Chapter Five #2
She hadn’t expected to feel desire rush in so suddenly on top of fear but inside his house, his touch and the sense of sanctuary that the comfort of his home suggested allowed it to happen. She’d have preferred the fear of her training to this—fearing the emotions he evoked, how he made her think these intimate things about him. The sky was now a violet blaze, night settling in. He had the gas logs going at a low setting in a cozy sitting room. He paused in there a moment, stopping her in front of its warmth. “Sarah will have us a small meal in about an hour. You probably haven’t eaten yet.”
She shook her head. “I’m not really hungry.”
“You’ll eat, because I’m going to be requiring a lot of you.” His voice was the erotic touch of warm oil on bare skin. “And it’s my job to care for you. As much as it is for you to follow my direction for your benefit.”
Get a grip, Marguerite. They’re just words. Words have no power to change who you are.
It was just the way the game was played. That’s all it meant, though the focused way he watched her very movement, heard every word she spoke, made her stomach do a funny dip. Was this the way it was for subs? Every reaction of approval or disapproval from the Master ratcheting up the tension as well as the arousal another notch? And was it this easy to slip into the way a sub might feel? He hadn’t even demanded she address him formally as Master but she’d felt the new relationship settle onto her shoulders like a staggering weight the moment she’d crossed the threshold. She’d always been a Mistress. It never occurred to her that the states of mind could be so easily tried on.
The foyer was a hallway that extended the length of the house. When he took her up a staircase to the second floor and turned her onto a catwalk that connected the two sides of the second level, she could look at the view of the Gulf out of the two-story-high window that framed the rear entry and rose high above it in an arc, a wall of glass. The water moved calmly under the rose sky which was beginning to be jeweled with early faint stars that would grow more ornate as the night deepened.
“This is an amazing home,” she said out of politeness, sincerity and an awkward inability to come up with anything to say. He glanced down at her, reminding her again of their height difference before he tugged her to sit down with him on the catwalk. The slats of the railings were wide enough that he could slide his legs through them. When he directed her to do the same, they sat like two children, their feet dangling over the open space below. He put her hand on his thigh, his own hand curled over it.
“Here’s one of my rules, Marguerite. You speak only when I ask you a question or if you want to say something, in which case you ask my permission to speak first.” His thumb moved over her knuckles one at a time, tracing the bumps of bone, the veins running across them. “Do you understand why I would have that rule?”
“Because you’re an egotistical male who doesn’t want any competition with the sound of his own voice?”
He tightened his grip. “Marguerite, focus. Quit building up your defenses and think.”
The admonition stung, mainly because he’d seen so easily through her tartness, more easily than she had. Closing her mouth, she tried to think beyond his touch. He’d turned her hand over now and was running his fingers over her palm, down toward her wrist. She wanted to pull away, to make him stop doing things that were creating taut arousal in her lower abdomen. She could handle this. She could. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her sternum just below the pocket of her collarbone, inside the vee of the blouse. Her breath expelled sharply from her, her nipples instantly reacting. Her thighs wanted to press together, to contain the response between them, but of course her legs were between the slats and could not close. Her chin brushed his hair. Looking at his other hand braced on the railing just in front of her, she could imagine how easy it would be for him to let go of the railing and cup her between the legs of the slacks.
“I’m waiting for an answer to my question, Marguerite,” he said against her skin.
“Because…” She swallowed, closing her eyes, wishing his tongue wasn’t so warm and clever, able to make her heart pound beneath it. His chin rubbed the top of her breast, an innocent touch. “What…why are you doing that?”
“Because a Master is able to enjoy the gifts of his slave at any time he chooses. Answer the question. Or am I making it too difficult for you to think?”
The teasing, the arrogant implication, stiffened her resolve as she was sure he’d intended. However, she was learning that being able to identify the strategy did not make her any more immune to it.
A Mistress of incomparable experience and yet his lightest touch was making her react like an innocent, unused to sensual pleasures. Tyler wondered what she would think if she knew how powerfully that unexpected discovery affected him.
Her voice came out strained, her brow furrowed like a student puzzling out a difficult math problem. He smiled against her skin.
“A slave who doesn’t have to make…conversation will focus on…things.”
