The Secret Window

Rachel Adams woke up to the smell of leather.

That was the first thing. Not the cold, though the room was cool, and not the mattress, though she could feel right away that there were no sheets on it, only rough fabric against her bare back. The smell came first, rich and close, and then the feeling that went with it: straps. A lot of straps.

She opened her eyes and took inventory the way she'd been trained to. Ceiling, plain. Walls, plain. One of them had a long dark panel set into it at about head height, smooth as glass and black as a switched-off screen. She looked at it for a long moment and decided she didn't like it.

Then she looked down at herself, and liked that even less.

Somebody had taken everything but her black bikini panties. Her own clothes were nowhere in sight. In their place were leather straps, broad black ones, buckled snugly across her bare breasts and wrapped around her torso, cinched so neatly that each breath pushed her against them. Her arms were behind her. She tried to bring them around and found they were strapped there, pinned together, the leather creaking when she pulled.

And there was one more. It ran down her front and between her legs, tight through her crotch, and buckled off somewhere behind her where she couldn't reach it even if her hands had been free. Rachel felt her face go warm. That one wasn't about holding her. That one was a message.

She was bare from there all the way down. She wiggled her toes, still polished that silly pale blue she'd picked out a week ago, back when the job had seemed simple.

Fine. She'd been in tight spots before.

She started with the obvious. She rolled onto her side, drew her knees up, and pushed against the mattress with her feet, trying to work her shoulders loose. The leather creaked and squeaked with every inch. Her bare soles scuffed across the fabric. Nothing moved except her.

She rolled the other way and tried again, twisting her wrists inside their straps, flexing her fingers, feeling for a buckle she could get a fingernail under. Every strap was exactly as tight as the last. Whoever had done this had done it slowly, and had enjoyed every buckle.

Rachel let out a long sigh at the ceiling.

Then she glanced at the black panel again. If she was being honest with herself, she'd been glancing at it the whole time.

She knew the type, or she thought she did. The kind of man who builds a room like this and puts a window in the wall so he can watch from the other side of it. She could picture him perfectly: a deep leather chair, a glass of brandy warming in one hand, a cigar in the other, the smoke drifting up while he watched his captive squirm. Not hurrying. Never hurrying. Why would he? He had all evening.

Maybe he was there right now. Maybe the glass was empty and so was the room behind it, and all this was just her imagination. She couldn't tell which idea bothered her more.

"Enjoying the show?" she said to the panel, and her voice came out breathier than she wanted it to.

The panel said nothing. Of course it didn't.

So she gave it a show, because she didn't have another choice. She arched off the mattress and pulled with everything she had, shoulders and back and hips, until the straps across her chest bit in and the one between her legs pulled tighter than ever. She gasped and dropped back down, panting. Tried again from her stomach. Tried kicking, which did nothing but make noise and send her sliding across the bare fabric. She writhed from one end of the mattress to the other, and the only things that changed were her breathing and the creak of the leather.

She was flushed and out of breath when she finally stopped, lying on her side with her cheek on the mattress, staring at the glass.

That was when she heard the door.

It didn't open where she could see it. It was behind her somewhere, a soft click and the faint scent of cigar smoke drifting in with it. Rachel went very still. She'd wanted proof that someone was watching, and apparently she was going to get it.

She didn't see his face. She saw only a little of what came next: more straps, the cool slide of leather against her thighs, a firm hand bending one leg up until her heel met her backside. A buckle. Then the other leg. Then another buckle, and another, each one pulled snug with a patience that made her grit her teeth.

Then the click again, and the cigar smoke fading, and she was alone.

She tried to straighten her legs and couldn't. Her thighs were strapped tight to her ankles now, both legs folded up and held there, and the little bit of movement she'd been using to roll and kick and slide was simply gone.

Rachel stared at the panel. She was almost certain, now, that he was back in his chair.

"Seriously?" she said.

She still had to try, so she did. She rocked, she squirmed, she worked her shoulders and her hips and the very ends of her toes, and all of it went into the straps and stayed there. The leather creaked. Her soles rubbed the fabric in useless little circles. Her breath came short and frustrated, sigh after sigh, as the minutes went by and nothing gave even a little.

Somewhere behind that black glass, she imagined, a man was refilling his brandy.

Rachel had gotten herself out of a lot of fixes. She lay there on the bare mattress, strapped up, frogtied and nearly naked, and admitted to herself that this was not going to be one of them. Not tonight.

She sighed once more and started pulling again anyway, because the show, apparently, wasn't over.