“You can turn around,” I said.
Tobias did, eyes lifting to my face. Not the shirt that clung to my waist from the humidity, or the sweatpants that sat low on my hips and exposed a hint of my hipbones, but my face.
He held his gaze there with a focus so controlled it almost became worse than if he had been obvious, because I was starting to become aware of the true depth of his restraint.
His stare was not clinical.
Not anymore.
I knew what clinical looked like on Tobias. I had seen it when he examined my ankle, when he reviewed water test results, and when he scanned Ben’s notes for omissions. This was different. This was attention locked behind glass, every part of him forced still because stillness was the only thing keeping him from becoming whatever he wanted to be.
My stomach tightened annoyingly.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I mumbled.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying really hard not to look at me.”
A faint line appeared between his brows. “But I am trying hard.”
I stared at him, and he stared back.
My face warmed, which was infuriating, because the correct emotional response here was not embarrassment. The correct emotional response was outrage, disgust, fear, maybe a little nausea if my nervous system wanted variety.
Not heat.
Not awareness.
But then he held up the cuff meant for my wrist, the fragile civility vanished, and my mood soured immediately, dumping a bucket of cold water onto said heat.
“Do we have to?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You know, most people would consider the whole shower-door thing enough indignity for one morning.”
His mouth tightened. “This is not meant as indignity.”
“No, it’s meant as control,” I hissed out.
I held out my wrist with as much contempt as I could fit into the gesture.
Tobias stepped closer and fastened the cuff around my wrist so carefully, so gently, it made me want to scream.
His fingers were warm as the cuff clicked shut.
Tobias’s thumb lingered for a fraction of a second, brushing lightly over the pulse point before he swallowed and withdrew his hand.
Our aquarium time came after that.
It always did now, after breakfast and the bathroom and whatever new humiliation the morning had cooked up for me. The routine was grotesque in how quickly it had become a routine at all. Tobias opened the room. Tobias brought food. Tobias cuffed me. Tobias assisted me to the bathroom. Tobias let me see the tanks. Tobias returned me to the concrete room.
I should not have looked forward to any part of it, and yet I did.
Not the cuff. Not him. Not the way the chain forced our bodies into an orbit I had never agreed to.
The fish.
