Daddy's First Lesson novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Seventh Saturday

I rang the bell at eleven on Saturday night, in my good coat, with the red rope I'd bought myself that afternoon in my bag.

Abram opened the door.

He hadn't shaved, and he hadn't slept since I walked out.

"Joss."

"Lise told me," I said. "Everything. In my kitchen, at two in the morning."

He closed his eyes.

"I'm not here to shout at you," I said. "I'm here because it's Saturday, and I said I'd come."

"You left the collar."

"I did. Take me inside."

He stepped back and let me pass.

The main room was empty, the stools up on the bar, one lamp on over the old press.

I walked straight through to the curtain, and he followed, and I felt the quiet in him all the way down my back.

In the little room the bed was in the middle of the floor again.

I put my bag on the chair and took out the rope.

He looked at it.

"Sit on the bed," I said.

"Joss."

"Sit."

It was his own word and his own voice, or as close as I could make it, and it came out of me steadier than I'd expected.

He sat.

"Hands behind you, wrists together."

He gave them to me.

I had watched him tie me six times, and I knew where the knots went, though my hands were slower than his.

I wound the rope around his wrists and up his forearms, and I threaded the end through the iron rail of the bed.

The knot was not as neat as his.

It held.

"Two fingers under it," he said quietly. "Check that it isn't cutting."

I slid two fingers under the rope and felt his pulse going hard.

"It isn't."

"Good."

"You don't talk unless I ask you something."

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