Rope 'Em

by Delphine Dryden

  “I’m more used to this than the ranch stuff, to be honest,” she admitted. “It’s pretty cool to see such a big outdoor event, though. That’s new to me.” It occurred to her, finally, that she ought to be surprised Lamar was there on a Giddyup weekend, calmly surveying the scene, chuckling at a guy in head-to-toe gloss red latex stopping to complain to his partner about all the dust and pieces of “hay or straw or . . . ugh, nature” that clung stubbornly to his outfit.

  “Welp.” Lamar pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth; it bobbed up and down as he kept speaking. “Nice thing about gettin’ old. Nothin’s that surprising anymore. Seen it all before. It comes and goes in cycles.”

  Victoria assumed he meant metaphorically. “I have a hard time picturing bondage nights at the ranch back in the fifties or sixties or whenever.” How old was Lamar anyway? He was one of those sun-cured guys who looked ancient but had probably looked exactly like that since about age forty. Timeless.

  He turned his head, looked at her for a second, adjusted his hat, and then turned front again. “Nothin’ new under the sun, Miss Victoria. So, you gonna take me up on those riding lessons soon? It’s like riding a bicycle; it’ll come back to you. You get good enough and you could be leading trail rides instead of scrubbing toilets and doing laundry. Don’t stop makin’ the kolaches, though, please. Robert never did have the best hand at pastry.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be here that long.” She had sent résumés everywhere she could think of. Not just Dallas but New York, Paris, Milan. Anywhere she had the remotest hope that somebody remembered her from one of her internships or from an alumni event or from a contest or award or something. “But I’ll keep making the kolaches as long as I stay.”

  “Fair enough. You think you could maybe do some o’ them . . . croissant? Plain, not that fancy chocolate business.”

  He said croissant perfectly, with a better French accent than Victoria’s. Hidden depths, Lamar had. Victoria nodded. “Yes, I can. It’s been a while. Give me a few practice batches before you judge me.”

  Lamar smiled, toothpick wiggling. “Can’t wait.” He slapped his palms on his jeans, then pushed up and away from the porch and tipped his hat. “Bonfire lighting’s in about ten minutes. That’s when the party really gets started. You enjoy the evening.”

  “Thanks! You too.”

  She didn’t know, and wasn’t sure she wanted to know, how much Lamar participated in Giddyup. But she didn’t have long to think about it. Ethan ambled over to the porch from the direction of the old barn, hands in his back pockets, irked expression on his face.

  He nodded his head at her, eyes flicking to her bare legs and her impractically short boots for a fraction of a second before he caught himself and made eye contact. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself. Something wrong?”

  “Eh.” He glanced toward the trailhead leading to the parking lot, as if he was looking for somebody. Clearly he wasn’t finding whoever it was. “Did anyone give you a rundown of how this goes? Like a schedule? What’s Logan got you doing, concessions or water bottle patrol or . . . ?”

  “For tonight, I’ve been instructed to enjoy myself.” She stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the popping along her spine, wondering if it would be worth it to go for a warm-up walk and do some stretching before it got any cooler. Just in case she got a chance to play. “Tough job, I know.”

  “So you’re off tonight? Hmm . . .” His expressive face was ridiculously easy to read sometimes; now, he looked like a cartoon villain plotting something. Not in a Skeletor way. More of a Doofenshmirtz vibe.

  She shouldn’t find that endearing. He could be kind of a tool sometimes. He still didn’t think she knew much about anything—although he had been downright complimentary of her after their ropewalk demonstration. When his attitude changed it showed up on his face instantly, every time.

  Victoria found that transparency refreshing. After years of spending all her time around designers and artists, she was used to artifice—to people who wore the image they wanted to project like costumes, with every move and garment and expression cultivated to fit a particular aesthetic. She had thought her own aesthetic was voluntary simplicity, paring things down to their essentials, form following function, organic flow. But every day of the past few months had shown her a new way in which she had failed at that. There had been nothing organic about her life, her choices, her opportunities; she’d been a hothouse flower, sustained through a complex artificial system. Now she was going through a hardening-off process. It was nice to spend time with someone who knew how the real world worked . . . how to do practical things. Someone genuine. And funny and patient and mostly nice.

