Page 21 of Roped

“No?”

“Nope.” I shake my head, popping the “p” at the end. “A lot of people have tried, but no one can hold me for long.”

“Is that right?”

“Yup.” I pop the “p” at the end here too. “And I know you’re the rope expert here. I mean”—I wave my hand to the wall with ropes—“very impressive display. But they haven’t invented a rope that can slow me down yet.” I give him a sweet smile, just to fuck with him. I also go ahead and tie his bandanna around my neck like a jaunty scarf. Again, to fuck with him.

He watches me do all that, his eyes first flicking down to my mouth that starts tingling before settling on my neck for a few moments. My throat goes dry the longer he watches me, and my pulse seems to be hurtling at a dizzying speed. When he finally meets my gaze, his eyes are so shiny and intense that I have to clutch the dresser to steady myself.

“Not about the rope,” he drawls, his voice low. “It’s about the knot. The loops you make, the retrace, the dress.”

“The… what?”

“It’s about pullin’ the ends,” he goes on, his eyes green and glittering, “to set the knot in a way that it only tightens. And tightens.”

“Well—”

“And keeps tightenin’, the more you struggle to break it.”

“That’s—”

“Until you breathe only when I tell you to breathe,” he finishes.

I swallow, the bandanna feeling tighter around my neck. “That’s, uh, quite graphic.”

He jerks his chin at me. “Unlike the knot you’ve got.”

I touch the knot at my neck and clear my throat. “I—”

“Or,” he continues, “the other option’s to just hog-tie you.”

“Hog… hog-tie?”

“No one gets out of a hog-tie,” he advises, educating me. “Bet all those city boys you play with didn’t know that.”

“I do not play with—”

“Let alone city girls, who ain’t never seen a rope before.”

“I’ve seen a”—I clear my throat—“rope before.”

He watches me a second before observing, “But never tied it.”

“Of course not. Why would I—”

“Never been tied by one either.”

“Well, this is my first time getting kidnapped, so”—I attempt to clear my throat again—“pardon me if I’m not an expert on ropes and knots and… whatever.”

His eyes flash, and I swear I see his lips twitch, his scar flickering a bit. But the almost smirk disappears quickly.

Ignoring it, I tip my head to gesture at the wall again. “So these are just for the animals, right?”

He leans against the wooden post then, his chest moving with a breath. “What else would they be for?”

“I don’t know,” I say, my heart beating really loudly in my ears. “Strangling people, maybe?”

At this, he crosses his arms across his massive chest, making it look even more massive and corded. “Don’t need rope for that.”