It wasn’t easy getting to sleep that night. I hadn’t slept well in years but this was the worst it had been in a very long time.

With the others, I’d been able to leave them safe in the knowledge they were happy to please me. I didn’t need to worry about them overnight. That was the good side. The bad side was that was the first step to things not working out.

She wasn’t reacting in the same way. She had refused to strip, she had screamed to be let out. And then when I’d gone back and given her a final chance to change her mind, she had told me to go to hell. It was almost enough to make me grin.

I worried about her as I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take me. I worried that it might fail for a different reason. It might take too long. What if we came to the end of the week and I hadn’t broken her yet?

I knew I could try again with some other woman but I didn’t want to. I wanted this one to work. Already, I was certain that she was my best shot at achieving my goal, of ending the week with her broken and me done with the world.

Longer than a week and Emilia won. She’d dragged me into her world in a week, taking me away from her friends, hiding away with me in the cottage, introducing me to a world of dominance and submission that I never knew existed.

She’d dominated me. She still did, residing in a part of my brain long after the car crash that killed her, nestled in there with a long needle that she used to jab at me, remind me what she’d done, make sure I never, ever forgot.

Would things have been different if she was still alive? Would I have been able to find out the truth? Find out why she had dominated me so perfectly and then pretended it was just a joke? I knew it wasn’t a joke, not really. Her eyes had told me as much, even as she’d laughed with her friends, boasting to them about what she’d made me do.

She’d had a choice. To admit the truth about who she was, about what she was, or deny it, pretend she was just like them. She made a choice. So did I. I made a choice never to give my heart to anyone ever again, to focus on work, nothing else.

I closed my eyes, hoping that would help me sleep. As I did so, an image of Zoey’s face came into my mind. I felt a tug of something inside me, a creeping doubt. I didn’t know what it meant. I only knew it felt heavy and strong and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

This was about ending things, not starting them. This was about getting closure, about being in charge of my own destiny. I had to ignore that doubt. If I listened to it, there was a chance it would gnaw at me and I might not be able to finish this task, complete the job, go out the right way. Fate wasn’t the boss of me. I was the boss of it. I was in charge.

I realised I was clenching my fists, the nails digging into the flesh of my palms. I had to concentrate on loosening them, trying my best to think about nothing.

By the next morning, I felt groggy as hell. I had woken up too many times, even for me.

My mood improved as I dressed. However uncomfortable I’d felt during the darkness, she would have felt far worse, alone and half naked in that cold room. It would make her eager to please me, fearing the consequences if she didn’t. That would be a great start to our second day together. Then I could work on shifting her mind towards obeying me because she had to, not because she wanted to, because her soul demanded it of her. I refused to think about afterwards. There was no afterwards. There was only me and her and this week together.

I unlocked the door, the noise bringing her out of her sleep. I caught a glimpse of her laid on her side in the foetal position before she was up, rubbing her stomach as she got to her feet. She looked cold.

“Good morning,” I said, closing the door behind me. “Sleep well?”

“I need the bathroom,” she said, trying to walk past me.

“It’s right there,” I said, nodding at the pot.

“You can’t expect me to use that.”

I grabbed her, shoving her backwards until she was pressed against the wall. I moved my hand to her stomach, jabbing into it with my fingers, watching her discomfort turn to agony. “You are pissing me off, Zoey. You agreed to obey me. Already you’ve refused to strip. Look where that got you, a night in here. Do you want another one to think about it some more?”

“Please,” she said, wincing and squirming on the spot. “You’re hurting me.”

“You’re hurting yourself,” I replied. “Now do as you’re told. Strip.”

“No, please-”

“Strip!” I roared in her face, pushing my hand behind her back, unhooking her bra between two fingers, letting the sides fall away.

I stepped back, tugging at the bra, yanking it from her shoulders until it finally came off. The sight of her tits took my breath away. They were magnificent, begging to be played with, the nipples light pink and rock hard. I yearned to squeeze them between my fingers.

She looked at me, her hands already on her panties as she slid them down. I had to shift on the spot, not wanting her to see the bulge that had appeared in my trousers as her pussy came into view. “We’ll deal with that next,” I said, pointing at it. “First, get on that pot.”