Page 42 of Spade

She picked up the glass, sipped from it, and put it down again. “Maybe you do. Maybe you’re just hoping I say it so you don’t have to.”

I let that hang. In another life, I would have pushed, cajoled, gotten her angry enough to slip. But this wasn’t a suspect, and I wasn’t working anymore.

She walked past me, to the lamp, and turned the dial so the light dimmed to a quarter-strength. The room went gold and uncertain, shadows deepening along the floor. She stood in the doorway to the bedroom, one hand on the frame, and watched me.

“This is the part,” she said, “where you either leave or you fuck me.”

I didn’t move.

“Which is it, Detective?”

She was giving me an out, but her eyes said she already knew. I closed the distance and stopped when I was half a foot from her. The heat off her skin, the scent of sweat and soap, the scar along her jaw like an underline.

“This is a terrible idea,” I said.

“I know.”

She kissed me first, hard and closed-mouth, the kind of kiss that is more about ending the conversation than starting anything else. I put my hands on her waist, feeling the muscle and the heat, the edge of a holster at the small of her back that I was fairly sure was empty.

She broke the kiss and pulled back, running her hands along my torso with clinical efficiency. Her left hand slipped inside my jacket, past the lapel, to the inner pocket where I kept the cuffs.

She palmed them, held them up between two fingers, the metal catching the light.

“There are a lot of kinks I’m into that you may not be built for,” she said, almost a laugh in it.

I didn’t blink. “I can handle anything you have.”

She let the cuffs dangle from her finger, then looked at me for a long time. Her eyes never left mine.

“Show me,” she said.

The second the word left her mouth—Show me—I felt my pulse hitch, a tiny unspooling at the base of my neck, half fear and half recognition. The metal of the cuffs still glinted in her hand, perfectly at home there.

She spun and walked to the bedroom, pausing only to flick the lamp switch on her way, plunging the rest of the apartment into a darkness that was deeper for how little it hid. I followed her, barely remembering to pick up the glass and drain it before setting it on the kitchen counter.

The bedroom was all straight lines and black fabric. She stood by the headboard and looked at me, just looked, until I understood. The cuffs were real police-issue, cold and heavy when I took them from her. She rolled her wrists together, palms forward, and there was nothing performative about the way she held them out—like she’d done this a hundred times, maybe had. I caught a shiver at the base of my spine.

“Careful,” she said, “I’m not as forgiving as the real thing.”

I hooked her wrists around the iron headboard and ratcheted the cuffs tight. The skin pinched, but she didn’t flinch; her tattoos looked almost alive under the bedside lamp, the snake’s eye catching a yellow spark. She lay back without waiting for instruction, feet flat, knees up, breathing slow and regular.

I took a second to look at her, really look. The way the lamp drew gold out of her scars, the new and the old. The muscles along her stomach, the angry little bandage on her hand. Her shirt was ribbed cotton, thinned out from wear, collar was already half-stretched from being grabbed too many times.

“Take a picture,” she said, “it’ll last longer.”

I undid the first three buttons, then got impatient and ripped the rest. The sound was loud in the little room. Buttons skittered across the floor, two rolling under the bed. She arched her back into it, eyes wide and black. Her arms strained against the cuffs, not to escape but to test the bite.

I got my hand around her throat. Not tight, not yet, just enough to let her know what was coming. I held her there, thumb along her windpipe, fingers pressing into the muscle just below her jaw.

She made a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and a laugh, and then her eyes did something I didn’t have a name for. Hunger, maybe, but deeper, like a wire being stripped down to the copper and left raw.

“Do it,” she said.

I squeezed. Not hard enough to cut off air, just blood, just enough to see her skin go hot, then pale, then a quick flicker in her eyes as her head flooded with something chemical and bright. Her legs kicked once, involuntary, then stilled. I loosened my grip, and she sucked in air with a sound like relief.

I leaned down, forehead against hers, and stayed there until her breathing slowed. I could feel the heat from her skin, the sweat starting to gather at her hairline.

She spat in my face, a perfect arc that landed just under my right eye. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”