Page 80 of Dose

“If I stop answering, you stop.”

“Yes.”

She takes a slow breath. “Green.”

The word goes through me like heat.

I bought the cuffs after Atlanta, after I promised to tie her to my bed when I came home. They have waited in the locked drawer beside it ever since: wide neoprene, lined at the wrists, with quick-release tabs I can open in one pull. The blindfold is folded beneath them.

Isla examines every piece before I touch her with it. She opens and closes one cuff, tests the release, runs her thumb along the seam.

“Softer than the leather,” she says.

“That was intentional.”

“The release is on your side.”

“Yes. Your release is the word or the taps.”

She looks at me. “And you.”

“And me.”

Her expression shifts. Desire is there. So is fear, small but real. I am relieved by it. Fear admitted is something we can work with. Fear denied would end this before it began.

“Still green?” I ask.

“Yes.” She puts the cuff into my hand. “Make me stop thinking, Daddy.”

My control settles into place.

I undress her slowly. The room is cool enough to tighten her skin beneath my mouth. I kiss each place I expose—shoulder, collarbone, the soft inside of her elbow—until her hands are resting on me instead of clenched at her sides.

When she is bare, I ease her onto the bed.

“Hands.”

She raises them above her head.

I fasten each cuff and clip the short tethers to the reinforced rail. Two fingers fit beneath both bands. Her hands remain warm. I pull once against each quick release, then place her fingers against the headboard so she knows exactly where to tap.

“Test them.”

She pulls. The cuffs hold. Her throat works as the old memory reaches her.

I kneel beside her. “Isla.”

Her eyes find mine.

“Color?”

She pulls again, less sharply. “Green.”

I kiss the inside of her wrist above the cuff.

“Blindfold?”

“Yes.”