Page 97

Just that. No teasing. No triumphant grin because Laura Hutchins, responsible adult and longtime believer in sensible shoes, has decided to spend Tuesday night tied to her own bed.

My shoulders drop, and the breath that comes out of me is deeper than the one before it. Then Kell asks, “How?” That’s a more complicated question.

“I haven’t done this before.”

“Neither have I,” Kell says.

Right. Somehow that helps more than it should.

“We can learn.”

I take another breath and find it comes easier this time. Kell isn’t pretending to know what he’s doing, and he isn’t asking me to pretend either. We’re going to figure it out together.

I look toward the stove.

Kell follows my gaze.

“Dinner,” I say.

He turns off the burner and says, “We can finish it later.”

I look at him, then at the skillet, then back at him.

“Given what I think ‘later’ is about to mean, we should probably deal with the chicken first.”

Five minutes later, dinner is officially tomorrow’s problem and we’re heading for the bedroom.

So we spend the next twenty minutes figuring out logistics before either of us takes off a single piece of clothing. We start by looking for something soft enough not to hurt.

In my bedroom closet, I find two cloth belts from bathrobes, one mine and one that belonged to Dave. My hand stops when I pick up his.

The robe had been navy once, though years of washing softened it almost gray. I remember Dave wearing it on winter mornings, one hand wrapped around a coffee mug while he climbed the stairs and complained that I’d stolen all the blankets again.

Kell waits without speaking. I run my thumb once over the belt, then put it back.

“Not that one.”

“Okay.”

Then I remember the scarf. The one I knitted before any of this started. The one I wrapped around Kell’s hips that first night because neither of us knew what else to do with a naked Wicker Man standing in my kitchen.

My bed has a wooden headboard with open slats. There’s enough space to loop the scarf and belt through, one on each side, without forcing my arms straight over my head. When I lie back, my wrists will be angled above and slightly out from my shoulders. Before we try anything, I tell him we need a safe word.

“A word that means stop?”

“Yes. Red means stop. Immediately.”

Kell nods. “Red.”

“Yellow means slow down or check in. Green means everything’s good.”

“For both of us?”

“For both of us.”

He nods once. “Okay.”

We test the scarf against my wrist. Kell loops it around me, slips two fingers beneath it, then adjusts the fit.