even know what an orgasm feels like!” she wailed hysterically, completely letting go of any remaining pride. “Can you even comprehend that?! I am about to be brutally murdered by the mafia, and I don’t even know what an orgasm is! God, I am such an absolute, pathetic loser!”