When the water is cold, Javi helps me from the tub. He dries my hair with a towel and then my body too. He uses the same towel on himself, and I watch.

Then he takes me by the hand and leads me back into the library in the conservatory. He pulls one of the chairs onto the hardwood floor and cups my face in his palm.

"Do you know what I need from you, my Bella?"

His voice is gentle. Filled with want. And it doesn't matter what he needs from me because whatever it is, I will do it.

I nod. He kisses me.

"Good girl," he says. "Now stay right here."

I stay in place while he walks back across the room and returns a moment later with a cup in hand. A cup that I recognize well from my early days with him.

It is filled with dry rice. Rice that he scatters on the floor beneath me. I swallow and look up into his eyes when he is finished. Wondering if he is angry. Wondering if I've done something wrong.

But that isn't what I find. Today, I only see need. He needs this from me. And so when he asks me to kneel, I do it without question. It has been a long time since he punished me this way, and I have forgotten the pain. But I bear it.

For Javi.

For Javi, I would bear anything. The thought scares me. Excites me. Confuses me.

He sits in the chair in front of me. Naked. Hard. Swollen. He spreads his thighs in offering, and I lean forward to take him into my mouth. I draw him in, and he strokes my cheek reverently.

"Good girl, my Bella. That's such a good girl."

I work him over for a long time. Until my knees are on fire from the pain and I'm certain he's about to come. But he stops me before I can get him there.

He grips me by the hair and leans down to meet my lips. Kissing me in a way that he never has before. Like he is worshipping me. Like he is tasting me for the first time. It goes on until I am dizzy. And then he instructs me to lay back.

I do.

My knees are grateful for the reprieve, but my back smarts when the tiny grains of rice dig into my flesh. The pain is soon forgotten as Javi kneels down before me and squeezes my thighs in his palms. He buries his face between my legs, and his tongue inside of me.

I cry out and jolt against him. He presses his palm into my stomach, holding me in place while he pleasures me.

I come hard.

And then I reach down and touch his face. I beg him for more. I plead for him. Javi leans back and drags me closer. His knees digging into the rice as he drives inside of me in one solid stroke.

He squeezes my hips and angles them for his pleasure, thrusting in and out of me with violent need. Grunting and slapping against me as he stares into my eyes.

It goes on forever. Until he can't hold himself up anymore. Until my body is completely limp in his arms. Until he finally roars out his release and then collapses beside me.

We lay there for a long time. Catching our breaths. Entranced by each other. I can feel that shift again. A barrier being swept away. It’s liberating. It feels like progress. We have come so far together, extricating ourselves from the prisons of our hearts.

He kisses me again, and it's sweet.

Then he lifts me into his arms and sets me down on the chair, brushing the grains of rice from my skin and kissing the swollen flesh with his lips.

"Such a good girl, my Bella," he tells me again. "Would you like your reward now?"

I nod because it does not feel like a trick. Javi dresses himself. And then me. He retrieves a remote and turns on a projector I never knew existed in this room.

Fear twists in my stomach, but one look from him quickly snuffs it out. This is not a trick. Not this time. He brings me into his arms, turning me to face the screen. When it comes to life, I am surprised by what I see there.

A YouTube video. Of me. Singing at the piano. In Javi's house. Here at Moldavia.

Nobody else would know it, but I do. The room is black. So black. And I am playing one of my new songs. One that I sang for him. One that I wrote about him.

The video is public, for all the world to see. My chest squeezes as he scrolls through the comments. I'm expecting the worst.

I close my eyes and try to turn into him, but he guides my face back towards the screen and whispers in my ear.

"Open your eyes, Bella. This is your reward."

I open my eyes. And I read. The comments are not what I expected. They are positive. Uplifting. The listeners say how much they like the song. How they miss my voice. How they hope that I will put out more.

And there is more of the same, the longer Javi scrolls. I don't know how it's possible, but it is.

"You uploaded this?"

"Yes," he answers. "They miss you, Bella. It is not fair for me to keep your voice only to myself."

I turn to him, and this time, he lets me. And he does something else.

He wraps his arms around me and presses my cheek to his chest. And then he dances with me. Humming along to the music that I made. Music that I didn't even realize he recorded.

I wrap my arms around his waist, and I relax in his arms. For five minutes, nothing else outside of this room exists. For five minutes, Javi lets me inside. And in those five minutes, my emotions become so clear.

I am in love with my captor. He is my tormentor. My greatest source of pain and fear. But somehow, he has also become my sanctuary.

My whole world.