A single word. A challenge. Something that I would have ignored most times. If not for the drinks. Or for the fact that his fingers were still on either side of my wrist, tightening in, capturing my skin between them. If not for the way my body suddenly responded, a dizzy spin of want that left me hollow and wet.
“No.” Fingers digging into my head, holding me. I tugged my head forward, but his grip only tightened. So tight I saw threads of black and gold through my vision, and still the blue of his eyes through it all.
“You’ve never…” I didn’t know if the others could hear him, even though he was leaning down slightly, the press of his fingers keeping me there. “…called someone master?”
I pulled my body away although my hand, inexplicably, didn’t follow. I was sure I’d meant it to. “Hell, no. And I never will.”
“Shall we bet on that?” he asked. I was sure the others could hear him now, as well as my own bitten-back moan in response. What was my body doing to me? Betrayer.
Still, I suddenly and desperately wanted to prove this man wrong. I didn’t know if it was to knock his ego a notch or soothe my own pulse, which was thumping hard beneath my skin.
I took a deep, unsteady inhale. “What do I get if I win?”
“You won’t,” he said.
“Then there’s no reason to bet, is there?”
He laughed and let go of my hair, touching a single finger to the corner of my mouth as he bent and said softly, his lips whispering along the curve of my ear, “What’s my name, Elly?”
I’m sure I looked at him like he was stupid. How long had we been friends? Of course I knew his name.
“Jackson,” I said. At the same time, I pulled my wrist up, breaking the napkin.
As the paper split, releasing my wrist, he bowed down again to drag his teeth along the curve of my ear. “That’s one.”
Spinning Round
Time goes, as it does. I didn’t see him for nearly six months. I’m sure I didn’t think of him. Or his bet. Or the way I sometimes thought I felt his fingers in my hair, tangling me up.
And then, at a wedding, there he was. Tuxed up in a way that changed him once again. Prince maybe. Or young king, before he leans old and weary. He turned, halfway through the ceremony, looked into me with those blue eyes, and I forgot his name. Forgot my own. I had an image of my wrist held to the table with no more than a paper strip, remembered his fingers threaded in my hair. The heat that filled my cheeks—I knew I was turning the same color as the blood-red dress I wore, and I dropped my head, my blond hair falling forward around me. Closing my eyes for so long, I missed the bride coming up the aisle.
At the reception, he stepped beside me near the dance floor, keeping a careful distance. He touched me lightly on the inside of my arm. Even his voice was soft.
“Come and dance?”
Soft hands, safe hands around my back, careful how he touched me. He brushed a few strands of my hair from my face, his fingertips barely touching my skin, soft as silk. I looked in his eyes, waiting for him to say something like he did before.
“How have you been?” is what he asked.
So formal, so regal and considerate, I wanted to scream. I wanted to arch my hips against him and beg him for…what? I didn’t know. I wanted to see what he would do with a paper napkin, a wedding streamer, the straps of my dress, the bride’s veil.
I bit my lip instead, answered with the one word I could find. “Fine.”
I couldn’t think how to turn the conversation, so I danced with him, aching. I draped my wrists along his shoulders, turning them softly, just to see. I let my long blond hair brush his shoulders. My eyes on him, silent desire, but he merely tucked my cheek to his chest lightly, swayed to the bad music without touching his hips to mine. Every touch so soft, I couldn’t help but bend my body toward it. By the end of the song, I decided I must have confused that night. Or his comments. He’d been drunk. So had I. Perhaps our conversation had been something for only the dark of a backlit bar. Perhaps he’d forgotten our bet.
Besides, I told myself as he maneuvered me around the floor, I hadn’t wanted that, right? No bondage. No stupid calling someone master. Why did I care? I chalked it up to the soft whisper of fabric as his hips edged along mine and to the feel of his breath along my cheek.
As the dance ended, he stepped away with a gentle smile. The quiet press of his hand to my shoulder was so formal that I again thought of kings and royalty. Then he reached and curled a hand to the back of my neck, the blue of his gaze hardening as his eyes settled on mine. His hold was so strong and sudden that I yanked my head forward, pulling it from his grip. Too late, I realized what I’d done.
He dropped his head, mouth edging to the curl of my ear as he laughed quietly along my skin. “What’s my name, sweet Elly?”
“Prick,” I sputtered, so in want and confused that I was sure the dance floor was swaying beneath me.
He winked at me before he pulled away and left me standing in the middle of the floor by myself, only his words remaining. “That’s two.”
Spun to Gold
I spent two weeks arguing with myself. Wearing my seat belt extra tight in the car to remind myself why I didn’t want it. Didn’t want him. But all I could see were his blue eyes reflected in the sky of my windshield.
I called him. Some faltering tone in my voice about dinner, or drinks. I looked at my wrists while I held the phone, their fine bones, the thin length of them. I bent my head forward and touched a few fingers to the nape of my neck.
“Tell me where you live,” he said, and I did.
I slipped into jeans. Then a sundress. Then a T-shirt and a soft yellow skirt that swirled around my thighs. I paced, touching things, asking myself what I wanted. Unable to say the answer aloud.
When he got there, I opened the door, unsure whether I’d find predator or king. Or perhaps just the man I’d known for so long, before that night at the bar.
He was neither. And all three. Leaning against my door frame in jeans and a shirt that fit his wide shoulders. Arms crossed, those long fingers hidden from view, he slid in through the door finally, gesturing to the couch without a word.
I sat, fiddling with my skirt. Wishing I was anywhere else.
“Hold still,” he said, reaching for my head.
The pain was small and short, the backward prick of a needle, and then he was holding one of my long hairs in his fingers. “Golden thread,” he said, “to bind you with.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The sound eased the nervousness in my stomach and made me feel sick and stupid at the same time. “That? A hair?”
Without saying anything, he pushed the coffee table out of the way, then pressed both hands to my shoulders, easing me back. Scooting my hips forward as though I was a mannequin. With just his fingertips, he pushed my shirt up, then laid the hair across my stomach, the thinnest of gold threads. A breath would blow it away.
Down on his knees, he looked up at me, sending me swimming in blue. “Last chance, Elly,” he said, and his teeth were big when he smiled. “You decide.”
He didn’t wait, just curled his fingers beneath my skirt and hooked them into my panties, began to ease them down my thighs with tiny pulls. Bit by bit, until he caught them and pulled them over my knees. His tongue curled along the inside of my thighs, meaningless circles that echoed the turns of my stomach, the spinning ache that made me want to push my hips up from the couch.
With