Tina: Seven Days Bound

Chapter One

Day 0 - 8:00 PM

Tina propped her phone against the bathroom mirror, checked the angle twice, and hit record.

She was already in what she slept in: a pink cami, washed thin and almost see-through, so that the light from the glass wall went straight through it. She wore no bra, and you could see her skin and the two short gold barbells through her nipples, both horizontal, the left one capped white at both ends and the right one capped green. All four points showed. One strap had slipped off her shoulder. The matching shorts sat low under her hip bones and rode up when she perched on the sink. She was barefoot on the marble, with a gold bar at her navel, a nose ring catching the light, a small gold bar through one eyebrow, and her honey-blonde hair still done from the announcement shoot.

That was the frame. Not the apartment. Her.

‘Okay guys, so tomorrow morning is THE DAY.’ She said it the way she said everything for the camera, bright and a little breathless, as if the sentence itself were exciting. ‘CINCH arrives at nine sharp to install everything. And I mean everything.’

She bit her lower lip, caught herself doing it, and let the smile widen instead.

Behind her, the floor-to-ceiling glass held the last of the light over the water: white marble, gold fixtures, a view her followers liked to argue she hadn’t earned. Tonight she barely noticed it. She was watching her face in the small rectangle of the screen, checking whether the nerves showed.

They showed.

‘They’re making me wear just this during installation.’ She held up a folded white towel from the counter, small enough to look almost like a joke next to the cami. ‘So basically this, then that, while they put the hardware on. Livestream, on my channel and theirs. Two hundred thousand people watching me get...’ She laughed, high and a little too fast. ‘...fitted.’

She ran a hand through her hair and felt her pulse in her throat.

‘I’m freaking out a little. A lot. But I’m also excited? This is the craziest thing I’ve ever agreed to.’ The smile wavered at the edges. ‘Seven days. I can’t take anything off. I can’t shower alone. I can’t dress myself. I can’t do anything without help.’

She glanced off camera, then back.

‘And on Saturday I’ve already said yes to the lake. Dad’s other house, family weekend, two days. CINCH said the week doesn’t pause for that. So if you’re watching, be normal. Please be normal.’

For one unguarded second the influencer dropped away, and it was just Tina, twenty-six, standing in her bathroom and being honest with a camera that would show it to strangers.

‘Why am I doing this? Not because I need the cheque. I can hear you typing it, and I really have no need of it. I need something that’s mine. I’ve spent three years building this from nothing while everybody still introduces me as someone’s daughter. Half the comments said I couldn’t do it. That’s closer to the reason than the number.’

The smile came back on cue.

‘Okay. I’m going to try to sleep. Wish me luck. Love you guys.’

She blew a kiss, her full lips pursed, and cut the recording before her hand could shake enough to notice.

10:30 PM

She lay in bed with the lights off, the glow of her phone the only light on her face, scrolling through the comments already piling up under the announcement.

You’re so brave omg.

I could never.

This is either genius or insane.

Daddy’s paying for the chains lol.

Iconic. You’re making history.

She read the fourth one twice, then set the phone face down and stared at the ceiling.

‘What the fuck am I doing?’ she said quietly, to no one.

Then, more firmly: ‘No. You’ve got this. Seven days. You can do anything for seven days.’

She closed her eyes. Tomorrow the hardware would go on. On Saturday the lake house would see it. She was not going to think about who would be standing in the kitchen when she walked in.

Day 1 - 7:30 AM

The alarm went off, and her hand found it before she was fully awake.

She sat up in the big white bed. The cami had slipped off one shoulder in the night, and in daylight it was just as see-through as it had been in the evening light, showing her skin and the barbells. She wore no makeup, and her hair was a wreck from sleep. The face underneath was the one nobody paid to see: heavy-lashed even bare, her mouth soft, the bored camera expression nowhere in sight yet.

