Page 763 of End Game

Then he moves close enough to Cami that I notice him in my peripheral vision.

“Dex.”

“I'm not touching the rope.”

Technically true.

His finger brushes over Cami's nipple instead.

Her breath catches and her mouth curves.

Micah looks up very slowly.

I straighten.

Dex pulls his hand back, although he looks entirely unrepentant. “She liked it.”

“I did,” Cami says.

“That is not the relevant issue,” Micah tells him. “We're working.”

“I feel like whether she liked it is at least adjacent to relevant.”

Cami turns her head toward Dex. “Keep it up, and I'll have Ronan make you keep your hands to yourself.”

My attention shifts to her.

The satisfaction on her face tells me she knows exactly what she just did.

She is not attempting to exercise authority over me. She's threatening Dex with an authority she knows I am perfectly willing to use.

I like that more than I should.

Dex apparently likes it too. “You promise?”

I point toward the chair. “Sit down.”

His grin survives, but something in his posture changes as soon as my tone does. The shift is familiar enough now that I know he hears the difference even when nobody else would.

He looks at the chair.

Then back at me.

“Is that the cuck chair?”

“It's a chair.”

“It feels emotionally like a cuck chair.”

“Dexter.”

He sits.

I step in front of him. “Hands where I can see them. You don't touch yourself. You don't touch anyone else. You sit still, stay quiet, and watch.”

His eyes flick toward Cami and then back to mine. “Yes, Sir.”

The first thirty seconds go better than expected.