Page 141 of Coerced

That’s it. Keep it light. Keep it amusing. She can’t take anything too emotional yet. Maybe soon, but not yet.

Bracing my arm against the wall, I watched her turn on the water in the bathtub and add a liberal amount of the salt. When she turned back, I made a shooing gesture at her.

“I really meant it about having to go pee, so vamoose.”

She snorted, but made tracks and I took care of business with a sigh of relief. I managed to kick off my jeans and shorts, then debated how necessary it would be to lose my shirt. What did it matter if it got wet? It was just plain white cotton.

“Can I come back in now?” she called through the door.

“What?” I frowned. “I thought you wanted me to get in the tub and soak.”

“I do,” she said. “But you can’t get in by yourself. I’ll help you, then I’ll read to you for a bit.”

“You stay out there!”

“Can you even take off your shirt?”

“I am sure I could.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sir Serious,” she sing-sang.

“I was thinking I really don’t need to,” I tried again.

“Coming in!”

“Mira, no, wait—”

The door began to open. Whipping a towel from the rack and wrestling it around my waist was the most painful thing I’d ever endured in my life. I groaned and bent over the sink, gripping the countertop to keep from falling over as light burst behind my eyes.

I’m dying. I’m dying!

“You could have left your tidy-whities on, ding-a-ling,” she said in a dry voice.

“Boxers.”

“Whatever. Stay still.”

“Not … going … any … where.”

Something hard and cold dipped inside my shirt at my neck and ran down my spine, but I let her do what she wanted. After all, I couldn’t do anything to stop her right now. Unless vomiting counted as a defensive action.

The cold thing suddenly pressed against my neck, jolting me, and I looked in the mirror to see a pair of silver scissors cutting through my shirt. They slid down my chest to my lower abdomen, shearing through my shirt so it fell down my arms.

“Holy cats.” She caught the scissors when they flew to her hand. “John wasn’t joking about the duct tape, was he?”

I looked in the mirror with a grimace. The silver stuff was wrapped around my upper chest and one arm, and the skin around it was red and raw.

That’s going to hurt like a mother coming off. Oh, joy.

“I’ll take it off after your bath,” she said. “The water should help loosen it, right?”

“I surely hope so.”

I managed to step into the bathtub, then stood there and contemplated the least painful way to lie down from there.

“Just leave the towel on,” she said.

“I planned to.” Heat fired along my cheekbones. “I’m trying to figure out how to do this without passing out.”

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