Page 63

I walk out to the horse barn and take a new goat-hair face brush off the top shelf in the tack room, still in its plastic sleeve.

Back inside, I wash my hands at the kitchen sink and pick up the bag.

She's left the bedroom lamp off. Moonlight from the window shows me the shape of her standing on the folded quilt, in the Kerrville shirt and nothing else.

I switch the lamp on. I want to see her face when I take her at her word.

The shirttail just covers the tops of her thighs. Her nipples show dark and stiff through the thin cotton, and her bare toes are curled into the quilt.

I set the bag and the brush on the bed. I take out the cuffs and hold them up in the lamplight. I cleaned them with leather soap after the last time I used them, the way I always do.

"These were in your hand last night," I say. "You can have new ones. I'll drive to San Antonio tomorrow."

"Use those." Her voice doesn't shake. "They're cuffs. I decide what they mean now."

"Then these."

I sit down on the end of the bed, fully dressed, with my boots planted on either side of the folded quilt. I take her paper out of my shirt pocket and unfold it on my knee.

"Kneel."

She folds down onto the quilt between my boots. The floorboards creak under her. Her knees spread a little for balance, and her hands rest on her thighs. Her face tips up to mine.

For a second her eyes drop to the floorboards. I'd bet she's hearing some masked man order them down in that cellar. Then she drags her eyes back up to me herself.

"What did you write about kneeling?" I ask. "Say it to me."

Her throat moves. "Kneeling. Yes. For you. Eyes up."

"Again."

"Kneeling. Yes. For you." She lifts her face to mine. "Eyes up."

Her lips are parted, and her breath comes fast and shallow. She's on her knees on my floor because she wrote it down in her own hand and signed her name under it.

"Here's what you get tonight," I say. I lift the paper and read her own words back to her.

"'No zip ties.'" I set the paper on my knee and lay the first cuff across it. "Leather. Lined. Buckled where you can watch me do it."

I thumb her shirt buttons open from the bottom up, fast, and spread the front edges apart. Her breasts are small and high, the nipples drawn so tight they look sore. I don't touch them.

I unbutton her shirt cuffs and look up from the paper. "'Nobody touches the scars on my wrists.' The leather goes above them. To get it there, your sleeves come up, and I'll see them. Up or down. Your call."

She looks at my hands for a long time. "Up."

I push her sleeves up her forearms slowly, until the scars show, pink and shiny in a band around each wrist. She watches my face while I look at them. I don't look away, and I don't stare. I don't touch them.

I wrap the first cuff high on her left forearm, just below the elbow, where the muscle is thickest. The leather is warm from my palm. I cinch the strap snug and push the tongue of the buckle through the hole while she watches. Then I tug the cuff toward her hand, hard. It doesn't budge off the thick part of her arm, and it's nowhere near the scars. I do the right arm the same way.

I snap the steel clip from the bag through both rings. The click is loud in the quiet room, and her breath stops on it.

I hook two fingers through the joined rings and draw her hands forward until her bound forearms rest across my denim-covered thigh. It tips her toward me on her knees. Now her hands are on my leg where I put them, and everything else about her is open to me.

"'No masks.'" I look at her. "You'll see my face the whole time."

"'No riding crops.'" I strip the plastic sleeve off the brush and hold it where she can see it. "This is what touches you instead."

"That's Sadie's brush."