Page 129

“I can wash myself,” I say, and my voice comes out thinner than I intend.

“With your hands restrained?” he replies, tone flat.

I press my lips together. My silence hangs between us like a held breath.

The corner of his mouth twitches, just once. “Exactly.”

My heartbeat stutters, a clumsy rhythm against my ribs. Bath. Adrien. Naked. His hands on me. I shove every thought into a locked box and kick it hard over some mental cliff edge.

“It’s just, um… weird,” I mutter.

“It’s hygiene.” And then he smiles, and not just a flicker of one. It changes his whole face, softens the lines around his eyes, and my stomach rolls over like a nervous animal. “You’re blushing, sweetheart.”

“I’m hot,” I mumble.

“The room is sixty-nine degrees.”

I cross my arms. “That’s not very warm.”

He chuckles under his breath. I glare at him, but there’s no heat behind it. He retrieves the small silver key from his jeans pocket. My eyes track the movement, the way his fingers curl around the metal.

“Alright, let’s get a move on,” he says.

I set Rabbit—not calling her by a name began to bother me yesterday, but then nothing but just Rabbit felt right—against the pillows, tucking her ears so they don’t bend, and close the sketchbook over my failed drawing. My pulse picks up as Adrien approaches—not the jagged spike of panic from before, but something lower, warmer.

He unlocks the cuff from the headboard, leaves it circling my left wrist, then draws my other hand gently behind my back. I don’t resist. The realization that I’m letting him do this comes late, after he’s already done.

Adrien asks, “Comfortable?”

“Yeah,” I whisper.

“Good. Let’s go.”

I walk slightly ahead of him into the hallway, kept within sight as always. He has his hand on my back as he leads us to the bathroom.

Sunlight filters through the small window above the toilet, casting shifting leaf shadows across the clean white tile. A bathtub sits against the far wall beneath a shower head, its cream curtain pushed to one side.

Adrien guides me to stand near the sink, then kneels by the tub and turns the faucet. I watch as steam begins to rise in lazy curls from the water.

“Sit while it fills,” he instructs.

I lower myself onto the closed toilet lid.

He tests the water with his bare hand, then adds a stream of amber liquid from a plain bottle on the ledge.

My eyebrows lift. “Is that bubble bath?”

He glances over his shoulder. “Body wash.”

“It’s making bubbles.”

He shrugs. “Soap tends to do that no matter the form.”

I don’t answer. Somehow the bubbles make everything feel more intimate.

When the water reaches the halfway mark, he shuts it off and reaches into the cabinet below the sink for a length of dark blue rope.

My stomach drops. “What’s that?”