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Watched the way I had silently asked for it.

That part of me now felt broken. Like some starved and stupid, buried part of me had stood in that stall with her hands tied over her head and wanted every second of it. And honestly, there was no version of the story I could tell myself in the light of that bathroom that made that untrue.

I tried a few. Sitting there on the edge of the tub, I tried them all.

You were terrified. It’s a physical response. It doesn’t mean anything.

But then, I was a nurse. I knew exactly what a physical response was and what it wasn’t. I knew which one of the two made you turn your face into your own arm to keep the noise in. My body didn’t do that. I had embraced it when I could have just endured it.

So, I got up off the edge of that tub with legs that felt like they belonged to somebody else, and I went and lay down on the bed.

Ten minutes.

That was the deal I made with myself, and I remember making it. Ten minutes flat on my back to let the shaking finish. Then I would get up, grab my bag, and I was gone.

I didn’t even get under the covers.

But what I wasn’t prepared for, was that I slept like the dead.

Which made no sense. Not when he had been the cause of so many sleepless nights before this one. Although the difference now was the line he crossed. Instead of wondering what those hands could do to me, now I knew.

I knew and I couldn’t stop thinking about them, not even in my dreams. It wasn’t what they could do, it was what they did. It was how I unraveled for him and couldn’t hate him for it. For making me feel desired for the first time in years. It was reminding me that a man’s touch didn’t have to be cruel, even if the act may have started out that way.

It was the way I felt helpless and protected in the same breath. The way I felt trapped and treasured all at the same time. It was the way he had given me pleasure without once thinking about taking it for himself. He could have raped me. He could have torn my clothes off, turned me around and taken me without even looking in my eyes.

But he hadn’t.

He had taken care of me and given me what no other man ever had… my first orgasm by another’s hand.

Which was why my mind couldn’t let it go. His hands, his voice at my ear, and the sheer size of him dominating every inch of me. And the whole of it went round and round in the dark and not once did I try to wake myself up from it.

That’s the part I couldn’t forgive. Not the wanting. I’ve made a kind of peace with how badly I wanted him before I even lay my head on the pillow.

No, the part I couldn’t forgive was that it had been the safest I had felt since before my dad died. That the man in my dreams who had put me in that room would have burned the world down for me if only I asked him to.

And in the end, it wasn’t the sight of him walking out the door that woke me. That didn’t signify the end of the dream for me. No, it was…

Just nine words.

I know your last name is not really Vale.

They came up out of the dream with me, and I suddenly sat bolt upright in a bed I’d had no intention of staying in. Because if I were honest with myself, had he not said those words to me, I might have stayed. I knew it was insane and the most irrational truth I had ever faced but it was true.

Because I could have risked the next time he got me alone. Hell, I might have even welcomed it or been brave enough to seek it out. But not now. Not after what he had threatened with the weapon of knowledge. And it was one that I was at least smart enough to take seriously, even if he didn’t have all the details yet. I knew now that he was more than capable. I didn’t know how it was possible, but I didn’t doubt he was powerful enough to discover everything, even behind bars. Because he had proven as much. He had practically taken over the prison and made it his playground. And in it…

I seemed to be his favorite plaything.

So, I had to run. I had no other choice, not when I knew he wouldn’t stop until he had dismantled my fake life and reached the core of me. Vale was the wall and the second he found it standing between us, it started to crumble.

That name cost me money I didn’t have and sixteen weeks of waiting and an old man’s very careful craft of favors he felt he owed. It was the only thing standing between me and the version of my life where I get found. Every night for as long as I’d been in that apartment I’d dropped my keys in a bowl and thought; he can’t get to Vale. Vale had no history, no debts, nobody who’d ever loved her, and that was the entire point of her.

And a man who lived behind bars had taken her off me in nine words, standing in a shower with my release still coating his fingers.

I released a sigh, scrubbed a hand down my face and turned my head to the clock. Eight fifty. Jesus, I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept so long.

Twelve hours.

The clock had gone all the way around without me, and I had slept through far too many minutes of the small window I had. I had hoped that I would have had hours between me and anybody who could have noticed a nurse not turning up for work. That had been the plan. Instead, the whole night was gone, the sun was up and my shift had started two hours ago.