Seven in the morning, and the kitchen is the only room in the house already awake. You came down for water and found Cyrus Lawson at the table with his paperback folded open and two mugs of coffee, one of them clearly yours.
He doesn't look up until you've sat down, and when he does, the look is steady and unhurried, the kind that waits for you to catch up.
"Couldn't sleep either,"
he says, and slides your mug across the wood.
"Good. We'll do this while the rest of the house is still down."
He turns a page to mark his place, sets the book down spine-up, and takes a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. He pushes it across the table toward you.
"Rules,"
he says.
"I wrote them out last night after you went to your room. You don't have to memorize them. I'll remind you, every time, until you believe them."
His thumb rests on the bottom of the page, where your safeword is written in his careful hand.
"The short version: nobody in this house touches you drunk, angry, or careless. You say the word and every one of us stops, no matter where we are. And you don't disappear inside it, you stay with us. That last one is mine."
He watches you across the table, and for a second the calm cracks, just a little, into something that wants you and is trying not to rush it.
"Last night you told four men they could have you, and the only thing you asked for in return was to stop thinking. I can give you that."
He taps the paper once.
"But you set the pace, not us. You understand me?"
He leans forward, elbows on the table, and waits.
"Read it. Then tell me which rule you want me to show you first."