“Feel the Will of her Master far more keenly, physically and emotionally.” He raised his head, making sure his approval was evident in his eyes. “Similar to what’s implied by ‘God is in the silence’. Many enlightening lessons are to be found in quiet.”
A flush spread through her cheeks and drew his attention to the delicacy of her eyelashes, as fine and pale as her silken hair.
“Come with me. We’ll come back here, don’t worry.” Rising, he easily plucked her out of the slats and set her back on her feet, guiding her forward again with a hand on her lower back, his fingers lingering on the beginning swell of her buttocks.
He took her across the catwalk and down the rear staircase, to an oak door carved with a pastoral scene. While sheep lay placidly in a meadow, a shepherd serenaded a reclining shepherdess with his pipe. Marguerite reached out to touch the fine detail as he turned the skeleton key in the lock, the key also serving as a doorknob to pull the door open.
It was an atrium, a large chamber with a domed ceiling which had been painted with a simple scene of clouds and pale blue sky. Only… Her eyes narrowed. On closer inspection, she saw wispy outlines of angels floating in those clouds, elegant fingers extended toward the feathers of swans backing against the wind, soaring. It was a study of whites, the shadowing giving the features of clouds, birds or angels.
“It’s called ‘Living a Child’s Summer Day’,” he explained. “Inspired obviously by the way children lie on their backs and look into the sky. The artist told me that there are over two hundred and twelve images in it. I haven’t found them all myself yet. Sometimes I think magic has touched it and the images actually change from day to day.”
She managed to tear her gaze from it to see that the chamber was a gallery. The walls were hung with original paintings. Sculptures had been placed on pedestals strategically scattered across the room, such that one could either wander among them or stay in one space and simply turn in a circle. And as she had that thought, her eyes came to rest on two cushioned straight-back chairs positioned in the center of the atrium, back to back. There was an ice bucket next to them.
“I’d like you to sit here.” He guided her into one of the chairs as she eyed him, distrustful. “And while we’re in here, you may speak freely, whatever comes to your mind.”
Kneeling by her, he took one ankle in his hand. There was a muted ripping noise as he loosened a Velcro strap she hadn’t noticed at the base of her chair and wrapped it around her ankle over the thin dress sock she’d worn with the loafers. “A simple lesson in restraints,” he explained. “Nothing too fast or aggressive, just easing you into it.”
She peered down the other side, noted there was a matching one there. Her heart started pounding up into her throat again.
“Would you ease a sub into it? I don’t want to be treated differently.”
Tyler took the other ankle in hand, fastened it to the opposite chair leg so her legs were spread, restricted. “Handling subs doesn’t come with an Equal Opportunity Employer policy, Marguerite. Every one is different. If she was new to it, uncertain of what her feelings meant, yes, I would take my time. To rush it would be selfish, but even more than that I’d be depriving myself of a great pleasure. To watch the minute signs of nervousness, the moistening of the lips…” He raised his head, passed his finger over her mouth. “The quick darts of the eye, the pulse riding high in the throat…” He stroked there and she shuddered. “The trembling, the knowledge that this is something the body and soul are begging for, even as the mind and its fear and its inhibitions try to interfere, to slow a process that’s inevitable… It’s one of the sweetest aphrodisiacs I know.”
“I’ve never broken in a virgin sub.”
“You’ve denied yourself a real emotional pleasure then, for both of you. I can’t imagine any sub not wanting to be under your command for his first time. Now the hands.”
He stood up behind her, his hands coming down on her shoulders, molding over her biceps, moving to her elbows. Tugging gently, he eased her arms behind her, around the back of the chair. It flattened her against the upper part of the chair, straightening and arching her. Tyler could tell it startled her when he secured each of her wrists not in Velcro straps but in the handcuffs he picked up off the seat of the chair behind hers and ran through the slat of her chair back. He was still learning the territory, working on picking up the minute nuances of her expressions, body language and voice, but it was hard to focus when she was now all his, restrained and open.
Bending to her ear, he ran his hands up her upper arms again then rested them there, his grip light, easy. “Are you wet, Marguerite? Wet from me restraining you, holding you open to me like this so I could fondle your breasts or your pussy whenever I wish?”
“I’m…I’m wet. I think.”
She had no flirtatiousness or artifice to her. From her sudden stiffening, he knew she’d realized that her words could easily be construed as an invitation, not as honest uncertainty. It made Tyler curse the obvious need to exercise restraint, not to take undue advantage. Weren’t you the one who just expostulated on the benefits of patience? Idiot.
