Page 115 of Suite 7

“I’d been trying to get a read on her for months. Not directly. I wasn’t ready for that. So I’d drop things into conversation. Make a remark about liking being in control in the bedroom. Mention something I’d read. Watch her face.”

The water settles around us, still.

“Sometimes she’d go quiet. I thought that was her processing it, deciding how she felt. And then she’d come back with something like sounds intriguing or maybe we should try that sometime, and I’d think — she’s getting there. She’s working her way toward it.”

“You thought the hesitation was interest.”

“Yeah.” His chest rises once behind me, slow. “So I tried once to be more direct. To actually say it — that I was interested in BDSM. That it wasn’t a passing curiosity, it was something I’d wanted for years.” His voice empties out, reporting rather than feeling it. “I’d planned what I was going to say. Practiced it, even. And then I said it, and she laughed.”

I wait.

“Not unkindly. She thought I was joking. She said Kane, you’re the least kinky man I’ve ever met and kissed me on the cheek and went to make dinner. And I let her think that’s what it was. A joke. Because the alternative was saying — no, I mean it — and watching her face change.”

“So you didn’t push it.”

“I told myself I’d find a better moment. And then I stopped looking for one and started looking for proof she already understood.” His thumb stills against my arm. “At some point I suggested we make a room. Somewhere we could experiment. She looked at me and said, you want to make a room to worship my body? I said yes. After a few moments of silence she said I think I’d like that.” His thumb starts moving again, slower than before. “I built six months of certainty on those words. Her willingness. Her readiness for the lifestyle. Everything I needed her to be.”

He’s quiet long enough that I feel his heartbeat instead of hearing his voice.

“When she went to Singapore for a work assignment, I thought: this is the time. We talked every night and I mentioned I was working on a surprise. What kind of surprise? she asked. The kind we talked about, I said. She laughed and told me she couldn’t wait.”

The steam has thinned above the water. Neither of us moves to add more heat.

“So I built the room in the three weeks she was away. Every detail. Soft restraints on the bedframe, quality leather, nothing that would frighten someone who understood what they were. A spreader bar I’d had made. Hooks in the ceiling I’d installed myself. Lighting I’d spent two weeks getting right. A blanket for after. Her favorite tea already in the room.” His arms tighten around me, just slightly. “I built it as a gift. I imagined her face when she saw it. I thought I was finally showing her who we could be.”

The water has gone still enough that I can hear him swallow.

“I was wrong about all of it.”

“What happened when she got home?”

“I opened the door, and watched her face move through confusion, then shock, then something that—” He stops. “Closed. Like a door shutting.” His voice empties out on the last word.

“She looked at the room and said this isn’t what I agreed to. This is a torture room. Then she called me sick. Pathological. That wanting this made me a predator.” His hold on me doesn’t loosen, but it gets more careful, like he’s remembering to be gentle on purpose. “And standing there I understood — when she said you want a room to worship my body, she meant something completely different. We’d been agreeing to two different rooms the whole time. I tried to explain. She wouldn’t hear it. She filed two weeks later.”

The water moves, faintly.

I don’t speak. I wait.

“The morning after. She was getting ready and I came to the doorway and she saw me in the mirror.”

He doesn’t move behind me.

“She stepped back. Just one step. Not because I’d startled her.” His thumb goes still against my arm, like even the memory needs him to hold his hands steady. “Her body made a decision about me before she could.”

My chest tightens hearing the pain in his voice.

“That was the moment I understood what I’d done. Not the words the night before — those I could have lived with. People say things in shock. But a body doesn’t lie.” His voice stays even. “I had wanted it so badly. For her to want what I wanted. And so I took every quiet, every laughed-off remark, every maybe we should try that sometime and I built something out of it that was never there. I read her wrong for months because I needed to.”

Neither of us speaks. The water has gone cold enough that I can feel it now, but neither of us moves.

“She wasn’t afraid of me. She was afraid of what she thought I was. And standing in that doorway, watching her step back, I understood that those two things were going to feel the same for a very long time.” His thumb traces once along my arm. “So I locked the door. And I didn’t open it for two years.”

“What did you do in those years?”

“I tried to be someone whose nature fit without alteration into the shape of an ordinary life.” A quiet exhale. “It didn’t hold. The need was structural. Remove it and nothing else held either.”

He doesn’t say what came after: Eclipse, Dominic, the months of learning — and I don’t ask. I already know that part. What I didn’t know was the shape of the wound underneath it.