My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Lead Rope

"Tie me," I said.

Cade stopped with one boot on the hay loft ladder.

It was the first frost, and our breath smoked in the lantern light.

The old Hartmann hay barn smelled of dust and sweet grass, and the stack of bales rose behind him to the rafters.

"Say that again," he said.

"I thought of it in the saddle this afternoon. I've been thinking about it for hours."

I held out my wrists, one on top of the other.

I had a cotton lead rope in my hand, a soft white one from Pfeffer's halter, and I laid it across his palm.

He closed his fingers around it and looked at it, and then at me.

"I asked you to tie me up, Cade," I said. "Take it as read."

He climbed the rest of the way into the loft and held the lantern high.

A long beam ran under the roof with a hay hook hanging from a pulley.

The hook swung above my head, at the height of his raised hand.

"Come here," he said.

I went.

He took the rope and wound it twice around my wrists, snug and soft, and made a loop over the hook.

"Pull," he said.

I pulled.

The knot slid open at once, and the rope fell loose in his hand.

"That's yours," he said. "Any time you want it, that's how it opens."

"I won't pull," I said.

"Then you'll know you could."

He tied it again.

He lifted my bound wrists over the hook, and my arms went straight up.

I stood on my toes on the wooden floor with my fingertips just brushing the beam.

I was held, but not hurt.

He had left exactly enough slack for the heels of my boots to touch the boards.

Then he took the red bandana from his back pocket and held it up.

"Tell me what you'd do," I said.

"What?"

"Out loud. While you do it."

For one moment he went entirely still.

Then he folded the bandana in half, and in half again, and tied it over my eyes.

The dark was total.

It smelled of his sweat and cotton and hay.

I heard his boots circle me once, slowly.

"I'm going to take your shirt off," Cade said. "Then your bra. Then your jeans, and your boots, and your underwear."

"And I'll take my time."

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