Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Then a message appears.
Submission Received.
Thank You, Participant 847-Sk-2847.
Further Instructions Will Be Provided Shortly.
The timer disappears.
I sit back.
It's two-fifty-five in the morning now. I've been staring at this screen for three hours, excavating my psyche and assigning dollar values to my boundaries.
My phone vibrates.
I nearly jump out of my skin.
A text message. Unknown number.
Take nothing with you but your phone and go downstairs to the lobby. A car is waiting.
I read it again.
Now?
Right now?
My apartment is a disaster. Dirty dishes, blanket for catastrophe, and I'm wearing yoga pants and a t-shirt I've been in for two days. I haven't showered. Haven't brushed my teeth. Haven't—
My phone vibrates again.
Now, Scarletta.
They know my name.
Of course they know my name. They have my bank account. My psychological profile. Forty-seven stories worth of my deepest fantasies.
They know everything.
Take nothing but your phone.
I stand on shaking legs.
Look around my apartment one last time.
The blanket fort. The laptop. The eviction notice on the floor.
One-thousand forty-seven dollars in my checking account.
Forty-four thousand waiting for me downstairs.
I pick up my phone.
And I leave.
Chapter 6
Caleb
There are many ways to be depraved.
Some people lack moral boundaries.
Some find pleasure in cruelty and pain.
And some, like my good little slut, Scarletta, twist desire into something dark and consuming.
She and I have that in common.
I'm in bed. Naked on top of the covers. Cock in hand.
The laptop sits on the nightstand, screen angled so I can see it clearly. Three feeds on the display. Top left: her apartment, wide shot from the camera hidden in her smoke detector. Top right: close-up from the webcam I activated six months ago. Bottom: keystroke logger, every letter she types appearing in real-time.
She's been filling out the questionnaire for nine minutes.
I've been hard since she clicked the link.
My stroke is slow. Controlled. I'm not rushing this. I want to savor every second of watching her confess what she needs.
What she needs from me.
The thousand dollars was a calculated risk. Not a bribe—insurance. Keep her focused. Keep her engaged. Make sure she didn't panic and close the browser before she got far enough in to see what she was really agreeing to.
Worth every penny when I watched her face change. When doubt, became curiosity, became arousal.
And the phone call.
My grip tightens.
Her voice. Breathy. Nervous.
That little hitch when she said, "Fuck," instead of hello.
She was scared, yes. But underneath she was interested. I heard it. The way she didn't hang up immediately. The way she listened.
She liked my voice.
Good.
She's going to hear it a lot over the next twenty-four hours.
The keystroke feed updates.
Question 1: Describe your darkest sexual fantasy in detail. What about it arouses you?
I stop stroking. Wait.
Her cursor blinks in the text box for thirty-seven seconds.
Then she starts typing.
Being held captive by someone who sees me completely—
I resume stroking. Slower now.
She wants captivity. Not rope and chains. Psychological captivity. The kind where escape is possible but surrender is inevitable.
She wants someone who's read everything she's written.
I have.
Every story. Every draft. Every deleted paragraph she wrote and reconsidered and cut because it was too honest.
—knows my fears and desires better than I do—
Better than she does.
That's what makes my cock throb. Not the captivity fantasy itself. The fact that she craves someone who understands her needs before she can articulate them. Someone who sees through her walls and dismantles them piece by piece until she has nowhere left to hide.
She wants to be known.
Completely.
Darkness and all.
And desired because of it.
Not despite it.
I stroke faster.
This is why I chose her. This exact need. The desperation to be seen by someone intelligent enough to understand what she can't say out loud. Someone who won't flinch when he discovers how dark her desires run.
Someone who'll give her exactly what she's too ashamed to ask for.
I've been watching her for six months. I know her better than she knows herself.
And in—I glance at the countdown timer on screen—nine hours and forty-two minutes, I'm going to prove it to her.
Question 2: What is your relationship with shame regarding your sexual desires?
Her cursor blinks for ninety seconds this time.
Longer hesitation. More resistance.
Then she starts typing.
I read the first line and my cock jumps in my fist.
She's ashamed of what she wants.
Deeply ashamed.
Writes under a pseudonym because the humiliation of being discovered would destroy her. Her mother's voice still echoing in her skull—nice girls don't think about that—even though she knows intellectually it's bullshit.
But the shame doesn't stop the arousal.
It feeds it.
I stroke faster. My breathing goes shallow.
This is perfect.
This is exactly what I need.
She's aroused by dominance, control, fear, pain—all the things she thinks she shouldn't want. The shame sharpens the desire. Makes it forbidden. Makes it dangerous.
And she wants someone who won't judge her for it.
Someone who'll make her admit what she craves even when she's too mortified to speak.
I pause. Process that.
She doesn't just want acceptance.