Page 34 of Made to Be

But my warning came too late.

In an instant, the fluffy pink handcuffs had turned on him like a biting snake, latching one end around his left wrist. And, with the close proximity of my own hand reaching out to stop him, the other cuff clasped onto the next closest thing: my wrist.

The ratchets of the cuffs clicked as they tightened snugly around each of our arms. Too tight.

I stared down at where we were now joined in shock. Cam slowly lifted his gaze from the cuffs, expression already one full of apologetic guilt.

“Uh oh,” he said.

***

“What do you mean they don’t come with keys?” I demanded as Cam and I stood across from the man at the checkout counter. “Who the hell sells cuffs without their keys?”

“Look,” he began in an impatient tone, “I don’t know what to tell you. The sign clearly says touch at your discretion. Can’t be any clearer.”

The man placed the box of Alice’s dishes onto the counter as he began to ring us up.

“So, with the dishes and the cuffs, that’ll be...”

“Wait wait wait,” I interrupted. “Absolutely not. I’m not paying for these things.” I hefted me and Cam’s arms up and shook the metal chain between us. The fuzzy pink fur tickled my wrist. “We didn’t even touch them. They jumped us!”

Cam nodded earnestly, my silent backup.

The man gave us that bored, flat stare like he thought we were trying to pull a fast one over him. As if he had seen people use this trick to get free stuff one too many times and wasn’t falling for it.

Well fucking hell. Why would I want crappy, probably cursed, handcuffs that someone else had definitely been fucked in before?

“If you want the dishes,” he patted his hand on the neatly packaged box before us, “then you’ll be paying for the damaged goods as well.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, jaw working.

Damaged goods, I’ll give you damaged goods,I thought as I ground my teeth.

I couldn’t leave here without these stupid dishes. I knew Alice would do something awful if I fucked this up, even if I didn’t know what it was. That woman terrified me. And I literally owed her this favor. For Cam.

With a heavy sigh cast toward the ceiling, I asked,

“You take credit cards, right?”

Five minutes later, Cam and I were sitting in my car with the box of dishes on my back seat. I was still panting because, with our hands cuffed together, getting into the car had been a new challenge I hadn’t thought to anticipate. And, seeing as Cam was well over six-foot and built like a brick house, I was the one who had to climb in first and crawl over the center console to get into the driver’s seat.

I hadn’t even started the engine yet. We were just sitting there in silence until Cam spoke up,

“I’m sorry, Victor.”

I shot my gaze to him. He was gazing morosely down at his feet with a gloomy, dejected expression. He very much resembled a kicked puppy, all wilted ears and droopy tail.

“No, it’s not your fault Cam,” I insisted, grabbing his hand and squeezing it for emphasis. “I’m not mad, promise. It’s honestly pretty funny. And now,you’re stuck with me. Literally.” I gave him a winning smile.

That seemed to turn his mood, because the corner of his lips quirked up in a half-smile before adding shyly,

“I like being stuck to you.”

Ack, my poor heart!I nearly clasped my chest through the palpitations.

Then, the idea struck me.

It was literally like a lightbulb had turned on in my brain. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to be cuffed to Cam. Obviously not forever; I would figure out how to break the curse or hex or whatever was on these things eventually, but for now... What was it? Forced proximity and all that? It was the perfect setup for a romance novel! The infamous trope that never grew old.