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“Come in, sladkaya. Shut the door.”

I step in only as much as I need to in order to shut the door. My hands don’t know what to do, so I shove them in my back pockets. Then my eyes fall past Kane, to the black bedspread⁠—

—and my breath turns jagged.

On the bed, laid out on the comforter in a neat row, are three things.

A folded strip of black fabric.

A pair of black leather cuffs with a short chain between them.

And a long, padded bar with a cuff at each end.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what they’re for.

“You went shopping,” I say. “I take it this wasn’t a quick run to Target?”

He doesn’t laugh, though. His eyes are deadly serious, and it’s starting to drive my anxiety even higher. I’m hyperaware of every part of me.

The soles of my feet. The tips of my ears. The tingly skin on the inside of my thighs.

He’s got something in his hand, I realize. When he shifts, I see that it’s a black leather riding crop.

He aims at the items on the bedspread like it’s a professor’s pointer stick. “Blindfold. Handcuffs. Spreader bar.”

I nod. “‘Spreader bar’ isn’t the sexiest name in the world, is it? Whoever came up with that name wasn’t exactly a romantic.”

“It describes what it is.”

I tiptoe a little closer. I want to touch these things, if only to confirm that I’m not going to instantly crumble into dust when I do.

“Have you used them before?”

“Not like this.”

“Did you purchase them for me?”

“Yes.”

“And if I decide I hate it?”

“It all goes away.”

I swallow hard and drag my eyes up to his. He’s looking at me with a strange mix of patience and hunger. I don’t think I’ve seen this side of Kane Makov quite yet.

He reaches past me, picks up the strip of black fabric, and holds it out flat on his palm. Not offering it to me, just showing it. “This is a blindfold. Cotton. It sits on your eyes, it doesn’t press on them, and you can push it off with one hand if you need to.”

“Okay.”

He sets it down and picks up the cuffs. “These fasten with buckles, not clips. Two fingers fit under them so they aren’t too tight. The chain clips to the headboard. You’ll be able to move your arms, but not put them where you like.”

“And the third one is a medieval torture device?”

“It’s a spreader bar, like I said.” He picks it up. “The cuffs go around your ankles. The bar keeps them apart.”

He sets it back down and looks at me. “Do you know why I got these things, Lilah?”

“For the, uh, obvious reasons?”