Page 63 of Animal Tamer
“What?” She grabs the blanket and hauls it to her chest like Silas is already in the room. “Rowe. It's six in the morning. You cannot text a man at six in the morning asking for—what are you even going tosay?—”
“He's awake. He's always awake.”
I type:
Need chains. Enough for a full tie. Now.
Send.
“And I'm not explaining anything. He'll know.”
“That'sworse.” Her face has gone scarlet all the way to her ears. “That's so much worse. He'llknow, and then Nova will know, and then?—”
There's a knock on the trailer door.
Wren makes a sound like a teakettle and pulls the blanket over her head.
It hasn't even been three minutes. I cross the trailer and crack the door, and Silas is standing in the dawn gray with an armload of chain looped over one shoulder, padlocks threaded onto the links, a coil of softer welded chain in his other hand—the kind Nova uses against bare skin—and the single most insufferable smirk I have ever seen on a human face.
“These are the smooth ones,” he says. “No burrs. Nova checks every link herself, so they're safe.” He hands the load across the threshold without stepping inside, and his blue eyes flick past my shoulder to the blanket-covered lump on my bed. His smirk widens. “Morning, Doc.”
The lump does not respond.
“Have fun,” Silas says and walks back to his own trailer.
I shut the door. Set the chains on the table. They pour through my hands, cool and heavy, and behind me I hear the blanket rustle down.
“I'm never making eye contact with him again,” Wren says.
“He'll enjoy that.” I turn around. She's sitting in the middle of my bed, knees drawn up, face still pink, eyes on the chains—and there's no fear in her expression. There's the opposite of fear. “Wren.”
“Yeah.”
“Strip.”
Her breath catches. For a second, she doesn't move, andI brace for the retreat, ready to slow everything down to whatever speed she needs.
Then she rises to her knees and reaches for the hem of the henley.
She's shy about it. She does it slowly—not the practiced slow of a performance, the real slow of a woman who's never believed her body was worth watching—lifting my shirt over her head an inch at a time, her arms crossing over her breasts the moment they're bare, then forcing them down to her sides because she's decided to be brave. Her underwear next, worked over her hips, down her thighs, kicked off the end of the bunk.
She kneels there in the lamplight, naked, all of her—the heavy sway of her breasts, the soft curve of her belly, the width of her hips, thighs I've dreamed about since day one—and my breathing has gone loud in the small space. My hands hang at my sides, fingers flexing, and it takes everything I have not to close the distance and put them on her.
I can't. Not with hands. But there's another way to hold her, and it's coiled on my table.
“Lie back,” I tell her. My voice barely works. “Spread your thighs. Pull them open and up. Hold them there for me.”
She lies back against my pillow. Her hands slide to the backs of her knees, and she draws them up and apart, folding herself open, and the sight of her—glistening, flushed, offered—nearly ends me before I've touched a single link.
I start with the soft chain.
I loop it around her right thigh, high, and I'm careful—so careful—feeding the links over her skin without letting my fingers land, letting the chain do the touching forme. It glides across the inside of her thigh, and shemoans, hips lifting, because the metal is cool and her skin is flushed.
“Okay?” I ask.
“More than okay.” Her voice is wrecked already. “God, Rowe.More.”
I give her more. Her calf folded to her thigh and bound there. Her wrist drawn down, chained to her ankle. Then the left side, matching, link by link, padlocks clicking shut one after another—and then the long wrap, chain crossing her body, cinching everything flush, her arms locked to her legs, her legs locked open, all of it snugged tight enough that when she tests it, straining, nothing moves but her breath.