He went back in front of her, dropped to one knee, laying either hand on her spread thighs clad in the mannish trousers. Leaning forward, he felt her tense, quiver, as he brought his face down between them, his nose and mouth so close, so temptingly close…
He inhaled, closing his eyes, felt his cock harden even further than he’d thought possible. “You are wet,” he agreed, his thumbs caressing her inner thighs. “And I’m going to make you much wetter.”
Marguerite wanted to spit at him when he rose without doing anything else, almost as much as she wanted to rail at her traitorous body for wanting him to do more. Surprisingly, he took a seat in the chair just behind her so they were back to back. There was that rattling of handcuffs. She was astounded when she turned her head enough to see him fit one of his wrists in a second pair, work the slack between the slats of his chair. He clicked the other one in place, locking his arms behind his back in much the same manner. They were close enough that he was able to lace the fingers of his right hand with that of her left. Reaching out with his foot, he tumbled the ice bucket over on its side, so that two ice cubes rolled out. Marguerite noticed that there appeared to be something gray in the center of the cubes.
“Those are the keys to the cuffs. When it melts down, we’ll be able to free ourselves.”
“And exactly how is either one of us going to reach down to pick up the keys?”
He twisted his head, looked at her blankly a moment, then the meaning of her words apparently sank in. “Oh, Christ. Didn’t think of that.”
At her alarmed look, his grin broke through. “Just kidding, angel.” He caught her fingers in his, tugged them so they were feeling the slat of the chair through which his cuffs had been threaded. “The slat of this chair is in slots, see? I just remove the slat, pull the cuffs free. Then I can pull my legs through the cuffs and pick up the keys.”
“You…” She shook her head, resisting the urge to throttle him as he chuckled. He settled his back to her, both of them bound by the handcuffs, hands intertwined in a lovers’ clasp.
“Tyler, why are we doing this?”
“It’s a way to see if you can follow direction. And remember, one of the requirements was the restraints, the physical vulnerability.”
“But why are you participating?”
“Maybe to remind you that we’re in this together. You’re not all by yourself.” He caressed her open palm as she moved restlessly, clacking the cuffs against the wood of the chair.
And there was another point as well, though Tyler chose not to share it. He wanted to coax forth the Marguerite he’d seen in brief flashes at the tea room, with her appreciation of aesthetics. He wanted the real woman when he roused her passions, not the prisoner fighting involuntary response every step of the way.
“Trust me, Marguerite. Look at the artwork on display before you.”
Marguerite closed her eyes, wondering if she should count to ten as a method of regaining her composure. She thought that a multiple of ten might not be enough. So she resigned herself for the moment to following his direction.
She found herself auditing an eclectic assortment of erotic art. The one directly before her chair was a photograph blown up to life-size and framed in black. A woman was folded over the soft high back of a couch. Taken from a rear angle, the photo focused on her from waist to feet, showing her wearing frilly high-cut panties, garters, stockings and heels. Her calves had been crossed and tied, her arms bound behind her. Her face was in shadow, the whole photo artistically done in black and white, every detail of her submission starkly outlined except for one tiny touch of pink. The line of ruffles that went across the widest portion of her backside. Cry Mercy was the name of the photo.
Not a cry for mercy from punishment Marguerite knew. For the punishment, for the release that came with it.
The piece to the left was a photograph focusing on a man’s erect cock. With his body displayed only from mid-thigh to well-defined abdomen, the man rested his hand on the base of the cock, a loose curl, his fingers massaging his testicles. It was easy to imagine him caught in a frozen moment of stroking himself for an avidly watching lover. She was absorbed by the hand, the long fingers, and made herself pull her attention from it.
Next came something familiar, the fresco of the three Graces, the Hellenic Period rendering, the two outside Graces facing forward, the middle one with her back to the viewer. The smooth bodies, small perfect breasts and heart-shaped buttocks, the partial torsos linked by their arms in sensual innocence, simply what they were.
“Describe what you’re seeing to me as if I’ve never seen it. Tell me what you think about it.”
