Free Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology by ed. Pela Via Page B

to process. I don’t have any plan, and I suppose it’ll raise a couple eyebrows with the cops, if they bother to look, that I quit right after Andy died. This should trouble me, I know, but it just glides into the mess of the last few days, another point I can’t quite make sense of, and I’m starting to get those too-late second thoughts, the feeling the suicide case gets the moment after his feet leave the bridge. My breathing picks up a little bit and I can feel the sweat beading on the back of my neck until I turn on the television and flip to a movie channel. A diversion. I’m already missing the free rentals, but it’s a third-tier horror film. The channel’s got my number.
    The killer in his rubber mask has just hacked a cellar door to splinters when the front door’s kicked open and I jump so hard I spill bourbon down my shirt. Stephanie stomps into the house dressed in the black smock and white apron from work. She sets her waitress pad in its place next to the oven and dumps her coat on the kitchen table. The door creaks to a stop, short of closing. She curses to herself and walks back to close it, pushing it slowly closed with one finger held forward like she’s miming a gun. She comes back to the kitchen and looks over at the television, to me, and back at the television. She very nearly smiles and goes to the bedroom.
    I wipe ineffectually at the bourbon on my shirt and succeed only in spreading it around. The woman onscreen comes to a bad-omen gas station with dark windows and Stephanie slinks back in. I almost don’t hear her footsteps. Her skin’s blue in the light from the screen. She’s changed clothes, something black, now, and not much of it, which means she’s probably ready to talk.
    I run my thumb around the rim of my glass. 
    “Hey you.”
    She walks toward me, slow, one foot in front of the other so heel touches toe. It has a distracting effect on her hips. 
    “Hello.”
    We exchange pleasantries and I find myself somehow blindfolded with silk, being led to the bedroom with a demented fervor that’s still charming. Hell, she looks like a teenage babysitter when she puts her hair up, but it doesn’t do for a blindfolded man to get too lost in thought. I focus on not tripping. There are no stairs, thank heaven, and I manage my way to face-up on the bed without embarrassing myself.
    I know before I hear the clink of metal that she’s going for the handcuffs, because of course that’s how it would happen. I think I’m about to have a problem with this but she fastens my wrists to the headboard and puts one hand flat against my chest and I forget to.
    We’re well underway and I’m still cuffed and blindfolded, which is unusual. Most times she wants my hands free. She’s having fun, blowing off steam. My head is clear. I’m picturing her face, thinking that I can imagine her expression and not thinking much else. She’s all fingernails and teeth for the moment. 
    She bites down hard on my collarbone and my whole body jerks. The cuffs dig into my wrists. My voice catches in my throat. The silk over my eyes smells suddenly of dust and spilled coffee and the blood in my head is the faint whine of a power drill and I’m slipping, slipping. Long, jagged breath. I’m writhing around, slippery with sweat. Stephanie gets the cuffs and blindfold off one-handed. My eyes are confused. The first thing I make out is her smile as she pulls me over on top of her. She thinks my ragged breathing is a good sign, and maybe it is, I can’t tell anymore, but I would have no idea where to start to explain and so I go with it. My mouth has gone dry but we’re not exactly kissing.
    Some time later her face is lit by the end of her cigarette. She’s got the smile on her face that means she knows she’s doing the Hays Code pose for me, smoking so the audience gets it without the director actually showing sex. Her body goes gradually limper and I can feel her drifting to sleep. 
    The bedroom is a