The cabin was rudimentary and had a slightly dilapidated look about it. The logs it was built out of were stained dark, and as a result, it seemed to blend into its surroundings. It was built in a clearing, but there were established pine trees of every description growing around it. It had a front porch, similar to the cottages we had back at the homestead, but this one was wider and deeper. There was a rustic wooden bench out front, and a few thick logs arranged in a semicircle around an open fire pit.
“I knew it,” Jules said, leaping out of the vehicle and punching the air. “I knew you could do it.”
“That makes one of us,” I muttered.
I got our things off the back of the truck while Jules set about finding a key to the cabin.
“Look behind the gutter,” I said. Sure enough, he found the key tucked away there.
“You’re on fire, big boy,” he said, laughing.
The cabin door needed a little convincing, but Jules got it open with a firm shoulder shove. It was musty inside but nowhere near as bad as I was expecting it to be. In fact, it was cozy. If the place had been listed on Airbnb, it would have been described as “a quintessential woodland escape” or something like that. I opened all the windows and had a look around. It was just as I remembered it. A big studio-type room, with a bed and a small bathroom at the back of the building. There was a tattered sofa at the foot of the bed, plus a couple of armchairs to the left of it and an intricate rug on the floor in the center of the room. A tiny table and two chairs were near the front door. The kitchen was small, with rickety timber cabinets and a sink in front of the window that looked out on the porch. It had a vaulted ceiling with exposed beams.
“Geez,” said Jules, standing in the center of the rug and pointing up, “check it out.”
I was as surprised as he was when I looked up and saw a pair of sturdy-looking wrist cuffs fixed to the beam overhead.
Jules tapped them lightly. They clanked together. “Holy shit, look, there’s a key here and everything.” He started to laugh. “Whose place did you say this was?”
“I’m not sure exactly. It’s been in my mom’s family for years. I think she and a bunch of her cousins share it or something.”
“Ooooh,kinky,” crowed Jules.
“Oh, shut up.”
Jules was in no mood to shut up. Quite the opposite, in fact. “Didn’t you say that your parents come up here every so often?” It was true. At least once a year, my parents came up here and stayed for a week or so. I’d always loved it because when they did, I got to stay over at Jules’s. They’d done it since I was a child. The only reason they brought me along that one time was that Jules came down with stomach flu the morning they were due to leave.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I really didn’t. It was weird as fuck that there were cuffs in the cabin. There was no getting away from that.
Jules juddered like a hyena. “Who do you think ties up who?”
I looked at him in horror. “You’re talking about my par. . .”
He grinned and nodded as if he was in total agreement. “You think your dad’s the one who gets tied up, too, huh?”
If anyone else had said it, the rage monster inside me would certainly have raised its head. Because it was Jules, I just looked at him and shook my head in disgust. “I don’t even know what to say to you right now. I really don’t.”
Jules’s eyes were dancing.
I could see he was fixing to say a lot more. “Now, you listen, and you listen well, Julius Blaine.”
He stretched his eyes wide and nodded his head up and down rapidly in a way that couldn’t have been more mocking if that was his life’s purpose.
“If you say one more word about the cuffs andanymember of my immediate or extended family, I’m going to whup your ass and I’m going to suspend you in those cuffs—by your ankles—and then I’m going to make you watch while I sit on the sofa and eat every single one of the Mars Bars your mom sent. Got it?”
“Oh,yes, Mr. Big Boy. I’ve got it,Sir,” he said, clicking his heels together and saluting me vigorously.
I rolled my eyes again and sighed deeply.
“Just one thing, if you please, Mr. Sir Big Boy . . .” He tilted his chin down and looked up at me through his eyelashes. His eyes were lit up in pure mischief. “How d’you propose getting me up there, huh?”
Before I could reply, he gave me a stinging slap on the ass. My mouth opened in surprise, but before the squeak I was attempting to stifle made its way out of my mouth, he slapped my other cheek too.
“What the fuck, Jules?” I complained, taking a step or two forward.
“What? I’m just evening you out,” he said as if it was obvious.
I tried my best not to think about how much I wanted to pin him down on the floor. I tried to ignore the fact that I wanted to use my whole body to do it. I wanted to press my hips down against his. I wanted to use my chest and my arms and my hands against him. I wanted to feel him squirm beneath me. I wanted to do it skin against skin.
