Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102375 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
"I gave her the day off."
"You what?"
"She still earned one demerit last night," Jino continues, his tone maddeningly even. "Came without permission. But otherwise, she needs rest. So I'm giving her rest."
"Last night?" I'm confused. But the monster in my chest isn't. It's doing more than stretching now. It's clawing against the inside of my ribs.
"She didn't get the full experience. So… I took care of it."
"You what?"
He touched her, the monster growls.
Again.
My gaze drops to the bruise on his jaw. The one I put there. The one that should remind him exactly where the line is.
"She doesn't need a break," I say. My voice is quieter now. Sharper. "She's experienced. She's had submissive training before. Two days shouldn't require recovery time."
Jino tilts his head again, the way he does when he's choosing his words with surgical precision. "Experienced doesn't mean conditioned. And conditioning requires pacing."
"She needs a push, not coddling."
"She needs consistency."
"She needs—"
"You should watch the footage from last night," Jino interrupts.
The shift in his tone is subtle, but I catch it. The calm veneer cracks just enough to let the edge show through. He's definitely angry.
Holding it in, but angry.
I take another step forward. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
Jino's jaw tightens. His fingers flex once, then still. "It means you should review your own session before questioning mine."
"I know what happened last night."
"Do you?"
The question hangs in the air, weighted with something I don't like. Accusation. Judgment. The kind of unspoken criticism that makes my skin crawl because it implies I fucked up.
I didn't fuck up.
I gave her exactly what she needed. Structure. Consequences. Pain that she could process and submit to. She took thirty strikes without using her safe word. She chose that. Chose me.
But Jino's looking at me like I'm the one who needs correcting.
"She didn't safeword," I say.
"No," Jino agrees. "She didn't."
"Then what's the problem?"
He stands slowly, unfolding from the chair with that controlled grace he's always had. The tattoos on his arms shift as he moves—skeletal saints and devils locked in eternal struggle. He crosses to the window, staring out at the grounds like he's trying to decide whether this conversation is worth having.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet. Measured. Clinical.
"You weren't training her last night, Giovanni. You were punishing yourself."
I don't respond.
Can't.
Because the monster is too busy clawing its way up my throat, screaming at me to throw him out. Get rid of him. He's not doing his job. He's undermining me. He's touching what's mine and then sitting in my living room reading a fucking newspaper like he owns the place.
Get. Rid. Of him.
"She's fine," I say instead, and the words come out strangled, defensive, sharp enough to cut. "She didn't break. She didn't use the safe word I gave her. She submitted beautifully—perfectly—exactly the way I needed her to."
Jino turns from the window to face me, and what I see in his ice-blue eyes stops me cold. It's not anger. Not judgment. Not even disappointment.
It's something worse.
Pity.
"She'll recover, yes," he says quietly, and his voice is soft in that way that makes grown men confess their sins. "The welts will fade. The bruises will heal. Her body will remember how to move without flinching. But it's not really her I'm worried about."
The silence stretches between us like a blade.
"What?" I finally respond.
"It's you, Giovanni." He exhales slowly, shaking his head. "You're becoming... I don't even know what to call it. A stranger, maybe. Someone I don't recognize anymore."
The rage detonates.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I snap, my voice rising despite every instinct screaming at me to stay controlled. "What is this, a bullshit psychotherapy session? Since when do you play counselor? I didn't ask for your fucking opinion about me. I asked you to train her. That's it. That's all."
"Watch the footage."
"I don't need to watch the fucking footage—"
"Watch it."
The command in his voice stops me cold.
Jino Moretti doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to. But right now, standing there with his bruised face and his skeletal saints and his unshakable certainty, he sounds exactly like what he is.
A man who knows more about this than I do.
And that infuriates me more than anything else.
"She needs structure," I say, forcing the words out through clenched teeth. Boundaries. Discipline. That's what I'm giving her."
"You're giving her chaos dressed up as control," Jino counters. "And she's accepting it because she doesn't know the difference yet."
"She's mine—"
"Then act like it."
The silence that follows is suffocating.
I stand there, staring at Jino, the words act like it echoing in my skull like a gunshot in an empty room.
The memory comes back unbidden.
Her wrists cuffed to the throne. The riding crop in my hand—heavy, leather-wrapped, precise. The first strike landed across her thighs, just above her knees. I remember the sound. That sharp crack that split the air and sent a jolt straight to my cock.