Page 43 of Filled

A bench, padded in black leather. Chains looped through eye-bolts in the ceiling. A row of implements hung along the wall like surgical tools displayed for a procedure. Floggers. A crop. Something with thin tails of suede.

My hand finds the doorframe. I should leave.

I don’t.

I step inside instead and let the door swing shut behind me, and the bass becomes a distant pulse, like the building has its own heart and I’m standing inside one of its chambers.

The St. Andrew’s cross is taller up close. I have to tilt my head back to see the top cuffs, and when I lift my fingers to one of them, the leather is cool and supple under my touch. Used. Loved. Cared for. There’s a tiny brass plate beside the cross with engraved text I can’t read in this light, but I trace the cuff’s edge with my thumb, and the buckle warms against my skin.

Something inside me goes very, very still.

I’ve been fighting my whole life. Fists up, jaw set, shoulders squared against the next thing that wants to take from me. Even my sleep is a fight. I wake every two hours, listening for footsteps that aren’t there anymore. My body has forgotten how to rest. It only knows how to brace.

I stare at the cuffs and imagine my wrists in them.

Not the way Gerald held me. Not fingers digging into bone, not fear sour at the back of my throat, not the wet-eyed bargaining with a god who never showed up. Something else. Something where the cuffs are tighter than his hand ever was, and I’m still safe.

My breath catches.

I want it. God help me, I want it so much my knees feel weak.

“You shouldn’t be in here.”

I don’t turn around, but I feel the air shift, smell the cedar-and-citrus scent of him.

“Following me, Dante?” I ask.

“Watching out for you.” He steps inside. The door clicks shut behind him, and the small sound makes the room shrink to the size of my own ribcage.

“You should head back,” he says.

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“Never claimed to be.” His voice is low, careful. “But Theo’s room ain’t somewhere you wander into by accident.”

“I didn’t.” I finally turn, and my hand drops from the cuff. “I’m not lost.”

The light catches him. White shirt unbuttoned at the throat, dark skin glowing against it, the gold chain he wears resting in the hollow of his collarbone. His eyes flick to the cross behind me, then back to my face. Something passes across his expression that I can’t name, only feel.

“Dakota.”

“Don’t,” I reply.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk me out of it.”

The silence between us stretches like a drawn bow.

“Out of what, baby?”

The word lands soft and I have to lock my knees to keep them under me.

Baby.

“You hooked up with Cruz,” I say, because it’s the easier thing to throw between us. A wall. A distraction. “You two have this obvious chemistry.”

His jaw flexes. “Yeah.”