Madness has a name, and it wears my mouth like a prayer. A curse I cannot lift. It’s like a loophole; no matter what I do, wherever I go, it always leads me to madness.

I’ve never felt this way.

Like I’m possessed by something that shouldn’t be named. Shadows whispering sweet deliriums into my ears. It’s not love, and strangely, it’s not hate either. It’s something in between. Something cruel, something all-consuming. As if I’m moving barefoot on gravel, knowing my feet are bleeding, but I can’t stop.

That’s what it feels like right now as I’m being dragged somewhere. My wrist aching in his hand, my chest heaving up and down, there’s this frantic rhythm of my heart, yet all I can feel is his mouth on mine.

It’s not like he’s never kissed me before.

But it’s… different this time.

As if he is laying a claim.

I don’t remember how I got outside. Maybe I never left the ring. Maybe I’m still there, still burning and drowning in the aftermath of his violence.

Because he’s touching me again.

Dragging me,

Fingers like shackles wrapped around my wrist, and each step pounding into concrete like the beat of music fading into the back. I stumble after him. The cold bites my skin, but I barely feel it.

“Massimo-“ My voice is threadbare. “Where are you taking me?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t look back.

And I realise he’s not here. Not fully.

His shoulders are heaving with a rage that hasn’t cooled, teeth still clenched like he’s tasting blood. His jaw ticks, and his fist is bleeding. The silence between us is dangerous.

Not the kind that passes with time. The kind that will ruin me.

I try to wrench away. “You’re scaring me.”

He halts so suddenly, I slam into him, breath catching in my throat as his head slowly turns and his eyes bore into me like eclipses swallowing the moonlight.

“I scare you, bambina?” he murmurs. “You don’t look scared.”

A strangled breath claws up my throat. “I don’t want this,” I whisper even as my legs betray me. Even as the heat in my stomach pulses like a bruise wanting to be touched. “You kidnapped me from my home, forced me to come here with you, made me watch you almost kill someone… tell me, Massimo, why don’t I look scared to you?”

He jerks me forward again, and this time I don’t fight. What would be the point anyway? He’d do what he wants, and it wouldn’t matter what I want. It never has.

Girls like me don’t have choices. People like Massimo make them for us.

He slams me against something hard and metallic. I gasp. And the air in my lungs doesn’t know whether to shatter or ignite. Because before I can protest again, his hand fists in my hoodie, jerks the fabric up, exposing my waist to the biting night and his palm.

He drags his knuckles across my skin, filthy and blood-stained, smearing chaos into my softness. It’s madness, his body caging mine against the hood like I’m a secret he wants to carve into steel.

His knee presses between my thighs, nudging them apart.

“Kidnap? That’s some fancy word, bambina.” He growls as his mouth travels down my cheek. “I wasn’t planning to initially, but guess what?”

His hand squeezes the flesh. And I feel the pressure inside me. It’s scorching hot, glacial cold and unexplainable. If someone told me years ago that I would be cornered by Massimo Bianchi, Italy’s heartthrob, I would’ve laughed. Or maybe I would’ve spent the entire week fantasising about him like I did in earlier days.

But the reality is not what I used to see in my dreams. It’s worse. And intense.

Massimo from my fantasies is completely different from the man devouring me as if I’m his last meal. Last sin before he’d be cursed to hell for eternity. It’s bizarre, yet it’s everything I am scared of.

This Massimo tastes like battle. Like hunger. Like every bad decision I've never had the courage to make.

I’ve never been touched by a man this way.

My idea of intimacy is soft and slow, not the violence that comes with his caresses.

“Massimo, please…” I beg for what I don’t know. I want him away. Far away, but I know I’d still feel the heat. Still think about him. Still surrender to him.

I’ve always known madness isn’t a scream. I’ve seen the madness in many eyes, including my brother's. But his is quieter. He unleashes it upon those he sees as unworthy.

But this… this is nothing compared to what I’ve encountered.

It’s like the beat of my own heart. Hitching of my own breath and anxiously devouring.

As if oxygen fears him. It’s the chaos behind his eyes, the storm that has no name. And can’t be named. It’s inevitable that way.

And right now, that storm is dragging me in its whirls.

Sinfully cruel lips descend down my throat, leaving open-mouth kisses and marks of his claim. Impatient hands grope my flesh under their calloused touches. I whimper ,feeling everything and nothing all at once.

