I reach for the battered Monte Cristo on the nightstand.I read until the last of the steam leaves the mirrors and her breathing evens under my palm.When her lashes flutter, I kiss her forehead.
I watch the ceiling for a while, listening to the house settle and the city breathe.When she shifts, I pull the blanket higher and tuck my hand back under the hem of my shirt on her stomach, palm warm to warm.
Tonight only care.Tomorrow I’ll make it harder.
“Tape lies,” I tell her, the next morning after we’ve had our coffee.I wind silver around her wrists.“It begs you to pull it apart.Don’t.You go up.Elbows high, then hammer down hard to your low back.Find the weak point.”She misses the first time and winces.I steady her with a palm between her shoulders.“Breathe.”The next strike pops the seam.Her laugh cracks the room and buys us a few clean minutes where London and ghosts don't exist.I wish we could live there forever.
The next day, zip ties.I give her choices.“There are a couple of ways,” I say, laying them out.“Fast break like what you did with the tape.Or, friction cut if you have something you can use, like a shoelace.”She picks the lace.I loop it through the tie, knots at her hands.She bicycles her feet, teeth gritted, heat building until the plastic smokes and parts.She pants, triumphant.
“Again,” I say, and take away the shoelace.
Some days I blindfold her.Sometimes I don’t.I make the room loud with the bag thudding, punching over and over as she tries to escape.Then, I make it so silent she can hear my watch tick.I move around her in the dark and let my boots creak on purpose so she learns to track with ears, not only eyes.
“Where am I?”I ask.She points.Wrong.“Again.”Then right.I touch her jaw with a knuckle.“Good girl.”
The next day when her hands shake too hard to pick a bobby pin up off the mat, I kneel and set it in her palm.“Breathe,” I tell her.“Do you need a break?”
“How do you know all this?”she asks, choosing to keep fighting the knot instead of surrendering.
“I’ve paid in blood and scars to learn every way out.”I don’t let the words sound like a threat.Not to her.“Leven taught me a lot growing up, like I’m teaching you.But, I’m not Superman, darling, I’ve been caught off guard once or twice.”I wink, then drop to the mat and kiss her swollen lips.“I also know every way to keep men in,” I whisper against her mouth.“I’ll teach you that too.”
“You’d let me tie you up?”She rocks back on her ass.I guess itisbreak time.
“Say the word, darling.Not only will I let you, I’ll enjoy it.”
“Now?”This clearly isn’t about training anymore.
“You want to be in control for a while?”Sign me up.I’ll take her “drill” over my own any day.I can’t say that because then all actual training goes out the window.She knows she’s distracting me from her training.I know I’m letting her.If she wants to play trainer for a while, I’m more than happy to let her.
Nothing’s changed.The anger lives under my tongue, but she’s trying and desperate to please.So, for a few minutes I’ll take the truce she’s offering.She can knot my wrists and call it a drill.I’ll let her own me and call it control.We both get to breathe.
“Yes.”
“I can allow that, darling.”I drop the key for the handcuffs she’s wearing into her palm and sit back, picturing my wrists behind a chair.
She chooses paracord.Of course she does.She double-wraps my wrists, cinching snug, but with more slack than I’ve given her in a while.I don’t fight it.I give her the weight of my trust and let it show on my face.
Her gaze flicks to the table of trinkets.She plucks one of my knives.Her thumb checks the spine.She brings the flat to my chest, trails it up my sternum, over my throat.My pulse knocks against steel.She smiles when I don’t flinch.
“You’re not afraid of me.”
“I’d rather die at your hand than anyone else’s,” I say, and her smile disappears.Color climbs her cheeks.She drags the spine across my collarbone, maps a line down my ribs, then memory lights her eyes.She lowers the blade and sets it across my thigh the way I set it on hers in the bathroom atMirage.Flat, cool metal laid high and deliberate, point angled right at my cock, exactly in my eyeline.
“Hold still,” she whispers.
“Yes, darling.”
She breathes me in from that new nearness, her mouth a ghost over mine, and then she sinks to her knees.The knife stays where she placed it, a bright line of trust across my leg.I can’t thrust without shifting steel.That’s the point.Restraint.Her rules.
Her fingers wrap me; her mouth takes me and my head tips back against the chair.I flex my bound hands once against the chair and let her set the pace.Praise breaks out of me in a gravel I don’t recognize.“That’s it, Lindy girl.Use me.Take what you want.”
She glances up through her lashes, triumphant.Outside, fireworks mark the new year.Inside, the blade gleams on my thigh, anchoring me.I don’t move.Ican’tmove.I let her take everything.The basement lets me forget my rage for a while.When she makes rules I can obey, when she follows my rules, the world makes sense again.
The following morning, I don’t tie her.I teach her to hide knives in everyday things: the underlayer of a purse, the seam of a hoodie, the underwire of a bra.I show her where to stab if she only gets one shot.Under the chin and up, the soft notch above the collarbone and down, the inside of the thigh and pull.I say the anatomy out loud so it lives somewhere she can grab it when the world tilts.
Not everything is edge.Some of it is patience.I make her sit with her back to the wall and watch the door for seven minutes.“What did you see?”I ask.She lists small things.The way the dust spins when air moves, the overhead hum that dips every time the heater kicks on.She’s incredible.
I push further because I have to.I tie her wrists with a zip tie, loop a scarf between her teeth.“How long?”she mumbles around it.
