It was a random boast. Too many gin and tonics, too aware of how my ass looked in a new pair of dark jeans. Far too aware of how he’d been watching me across the loud space of a bar table all night, long fingers reaching up to push a few strands of dark hair away from his blue eyes. Not a close friend, but still a friend. And for long enough you’d think I’d have noticed him that way before. But sometimes that’s how it happens, a flip switches, and the guy at the edge slips into the center. He is suddenly all you can see.
This flip was the conversation that turned from usual drunken rants to sex. Specifically to bondage sex. After a few minutes of the boys around the table laughing and the girls not really saying much, I pushed the lime into my gin and tonic with the end of my stir stick. “I don’t know what the big deal is.” I imagined being stuck somewhere, seat-belted in, unable to reach the drink holders or turn the knobs on the dashboard. “I like to move when I have sex. Why be tied down?”
Suddenly, the quiet man that I mostly knew from group nights out was leaning across the table, creating near-perfect paper strips from the bar napkin, talking about ropes and twine and knots in a power voice, a low light flickering in his eyes. He wasn’t talking to me, not specifically, but his gaze flicked to my wrists as he talked. “There’s freedom in constraints.”
I curled my hands around my glass, the bones feeling exposed, the pulse thump-thumping beneath the skin. “There’s constraint in constraints.” My words had made more sense in my head.
He followed the movement of my hand with his eyes, tearing another near-perfect strip from the edge of his napkin as he waved my comment away. “But it’s not really about what you use to tie someone down. At least, not the physical thing you use to tie someone.”
He laid the thin strip of torn napkin over my wrist, holding the edges with a few fingers to the table, as though paper and pressure was enough to keep me there.
“It’s other things. Isn’t it, Elly?” His eyes settled on mine. Such intense blue, like a weight all their own, trying to keep me against the overly warm bar seat.
I dropped my gaze to watch the lime floating in my drink, raising both shoulders in a shrug, my wrist slipping along beneath the paper. “You’re asking the wrong girl,” I said, when I could finally meet his eyes again.
He arched a brow, the low bar lights flaring in his gaze as he shifted his head. “Am I?”
“Yes.” The others faded away. Did they grow quiet on their own or just slip into the edges of my vision, sliding into the place he’d occupied so recently? “I’ve never been bound to anything. Man or bed or chair. And I don’t intend to be.”
He stood suddenly, the lean movement of predator, still holding the napkin strip across my wrist with one hand. His other hand snaked forward to tighten into the length of my blond hair, fisting his fingers at the nape of my neck to pull my head back slightly. My mouth gasped open—I couldn’t help it—and then I was looking up at those blue eyes. Darkening to near black on the edges. “No?”
A single word. A challenge. Something that I would have ignored most times. If not for the drinks. Or for the fact that his fingers were still on either side of my wrist, tightening in, capturing my skin between them. If not for the way my body suddenly responded, a dizzy spin of want that left me hollow and wet.
“No.” Fingers digging into my head, holding me. I tugged my head forward, but his grip only tightened. So tight I saw threads of black and gold through my vision, and still the blue of his eyes through it all.
“You’ve never…” I didn’t know if the others could hear him, even though he was leaning down slightly, the press of his fingers keeping me there. “…called someone master?”
I pulled my body away although my hand, inexplicably, didn’t follow. I was sure I’d meant it to. “Hell, no. And I never will.”
“Shall we bet on that?” he asked. I was sure the others could hear him now, as well as my own bitten-back moan in response. What was my body doing to me? Betrayer.
Still, I suddenly and desperately wanted to prove this man wrong. I didn’t know if it was to knock his ego a notch or soothe my own pulse, which was thumping hard beneath my skin.
I took a deep, unsteady inhale. “What do I get if I win?”
“You won’t,” he said.
“Then there’s no reason to bet, is there?”
He laughed and let go of my hair, touching a single finger to the corner of my mouth as he bent and said softly, his lips whispering along the curve of my ear, “What’s my name, Elly?”
I’m sure I looked at him like he was stupid. How long had we been friends? Of course I knew his name.
“Jackson,” I said. At the same time, I pulled my wrist up, breaking the napkin.
As the paper split, releasing my wrist, he bowed down again to drag his teeth along the curve of my ear. “That’s one.”
Spinning Round
Time goes, as it does. I didn’t see him for nearly six months. I’m sure I didn’t think of him. Or his bet. Or the way I sometimes thought I felt his fingers in my hair, tangling me up.
And then, at a wedding, there he was. Tuxed up in a way that changed him once again. Prince maybe. Or young king, before he leans old and weary. He turned, halfway through the ceremony, looked into me with those blue eyes, and I forgot his name. Forgot my own. I had an image of my wrist held to the table with no more than a paper strip, remembered his fingers threaded in my hair. The heat that filled my cheeks—I knew I was turning the same color as the blood-red dress I wore, and I dropped my head, my blond hair falling forward around me. Closing my eyes for so long, I missed the bride coming up the aisle.
At the reception, he stepped beside me near the dance floor, keeping a careful distance. He touched me lightly on the inside of my arm. Even his voice was soft.
“Come and dance?”
Soft hands, safe hands around my back, careful how he touched me. He brushed a few strands of my hair from my face, his fingertips barely touching my skin, soft as silk. I looked in his eyes, waiting for him to say something like he did before.
“How have you been?” is what he asked.
So formal, so regal and considerate, I wanted to scream. I wanted to arch my hips against him and beg him for…what? I didn’t know. I wanted to see what he would do with a paper napkin, a wedding streamer, the straps of my dress, the bride’s veil.
I bit my lip instead, answered with the one word I could find. “Fine.”
I couldn’t think how to turn the conversation, so I danced with him, aching. I draped my wrists along his shoulders, turning them softly, just to see. I let my long blond hair brush his shoulders. My eyes on him, silent desire, but he merely tucked my cheek to his chest lightly, swayed to the bad music without touching his hips to mine. Every touch so soft, I couldn’t help but bend my body toward it. By the end of the song, I decided I must have confused that night. Or his comments. He’d been drunk. So had I. Perhaps our conversation had been something for only the dark of a backlit bar. Perhaps he’d forgotten our bet.
Besides, I