She stretched with her arms overhead, arching her spine, so that her flat stomach pulled tight between the cami and the low waistband of the shorts. Her small breasts lifted the thin pink. Her hip bones showed, and the gold bar at her navel.

‘Last normal morning for a week,’ she told the empty room, and meant it two different ways at once.

There were ninety minutes until they arrived.

8:00 AM - Last normal shower

She stripped, stepped into the glass shower, turned the water hot enough to fog the room, and stood under it longer than she needed to.

Water ran down her honey-blonde hair, turning it dark and heavy, over her shoulders and down the long clean line of her back. She was tanned all over, with no lines anywhere. She had a narrow waist, a high, neat ass, and small-to-medium breasts that looked fuller because there was so little else of her. The barbells caught the water every time she turned. She had long legs, not runway length, just clean and well proportioned on a body of five foot eight that had been built for the bikini shots that made her name. There was the nose ring, the small gold bar through one eyebrow, and a septum ring, long healed, that was simply part of her face now.

Lower down, where nobody else was invited, there was a thick gold ring through the hood and a thin chain hanging from it. It was short, and always a little in the way.

She used to catch it with the razor every time she shaved down there. That was over now; she’d had the hair lasered off months ago, and there was nothing left to shave, thank God. The chain just lay against bare skin and knocked when she walked, or when she sat the wrong way, or when she forgot it was there and then remembered.

She had meant to have it taken off at the shop before the week started, but she had never found the hour. Some nights she pinched the chain between two fingers anyway, idly, privately, and lifted it just enough to feel the ring pull before she let it drop.

That was hers, and it stayed hers.

She washed her hair slowly, savouring the ordinary luxury of doing it herself. The soap ran over the ring, and the chain clicked against her fingers once, and she left it alone. She ran her hands over her skin as if she were memorising the feeling of belonging to nobody.

After today, someone else would wash it. Someone else would watch. She would need help with everything.

She turned the water off while it was still hot. She had been in there twenty-six minutes. She had checked.

8:30 AM - Getting ready

She blew her hair out straight, then curled it loosely with the iron until it fell in that expensive, effortless-looking wave that took forty minutes to fake. She kept the makeup minimal: mascara, a slick of nude gloss, and a little bronzer along cheekbones that didn’t really need it. No foundation. Her skin had never needed it.

She put on a thin white cropped tank with no bra, so that her stomach and the navel bar showed and the barbells printed through the cotton for anyone close enough to see. Then low pink sweatpants, with her hip bones just visible above the waistband, and nothing on her feet.

She walked to the closet on the balls of her feet, because that was how she walked: calves tight, toes pointed. Three years of posing had put it there and never taken it out. She hadn’t thought about it in a long time. It was just how she stood.

She checked the mirror. There was determination in her jaw and the real smile, not the practice one.

‘You look good. You’ve got this.’

8:40 AM - Last normal shot

She propped the phone on the kitchen counter, framed herself against the white cabinets and the ocean light, and hit record one more time.

‘Hey guys! Twenty minutes. They’re going to be here in twenty minutes.’ She bit her lip, caught it, and let it go. ‘I’m nervous. So nervous. But also kind of ready? This is actually happening.’

She ran a hand through her hair again. It was the tell she had never managed to train out.

‘Okay, so the plan: handler in five, team at nine, and the hardware goes on while I’m livestreaming in a towel the size of a napkin. Then I do this for a week.’ She gave a short, too-fast laugh. ‘And I still have the lake on Saturday, with the family. So if my aunt finds this first, somebody lie to her. She thinks it’s jewellery, and I didn’t correct her.’

She looked straight into the lens.

‘See you on the other side.’

She blew the kiss and cut the feed.

Her phone buzzed before she had even put it down. It was Preston, her manager: Numbers on the announcement just crossed 40K shares overnight. Sponsors are calling ME. Do NOT screw this up. And then: Proud of you. Seriously. And no explaining the cheque on stream. You already did last night.

