Chapter 3: Please Don’t Punish Me

We were on our floor, walking down the hallway toward our room, when we saw the two women—the ones from the restaurant—standing outside a door. A second later, the door opened, and the third woman appeared, stepping into the hallway.

I panicked. I was about to turn around and hobble back the way we’d come when John grabbed my arm and opened the door to the stairwell, gently pushing me inside.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m pretty sure they’d see you shuffling down the hallway.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Guess we’re lucky we’re right by the stairs.” I sighed.

We stood there waiting for the women to pass, hoping they were taking the elevators instead.

As we waited, we heard voices and footsteps. A few seconds later, a couple came walking up the stairs toward us.

When they reached the door, they looked over and smiled.

“I don’t think you’re going to make it down the stairs like that,” the woman said, still smiling. “Up, maybe. But definitely not down.”

“Yeah,” I replied. I could feel my face turning red.

“They’re really cute with that outfit, though,” she added as the man opened the door and she stepped through. He then held the door open for us.

I looked at John and nodded toward the man. “Thank you,” I said, then hobbled through, briefly closing my eyes because I knew we were about to walk straight into those women.

But when I stepped into the hallway, they weren’t there.

The woman looked back at me, still smiling, as John came through the door behind me.

“I didn’t know there was an event tonight,” she said, looking at me. “At the museum.”

“Uh...” I started. “No—no, we just got back from dinner.”

“Beccas?” she asked as we all started walking. I could hear the man talking to John behind me.

“No, no,” I said, not sure what she was talking about. “The hotel restaurant.”

“Oh, okay,” she replied. “Yeah, it’s impossible to get a table in that place unless you book months in advance.”

I nodded.

She smiled at me. The kind of smile you give someone when you’re about to ask something you probably shouldn’t.

“How are those?”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Those,” she repeated quietly, gesturing toward my wrists.

“Uh...” I said. “Restrictive.”

She laughed.

“You just seem so comfortable in them.” She glanced over at me. “I mean, you look comfortable being like that.”

I nodded, smiling.

I lifted my wrists, the chain stopping them before I could raise them very far.

“I’m stuck. Can’t get out.” I shrugged. “So ... no point in fighting it.”

She glanced over at me with a smile.

“Okay,” she said.

It wasn’t condescending or judgmental. More the kind of okay you give someone when you understand—or at least acknowledge—what they’ve told you.

“This is us,” she said, pointing toward their room.

I nodded. “Have a nice evening.”

“You too,” she said.

John and I continued down the hall until we reached our room, both of us quietly hoping we wouldn’t run into the other women.

“Did you want to eat at all?” he asked as we got inside and he put the bag down.

“We should,” I said.

John spread the food out on the table.

“They were friendly.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling as he helped me sit down.

“What?”

“He wanted to know where you got those.”

“These?”

“Yeah.”

I smiled back. “Why?”

“Get a set, I guess.” He chuckled. “He wanted to know how often I had you in those.”

“You had me in these?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you say?”

“Regularly,” he replied, laughing.

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, if I’m tying up a pretty little flight attendants and fucking them raw, then you’re in those regularly.”

He laughed again.

“Training,” he said.

“What?”

“Training,” he repeated. “The guy wanted to know how long it took you to get used to being in them.”

I looked at him.

“Training?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Apparently he was curious how long it took before you stopped fighting them and just accepted that this is how you needed to be.”

I huffed as we settled in, with him dipping the chicken strips in honey mustard and feeding me while he took bites of his burger.

“Didn’t you order a salad?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Then I changed it to something you could feed me.”

“The plan was to eat in the restaurant and have me feed you?”

“Yeah.” I sighed, feeling the embarrassment creep back in. “Like I said, it sounded good at the time. Until I realized these weren’t coming off.”

He laughed softly as he reached over and lifted the back of my jacket, examining the padlock.

“I think we could probably cut it off with bolt cutters,” he muttered. “Maybe the front desk has some. We could just tell them we need to cut a luggage lock or something.”

He gave the padlock a gentle tug, making sure it was really on, then sat back down.

“It’s definitely real. Those women were using the real thing.”

He picked up a chicken strip, dipped it in sauce, and held it out to me.

I leaned forward and took a bite.

“Yeah, there’s no slipping out,” I said while chewing. “And they’re heavy. I felt them the whole way here.”

John nodded and took another bite of his burger.

“You think those women will come back for these?”

“Don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s kind of hard to imagine them forgetting something like this.”

“Let’s finish eating,” he added. “Then I’ll go downstairs and find something to get you out of those—that way I can take them back to the restaurant.”