She cleared her throat as her gaze shifted again. “It’s a pen and ink drawing, in color. In the forest. It looks like a David Delamare. A man has been attacked by a woman with…wings and fangs. Like a harpy, only beautiful, with raven dark hair falling over her shoulders. She’s crouched over his groin, her wings folded back, teeth bared. You can see where she’s scratched his chest with her talons. He’s bleeding. Naked, his garments and armor stripped…as if he’s a knight…scattered in piles in the clearing where she’s torn it haphazardly all off him. She’s just started to lower herself onto his erection and though you can tell she’s forced him to this moment, something has happened. He’s gotten one hand loose to reach up to her face.”
“Even though she could tear him to shreds, he now desires her more than fears her,” Tyler suggested.
“Yes. But it’s more than the fact he desires her. The way he’s touching her face…he’s offering…more.”
“And what’s she doing?”
“She’s…looking down at him. You can tell it’s…she’s not sure. She didn’t expect her savagery to be met with desire. With love. You can’t tell if the next moment is going to be one of blood or passion.”
“The interesting thing is that’s an adaptation from a medieval religious engraving. It was intended as a rendering of an agent of the Devil trying to tempt and destroy the soul of a poor sinner but the artist took it and provided a different interpretation. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “What are you looking at?”
You , he wanted to tell her. There were two angled mirrors that allowed him a clear view of her profile without her being able to see him. Her shifts in gaze, her expression as she studied the artwork, intrigued him. He wished he’d thought to open her blouse before he’d restrained her so he could see the small curves rising up over the top of her bra and know if her nipples were puckering into hard points. Her fingers were twitching against his, suggesting agitation, possible arousal. Or just the fact she didn’t like his proximity, he reflected wryly.
“First, tell me if you like the one of the man’s cock. And why or why not.”
“I like it. The detail. The stillness. A moment of reality you don’t usually get to study at your leisure before the view changes.”
“Well, unless you have Viagra.”
“That’s not what I meant.” There was a smile in her voice, though. It pleased him to know he could touch her sense of humor. “The hairs on his legs, the line of muscle in his thighs, the curve of ass, the planes of his abdomen. His hands…”
“You like his hands.” He caught the slight inflection and pounced on it.
Her fingers flexed in his and he heard a quiet swallow. Testing, he began to move his index finger on a slow glide up the center of her palm. “Why?”
“Tyler.” She stilled further at the caressing touch. “Are you… It feels like you’re seducing me. Trying to seduce me,” she amended.
“Does it? You sound surprised.”
“It doesn’t seem necessary.”
“That’s because you don’t have to seduce or flirt with men, Mistress Marguerite.” He leaned his head back on her shoulder, turning to brush her cheek, smile up into her confused eyes. “You are a seduction. A man looks at you and not even a siren’s voice would tear him away from your side, or keep him from seeing to your desires. But the rest of us poor Doms…” His thumb drifted to her wrist, stroked that erogenous zone. He felt her shoulder shudder where it was pressed under his. “We must endure the torment of flirtation. The tedious, monotonous arts of active seduction.”
Despite her best struggle, he saw that tightening of her facial muscles he was beginning to recognize as her version of a smile, the resistance to one.
“Tyler, I really don’t like you.”
“I’m glad you told me,” he said gravely, wishing he was free to turn around and kiss a smile onto her mouth, a real one. He had a suspicion that those blue eyes could sparkle like diamonds when she was truly happy. He lifted his head, returning them to their back-to-back position where she thought he couldn’t see her. “Tell me about his hands.”
“They’re…capable. You’d think the cock would be the focal point of the picture but because they’ve brought his hand into it, underscored its functionality by showing it stroking and stimulating him, you begin to think of the other things his hand could do if…”
“If?”
“If he stepped out of the picture.”
“Nicely said.”
“You still haven’t told me what you’re looking at.”
“Marilyn Monroe’s breasts.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a molding. Not from the real ones, because the artist unfortunately was just a boy when that wonderful lady passed out of our lives but he studied her movies, photographs. Interviewed two privileged gentlemen who had the honor of seeing them uncovered. He chose to mold them as they would have been toward the latter end of her life, when they were fuller, heavier, ripe.”