Underneath was a message from Nadia: I still think you’ve lost your entire mind, but I love you and I’m watching every second. Your aunt texted me. Jewellery. I didn’t correct her either. You’re welcome.

She smiled at both, typed nothing, and set the phone down as the buzzer went.

8:45 AM - Colt

The buzzer went, and she actually jumped.

She crossed the marble barefoot, her toes finding that same lifted line even now, and opened the door.

The first thing she noticed was how much space he took up. He was six foot something and built the way the job required, with a dark buzzcut and a tattoo sleeve climbing one forearm out from under a fitted black T-shirt. He carried a heavy silver case with CINCH stamped small on the lid. He had a clean, hard face that would photograph well from any angle, which she noticed instantly, professionally.

‘You’re Colt?’

‘Tina Sterling?’ His voice was calm and low, and he was already sizing up the room behind her.

‘Tina’s fine. Come in. Do you want water or anything?’

He stepped past her, set the case down on the marble with a heavy thunk, and turned to face her properly.

‘The team’s here in fifteen. Are you ready?’

She crossed her arms without quite meaning to, and had to tip her chin up to hold his eyes. Five foot eight barefoot, and she was still looking up.

‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’

He knelt and opened the case. Inside were wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs, wider thigh bands, a thick collar, coiled chains, small padlocks, tools, and the tiny folded white towel lying on top like a punchline.

She stared longest at the collar.

‘For seven days,’ said Colt, without looking up. ‘You signed it. Nothing comes off except in a genuine emergency. Saturday is not an emergency. We go with you, and the hardware stays.’

‘Yes. I understand.’ Her throat had gone a little tight.

‘Let’s do this,’ she said, and meant it, mostly.

8:50 AM - The towel

He stood up and unfolded the towel from the case. It looked worse in his hands than in the video. It was a square - not a wrap, not a robe.

‘Change into this before the team gets here. It’s protocol, and it makes the fitting easier.’

‘That’s not a towel. That’s a napkin with ambition.’

‘It’s what you agreed to be measured in. The bathroom’s yours.’

She took it in, closed the door, and held it up against her body in the mirror.

‘You can do this,’ she told her reflection, and pulled the tank over her head.

In the glass were her small breasts, the barbells, her tight waist and the gold bar at her navel. She stepped out of the sweatpants and wrapped the towel round herself. It barely closed. One hand had to hold it shut at her chest, and from mid-thigh down she was simply bare and tanned. If she let go, the whole thing would drop. That was the design.

She looked at herself for a long moment. Then she opened the door.

Colt glanced over once and looked away, professional, giving her nothing to work with.

She crossed to the couch on the balls of her feet in small, careful steps, one hand locked on the towel, with the same walk as always: calves tight, toes pointed. She sat down slowly, so that the towel wouldn’t ride up.

It rode up anyway. She felt the cool air of the room on the underside of her ass. She tugged at it, and there was nothing to tug.

‘This is happening,’ she said to the tripod in the corner. ‘I’m sitting here in a napkin, waiting for strangers to put a collar on me. Why did I think this was a good idea?’

A nervous laugh escaped before she could stop it.

Colt checked his watch. ‘Two minutes.’

‘How many people have you done this for?’

‘You’re my third.’

‘Do they all make it through the week?’

There was a pause, just long enough to notice.

‘Not all of them.’

9:00 AM - The install

The team arrived at nine exactly, four of them, with cameras already up and a laptop on her dining table showing a livestream counter that was climbing before she had even stood up from the couch. She caught the number once - five digits already - and made herself stop looking at it.

A woman with a headset said, ‘Tina, we’re live on both channels. You can talk if you want. You needn’t.’

‘Hi,’ said Tina, too brightly, one hand still on the towel. ‘So this is the part I said I wasn’t going to chicken out of. Please be nice. Or not. You’re going to watch either way.’

Someone on the team smiled into a monitor and didn’t answer her.

