11. Dakota
DAKOTA
The bass thumps through the floor of Eclipse, vibrating up through my heels. Four drinks deep and my skin feels too tight, the press of bodies around the booth too close, Brady’s shoulder warm against mine, making my pulse stutter.
I need air. I need a mirror. I need to splash water on my face and remind myself who the hell I am.
“Bathroom,” I mumble against Brady’s ear, and his hand brushes my lower back as I slide out of the booth, sending sparks through me.
The corridor behind the back lounge is dim, lit by red-glass sconces that cast the walls in shades of blood and amber.
I try one door which is storage, mops, and the smell of bleach.
Another empty office. The music dampens with each turn I take, until it’s a heartbeat behind drywall instead of the room around me.
I push open a door and freeze. It’s not a bathroom.
The light flickers on automatically. They’re soft, warm, recessed into the ceiling so that nothing in the room casts a harsh shadow.
Black walls. Polished concrete floor. And in the center, against the far wall, a wooden X bolted to the brick wall.
Cuffs hang from the top and bottom of each arm, leather softened from use, the buckles a brushed nickel finish.
A bench, padded in black leather. Chains looped through eye-bolts in the ceiling. A row of implements hung along the wall like surgical tools displayed for a procedure. Floggers. A crop. Something with thin tails of suede.
My hand finds the doorframe. I should leave.
I don’t.
I step inside instead and let the door swing shut behind me, and the bass becomes a distant pulse, like the building has its own heart and I’m standing inside one of its chambers.
The St. Andrew’s cross is taller up close.
I have to tilt my head back to see the top cuffs, and when I lift my fingers to one of them, the leather is cool and supple under my touch.
Used. Loved. Cared for. There’s a tiny brass plate beside the cross with engraved text I can’t read in this light, but I trace the cuff’s edge with my thumb, and the buckle warms against my skin.
Something inside me goes very, very still.
I’ve been fighting my whole life. Fists up, jaw set, shoulders squared against the next thing that wants to take from me. Even my sleep is a fight. I wake every two hours, listening for footsteps that aren’t there anymore. My body has forgotten how to rest. It only knows how to brace.
I stare at the cuffs and imagine my wrists in them.
Not the way Gerald held me. Not fingers digging into bone, not fear sour at the back of my throat, not the wet-eyed bargaining with a god who never showed up. Something else. Something where the cuffs are tighter than his hand ever was, and I’m still safe.
My breath catches.
I want it. God help me, I want it so much my knees feel weak.
“You shouldn’t be in here.”
I don’t turn around, but I feel the air shift, smell the cedar-and-citrus scent of him.
“Following me, Dante?” I ask.
“Watching out for you.” He steps inside. The door clicks shut behind him, and the small sound makes the room shrink to the size of my own ribcage.
“You should head back,” he says.
“You’re not the boss of me.”
“Never claimed to be.” His voice is low, careful. “But Theo’s room ain’t somewhere you wander into by accident.”
“I didn’t.” I finally turn, and my hand drops from the cuff. “I’m not lost.”
The light catches him. White shirt unbuttoned at the throat, dark skin glowing against it, the gold chain he wears resting in the hollow of his collarbone. His eyes flick to the cross behind me, then back to my face. Something passes across his expression that I can’t name, only feel.
“Dakota.”
“Don’t,” I reply.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk me out of it.”
The silence between us stretches like a drawn bow.
“Out of what, baby?”
The word lands soft and I have to lock my knees to keep them under me.
Baby.
“You hooked up with Cruz,” I say, because it’s the easier thing to throw between us. A wall. A distraction. “You two have this obvious chemistry.”
His jaw flexes. “Yeah.”
“And earlier, you looked pissed when you found out about him and me. Were you jealous?”
“Of which one of you?”
“Both,” I whisper.
“Then yeah.” His tongue runs over his bottom lip. “Both.”
The room shrinks again. I can hear my own pulse now, loud in my ears, drowning out the distant bass.
“How long?” he asks.
“How long what?”
“Since anyone touched you. Really touched you. Not Cruz in the locker room. Not Eli pinning you to a cage. Touched you like you were worth more than five minutes.”
I open my mouth, and nothing comes out. He waits. Dante’s good at waiting.
“Years,” I say finally. My voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else.
“Gerald, my stepfather, he made sure I didn’t have anyone.
Made sure boys knew not to come around. Said it was protection.
