Page 6 of The Vigilante's Lover

Another long empty night has arrived. I feel disjointed and unsettled. Maybe it’s the letters. Maybe it’s the change of seasons.

I wonder how Aunt Bea ended up here all her life, never married, alone in this rambling old house.

I have to be careful or it could happen to me.

I check both doors. Locked tight. Not that it matters. This small town has all the danger of a potted plant.

But for some reason Aunt Bea has enough deadbolts for Fort Knox. I run my fingers over the cold steel. It takes six different keys to open them all. Maybe the first thing to do now that she’s gone is to have all but one of them removed. I will be fearless, like my mother. I won’t stay locked away.

I head back to my small bedroom. There’s nothing to stop me from taking over my aunt’s larger one, but it doesn’t feel quite right. Not yet.

I flip on the light. My room is tidy with its smooth crocheted bedspread, small dresser, and wicker nightstand. A bit of high school memorabilia still hangs on a bulletin board. I was president of the chess club.

Yes, the dullest life ever.

Except…the letters. I have placed the older ones in a wooden box on my nightstand. I run my finger over the carvings on the lid of the box, wondering if I should read through them again. So unusual, talking about all that bondage and using nautical terms. So intriguing and sexy and strange.

I lay back on the bed, imagining in my mind the person who writes them. Jax De Luca.

Does he hunch over a metal desk scattered with paper and pens? I wonder if he has a book of knots that he refers to as he writes, or if, like me, he has knowledge of them from years of study.

The letters are always addressed to “Klaus” on the envelope. Inside, each begins with a broad-stroked “K.” Whoever K. Klaus is, this Jax guy is really into her. Kate? Kathryn? Karen?

When I found the first one in my aunt’s unsorted mail, I set it aside, planning to return it. But weeks passed, and one day in a flurry of going through letters to find a missing bill, I accidentally opened the envelope.

By the time I read the first line, I was hooked. I searched through a newer stack, and sure enough, a second one was buried in the pile.

I read them, again and again. The knots made them so personal, like they were meant for me.

And they were so sexy. I’d never read anything like it. It’s as though they unlocked some secret part of me. Forbidden. Hot. Exciting.

On one of my quiet days, I drove out to the local library, and hidden behind a fern, opened up that popular bondage book Fifty Shades of Grey to see if maybe the letter writer was just copying passages from it.

I had gleaned from bits of news that filtered in from neighbors that this scandalous novel had the same sort of subject matter.

But no, the words were all his own.

I would never have written him back, except I kept passing that picture in the hallway. Mother, so beautiful and brave, fearless and full of adventure. How much harm could come from a letter? And wasn’t it a kindness? I would be easing the plight of some poor incarcerated soul.

Obviously his K. Klaus lied to him about her whereabouts, as this address has been owned by my aunt for decades. She probably distanced herself after his trial.

I tried looking up the prisoner’s name. I found very little. No arrest. No crime. Just a small notice about his arrival at Ridley Prison. No picture. Just his age, 37, and birth city, Atlanta. Also a Southerner. He would serve fifteen years of a sixty-year sentence. Only a year had passed.

Surely if he did something truly terrible, there would be news about it. Probably he was some white-collar criminal who evaded taxes or laundered funds, and the company kept it quiet to avoid upsetting the shareholders.

Or so I told myself.

My first attempts to write him fell flat. I couldn’t quite bring the sexy into the knots. So I began to copy his letters word for word, then slowly rearrange the sentences and switch out the knots. But the time I managed a draft I was pleased with, my urge to share it was strong.

So I mailed it.

Shirley’s dog howls in the night, a long terrible wail.

I sit straight up in my bed. Rowdy never makes any noise, not that I can hear down the road.

The howl is followed by a series of barks, then he goes quiet.

He must have tried to relieve himself in the yard, and it wasn’t pleasant for him after his snipping. Poor dog.

I relax back against the headboard.

I turn to the box of letters, wondering if I can handle reading one more before I go to sleep.

Maybe my dreams will be full of Jax De Luca and his slipknots.

I lift my hand in the air, the long cotton sleeve of the old-fashioned nightgown sliding to my elbow.

I giggle, imagining my wrist tethered to the bedpost. I shift my ankles apart beneath the comforter.

They don’t quite make the width of the bed to reach the knobs on the corners.

The long skirt of the gown keeps me from spreading very wide.

I’m just not the sort of girl made for BDSM novels.

But Jax doesn’t know that.

I pick up a pencil and jot down one new idea that has just come to me with my movements on the bed.

You jerk my ankles apart with such strength that my gown disintegrates into tattered shreds around my naked hips.

I shudder at the thought of it. Now it will be hard to go to sleep.

I set the pencil and paper back on the nightstand and flip off the light.

In the dark, the night is quiet, a silence I am used to.

Tomorrow I will try to sort through my life, figure out my next step.

Somewhere out there is a future for me. I just never thought to plan for it.

My eyes are heavy. For a little while, I drift in a twilight sleep. The letters ruffle through my thoughts. The cool silk of a well-made rope sliding around my wrist. The tickle of a sheet as it slips across my body.

Then I’m awake.

Wide awake.

The light on me is harsh.

My arms are immobile.

Both wrists are tight against the bedposts.

My breasts and belly are crisscrossed with red rope over my white gown.

One ankle is tethered to the knob at the base of the bed.

My other leg is in the air, lifted by an arm.

An arm in a slick pale gray suit.

A suit connected to a man with a scruffy beard and dark, impenetrable eyes.

“Good evening,” says a deep voice.

Oh, God. Who is it?

I can’t speak. I can’t breathe.

My nightgown is riding up, exposing my leg. The man tucks my ankle on his shoulder.

I begin to hyperventilate, my chest heaving. This isn’t happening. Not in my town. Not to me. It’s a dream. A bad dream.

I try to look at the man, to see inside those hooded eyes.

He waits, patiently, for me to come fully awake.

It’s not a dream. Men in fancy suits don’t wait for you to wake up in dreams.

“Who…are…you?” I finally ask.

“I think you know who I am.” He reaches down for the sheaf of letters and flings them across my body.

“Jax?”

“The one and only.”

“But you’re in prison.” My eyes dart to my body, the rope, the white pages, and his lean body in the silk suit.

His grin spreads wide.

“Not anymore.”