Page 109 of Redline Baby

His fingers move over the edge of the coloring book.

“But I’ve always known that wasn’t true.”

I can see that he’s tearing up. I lower myself to the floor beside him and pull him into my lap. I wrap my arms around him and cradle him against my chest.

“It was never gone,” I say. “You just stopped letting it out.” His face presses into me. “But it’s okay now, my love. Daddy is here. You’re okay.”

I kiss his forehead.

He cries quietly against me, and I just hold him.

Chapter 26. Kit

The light comes in before I’m ready for it, gray-gold through the gap in the curtains. My eyes open, and then I remember.

The promise. Redline. Soren’s voice: Kit will be getting another one in the morning.

I become very still under the covers. The stillness lasts approximately four seconds before something makes me turn my head toward the doorway.

Soren is already there. Fully dressed. Jeans, a dark henley, boots already on. His posture is the same as it always is: unhurried, completely at ease. He has a paddle in his right hand.

He’s smiling.

My first instinct is to scramble backward. My heels push against the mattress, my back finds the headboard, and I sit there with the covers bunched at my waist, my hair a disaster, and my eyes considerably wider than they were thirty seconds ago.

“Morning,” Soren says calmly, enjoying the panic in my eyes.

Sadistic bastard.

“Morning.” The word comes out rough.

“I promised you’d get another one after you woke up.” He doesn’t move from the doorway. “I always follow through on what I say.”

I know this. This is not new information. I have, in fact, been aware of this quality of Soren’s since the first evening in the shop, and nothing about the months since has revised the assessment. The problem is that knowing something intellectually and having it arrive in your bedroom at seven in the morning holding a paddle are two substantially different experiences, and my nervous system is currently working very hard to distinguish between them.

“Can I…” My voice is still thick with sleep. I clear my throat. “Can I at least go to the bathroom first?”

Soren considers me for a second, apparently determines this is a genuine and reasonable request rather than the opening argument in a forty-five-minute delay campaign, and nods.

“Go.”

I climb out of bed, cross the hall to the bathroom, and close the door behind me. Then I stand at the sink with both hands against the porcelain and stare at myself in the mirror.

I turn on the cold tap and splash water over my face. My dark hair is going in every direction, my eyes are still heavy with sleep, and my body has already decided that remembering what’s waiting for me in the bedroom is sexually relevant information.

Of course it has.

I turn around enough to inspect yesterday’s damage in the mirror. The faint marks from the belt are still there, and my backside is definitely sore, but nothing looks alarming.

Oh, damn.

The thing about knowing what’s coming is that it doesn’t help. This is a fact I’ve verified multiple times now. I can name every step, narrate it to myself in advance with perfect accuracy, and my body will still produce exactly the same sequence of responses as if the whole thing arrived without warning. Foreknowledge only means I carry the anticipation longer, which is its own punishment.

Soren knows that too.

I use the toilet, wash my hands, dry my face and go back.

He has moved from the doorway to the edge of the bed. The paddle rests across his knee, pale wood catching the morning light.