not alone

Loona did not pull away from me in haste. Her hands remained on my shoulders, firm and grounding, while the trembling in my chest only gradually subsided. Every breath felt like dragging myself up from the depths of freezing, pitch-black water.

When she lifted her head and looked at me, not a trace of her aloof mask remained. Her eyes were rimmed with red, deep lines creased her brow, and a restless twitch pulled at the corners of her mouth—a tremor of nerves I had never once witnessed in her. She did not look like the composed sovereign of my life. She looked like someone who had charged full-throttle toward a cliff edge, only to rip the emergency brake in the final yard. The shock was written plainly across her features.

"Come," she whispered hoarsely. Her voice sounded gravelly, nearly broken. "Get up. Not here on the floor."

Reaching under my arms, she braced her entire weight against me and helped me to my feet. My knees nearly buckled beneath me instantly; the blood now rushing unhindered through compressed vessels flared like white-hot needles. But Loona kept her arms locked around me, steadying my waist as she guided me slowly into the bathroom.

Walking at her side, being permitted to lean into her, kindled a fierce, almost agonizing ache in my chest. Every fiber of my body throbbed with pain, yet in the exact same breath, I drank in her scent—that dry, expensive cedarwood perfume mingled with the damp rainwater clinging to her hair. It was the scent of my subjugation, but right now, it was also the scent of my only salvation. A boundless, staggering wave of adoration surged through me. The way she had dismantled Emma with words alone moments ago, the absolute, untouchable authority of her presence—she was a force of nature. And that very force was now holding me as though I were made of glass.

When she flicked the light switch with her elbow, the stark glare of the white tiles hit my eyes. She guided me to the edge of the large enameled bathtub and eased me down gently onto the rim. I sat slumped forward, resting my limp hands against my thighs.

Behind me, Loona locked the bathroom door. The sharp click of the deadbolt felt like a barrier against the rest of the world.

She turned on the taps, adjusted the showerhead to a lukewarm stream, and checked the temperature against the back of her wrist. Sinking to her knees on the cold tiles before me, she pushed the sleeves of her dark green blouse up past her elbows and gingerly shifted the sodden, crumpled lace aside.

Under the unforgiving halogen glare of the mirrored cabinet, the full measure of my condition lay exposed.

A sharp, ragged intake of breath tore from Loona’s throat. Her hands froze in midair, barely an inch above my skin.

The pubic ring had pressed a deep, livid groove into my flesh. The tissue was doughy and swollen, turning nearly black along the edges where Emma had forced the pin through the metal at a crooked angle with blunt, vicious force. Tiny tears in the skin glistened raw and weeping under the light.

I stared at Loona. Her throat tightened visibly, her lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line. One hand rose unsteadily to her mouth; her fingers were trembling so violently she had to curl them into a tight fist.

"God damn it…," she breathed under her breath. It was a suffocating mix of revulsion, panic, and sheer self-recrimination. When her eyelids fluttered open again, genuine, unchecked tears welled in the corners of her eyes.

With an almost timid gentleness, she took the showerhead and guided the lukewarm spray over the bruised, broken skin.

My muscles seized with a violent flinch, fingers digging hard into the rim of the tub, but the gentle flow quickly began to dull the searing ache. Loona washed the clammy skin clean with absolute care. The pads of her fingers skirted lightly around the hematomas, never bearing down on the tender flesh. She traced every fraction of an inch, cautious, almost reverent.

Shutting off the water, she reached for a plush towel and patted me dry with minute, feather-light taps. From the cabinet, she retrieved a tube of Bepanthen, worked the cap free with unsteady thumbs, and squeezed a generous dollop of the white ointment onto her fingertips.

As she spread the cool cream across the broken, furrowed skin, my breath caught in my throat.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly.

The words dropped like heavy stones into the echoing silence of the tiled room. I went rigid. Loona looked straight into my eyes—and her gaze held nothing of her former detachment. It was pure remorse.

"I'm sorry, John," she repeated, her voice cracking for a beat. "I… I completely lost control. I wanted to see how far I could push it. I wanted you to belong to me, but I was blind. I gave Emma that fucking key because I thought I had everything handled. Because I treated it like a game."

Her hand, slick with the cool ointment, smoothed carefully over my inner thigh, soothing, tentative.

"I almost made the exact same mistake," she murmured, speaking more to herself than to me, a dark, haunted shadow crossing her features. "I almost let them destroy you. That… that was never what I wanted. I swear to you."

A swell of raw, suffocating gratitude locked in my throat. She was apologizing to me. The woman before whom I had crawled in the dirt, the one who had bound my entire life in chains, was kneeling on the bathroom floor pleading for forgiveness. It was so warped, so profoundly twisted, yet it filled me with a searing, unconditional devotion deeper than anything I had ever felt for another human being. She was the author of my torment, but she was also my only redemption.

And as her cool, cream-slicked fingers worked softly across the bruised flesh, kneeling so close that the warmth of her breath ghosted across my knees, something happened that shattered my remaining reason entirely.

Despite the deep bruising, despite the stinging ache of the broken skin, a dark, uncontrollable surge began to throb deep within my groin. Stripped of the steel cage that had strangled the tissue for weeks, the overstimulated nerve endings flared with unsparing intensity beneath her gentle touch. The contradiction was almost unbearable: the shame of my own physical response, the sheer relief of release, and the illicit, desperate heat that overwhelmed me simply because it was *her* hands on my skin. My body answered her proximity, straining upward toward her fingers as if trying to prove that every single fiber still belonged entirely to her.

Loona registered the trembling shift instantly. Her hand stilled for a heartbeat. Her eyes widened slightly as her gaze dropped, but no mocking smile followed. There was only a quiet, breathless realization of the absolute dominion she held over me.

Reaching into her bag, she drew out a clean, loose pair of soft grey cotton boxers and an oversized white T-shirt, laying them across my thighs.

No steel. No padlock. No lace.

"That thing stays off," she said softly, her tone carrying the weight of a gentle, unbreakable vow. "Tonight, tomorrow… until your skin has completely healed. And Emma will never set foot anywhere near us again. That part is over."

Rising to her feet, she rinsed the remaining ointment from her hands at the sink, leaning heavily against the porcelain basin for a lingering moment. Her shoulders dropped, as though an immense weight had finally slipped from them.

Turning back, she stepped close and cupped my cheeks with both hands. Her thumbs traced gently across my skin, brushing away the dried tracks of tears. I leaned instinctively into the warmth of her palms, shutting my eyes, shivering beneath her touch. I loved her. I was irrevocably, hopelessly hers.

"Get dressed," she whispered, a faint, exhausted smile gracing her lips that cut straight to my core. "You're sleeping in my bed tonight. I'm not leaving you alone."