Page 33 of Captive

“I want your mouth,” he says. His voice is low and rough and absolutely certain. “I want to know what you sound like when nothing’s hurting and nobody’s trying to take anything from you. I want my hands anywhere you put them. And I want to stop the second you tell me to, even if it costs me a week of sleep.”

I didn’t expect him to say it plainly. I didn’t expect it to feel like this when he did.

“That’s still a lot of obedience,” I say. My voice isn’t steady.

“You asked what I understand.”

“I understand choices.”

I stand up and walk down the porch steps. He watches me come. There’s dust along one side of his jaw, and I want to wipe it off with my thumb so badly that the restraint feels physical.

Before I reach him, I stop.

“The door behind me is open,” I say. “The keys are on the table. The truck is running out that gate if I want it to be. You know that.”

“I know it.”

“Say it.”

“You can leave any time. Nothing you do tonight changes what I did before. Nothing I do tonight earns anything.”

I take the tray out of his hands and set it on the rail. Then I grab the front of his shirt, pull him down, and kiss him.

For one second, he doesn’t move at all. His mouth is warm and still under mine, and his hands stay at his sides. He’s waiting to be sure. I start to pull back.

He puts one hand at my waist, not trapping, just resting there. “What are you choosing, Sofia?”

“You,” I say against his mouth. “My hands, my mouth, and whatever I ask from yours. Yes. Not intercourse tonight.”

He kisses me back.

It isn’t careful. It’s hungry and deep and a little desperate, like he’s been starving for four days and just found out he’s allowed to eat. He makes a low sound in his throat when I open my mouth for him, and I feel it all the way down my spine. I pull him closer by his shirt until his body is hard against mine, and he lets me, and his hand spreads on the small of my back without pulling.

“Inside,” I say.

He follows me into the cabin. The front door stays propped against the wall. The truck keys stay on the table beside it.

* * *

I don’t stop in the kitchen. I walk down the hall to the bedroom.

The door is standing open, the way I left it this afternoon. The brass key hangs from the blue tag on my belt. I stop in the doorway, in the exact place he sat all night in the chair, and turn around.

He stops in the hall. One step short of the threshold. I watch him look at the frame, and the lock, and the key on my belt, and I watch him not come in.

“Rule three,” he says. His voice is rough.

“Rule three is retired.” I take his hand. “This room is mine now. I decide who comes in.”

“Sofia.”

“Come in, Cole.”

He steps over the threshold like it costs him something. Maybe it does.

The room looks the same. The narrow bed. The wool blanket. The six-inch window, going dark. My rules on the treatment sheet, still on the floor where he set them, with his signature under number five. The only thing different is the key, and who has it.

I turn in the middle of the room and reach for his belt. When his hand lifts toward my face, I catch his wrist.