Page 59 of Somno Slave

The weight at the end of my bed. The hand around my throat. My nipples aching for no reason. The bruised feeling beneath my skin where nobody should have touched me.

Oh God.

Oh God, no.

My body goes cold beneath him.

“It was you,” I whisper. The words barely exist by the time they leave me.

Every night.

Every touch.

Every impossible thing curling through the dark while I lay there unable to move.

Him. My patient.

Panic detonates so hard my vision pulses white at the edges.

“No,” I choke out violently, shaking my head beneath him now. “No, no, no—”

“It was us.” He smiles. “My body and your mind. You make me do some filthy fucking things, Doctor.”

He leans closer.

“You know why I’m glad he didn’t touch what is mine?” His gaze holds mine, steady, unyielding. “I’d have to kill him.”

My stomach drops so fast it makes me dizzy, breath catching shallow and useless. I can’t slow it—can’t stop the way my body locks up around the fear.

And yet... I feel it.

Not just the panic, not just the pressure pinning me down, but something else threaded through it. Heat. Low, unfamiliar, coiling in a place I have never paid attention to.

Why is my body doing this while I’m terrified?

“You like that,” he murmurs, eyes sparkling. “If you want it rough and forced, just tell me and I can play the part.”

My breathing stutters.

He watches me in a way that almost feels reverent. His attention drags over my face like a hand. I hate how it feels like heat. I hate that something traitorous within me tightens.

I shake my head, the movement barely there. “Stop—”

But I don’t sound convincing.

“Just give yourself one night off, Doctor,” his words settle like poison. “I’m not real. None of this is real.”

The words yank at something inside, something familiar, but the idea bleeds away just as fast as it forms. He drags his thumb slowly across my cheek, over the curve of my freckles, like he’s counting them. I feel my breath hitch under it.

“Your mind knows you’re sexually starved. After twenty-six years and you had never even masturbated,” he whistles. “your body is desperate for release.”

My chest seizes. His fingers tilt my chin.

“You can let it go,” he offers it like it’s a kindness. “You don’t have to fight something that isn’t real.”

His thumb presses just slightly, grounding me to him, pulling my focus back every time it tries to slip.

“Just for tonight,” his voice fills the space behind my eyes. “Let it happen.”