“Stop…”

“Stop?” The brute grumbles against my throat, and the vibrations sent shivers down my spine. He’s bold when he touches me, like he doesn’t care if someone sees us. Or maybe that’s his plan. “You think that little word works on men like me?” I know it doesn’t. My head tilts as he licks the nerves behind my ear. “So what if you don’t want it?”

I freeze.

“You’ve been crushing over me like a slut in church since the first time you see me. And when I give you what you want, you cry innocence?” His breath dances down my neck.

I’m aware of his hand on my waist, and the other that fists my hoodie and with one tug, he has it pulled over my head, ripping it slightly in the process. I try to twist away, arms flailing to stop him, to cover myself, but he’s fast. Pinning both my wrists behind me, he throws the fabric somewhere.

I’m startled as I stare anxiously at him. Not liking how big and tall he looks, heightening my pain,c I know I can’t suppress if he touches me one more time.

“Stop, Massimo, what are you… Ah!”

“You don’t want this, bambina?” I suck in a breath as he presses his mouth to the hollow of my throat, my back arches, and my breasts push against his chest. There’s nothing but my bra separating us. It doesn’t justify the fact that he’s not wearing a shirt. “Then why’re you moaning every time I breathe on your skin, hmm?”

I shove his chest, but he’s stone and it’s pointless. A wall made of menace, insanity and fire. The one Sienna warns me about.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Already did,” He whispers, licking the edges of my jaw while his impatient hand moves lower and lower till I feel the tremble in my knees. “Already tasted you. Already dreamed about you every night with my cock in my hand and your name on my tongue. So what if you don’t want it now?”

His hand slides inside my jeans, and his palm spreads across my lower stomach. “Already planned what I want to do with you.”

My legs tremble. Shame and heat coil in one strand.

And I pant, seeing stars and the universe blinking in front of my vision, my eyes shut, and I take in a shaky breath as his hand moves lower till it reaches the hem of my panties.

I am ashamed, embarrassed, confused and paranoid that anyone will witness this. From a third person’s point of view, I can imagine how lustful it will look.

I, cornered against the hood of his car, while I doubt anyone will see me since my small frame is completely engulfed in his muscular one. He’s taller, broader and a sinner. Who won’t stop, Who doesn’t know how to stop. The one who has his hand in my underwear.

The dilemma of it all startles me, and I throw a remark his way. “You’re disgusting.”

But the devil knows no shame. Instead of being angry or taking it to his male ego, he presses his thumb over my clothed core, and I gasp. “And you’re wet, bambina.”

He grins like the devil who just caught an angel in a lie. “Say you didn’t imagine this. Say you didn’t dream about me bending you over and making you cry. Be honest, bambina.”

My mouth opens as I stare at him nonchalantly. What is wrong with him? He can’t be serious. Yes, I do dream of him, but my dreams were as pure as white. I wanted a relationship with him, something sweet and heartfelt. Not the kind that’d leave me broken and ruined.

Feeling pressure, pleasure and pain altogether, I feel water accumulating in the corners of my eyes. I feel pathetic. For giving people the upper hand. For being a people pleaser when I know no one cares about me. If they did, I wouldn’t be in this situation.

I feel a hand cradling my cheek, and when I look up, I see him looking down at me, confused as if he can’t understand why I’m crying. As if a murderer is trying to understand why he killed the person.

“Don’t cry now, sweetheart.” He kisses my cheek, cruelly soft. “You liked it better when I was beating the shit out of Rox, didn’t you?”

My head snaps at his direction, and I stare wide-eyed at him. He can’t understand emotions, can he? He doesn’t know why I’m acting this way. He doesn’t realise he’s the reason for my stressful days and sleepless nights? The well of emotions inside me overflows, and I lick my dry lips, hoping to soothe the cold bite of night air.

“Massimo.”

He tilts his head, still staring at me with those stormy eyes swirling with amusement, confusion and something unsaid. His hand is still on my cheek, and the other still inside my panties. “Yes, amore?”

How do I tell him that he’s making my heart race for entirely different reasons, reasons that I’m ashamed to acknowledge?

His thumb strokes slow circles over the lace of my panties, and I feel it like lightning dancing across the sky. Beautiful in a way it burns. I hate that my hips jerk in response. Hate that he sees it, that a part of me, the untouched and forbidden part, is purring.

What is this feeling? Not desire or hate. But it’s somewhere between them. Something unholy. Something that wears a silk dress and twirls in the moonlight.

I don’t understand him, no matter how much I want to. What does he want from me?

“Fuck, you’re making it impossibly hard for me to not ruin every sweet idea you had about other men. I want to make sure the next time someone touches you, you cry because it’s not me.”