‘Stand up. Centre of the rug. Feet apart. You can keep the towel until the collar’s on. After that we’ll tell you.’

She stood. The towel slipped half an inch, and she caught it as the cameras adjusted.

Measurements came first: wrists, ankles, throat, the width of her hips. The woman with the tape didn’t ask her to drop the towel. She simply worked around the hand that was holding it, the tape cold on bare skin, calling out numbers in a shorthand Tina couldn’t follow.

‘Swallow,’ said Colt, when he came over with the collar.

She swallowed nothing, just to feel her throat move.

The cool metal settled against it. He adjusted it with two fingers until it sat exactly where he wanted, not choking but not polite either. She would feel every swallow for a week. A small padlock clicked shut at the back, and the sound was louder than it should have been in her living room.

The counter in the corner jumped.

‘How is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s a collar,’ she said. ‘It feels like a collar. I haven’t got a prettier sentence.’

‘Good. Wrists.’

She had to let go of the towel with one hand to give him her arm, and the square opened at the side. She caught the front against her chest with her forearm just in time, so that the towel twisted instead of dropping. It was close - close enough that the camera on the left must have caught the barbells for a second. Heat climbed her throat and settled under the new metal.

‘Sorry..’

‘No need to apologise to the lens. Other wrist.’

She did the second one more slowly, and the towel stayed, just. The wrist cuffs locked on, with no chain between them yet, so both her hands were still hers.

The ankles came next. She had to look down, and the towel rode up again. She felt air on the top of her ass and couldn’t fix it without using both hands on the towel at once.

She left it, her face hot.

He fitted wider cuffs around her ankle bones, with a three-inch chain between them, and made her take a step to test it before he locked the last click. The step was ugly. She had to catch herself, and the towel jumped, and she made a sound she would later claim was a laugh.

‘Again,’ he said.

She did it again, shorter this time, and the chain answered. Three inches wasn’t a walk. Three inches was a decision somebody else had made about her feet.

The thigh bands went on last, wide and snug, gold hardware on tanned skin high on each thigh, just below where the towel ended. They were more for the look than for any use, and everybody in the room knew it, including her. The woman with the headset asked her to turn a quarter for the stills camera, and Tina turned. The towel opened at the side, showing her hip and the high curve of her ass. She couldn’t close it and keep her balance on three inches of chain at the same time.

So she stood there and let them have the side.

All the while, the counter kept climbing: forty thousand, ninety, past two hundred thousand by the time Colt straightened up and checked the collar one more time.

‘How does that feel?’

She tested her feet against the three inches. The collar moved when she swallowed. The thigh bands sat there like jewellery with opinions. Her wrists were cuffed but still free of each other. That part hadn’t happened yet.

‘Heavy,’ she said. ‘Real. I honestly couldn’t tell you. All of it at once.’

‘Day one is the worst day for that particular feeling.’

A voice came from the laptop, because somebody had decided reading out the chat was content.

She looks smaller in the collar.

Ask her to drop the towel.

This is the hottest thing she’s ever posted and she hasn’t even gone outside.

Tina opened her mouth and closed it again, and looked at Colt.

‘You’re not going to ask me to drop it because of a comment.’

‘I’m going to ask you to drop it because we need a clean fitting photo, and the towel’s in the way,’ he said. ‘You can say no. The contract has the word. If you say no, we dress you and we lose the still. Both are real options.’

She stood there: two hundred thousand people, her rug, a napkin, and a lock at her throat.

‘How long?’

‘Thirty seconds. Your hands come up and cover what they need to cover. We’re not asking you to pose open. We’re asking you to stop hiding the hardware behind the towel.’

She laughed once, not happily.

‘Fine. But please, no making it a thing in the edit.’

‘It’s already a thing,’ said the woman with the headset, almost kindly. ‘On three.’

Tina let go.