Tyler paused, searching for the right words. “When I saw it, I saw what he intended. The breasts of a woman… They’re her life, her vulnerability, one of the most powerful of her allures. Have you ever noticed when a woman touches herself for pleasure at The Zone, she often starts with her breasts, almost as fascinated with their perfection as men are? But while our interest is often atavistic, hers is more reverent, as if thanking Mother Goddess for a gift that ties the woman to Her. And I suppose that’s why he also sculpted her hands beneath them, cupping them. The vulgar would say that it represents what she offered to the world. They’d mean it in a crass way that denied her value, the fact that she captured our hearts as much as our sexual fantasies. She was a woman in every sense of the word. Every man wishes he could have saved her, helped her see the world was a far better place than she knew and that she was stronger than she realized.”
“I think you’re idealizing her. She likely was as difficult and mundane as any of us.”
“I reserve the right to make up my own story behind the art.”
Switching gears on her, he curled his forefinger and thumb around one wrist. “You’re fine-boned for your height. No jewelry, though. You don’t wear it much but when you do… That was some show of ice at The Zone. If that robber had known you were carrying those on you, he would have fought a lot harder. Probably cut your throat.”
When his grip tightened on her, just thinking about it, her fingers touched his, a reassurance that stilled him, made him loosen a bit. He cleared his throat. “Tell me your favorite piece of all of those you see in front of you. Don’t think about it, just say it.”
His sudden possessive protectiveness was almost more unsettling than his moments of physical seduction. Marguerite struggled to stay up with him. “They’re all beautiful. You’ve got exquisite taste, Tyler.”
“I certainly do.” He pinched her knuckle and she wiggled her finger free.
“Now you’re flirting.”
“A Master? We never flirt. We merely wave our hand and command our sub to fall to her knees in slavish devotion. We never cajole, coax, flirt, seduce…” He tilted his head, this time toward her other side. Catching her braid in his teeth, he gave it a tug and succeeded in catching the band holding it. When she jerked her head away, he was able to pull it down six or seven inches, off the base, so that the braided strands started to loosen.
“Tyler Winterman?—”
“Tell me your favorite. Stop being a polite guest, trying to say all the right things.”
“The statue in the left corner. I like the statue. And the chair near it. Though it’s not part of the artwork.”
“Describe the statue.”
“It’s a man and a woman. It’s done in brown clay and she’s… He’s behind her, his arms outside her arms, both in a vee, pointing down the front of her body, all four hands clasped just at her vagina. They’re bent over. His legs are spread, hers together, and it’s obvious he’s inside of her. Her head is back on his shoulder, his is tilted forward, his lips on her opposite shoulder. They’re perfectly meshed, unified. I like the lines of it.”
“Get past the artistry. What does it say, what does your heart say when you look at it?”
I wish I was her. The thought came to her mind uncensored but she couldn’t say it. “The look on her face…moves me. She’s not thinking of anything but this, doesn’t have to. Nothing is touching her, filling her but him. She’s an empty vessel, filled by him.”
He was silent. She knew he knew there was more. “And you like the chair,” he said at last.
She let out the tense breath she was holding, relieved he hadn’t pressed. “Yes. What do you call it?”
“A tête-à-tête.” The design was like two chairs facing in opposite directions, side by side but curved as one pair, so the two backs formed an intimate S-shape that would allow a man to reach over and lay an arm around the waist of his lover. However, separated by the opposite arm, they had to maintain a seductive distance. “There were many subtly suggestive items in the Victorian era,” he noted. “During sexually repressed times, I think people just get more creative.”
“That chair seems to be more romantic than sexual.”
“You think so?” He shifted to consider it, which rubbed his shoulder against hers again. He was so much broader there, reminding her how infrequently she allowed her subs to get close enough to her to compare the differences in their body types. “If you and I were sitting there, side by side, you know what I’d do?”
“I’m not going to encourage you.”
Tyler smiled to himself. “Do you also realize that many of the most popular sexual role-playing games we’ve adopted are associated with that time period? For instance, I can imagine you as a prim schoolmistress, saying what you just said to me, the naughty student. I come back after class is over, having loosened my cravat, tossed away my neat stockings. I take away your ruler and turn you over my knee for once, throwing that skirt over your back, feeling the press of your waist against my thigh, seeing your trim pantaloons beneath. Wondering what it would be like to take those down your stockinged legs while you’re struggling, kicking in those dainty little boots…”
“While I maneuver for a clutch grip on your crotch to get you to let me go.”
