Page 651 of End Game

“Yes,” we answer together.

Across the room, Carter laughs.

The first time I met her, she described him like a man who could build a house, run a company, properly use a sex toy, and make dinner while talking the entire time. Turns out that translates pretty well to rope.

I loosen the section that bothered me, feed it back through, then smooth my thumb beneath the line to feel how it settles against Cami's skin.

She watches my face.

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

“You made the squinty artist face.”

“I don't have a squinty artist face.”

Ronan looks at me. “You do.”

I ignore him.

Cami smiles.

She's gotten better too.

That part doesn't get talked about as much when people discuss learning rope. Everybody focuses on whoever is doing the tying, but being tied is a skill of its own.

At the beginning, Cami answered every check with fine or green because she didn't always have better language for what she was feeling. Now she catches differences before I do sometimes. She knows pressure from pulling, knows when something changes because of the rope and when it's the way she's holding herself. More importantly, she doesn't treat asking for an adjustment like she failed at being tied correctly.

“How's your left hand?” Ronan asks.

Cami flexes her fingers. “Normal.”

“Any tingling?”

“No.”

“Temperature?”

“Also normal.”

He nods.

I glance toward Drake.

He's standing a few feet away with his arms folded, close enough to step in and far enough that I don't feel him over my shoulder.

That might be the biggest difference between lesson one and lesson eight.

The first few nights, he watched every pass closely enough that I could feel his attention on my hands.

Tonight he lets us find things ourselves.

Which is somehow more stressful.

“You two done arguing with each other?” he asks.

“We weren't arguing,” Ronan says.