His Virgin Stripper

26- Feral Relief

Sienna

My fingers slowly uncurled from my hair, though my chest kept heaving as I stared at him.

The panic hadn't vanished; it had just shifted shape, morphing from a blind, paralyzing terror into a fragile, desperate need for absolute certainty. I needed him to say the words.

I needed to hear the validation out loud before my mind completely snapped from the strain.

I swallowed the dry taste of copper in my mouth, forcing my voice through a throat that felt like sandpaper.

"Can I ask you something?" I whispered, my voice cracking on the final syllable. I didn't wait for him to shrug or give permission. I just pressed forward, the words tumbling out before I could lose my nerve. "What's your name?"

As the question left my lips, I pulled my hands down to my chest, literally holding my heart in my hands. I pressed my palms flat against my ribs, trying to keep the frantic, irregular thumping from tearing through my skin.

I closed my eyes for a split second, praying to whatever God there is left in this dark, violent world to just give me a lifeline.

Please let it be him. Please let this be the end of the nightmare. Just let me be safe.

The silence in the room stretched out, agonizingly long. I opened my eyes, watching him.

He leaned his head back against the cushion of the chair, his dark eyes tracking the desperate movement of my hands on my chest.

The smirk still played at the corner of his lips, but the mocking edge softened into something human, almost weary. He let out a slow, heavy breath through his nose.

He finally answered.

"Yeah," he said, his voice dropping the theatrical, menacing pitch he’d been using to torture me.

"It's Enzo."

The second the name hit the air, something in my brain snapped. I lost it.

All that tightly coiled terror, every second of suffocating anxiety I’d been choking on for the past thirty minutes, surged up my throat.

Relief didn’t make me cry. It made me feral.

I emptied my thoughts entirely, shouting at him with everything I had left in my lungs.

"Are you out of your mind?!" I screamed, flinging my arms out as I surged forward on the soft mattress, totally unbothered by the pain behind my eyes now.

"You sat there! You sat right there in that damn chair and watched me struggle for air! You looked me dead in the eye and told me you were my kidnapper! Do you have any idea what you just did to me?!"

Enzo didn't flinch. He just tilted his head, watching the explosion with a mixture of amusement and curiosity.

"I was about to drown in fear!" I yelled, my voice cracking, tears of frustration finally spilling over my eyelashes.

"I thought I was dead! I thought Roxy was dead! I thought the men in the car had sold us out to the monsters who attacked us, and you just sat there laughing your ass off like this is a f*****g joke! For no reason! You made me scared to the point of death for no damn reason!"

"Sienna, take a breath," Enzo said, raising a hand, his palm flat in a gesture to slow down.

His tone was calm, too calm, which only added fuel to the fire burning in my chest. "Calm down before you pass out again. You're safe."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" I shrieked, my hands shaking so hard I had to ball them into fists against the silk sheets.

"You don't get to play psychological games with my life and then tell me to take a breath! You are a psychopath! Marcello sent me to a lunatic! I have been shot at, hunted, dragged through a forest, and I wake up to a strange man playing the role of a movie villain for his own sick entertainment!"

I went on for some time, the words pouring out of me in a chaotic, unstructured torrent of pure rage. I didn't care about grammar, I didn't care about looking composed, and I didn't care about his status in Marcello’s world.

I emptied every single dark, terrified thought that had accumulated since the first bullet shattered my window. I scolded him, I cursed his lineage, and I made sure he knew exactly how loathsome his sense of humor was.

Throughout the entire tirade, Enzo tried to calm me down. He didn't get angry, and he didn't raise his voice to match my pitch. Every few seconds, he would drop in a quiet, grounded sentence, trying to anchor me back to reality.

"Sienna, look around you. You're in a house, not a cell. Nobody will hurt you here."

"Relax or you'll give yourself a stroke."

His calm, steady responses were infuriating, but slowly, the physical exhaustion of my outburst began to take its toll.

The adrenaline started to recede, leaving my muscles weak and my lungs aching for oxygen. My shouting tapered off into sharp, ragged pants, my chest rising and falling as I glared at him through blurred vision.

When I finally calmed down enough to stop yelling, the room fell into a heavy quiet. I leaned back against the pillows, my head throbbing in time with my pulse.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to clear the lingering burn from my throat and steady the residual trembling in my limbs.

Enzo watched me for a long moment, ensuring the storm had truly passed. When he was certain I wasn't going to launch another verbal assault, he leaned back in his chair, a small, genuine smile tugging at his lips.

He shook his head, looking at me with a strange, appreciative glint in his eye.

He muttered something under his breath, his voice low as if he were speaking to himself. I only caught the end of it, something about Marcello having a keen eye for rear treasures.

My eyes snapped back to him, the fury instantly flaring right back up. "What the f**k did you just say?"

I gripped the edge of the mattress, my knuckles turning white. I was ready to unleash a whole new wave of profanity on him, ready to tear into him for comparing me to some prize or object Marcello had collected, when a sharp, heavy sound cut through the tension.

The heavy bedroom door slammed open.

The wood hit the adjacent wall with a loud, echoing crack that made me jump, my eyes darting instantly to the threshold.

I braced myself for another threat, another stranger, but the moment my eyes landed on the figure standing in the doorway, a familiar calm washed over me from head to toe. The tightness in my chest vanished instantly.

Rox stood at the door.

She leaned against the frame, completely unharmed, without a single scratch on her skin.

She was looking at me with that classic, irreverent expression she always wore when I was overreacting to something back at home. A wide, knowing smile broke across her face.

She crossed her arms over her chest, tilted her head, and looked directly into my wide, tear-stained eyes.

"Are you not passed your banshee stage of grief?" Roxy asked, her voice dripping with dry, familiar sarcasm.

I let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh, the remaining fragments of my terror completely melting away into the soft mattress.