He winced. “You and Mistress Violet have similar mean streaks.” But he noticed her eyes had moved back to the photo Cry Mercy and her pale face had more color than before.
“Now if I were in that chair, I might try to steal a kiss. Or maybe go lower, kiss every inch of your lovely throat, down to the first button of that stiff shirt. I’d bite it off with my teeth, then the next one. Run my tongue in the valley between your breasts, nuzzle your soft skin, nip at the lace holding it. But what would your more romantic version be?”
She couldn’t grasp any image now except the one he’d just painted. Imagining.
“I see you’re fascinated with Cry Mercy .”
Her gaze jerked up and he saw her realize at last that he could see every expression of her face.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” he continued in a mild tone. “How the photographer chose to keep everything in black and white except for that one ruffle of pink lace across the widest curve of her ass? And you can’t help but think of another area so delicately pink and female, waiting for a tongue, a hand or cock to slide into its welcoming warmth. Now, answer me. What was your romantic version for the chair?”
The creases of her palm were damp enough to please him. He was equally pleased by the tension he felt in her body now that she knew there was nothing she’d been able to hide from him.
She drew in a breath, then another. He admired her ability to continue to regroup, rebalance, no matter how often he was seducing her off the pedestal.
“Just sitting like that, the closeness, the arrangement of the chair speaking for itself, saying that the two people in it have a connection, or want more of a connection than they ever had up to that point. The suggestion of things to come. That’s romantic. And I guess you’ve proven it can be sexual, too. That’s a dirty trick,” she added. “The mirrors.”
He lifted one shoulder in a brief shrug. “The point is the sub learns there’s nothing she can hide from her Master, that she’s to be open to him in all things.”
“She doesn’t deserve any privacy?”
“No,” he said simply. “Not if the Master is going to give her the pleasure she deserves.” And needs.
He removed the slat of the chair to free the cuffs from it. When he moved to the floor, he felt her watching him as he brought the cuffs under his hips and pulled his long legs through the loop of his arms in a lithe, practiced move. Bending, he fished the key to his cuffs out of the melted ice, unlocked them. Then he came around the chair to squat between her spread legs, laying one palm on each kneecap.
“You look like you’ve done that a few times in your life.” Her breathing was beginning to elevate, he suspected because he was so close and she was completely helpless before him.
“More than a few.”
Sliding his hands up her thighs, he studied her face as he moved inch by inch up the inside until his thumbs were resting just shy of the spread crotch, framing it. With her arms behind her, her breasts were well displayed before him, the white shirt pulled taut across them. He suppressed the urge to unbutton her shirt, fondle them in whatever underwear she’d chosen to wear beneath it. If she’d dressed to the skin in the same theme, it would likely be something as practical and nonsexual as the rest. Clothed even in armor, her breasts would attract him. “The strongest drive inside of a submissive, underneath all their emotional wounds, is for the Master to push aside any curtains or walls they may have erected to separate them from their true self, the naked, vulnerable soul. Because that soul wants only one thing. Do you want to know what that is?”
She tightened her jaw, looked through him until he touched her face. Not with forceful compulsion but a whispering caress that drew her gaze back to him.
“You’ll answer me, Marguerite.”
“I don’t want to know. That’s not what the training’s about.”
“Wrong. That’s what submissive training is all about. Getting past those shields so she feels truly bound to her Master, a part of him as he’s a part of her. The ultimate connection, where thought isn’t necessary. They’re together in the most elemental and perfect way there is.”
She stared at him. “Let me go, Tyler. I can’t do this.”
“You can. You will.” He framed her face, leaned forward, pressed his lips to her cheek, her forehead, the curve of her ear. Her body shook under his touch and he kept his touch soothing, gentle, stroking the wisps of hair around her face. He’d gone to one knee to accomplish the nuzzling caresses. His leg pressed against the inside of hers, the front of his shirt brushing hers, his breath warm on the side of her neck. “It will be all right, Marguerite. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”
He drew back, just a space. Marguerite saw that his eyes were almost gold in the room’s light. To his right she saw the brown statue she liked so much. The woman who could just be in the moment, a part of her lover, worrying about nothing further.
She closed her eyes, looking for something solid but the only thing she could feel was his touch on her body. “Why is my key still in ice?” She opened her eyes.
His lips curved. “I put it in a bigger ice cube.”