  Even if the person in question was, currently, being a bit of a Doofenshmirtz.

  “I’m off.” She side-eyed him. “Why?”

  He was getting the eager, full-body tension she’d noticed on other occasions, when he got happy or excited about something. Ready to pounce. “You still want some rope for . . . whatever?” He waggled his eyebrows, putting a world of lascivious meaning into that whatever.

  She’d mostly wanted the rope to play with dyes, but she shrugged. “I guess so, sure.”

  “My stunt bunny had to bail on me.” He took his hands out of his pockets, obviously forgetting about their lurid coloration in his need to gesture. “She couldn’t get a babysitter last minute or whatever. And I’m supposed to do a thing after the firelighting and the mingle. Suspension demo of a rig I’m supposed to teach a workshop on tomorrow.” He traced invisible ropes with his hands, sketching the rig in the air. “Wouldn’t even need much flexibility, no predicament stuff, easy peasy. I was looking around for a volunteer. The main pose is just—” He approached her, hands up, palms facing her. “May I touch your arms?”

  “Certainly.” That’s all you wanna touch, cowboy? Now where had that thought come from? She needed to stop kidding herself; she knew exactly where that thought had come from, and it was nowhere helpful.

  Gently, Ethan pulled her hands from her knees, where they’d been resting, down her calves, coaxing her hands to curve around her ankles. Then he pushed her elbows closer together as he explained the tie. “Your legs would be bound together at the knees and ankles. Suspension is from a chest harness and a loop around the hips, but you’re bent this way and bound elbow to knee, wrist to ankle. Your hair is bound to the central point too, but there isn’t too much weight on that; it just keeps your head positioned with the chin up. And then . . . uh, you’re hanging with your back almost parallel to the floor, facing down. For, you know . . .” He pulled his hat off and ruffled his hair, a move of his she’d come to associate with embarrassment.

  “For, you know, spit roasting?” It was the first thing that sprang to mind, and her mind wasn’t the only thing that reacted to the imagery.

  “Or whatever.”

  Victoria nodded, pulling her own hat off—she’d purchased one at the local general store, a cheap straw tourist number that really did help keep the sun off—and ruffling her hair in imitation of Ethan. She resisted the urge to fan herself with the hat or squirm against the unforgiving wood of the porch step. Instead, she curled her toes hard inside her boots until the tingling thrill behind her breasts and between her legs subsided enough for her to think again.

  Ethan looked hopeful. In about one second he would hit puppy dog eyes, and she wasn’t ready to learn whether that would be as devastating as she suspected.

  “What would be in it for me? You said something about rope?”

  “Yes!” He fist pumped.

  “I haven’t agreed yet.”

  “Oh. Okay, so, I was going to use some of the dyed rope we’ve been selling here. As part of the demo, you know, kind of free advertising. But I could just use only a length or so of that, and then for the rest use some undyed stuff if you prefer. And whatever I tie you up with, you would get to keep.”

  An offer she couldn’t refuse.

  * * *


  After the traditional lighting ceremony at the fire pit, Ethan gestured Victoria away from the crowd and made for the old barn—now, inevitably, dubbed the Bondage Barn—to get set up. They had to talk about limits, but fortunately they wouldn’t really be doing that much. He only hoped she was more experienced with suspension than with most of the stuff he’d tried to show her around the ranch the past few weeks.

  “Okay, what are you gonna wear?”

  She pulled her Hilltop shirt off without breaking her stride. “This sports bra. Yoga shorts. Which I have on under these.”

  “Yoga shorts?”

  “They’re like . . . trunks? Like boxer briefs.”

  “That one I know.”

  Victoria laughed, a pleasant lightness over the growing cacophony of the crowd behind them at the fire. “Now I don’t have to ask you if it’s boxers or briefs.”

