Her wrists went behind the chair back, bound to the wooden spindles with the cotton rope they now kept in the kitchen drawer between the takeout menus and the spare batteries. Her ankles were tied to the front legs, spread wide enough that the inside of her thighs felt the cool air. The overhead kitchen light was on — the bright functional one, not the soft lamp kind — and there was nothing romantic or dim about it. It was just light. Ordinary light falling on extraordinary things.

Ryan knelt on the hard kitchen floor in front of her without hesitating about his knees and buried his face between her...