The towel hit the marble. Both her hands still worked, because nothing joined them yet, so she crossed one arm hard over her breasts and pressed the other hand low over her pussy, and stood there covered only by her grip. The hardware was fully visible, and the barbells were hidden under her arm. She stared at a point on the wall above the laptop and felt the flush spread all the way down her chest.

Then Colt held up the last piece: two inches of chain. He let her see how little it was.

‘This goes on now.’

‘I can’t hold both if you do that.’

‘That’s exactly why it goes on now. You’ve already shown us you can cover yourself. Now you can’t. That’s the still.’

‘Colt..’

‘Say the word, or give me a wrist.’

She gave him the wrist, her face burning. He clipped one end of the chain to her left cuff and the other to her right. Two inches. Her hands had to come together, so the arm across her breasts was pulled down, and the hand over her pussy was pulled up, and neither place stayed fully hidden. She tried to choose, and the chain chose for her: a sliver of nipple at the top, and below, everything else. She made a small noise and stopped moving, because moving made it worse.

‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘That’s the photo.’

On the chair behind him lay the bottoms, thin and side-tied, already waiting, because with three inches between her ankles she wasn’t stepping into anything. Someone would have to dress her.

She stood there and let the cameras have what the two inches had left them.

The shutters went: one long, ugly second, and then another.

‘That’s thirty,’ she said.

‘Hold.’

‘You said thirty.’

‘I said we needed the still. Hold.’

She held, her knees not quite locked, the three inches of chain forcing her feet slightly apart. Her arms had started to ache from holding the position, and she didn’t dare shift them. Someone in the chat wrote something the headset woman didn’t read out, and that told her plenty on its own.

She counted in her head, because nobody else was going to count for her. Forty. Forty-five. A camera moved round to her left and took in the line of the thigh band, the bare hip, and the fact that her hands were the only thing standing between the lens and everything else.

‘You can blink,’ said the woman with the headset.

‘I know when I can blink.’

Fifty. The flush had spread down between her arms. Her hands stayed exactly where they were.

‘Done,’ said Colt.

He picked up the towel and put it in her hands. She couldn’t wrap it properly with two inches of chain, so she clutched it against her chest instead, a shield that didn’t close at the sides, and turned her hip slightly so that at least the towel covered the one thing her hands couldn’t reach.

‘That was..’ She stopped. ‘I haven’t got the word.’

‘You’ve got seven days to find it. Walk to the window and back, holding the towel like that. We need to see how you walk in the hardware before we put a dress over it.’

‘You want me to walk. Like this.’

‘I want the stream to see that you can move. If you can’t, we stop and call it. That’s the test. It’s not a show.’

She looked at the window: twelve steps, the towel clutched to her chest and gaping open at the hips, three inches of chain, two hundred thousand people.

She walked.

Every step rang. The towel slipped on the third, and she caught it with both hands together against her chest, so that the fabric twisted instead of falling away completely, and kept moving before anyone got more than a flash of skin at the sides. Her face was burning. At the window she had to turn, angling her hip into the glass for half a second, so that the reflection did the covering her hands couldn’t manage.

Then back across her rug. She made it to Colt without falling, which felt like a stupid thing to be proud of.

‘I can move,’ she said, and it came out rough.

The woman with the headset was reading again, because the producer had decided this was the bit: ‘Someone wants to know if she’s wet.’

Tina stared at the laptop.

‘You are not reading that out loud in my house.’

‘It’s live. I can skip things. I can’t unsend them.’

Colt said evenly, ‘You never answer the chat with your body. You answer me. Clothes next.’

She clutched the towel harder, and the two inches of chain made even that look as if she were offering her chest to the room.

‘If that goes in the recap, I’ll lose my mind.’

‘Then give them no second sentence,’ he said. ‘Dress.’

10:10 AM - First failures

Her ankles were already done: black matte, thin, tight, three inches between them. She could stand, but she couldn’t take a real step. The chain sat against the bone and didn’t pretend to be jewellery.

The bottoms came next, from the chair. They were pink and side-tied, two strings and almost nothing else.

