Page 219 of Sweet Ruin

My hips lift.

My knees fall open on their own.

My hands strain against the chain and can’t come down and can’t cover anything, so they grip the spindle instead.

And that’s how Kane works his black magic.

When I can’t put my hands over my stomach, my brain has nowhere to go with the thought. It shows up, finds the mental door locked, and leaves.

“You’re quiet,” he says against the inside of my thigh.

“I’m concentrating.”

“On what?”

“Not saying something stupid.”

He laughs, and I feel it, and then he stops talking and puts his mouth right where I need it and doesn’t move it for a long time.

It builds and builds until I’m bowed up off the mattress and the chain is rattling against the iron and I come so hard that I make a sound I have never made in my life, one long note that isn’t a word in any language.

I’m still shuddering when he pushes the blindfold up onto my forehead. The candlelight floods back in, orange and gold and swimming.

“Hi,” I croak.

“Hello.” He unbuckles the cuffs, one and then the other, and rubs both my wrists with his thumbs. “How are your arms?”

“Fine. Attached.”

“Any numbness?”

“No, warden.”

He kisses the inside of my wrist and then sits back on his heels. “I’m going to ask you again about the bar.”

“Ask.”

“Do you want it?”

I look at it, sitting on the bench with a cuff at each end. It’s a stupid-looking object. There’s nothing menacing about it at all, and it means the only thing that could make it hard is me.

“Yes,” I say.

He gets it. He does the ankles the same careful way he did the cuffs—buckle, two fingers, pull, check. Then he sits back.

My legs are open. They stay open.

Every cell in my body wants to roll onto my side. I can’t. I can’t⁠—

“Sugar!” I yelp.

Kane’s hands are on the buckle before I finish the word. “Which one⁠—”

“No. No, don’t take it off.” I put a hand on his forearm. “I just needed to know it worked.”

He stops. He sits there with his fingers on the strap and looks at me for a second, and then his face settles.

“It works,” he says.