“I have worked this rope a thousand times before, and yet this one is new. This one is fresh, and I want to hold it, too. I want the marks on my skin, to make them indelible so I do not ever forget this first night. This first night, one of a handful I will spend with you. One of a handful of nights, of scenes that will feed my soul for the rest of my life. Looking at my angel, flying. Not free for now, but safe and warmed and cared for in my ropes.”

He finished the poem that ran through his head by going on his toes and managing to capture her lips with his. He knew some of his counterparts would tease him for the poetry that he sometimes wrote down but mostly left in his head, but those words were as much a part of him as the way he fought or how he did his job. He accepted them, used them when he needed to.

How many times over the next forty years would he form words in his brain that spoke of her? He forced the thought out of his mind. He had to live in the now when it came to her. This whole damn night before he’d taken her in here had been walking a tightrope. He’d planned on talking to Will in the locker room, but he’d missed the man and then he’d been sure Will was going to out him. Not that he was doing anything wrong. The relationship was real and the job was real, and the fact that he was involved in both didn’t make either less important.

“How do you feel?” He meant the question to come out in a patient tone, but he kind of ended up growling the words her way. There was something about the words playing through his head that made him anxious.

“I feel good, Master Remy. I like suspension, but I wish your hands were on me,” she whispered. “I like this, but I like being close to you more.”

The words in his head started to shift from pretty poetry about emotions to something more primal, dirtier, and yet still very much how he felt. “For some subs, this is what they want. They want to sit here in suspension and float for a while. Others, well, they want things a little different.”

“I want whatever gets your hands on me. Please. But nothing, I mean nothing, ever made me feel as close to you as your words. It was beautiful. I never heard you talk like that during a scene. Were you quiet about it with the others?”