‘Hips.’

She stood on the balls of her feet, because that was how she stood. The towel was gone. Her wrists were cuffed, with the two inches of chain still between them. Her long thighs were bare, her ass held high and tight by the same instinct that always straightened her spine for a camera, and her thighs were locked together without her deciding it. She had nothing on but the collar and the hardware, and heat was already sitting in her face.

Colt went down on one knee.

He didn’t look at her face; he looked at the work. She felt it anyway. The first string went around her left hip, and his knuckles brushed her skin. She flinched, then made herself stop. He pulled the knot tight. The triangle at the front was only a strip that sat over her pussy without ever becoming a bottom. The back string went between her cheeks and disappeared, doing almost nothing, while her closed stance did the rest.

He did the other hip the same way, tight and impersonal, if you only listened to his hands. His breathing wasn’t impersonal. She heard that too.

‘I approved a bikini. That is not a bikini.’

‘It’s the one in the rider. Side-tie, because of the chain at your feet.’ He stood up and looked at her once, the full length of her, and then he looked at the wall. Too late: she had seen it. ‘If you want it re-read, we stop the morning.’

She looked down at the pink strip, her bare thighs, and the rest of her ass. There wasn’t much there, and it was still far too much.

‘Do the top before I say something I can’t take back.’

The top was two triangles and a string that tied at the back. Her hands were already cuffed together. She couldn’t have reached that knot even without the chain.

‘Turn.’

She turned, and on three inches of chain it was ugly. Her ass moved with it, and the pink string stayed exactly where he had put it. He stepped in behind her, his chest close, not touching her, and then touching her because there was no room not to. He lifted the two triangles over her breasts. The pink didn’t cover them; it sat on them, with soft flesh showing round both edges and her nipples already marking the fabric, the barbells printing through.

He tied the back tight enough to keep the triangles in place, but not tight enough to turn them into clothes. His fingers were at her spine, and she felt every second of it. She was pink to the throat, and angrier about that than about the bikini.

‘You can breathe,’ he said.

‘I’m breathing. Please stop narrating me.’

He tugged the two-inch chain between her wrists once, black matte, thin and tight, to show her how little play it had.

‘That’s..’

‘Enough to find your other hand. Not enough to dress yourself. Not enough to fix a knot if one of those strings goes. That’s the point.’

She tested it. Her hands could touch, but they couldn’t get away from each other. When she tried to cover herself, the chain turned it into one movement: her breasts or her pussy, never both. She stopped trying, her face hot.

The white sundress should have been the modest part. It wasn’t. It had thin straps and thin cotton and no lining.

‘Arms.’

She couldn’t do arms; two inches wouldn’t let her. So he put it over her head from behind. The cotton dragged down over the pink, over her chest and her stomach, and stopped far too soon. The hem sat high on her ass, so that the undersides of both cheeks were below the dress rather than inside it. If she stood still, the pink showed at the edge. If she took the three-inch step the ankles allowed, the dress climbed another inch.

He stepped back and looked. He didn’t hide it this time: the dress, her thighs, the chain at her feet, the place where the white had already lost. She watched him take it all in and then lock it away, professional and late.

‘You’re staring.’

‘I’m checking the hem.’

‘Check something else.’

She tried to pull the hem down anyway, out of habit more than hope. Both hands had to come together to do it, and the chain made the pull look like a prayer. The hem came down an inch and climbed back up the second she let go. She felt cool air on the bottom of her ass. He could see it, and she knew he could see it.

‘This is shorter than the mock-up.’

‘It’s the dress you approved. If you want it re-read, we stop the morning and lose the beach. Your word.’

She stood there with the hem in her chained hands, her breasts printed through the white, pink strings at her hips, and let it go.

‘Never say I didn’t ask.’

‘Noted.’