It’s maddening how I shiver as he slowly pulls my panties aside, and the moment his fingers touch the untouched part of me, I forget to breathe.

“Ah…”

He chuckles. “You gonna tell me to stop again, bambina?”

I want to scream yes. Want to scream no. want to scream something that will pull me out of this haze. But I can’t. Because he’s not just under my skin, he’s in it. Etched like a scar.

And somewhere in that chaos… I still want to understand why.

Why does his cruelty feel like worship? Why his touch makes my soul stutter and ache.

Why the part of me that should be screaming… is quiet.

Is listening.

Is anticipating.

Wanting.

“That's the best you got?” He growls against my ear as his fingers run along the slit, teasing and feeling the slick wetness I don’t know how it get. “Come on, baby. Fight me harder. Make me work for it.”

His teeth scrape my jaw, and I flinch. The goddamn shame, my own body’s betraying me, and my thighs tremble as he wedges himself between them, one hand forcing them wider, knuckles bruising against skin that should be sacred.

“You said you hated me,” I whisper through clenched teeth, barely able to meet his gaze. ”Then why’re you doing this?”

I feel the heat of his fingers press into my womanhood as he curse under his breath all while flickering my throbbing clit. Shit. Fuck. This is blasphemous. I’m not supposed to be doing this.

“Hate’s never stopped me from fantasising about you, bambina.”

His one finger slips into me, and my back arches as I’m forced to take in the intrusion. A moan escapes before I can strangle it, betraying the chaos inside me. His finger stays there for a moment before he starts penetrating.

“I hate you.” I breathe out, half-panting, half-gasping for air.

He nips the edge of my lower lip, dragging it between his teeth before releasing it with a groan. “So what?” Deep velvety voice caresses my ears. “Hate’s me while I make you come on my fingers, baby.”

My heart slams against my ribs, thunder in a ribcage made of glass. His finger continue the assault as I feel the pressure bubbling inside me and his thumb still thumbing my clit. There’s nothing gentle in the way he touches me.

But worse than that?

It feels too good.

“Tell me to stop,” He says, eyeing boring into mine, daring me. “Scream, cry, scratch, fight… do something, baby.”

I should. God, I should. But I can’t. I can’t see past the pleasure his fingers are giving me. It’s my first time, but it won’t take a genius to realise I will be having my first orgasm of my life at the hands of my bully.

But my voice is lost somewhere.

I hate that I’m breathing like this. Hate that my hips twitch under his touch, and I’m all bare in front of him.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

This isn’t me.

This was never how I imagined it, my first time touching the edge of something so devastatingly sweet and so wrong. Not in the arms of someone who’s tormented me for years. Not against the hood of his goddamn car with his hand controlling me and his mouth on my neck.

But it’s happening.

And I can’t stop it.

“Stop…” I whisper. But it’s weak.

My body is on fire. But it’s not the flames that scare me, it’s the pleasure. It’s the horrifying realisation I want more.

I feel it building, this strange and unbearable thing.

What... what’s happening to me?

My cheeks burn. My chest rises. I bite my lip so hard I taste blood.

My conscience screams that this is wrong. That he doesn’t deserve to be the first person to ever do this to me. That he’s cruel and brutal, and has hurt me more than anyone.

But my body doesn’t care.

It climbs higher and higher, trembling and wild, desperate for a fall. I can’t stop.

“You are clenching around my fingers, bambina.” He rasps, slowing his fingers just to drag them on my slit before penetrating again. “Then say the word, baby. Beg me to make you come.”

I shake my head, and his motions slow. I let out a frustrated breath as I snapped my teary eyes at him. He can’t be serious. He’s grinning, looking at me with those grey-blue eyes that promise death and destruction.

I open my mouth. I try to speak, but my pride won’t let me.

I’m trembling, needy, and the itch is worsening. It needs to be scratched. He knows it.

“Pl… please,” I whisper averting my eyes and his grin widens as he without wait plunge into me ferociously.

I try to stop him. Tell him he’s being rough, but I don’t say anything.

Because I don’t want him to stop.

Because I want to know how it ends.

Because I need to feel it, even if it ruins me.

Fingers press harder, circling faster. A gasp breaks from my lips. My head snaps back against the metal, eyes fluttering shut as something inside me explodes like stars shattering across a black sky.

It hits me like a hot, dizzying and devastating wave.

My first orgasm.

And it’s at the hands of my bully.

I moan and he groans with satisfaction like he’s proud of what he’s done. Of what he’s reduced me to.