I hear her in the hallway.
I hear her stop. One beat. Two.
I hear her at the door.
I hear the door.
Max walks into the room.
I turn my head and I see her and my breath stops.
She is naked. She is naked except for the black strap around her hips. Her body is broad and scarred and plain and muscular and the most beautiful body I have ever looked at on a woman in my life. Her shoulders are square. Her breasts are small and high, darker at the nipple than I had imagined. Her stomach is flat with the line of an old surgical scar across the lower right that I did not know about. The scar on her forearm shows clean in the lamp light. Her thighs are heavy and strong and her calves are a runner's.
Between her legs is the dildo.
It is dark. Not skin colored. Black silicone. Medium size, curved up a little at the head, resting where her own pelvis would be. It is strapped to her with a leather harness at her hips anda strap between her thighs. She looks at home in it. She is a woman who has worn this before. She stands in the doorway and she lets me look.
I look.
I look at the length of it and at the curve and at the way the harness sits on her hipbones, and I feel a thing happen low in me that I did not know a thing like that could do in a second. My breath goes out. My thighs part a quarter inch. My hand on my stomach presses down without me meaning to.
"Thank you," Max says. Low. "For looking."
"You're welcome."
She is holding something in her left hand.
Rope. Soft. White. Coiled small. Cotton by the look of it, braided, the kind of thing you would use on a boat.
"May I," she says, lifting the coil a quarter inch.
"Yes."
"You remember what I said about safe words?”
“Yes, if I say Red, you will stop and untie me.”
“Yes. Two hitches. I pull, it falls off straight away. If you don’t like it or feel at all uncomfortable, I want you to say.”
I nod. I feel wet. Wetter and wetter. More and more turned on.
She crosses the room.
"Sit up," she says.
I sit up.
"Robe off."
I pull the belt. The robe opens. She puts her hands at my collar and she slides it off my shoulders and down my arms, turning me gently to get it free from behind me. She folds the robe once and sets it on the end of the bed.
"Lie back," she says.
I lie back.
"Hands up."
I lift my hands up. She brings them to the top of the bed above my head, palms together, the bandaged one cradled under the other. She wraps the rope around my wrists one time, around again, and then across, and she ties two hitches in a way I do not watch. She pulls on the wrap to test it. It holds.
