I grinned at the mirror again and started to put away my makeup. “Right, then toss your dirty clothes in the laundry and drag your other crap into the closet and leave it on the floor in there!”
“On a scale of one to ten, how important is this to you?” he asked through the door.
Another grin and “Eighty-five!”
I heard his chuckle, liked his chuckle, and lifted my hands to the curlers.
I took the ten minutes I told Deacon I’d take pulling out the curlers and smoothing some gunk through my hair that was supposed to separate and hold that I was surprised hadn’t congealed in the possibly two years since I’d used it. I did some teasing, some flipping, and then some spraying.
The results were good so I was grinning again when I spritzed on perfume, looked back to the mirror, and took myself in fully.
I didn’t go whole hog with the makeup (though I did with the hair). I also didn’t go whole hog with my clothes. But I again made an effort.
I wasn’t sure Deacon had seen me in anything but tees, shorts, sweaters, and jeans.
This wasn’t a big departure from that, but now I was wearing a long-sleeved, semi-fancy tee. It was a fantastic olive green that did good things to my eyes. It was blousy up top and had a wide neckline so it dipped off a shoulder, exposing the black lacy bra strap underneath (putting on one of the few good pairs of underwear I had was another effort I’d made; the hint at bra strap an indication of goodness to come later for Deacon). The rest of the shirt fit snug at my breasts, ribs and waist, the hemline low, covering me to mid-hip.
The shirt was five years old. I’d always loved it but I hadn’t worn it in ages.
I’d paired this with some nice jeans, far less faded than my others. And when I left the bathroom, I was going to add jewelry.
I had some heels, none of which had been out of their boxes for so long they might have disintegrated, though I was afraid to check. But so as not to give Milagros and Manuel heart attacks, I was going to wear some flippies. However, the flippies I was going to wear were going to be the ones I sometimes wore into town, these being the ones with the rhinestones on them.
Satisfied with my efforts, I exited the bathroom and saw Deacon from the side of my eye standing outside the closet. I turned to him and stopped dead.
This was because he was indeed standing outside the closet.
But he was doing it with the velvet ropes I’d bought in a moment of weakness years ago when I was with Grant. A moment of weakness that was born ages ago, when I was seventeen.
Certain my brother had stolen one of my favorite CDs, I’d searched his room and found some magazines under my brother’s bed. It was in them that I saw the image. An image that affected me in a way that freaked me out at the time but didn’t let go. An image that stayed with me into being an adult when I could process it and psych myself up to explore it.
An image that pushed me to buying those ropes off the Internet and approaching Grant with my idea, to disastrous results.
And they were ropes I saw now I should have thrown away because Deacon had found them where I’d thrown them on the floor in the corner of my walk-in closet and forgotten them. And now he was standing there, holding his hands out in front of him, the ropes draped over them.
I knew without knowing how that he knew what those ropes were for.
And now I knew there was a good possibility he was going to think I was a kinky freak.
His face was impassive. Completely.
I felt my face flush and my throat close, my gaze locked to his.
He spoke first and he did it low, his voice giving nothing away, just like his expression.
“You like to be tied up, Cassidy?”
Oh God. I was right. He knew what they were for and he thought I was a kinky freak.
I felt my stomach churn and forced myself to speak but my voice was weak when it came out. “I bought those when I was with Grant.”
“You bought ’em?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“For him.”
I swallowed and shook my head.
The room filled with something I did not get but it scared the crap out of me.
“For you?” Deacon pressed.
“Yes,” I whispered.
His tone had a rough edge I couldn’t read when he repeated, “You like to be tied up?”
I didn’t answer him.
Instead, I informed him, “It didn’t work.”
His head tipped slightly to the side but his face still gave nothing away. “It didn’t work.”
“We only, um…tried them once and Grant didn’t know what he was doing. It hurt. He got freaked then pissed and it was…well, not enjoyable.”
More bad filled the air when he asked, “It hurt?”
I nodded.
“He hurt you,” he stated flatly.
“He didn’t know what he was doing,” I repeated.
“How’d he bind you?”
Oh God. This was a disaster.
“Do we have to do this?” I asked. “They were only used once. It was just a wild hair I got. I should have thrown them away.”