Brett woke up hard and aching and already reaching for him.

He didn't know what time it was. The blackout curtains in the penthouse were still drawn, the room dim and golden from the bathroom light. He was still in Richard's black t-shirt, still wearing the white satin choker that said slutty tramp, still curled in the black silk sheets that smelled like cedar and sex and Richard.

Richard was awake, propped up on one elbow beside him, watching him. Just watching, like Brett was something fascinating to study. His blue eyes were dark, his silver hair mussed, his bare chest rising and falling slow and steady.

Brett's breath caught. Shame flooded him instantly — hot, humiliating, complete — because his body was responding again, without hormones, without permission, without Brielle. His hips shifted under the sheets, seeking friction, seeking heat, seeking him.

Richard's hand slid down Brett's stomach, over the thin cotton t-shirt, his palm warm and possessive. "You feel that, pet?" he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and power. "Your body knows what it wants, even if your head is still catching up."

Brett whimpered, his hands fisting in the sheets, his eyes squeezing shut. He thought of Lance, asleep alone in Kalispell. He thought of the empty vial of estrogen in their trash. He thought of the way Richard had held him after, like he mattered.

"I need..." Brett whispered, the words tearing out of him before he could stop them, his voice hoarse and low and wrecked. "Omg... I need you..."

Richard's hand stilled. "Tell me."

Brett shook his head frantically, tears already burning. "Stop..."

Richard started to pull his hand back, his expression cooling.

"No!" Brett gasped, his hand flying out to catch Richard's wrist, to hold him there, to keep that warm weight on his stomach. "I mean— don't. I mean don't stop."

Richard smiled then, slow and dark and victorious. "Good boy."

Brett was shaking so hard the whole bed seemed to tremble. His mind was screaming at him to stop, to remember who he was, who he was married to. His body was screaming something else entirely, something louder, something truer.

"I need you inside me again," Brett heard himself say out loud, the words shocking in the quiet room, shocking in his own ears, in his own low, male voice. He couldn't believe he'd said it. He couldn't believe he meant it. "Please, Sir, I need— omg, I need you again—"

It wasn't Brielle talking. Brielle would have purred it, would have made it pretty and feminine and soft. This was Brett, raw and desperate and honest, begging for something he'd spent months pretending he didn't want.

Richard's eyes flared, that true alpha dominance rolling off him in waves. He moved in one smooth motion, rolling Brett onto his stomach in the black sheets, his big hands sliding down to cradle Brett's hips, his thumbs stroking over the sharp jut of his hip bones through the t-shirt.

Brett gasped into the pillow, his face flaming, his whole body arching into the touch despite himself, because of himself.

"As you wish, my pet," Richard whispered against the back of Brett's neck, his lips brushing the choker, his voice a dark promise. He held Brett steady, his grip firm and reverent at once, positioning him, preparing him, taking his time like a man who owned every second of the next twenty hours and intended to use them all.

Brett sobbed once, hard, his fingers clawing at the silk sheets. "I don't know what's happening to me," he choked out, his voice muffled by the pillow. "I don't feel like a girl anymore, I don't feel like—"

"You're feeling like yourself," Richard interrupted softly, his mouth tracing the line of Brett's spine through the thin cotton. "Finally."

He leaned down, his chest pressing to Brett's back, his lips at Brett's ear. "And I'm going to take care of you, pet. Every inch of you. As many times as you beg for it."

Brett turned his head, tears streaming down his temples, and met Richard's eyes over his shoulder. In them he saw no disgust, no mockery, no pity for the boy in a choker and a man's t-shirt begging to be taken.

He saw hunger. He saw ownership. He saw safety.

"Please," Brett whispered again, surrendering completely, his hips pressing back into Richard's cradling hands, his body answering a call he'd been denying for six weeks. "Don't stop."

Richard kissed him then — deep and claiming and filthy with promise — and Brett gave himself over to it, to him, to the terrifying, euphoric bliss of finally being wanted for exactly what he was, not for what he was pretending to be.

Twenty hours left on the clock, and Brett Sullivan had stopped counting down to freedom.

He'd started counting down to the next time Richard would call him his.…