  He blamed the outdoor heater they walked past just then for the flush of heat on his cheeks. Had she been planning to ask him that? He’d kind of worried she was getting fed up with him, fed up with Hilltop maybe. But she came back each morning for more, and he didn’t get the sense it was masochism or submissive eagerness to please that motivated her. She wanted to learn the nitty-gritty. Part of him had to respect that, even as he winced at the sheer amount of nitty-gritty she didn’t know.

  Back in undergrad, his crowd had a set of descriptors—borrowed, if he recalled correctly, from another friend at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. It had started out gendered, but the girls had appropriated it almost immediately. Some people were chromy, like a shiny new king cab truck with expensive trim that looked like a beast but had a uselessly small engine under the hood. The California version of all hat and no cattle, basically. And other people were doers, like a horse that’ll go and go without complaint until it drops. He’d been in a lot of conversations that went something like, How’d it go last night with Jessica? Aw, just okay. She’s chromy, but she’s not a doer. Or, sometimes, Why’d you break up with Jason? He thinks he’s a doer and he’s not. And he isn’t even that chromy.

  He’d estimated Victoria as chromy from the first moment he’d seen her—she was, after all, the most beautiful woman in the world—and shortly after determined that she wasn’t much of a doer. But over the past week and a half or so, he’d realized that wasn’t quite true. She wanted to be a doer, and she was getting there. Hair shoved up in a knot, borrowed galoshes on, sweat staining her back and armpits, shoveling horse apples out of a stall and never saying a word even though it was obvious she was hurting from several hours of doing the same thing the previous day. Somehow, she was still chromy as fuck. As fuck. But she didn’t give a shit about the chrome at that moment.

  Or possibly ever. That was her dilemma now, he suspected. She had thought of herself as a doer before this. And when she’d realized she wasn’t, she’d set about remedying it and was working her hardest at that. Sure, she wasn’t always effective. But she was genuinely trying and she learned fast, and he really hadn’t given her enough credit.

  Tonight, after spending hours doing God only knew what to help set up for the weekend, she’d still managed to do something to her hair and face to make her look . . . fresh and pretty and sexy and damn. She was really good at the chromy thing when she wanted to be. And a doer. A chromy doer was . . . the gold standard. The dream, the myth.

  And maybe she wanted to know what kind of underwear he wore? Thank fuck she wasn’t planning to do this demo naked, because he was way too old to be sporting a crush boner in front of a crowd of happy perverts. Plus . . . she was only twenty-two. With her life kind of in the toilet.

  “All right.” Back on track, get back on track, Ethan. Without pausing his progress toward the barn, he hopped a few times, rolling his shoulders and shaking out his hands. They were tingling, partly sore from all the cleaning efforts and partly anticipating the rope. “All right, all right, all right. Any parts of your body I can’t touch during the scene?” As she continued toward the barn, he jogged ahead a pace or two, then turned, walking backward, gesturing with his hands as if suggesting various areas that might be off-limits.

  “Uh, nope. Well . . . no sexual touching. I mean, touch whatever you need to for the demo. But once I’m tied up, please don’t jack me off in front of the crowd or tweak my nipples or anything.”

  Oh, God, he would have more than a crush boner happening soon if that kind of talk continued. “Right. I wasn’t planning to.” He turned around, facing the barn again so he wouldn’t have to deal with visual stimulation and putting on his most clinical vet demeanor. “In order to do the chest harness, I’ll probably be touching your breasts quite a lot. Obviously your upper thighs, knees, pretty much your whole legs. And your buttocks, to do the hip part of the support.”

  “My buttocks?” She snorted. “Hot.”

  “Fine. I’m gonna have my hands all over your ass and tits, in front of God and everybody. You got a problem with that, missy?” Everybody had a default setting, and Ethan’s was being a straight-up smart-ass.

  “I am actively looking forward to it, Mr. Convenient Rope Top.” She turned her head to shoot him a look, like whatcha gonna say to that, bud? Then she stumbled over a pile of horse crap, nearly fell, and recovered only after a few running steps and jerking herself upright like a marionette. Knocked the shit off one boot toe and kept on walking. “I meant to do that.”

