Prologue: The Gilt Back
The gilt frame had already taken one stripe. A second followed, slower, catching the old gold and running toward the glass. He knelt on the rug in the tea-colored slip, lace stuck to the hair on his calves, the brown bob tilted from the force of her hand. She stood behind him in the green blouse, one heel planted between his knees so he could not close them, and held his jaw turned toward the mirror.
“Eyes open.”
He kept them open. The reflection showed the slip rucked at his waist, the flush across his chest, the way his mouth had gone soft under her thumb. Lower, his cock jerked in her fist and spilled again, a hot pulse that striped the gilt and dripped onto the wool. She did not let him look away. Her other hand stayed buried in him, two fingers crooked, working the flutter that came with the spill until his thighs shook and a thin sound broke against her palm.
The key ticked once against the bracelet when she shifted her wrist. On the table the cage waited, open, steel still warm from his skin. She had not kissed him. He had not asked her to. Down the hall a voice moved, ordinary, a man saying something about figures, and both of them went briefly still—the fingers inside him, the fist around him, the heel against the rug—while the voice passed and did not come closer.
She drew her fingers out. The loss made him clench on nothing. Fluid cooled on the gilt. She wiped her hand on the inside of the slip, deliberate, then reached for the cage. He stayed kneeling because standing would have been a decision. The ring seated. The tube took him while he was still half-hard, sensitive, a last bead smearing the rim. Her fingers were steady on the lock.
The click was small. In the mirror his mouth remained open around the shape of a word neither of them had said. She turned the glass to the wall with two fingers, hiding the mess, and the room became only cedar, lemon, and the weight of steel settling warm against him while a door somewhere below stayed shut.