” A bitter laugh scrapes out of me. “He wanted me isolated. Wanted me dependent. Every time I started seeing someone, he’d find a way to wreck it.
Show up. Make threats. Tell them stories.
He’d hover. He’d touch my hair when they could see, to send a message. ”
Dante goes very, very still.
“By the time I was twenty, I’d stopped trying,” I keep going, because once the wall cracks I can’t seem to plug it.
“By the time Mom died, I’d been celibate for years and I didn’t even know what I missed anymore.
I just knew I was so fucking tired of him deciding what I could have and who I could be and—”
“Dakota.”
“I’m so tired of being controlled, Dante. I’m so fucking tired.”
His chest rises and falls slowly. When he speaks, his voice has dropped an octave. “Nobody controls you here, baby. You hear me? Nobody. You want something, it’s yours. You don’t want something, it’s gone. That’s the only rule that matters in this room.”
My eyes burn. I turn back to the cross before he can see, and my fingers find the cuff again, and the words come out of me before I can stop them.
“I want you to tie me up.”
The quiet behind me is so complete, I think for a second he’s left.
Then his footsteps. Soft, unhurried, until he’s right at my shoulder and I can feel the heat of him along the length of my back.
“Say it again.”
“I want you to tie me up.” My voice steadies the second time. “On this. Hands and feet. I want to know I can be held down and it doesn’t. It doesn’t have to hurt. I want to know I can give it up and still be safe.”
“Dakota.” He turns me, gentle hands on my upper arms. His face is close, and his eyes are searching mine. “You sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“This isn’t a way to prove something. Not to me. Not to Cruz. Not to your ghost.”
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it, and his thumb catches it without his expression changing.
“It’s for me,” I whisper. “It’s the only thing that’s been for me in years.”
He nods, once. “Okay, baby.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” His hand cups my jaw, thumb stroking under my cheekbone. “We do this my way, though. You hear?”
“Yeah.”
“Safeword. Pick one. Something easy you won’t forget.”
I think about it. About Florida. About the bus station at 4 AM. About the article on my phone that brought me here.
“Greyhound.”
“Greyhound. You say that word, and everything stops. Don’t matter if I’m three seconds from coming. Don’t matter if you’re three seconds from coming. Everything stops. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good girl.”
The praise hits a place deep within me.
“Yellow if you need to slow down,” he says. “Red if you can’t get to Greyhound. But baby, I want you to use the word. Practice it.”
“Greyhound.”
“Again.”
“Greyhound.”
“One more.”
“Greyhound.”
“There you go.” His thumb brushes my lower lip.
“Now we go slow. I’m gonna take your clothes off.
You tell me to stop, I stop. You change your mind at any point, even when you’re tied up, even when I’m inside you, you say the word, and we’re done.
No questions, no negotiating, no second-guessing. You got me?”
“I got you.”
He steps back and just looks at me for a moment. Like he’s memorizing. Like the sight of me, fully dressed and trembling, is something he wants to hold onto.
Then his hands find the hem of my top.
He lifts it slow, gives me time to stop him. When the fabric clears my head, he sets it carefully on a small table. Folded, like it matters that I have something presentable to put on after. The care of that gesture makes my chest ache.
His knuckles trace my collarbone. Down between my breasts. Around my ribcage. He doesn’t rush. He looks at me like I’m the forbidden fruit he’s finally been given permission to taste.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “Look at this.”
His fingers find the button of my jeans, and he pops it open, dragging the zipper down. He kneels, Dante Jackson, six feet of muscle wrapped in dark brown skin and patience, on his knees in front of me, and his hands slide down my hips, taking the denim with them.
“Step out.”
I do.
He doesn’t stand right away. He stays there, level with my belly, and presses one soft kiss to the skin above my hipbone. His stubble scratches gently, then again. His hands map the backs of my thighs.
“Beautiful,” he says against my skin. “Goddamn.”
When he stands, he reaches for the clasp of my bra, and his eyes don’t leave mine.
It falls. He sets it on the table. My underwear goes the same way, slides down my legs while he kneels again, and when I’m fully bare in the warm light, he just stops.
Looks. Drinks me in like water after a long walk.
“Have you ever had someone look at you like this?” he asks.
“No.”
“You’re gonna get used to it.”
He guides me back toward the cross. The wood is cool against my shoulder blades when he turns me, my heels meeting the base. He lifts my right wrist first and buckles the cuff.