  He refused to find it adorable. Refused. “Safeword. The house words are red, yellow, green. Yellow me if you need to slow down or talk about anything or have any questions. Or have any circulation issues whatsoever. Uh, you don’t have any physical problems I need to know about, right? Or allergies?”

  “The safewords are fine with me, and nope. Healthy as a horse. A healthy horse.”

  “Well, feel free to let me know if something’s too much or you want information. I’ll have some background music, so the audience won’t necessarily hear if we’re talking quietly.”

  “What, like some ambient stuff? Or the traditional Japanese thing or . . .”

  “You’ve probably never heard of it.” Aaand now he sounded like a hipster douche.

  She paused at the edge of the square, packed-earth area in front of the horse barn, turning to the left, where a trail of solar lights was starting to show up in the gloaming. “That way, right? And why don’t you try me, cowboy?”

  “Oh . . . you say that right before I’m about to have you tied up at my mercy?”

  “You’ve promised not to do any sexual touching. My breasts, buttocks, and presumably my vulva and anus are safe from anything other than what is necessary for the suspension.”

  “Be still my heart. Clinical language does me in.” Because really. Clinical language did, in fact, turn him on a bit. Actually, it seemed that just about anything Victoria said turned him on a bit when they weren’t talking about how to get hair out of drains or shovel horse shit. When they were just two people strolling through the cool night air, planning some friendly bondage.

  He hadn’t been drinking. It wasn’t a moonlit night. He didn’t have a single rope on this woman yet. But he realized if he’d met her at a club or a kink convention or in just about any other setting, he’d already be in big trouble. Because he just . . . had never felt this way about anybody before. The knowledge hit like a ton of proverbial bricks. It wasn’t even the boner. It was the intrigue. The delight. The unexpected continual rightness of her.

  He wasn’t dumb enough to think that she’s different from other girls was a thing. He liked women in general, always had. He didn’t think he’d only fall for somebody who was different. But he felt different with her. It was weird.

  “Are you going to tell me about the music or not?” Victoria forged ahead of him on the path, looking down to mind where she stepped. “These lights need to be brighter. Isn’t there, um . . . What is it, low wattage or low voltage? Might be better than solar? Less green, I guess. Oh . . . you could do solar-powered low voltage. Right? Because you have
solar up at your place you’re building, so I know you’d be able to wire that and figure out the . . . meter, or the controller box thing, converter, whatever it’s called. And there are plenty of places around here to put the panels where the guests wouldn’t see them. Then you’d have brighter lighting and no problem with it going out after a few hours.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  “What?”

  “Hang on . . .” He stopped right there, pulled his phone from his pocket, and texted Logan. Because they’d been talking about the light situation and they’d known the cheap solar stake lights weren’t enough for the long haul, but they hadn’t really gotten creative with thinking about alternatives. “I think you . . .” He looked up at her, startled, then schooled his features because he knew his being startled that she’d thought of it was kind of offensive. “I think you may have just solved a problem we’ve been talking about for a while. About the path lighting. So . . . thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Are you gonna tell me the music, though?”

  He sent the text and then continued up the path. “Uh . . . it’s this big band song. It’s called ‘Sing, Sing, Sing,’ but it’s all instrumental.”

  Victoria looped her thumbs in her belt loops and nodded. “Mm-hmm. Gene Krupa’s cover or GTFO.”

  He almost stopped in his tracks. “No, the Benny Goodman live Carnegie Hall version. It’s twelve minutes long. Then I go to some Cole Porter to finish up. The demo is about fifteen minutes.”

  She shot him some fairly significant side-eye. “Cole Porter, huh? Are we talking Frank here? Or are we talking Ella? You will be judged by how you answer this question. Because you’ve already disappointed me with your ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ choice. And let’s not even get started on DS9 again.”

  Sweet holy fuck. Marry me. “Um. Ella?” Please let that be the right answer.

  “Good job. You pass. I mean, Frank has his moments, too. Don’t get me wrong. But . . . Ella. You know?”