“More pressure?” I ask. “Less?”
“More,” she says, her voice frayed.
I give it until the tremor settles. “Good,” I say. “You let it go.”
“The things I keep,” she says, and then stops like she surprised herself.
“All of it matters,” I say. “None of it owns you.”
“It feels like it does,” she answers.
“Here it doesn’t,” I say. “Here it belongs to me until you take it back.”
She swallows. “Okay,” she says. The syllables are wet. Not crying. Just body.
I work lower, broad strokes over latissimus and obliques, thumbs braced so I can pin what wants to climb under my hand and splinter. I stop at the waistband again and ask, “Under?”
“Yes,” she says, immediate, and then because we practice: “Yes, under.”
I slide fingers under elastic and oil the skin there, not sexual yet, and precisely because not yet is a power I will not squander in this room. She shivers so hard the cuffs clack softly against one thigh. I flatten my hand and press until the tremor bleeds.
“Color?” I ask.
“What?” she says, confused.
“Are you here?” I say. “Tell me where.”
She exhales and I feel it under my hand. “Here,” she says. “Mat. Leather. Your hands. Blindfold. Warm. I… want—” The word breaks in the middle. “I want,” she repeats, and the pride in me wants to bow to that.
“Say it,” I encourage, low.
Her mouth opens. Closes. “Everything,” she says, ridiculous and true.
“Soon,” I tell her. “But not yet.”
I step away and her body sways toward the absence like it would follow if I asked. I make her wait through three of her own breaths. I open another drawer and take out the lighter suede straps that anchor to the floor D-rings. I bring them into her hearing, let the small metal eyes kiss the mat so the sound is cataloged: this, now, with him.
“Ankles,” I say. “Spread to shoulder width.”
She obeys. The stance is utilitarian and obscene in the ways that matter here: it is an instruction to the body that the ground is an ally and not a precipice. I loop the straps over each ankle, snug but not constricting. I clip them to the D-rings. I test the give: a hand span, two. She shifts her weight and feels the tether. The sound she makes is a soft exhale that could be a laugh in any other room. Here it is surrender.
“Hands,” I say. She lifts them. I run the connector of her wrist cuffs through the anchor mounted at sternum height on the leather column beside the mirror and let it bear some of the weight of her arms. Not above her head—this is not punishment. In front, bent slightly, where the muscles of her shoulder girdle can let go without triggering the ache of restraint.
“Too much?” I ask.
“No,” she says. Then, because we’ve practiced, “No, Cassian.”
The name lands in me like a warm brick. I inhale it and let it anchor, then exhale and put my focus where it belongs: on the map under my hands and the route her body wants to take to the place where it remembers being safe without supervision.
“Blindfold okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. Breathier now. “It’s—quiet.”
“Good,” I say. I drag a fingertip along the edge of the blindfold where it meets her cheekbone. “If you want light at any time, say it. Blue and it’s off.”
“I know,” she says, and the small pride in her voice makes me want to kiss her mouth and her throat and the thin skin at the inside of her elbow. I do none of those things. Not yet. I step to the cabinet again and take out the Oximeter. I clip it to her index finger without naming it. She feels the foreign object and tenses. I anchor her with my hand on her sternum and say, “Breathe.” The line on the display tracks it: ninety-two, ninety-eight. The number is more for me than for her. It lets my medic’s brain sit down in the corner and stop whispering.
I pick up the feather again. I do not tell her where. I want her to learn that not knowing is not the same as threat. I start at her calves, both hands on her shins first—warm, broad—then the light drag of down up the inside of her leg in a path that makes sense to the body before it makes sense to the brain. She jerks once and then laughs, startled. “That’s—” she says.
