As he moved up her calves, then her thighs, Bettie felt a strange phenomenon. The fight was leaving her. The constant, low-grade hum of anxiety that was her normal state began to quiet. The ribbons were not a cage; they were a permission slip to be vulnerable. She felt her hips soften into the table, a deep release she hadn’t known she needed.

He began with her feet. His hands were extraordinary—strong, yet impossibly precise. He worked the arches, the heels, the taut tendons of her ankles. The ribbons, slack as they were, prevented her from instinctively jerking away when he found a tender spot. She had to breathe through it. She had to accept it.

Bettie, whose entire life was a performance of control, found the idea both terrifying and irresistible.