The bed was large. King-sized, because I'd always preferred space to sprawl, though I'd never imagined filling it with anything but restless sleep and too many pillows. The sheets were dark grey—expensive, soft, the kind of fabric that would feel good against bare skin.
Against her bare skin.
I positioned her on her back against the pillows. Took my time arranging her—head cradled by the stack at the headboard, arms at her sides, legs extended. She let me move her like something pliant, something that had surrendered the right to arrange itself.
The collar was stark against the pale pillows. Black leather, silver ring, the hollow of her throat visible above it.
I stepped back.
Looked.
She was laid out before me like an offering. Naked and flushed, chest rising and falling with quick breaths, nipples peaked and begging for attention. The pink between her thighs glistened in the low light—still wet from what I'd done to her earlier, or wet again from what was happening now. Both, probably.
The sight of her made my hands shake.
Not from nerves. From want. The particular kind of wanting that lived in your bones, that made rational thought feel like swimming through honey. I wanted to fall on her. Wanted to bury myself inside her and claim every inch of her body with my mouth and hands and cock.
Instead, I crossed to the nightstand.
The rope was where I'd placed it that morning, coiled neatly in the top drawer. Soft cotton, the color of cream—the same rope I'd shown her in the store, the one I'd explained would be gentleon sensitive skin. Nothing that would mark. Nothing that would hurt.
Just enough to hold.
I lifted it from the drawer and turned back to her.
Her eyes tracked the rope with something that looked like hunger.
"Arms above your head, little bird."
She obeyed immediately. No hesitation, no resistance—just her arms lifting, extending, her wrists crossing above her head against the pillows. The position arched her back slightly, made her breasts lift, made the collar sit differently against her throat.
God. I was going to die before this night was over.
I climbed onto the bed, knelt beside her. Took her wrists in one hand—so small, so delicate, the bones bird-fragile beneath my fingers. With the other hand, I began to work the rope.
The knots came from muscle memory. I'd practiced this—alone, in the dark, teaching myself techniques I'd only ever read about. The kind of preparation you do when you've been waiting five months to touch someone and you want to be ready when the moment finally arrives.
I wound the cotton around her wrists. Once, twice, three times—snug but not tight. The rope was soft against her skin, leaving no marks, just the faint impression of texture.
"Too tight?" I asked.
"No." Her voice was breathy. Wrecked. "It's perfect."
I tested the slack. She could slip free if she panicked—I'd designed it that way, built in the escape route because her safety mattered more than my desire to hold her captive. But to escape, she'd have to want to.
From the look in her eyes, she didn't want to.
I looped the remaining rope through the slats of the headboard. Tied it off with a knot that would hold but not pull. When I was done, her arms were stretched above her head,wrists bound together, the rope creating a line of tension from her hands to the bed frame.
She tugged experimentally.
The restraints held.
Something flickered across her face—relief, maybe, or that particular pleasure of testing boundaries and finding them solid. She pulled again, harder this time, and the rope creaked but didn't give.
Held.
I stepped back.