The team packed up for the beach that afternoon: the boardwalk, the brand tent. She would walk the rail in this dress and this hardware with the stream still running. The dress wouldn’t survive the wind, and she already knew it. Underneath it was the pink, tied on, almost nothing. That was the sentence she had signed and hadn’t let herself picture until the collar had already closed.

In the gap, Colt made her lunch.

She tried to eat it herself first. The fork felt wrong in a cuffed hand that had to bring its twin along for every movement. She got one bite cleanly into her mouth, and the second dropped lettuce across the counter.

‘Do you need help?’

Pride fought with something more practical for about four seconds, and lost.

‘...Yes.’

He picked up the fork. ‘Open.’

She opened her mouth, feeling her whole face heat up, and let a grown man feed her lunch one bite at a time in her kitchen, on day one of seven. The collar moved every time she swallowed, and she felt it every time. That was going to be the week. That was going to be Saturday too, and she wasn’t going to think about the kitchen at the lake until she was standing in it.

‘This is humiliating,’ she said once, quietly, looking anywhere but at him.

‘It won’t always be. It’s just new.’

She almost said something sharp. What came out instead was this:

‘The comments asked me to drop the towel, and I did it for a still. I need you to tell me that was the last time today I stand in my own living room with nothing on.’

Colt wiped the counter.

‘The beach isn’t nothing on. The beach is the dress and what’s under it, and the hardware. Saturday’s the same, in a different house. You can say no to either. You lose the rate. That’s in the paper.’

She looked at her wrists: black, matte, tight.

‘I’m going to the beach. I’m going to the lake. I’ve already told them I’m coming, and I’m not backing out because I got a collar.’

‘Then finish the water. I can’t hold the bottle and the door.’

She had to use both hands on one bottle, and spilled a little down her chin. He said nothing about it. The collar made her feel the swallow anyway.

11:00 AM - Leaving the building

Getting to the lift took four times as long as it should have. Three inches at the ankles turned her stride into a short shuffle, and the chain answered every step. The sundress moved whenever she moved, so every tiny step was a negotiation with a hem that had already lost.

A neighbour got in at the fourth floor, took one look at the collar, the black cuffs and the dress that was doing less than a dress should, and very carefully said nothing. His eyes did the talking all the way down. When she had to catch her balance, pink showed at the edge of the white. Tina kept her chin up, because that was the one part of her nobody had chained. She could feel the flush on her cheeks.

In the lobby, the doorman’s professional blankness slipped for exactly one second. Two women waiting for a car stopped talking and didn’t bother pretending not to stare.

Tina shuffled out to the waiting car with the sound of her restraints the only thing she could hear over her pulse. The dress lifted on a step, and she felt cool air under her ass and the pink strings at her hips. She couldn’t catch the hem with both hands without looking like a woman holding her skirt down in a lobby, which was worse, so she left it, with heat all the way down her throat.

One of the women by the door said, not quietly enough, ‘Is that a bit?’

Tina heard it and didn’t answer. She kept her chin up and kept taking her three-inch steps, in the collar and the dress, which was doing exactly what a dress that short does when you can’t take a normal stride.

Colt held the door.

‘Beach in twenty. Are you ready for actual people?’

She looked down at the cuffs, black and locked, and real now in a way the livestream numbers hadn’t quite made them feel.

‘Ask me when we get there. And please keep my aunt away from the stream until Saturday. She thinks it’s jewellery.’

‘That’s not my job.’

‘I’m aware. I’m asking anyway.’

The car pulled out into the San Diego morning. Ordinary traffic moved around them as if nothing about this were unusual at all. Somewhere behind them the stream counter kept climbing toward a quarter of a million people who had never met her and were about to watch the rest of her week happen in real time.

Tina sat with her knees as close together as the ankle chain allowed, her hands in her lap because that was as far as they would go, the collar cool against a swallow she couldn’t stop, and watched the water come up on the left side of the car.

Seven days. The lake on Saturday.

She had said she could do anything for seven days.

She was about to find out if that was true.

END