Justine tried to look severe. “Your orchid. I can’t do anything about the bed. Besides, you’re an insomniac, so you don’t sleep anyway.”
“I want to hold you tonight,” he said. “No sex. I just want to lie next to you while you sleep.”
Her expression didn’t change, but he thought he saw a spark of amusement in her eyes. “Like hell.”
“Okay, I want sex,” he admitted. “But after that, I would let you sleep.”
The hint of a smile faded. “I can’t be with you again. And don’t make me explain, because you know why.”
Jason reached out for her, unable to hold back any longer. “It’s not all your decision. It’s mine, too.”
“There’s nothing you can say—”
“Tell me what you want, Justine. Not what you’re afraid of, not what you’ve already decided. Just what’s in here.” He slid one hand to the center of her chest and flattened his palm over her rapidly beating heart.
She shook her head, looking unsettled but stubborn.
“You’re not going to admit it?” he asked, tenderly mocking. “What a little coward. I’ll say it for you, then: You want me. You’re in love with me. Which means that I’m already living on borrowed time.”
“Don’t say that,” Justine snapped, trying to push away from him, but he wouldn’t let her. He hugged her close, surrounding her with his warmth.
“I’m a dead man walking,” he said, his voice muffled in her hair. “A goner. My goose is cooked. My number’s up. I’m Screwdini.”
“Stop it!” she cried. “How can you joke about this?”
His arms tightened. “One of the few advantages of not having a soul is that you have no choice except to live in the moment. And any moment that I have you in my arms is a good one.” He kissed her hair. “Let me in, Justine. It’s lonely out here.”
Justine went still. She took a long, broken breath. When she looked up at him, her eyes glittered with some strong emotion. “Just for a few minutes,” she said, and stepped back as he crossed the threshold.
As soon as she closed the door, he hauled her close until they were pressed front to front. He took Justine’s wrists and pulled them around his neck. Her breath was fast and anxious against his skin.
“Help me do what’s right,” she begged.
“This is what’s right.” Jason cupped his fingers around the back of her skull, guiding her head to his shoulder. It felt insanely good to hold her, the embers of last night dancing into fresh flame. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said, “but I’m coming back in a week or less. I just have to make some arrangements.”
“Arrangements for what?”
“Restructuring. There’s no reason I can’t delegate some of my responsibilities at Inari. The stuff that only I can do, I’ll either handle remotely or it can wait until I make it back to the office.”
Justine sounded dazed. “What are you trying to say?”
Jason traced the delicate rim of her ear with his thumb, and kissed her earlobe. “I want to be part of your life. I have to be. Since you have to stay at the inn to do your job, I’ll come to the island as often as I can.”
“Where … where are you planning on staying?”
“That depends on you.”
“I want you to go away. For good.”
“Because you don’t care about me? Or because you do?”
Justine didn’t respond, didn’t look at him. He continued to hold her, trying to interpret her silence.
“I lose everyone I care about,” she eventually said. “I lost my father before I ever got to know him. I lost my mother because I couldn’t be what she wanted. I lost Duane because he couldn’t handle what I am. Now you’re asking me to care about you, knowing I’m going to lose you, too. Well, I can’t.” Defeat gave each word the weight of a brick, to be used in the wall she was building between them. Wriggling out of his arms, she turned away.
He would have her, and damn anything that got in the way. God knew he’d never been a man to back down from a fight.
“Are you worried about the possibility that I might die?” he asked. “Or the chance that I might not?”
Justine whirled to face him, her face reddening as the implication sank in. “You asshole!” she exclaimed.
“What if I don’t?” he persisted, turning ruthless. “What if I stick around long enough for you to have to deal with a real relationship? Compromise, intimacy, forgiveness, sacrifice … could you handle all that? You don’t know.”
Justine glared at him. “You won’t be here long enough for me to find out.”
“Everyone’s got an expiration date,” he said. “When you love someone, you take your chances.”
Justine covered her face with her hands, clearly not above a touch of drama. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you, you obnoxious bonehead.”
He gripped her against him, letting her feel his strength, his steady determination. “You’re what’s best for me. And I’m not going to turn tail and run because of some crazy superstition.”
“It’s not a superstition, it’s … it’s supernatural causality. It’s going to happen. And don’t try to claim you don’t believe in the paranormal, Mr. I-don’t-have-a-soul.”
Jason smiled. “As a Buddhist, I don’t have to be consistent.”
Justine made an infuriated sound and tried to push him away, but he kept her against him easily. He bent to kiss her, opening her mouth with his. Justine quivered and went pliant against him, her hands groping over his back. He could feel a subtle vibration running through her, fervency barely contained in stillness. He wanted to be inside that energy, driving it higher, hotter.
Breaking the kiss, he breathed in the soft fragrance of her neck, letting it tease his senses. “Let me stay with you tonight.”
Her voice was muffled. “No way in hell.”
“Give me one night. If you tell me tomorrow morning that you still want me to leave you, I will.”
“You’re lying.”
“I swear I won’t come back unless you ask me to.”
She maneuvered in his arms until she could see his face. “What are you planning?” she asked warily. “Why do you think one night will make a difference?”
Eighteen
The way Jason stared at her made her uneasy. She didn’t trust the glint in his eyes. “I already know you’re good in bed,” she continued. “There’s nothing left to prove in that department.”
“I want to try something with you,” he said. “It’s a kind of … ritual.”
“Ritual,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.
“It’s called Kinbaku.”
The foreignness of the word, three distinct and precise syllables, tapped delicately on her eardrums and made her shiver.
“Is that something sexual?”
“Something physical. It doesn’t have to be sexual, if you don’t want it to be.”
Mystified, Justine chewed on the insides of her lips. “What does that word mean?”
A faint smile touched his lips. “It’s translated as ‘the beauty of tight binding.’ Do you have any cord or thin rope?”
“Yes, I keep some in my closet for—” Justine stopped, her eyes turning huge. “Are we talking about bondage? No. No, I don’t have any rope.”
“You just said you did.”
“Not for that. I don’t like pain.”
“There’s no pain involved. It’s…” He paused, clearly considering how to convey the meaning of a Japanese word when there was nothing in English to approximate it. “It’s artistic. Ropework shaping the body into a living sculpture. The basic form is Shibari, but it becomes Kinbaku when emotion is involved.”
Justine wasn’t buying it. “That sounds like a sophisticated way of saying you want to truss me up like a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store deli. And I don’t see the point.”
“It’s like trying to explain the point of skydiving or skiing to someone who’s never done it. You have to experience it to
understand.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
His face was inscrutable. “I was involved with a woman in Japan who introduced me to it. There are shows where Shibari is performed as an art form, not to mention seminars—”
“What kind of woman?” Justine asked, surprised by the bitter tang of jealousy. “Like an escort service woman or—”
“No, not at all. She was an executive at a software company. Smart, successful, and very beautiful.”
That hardly eased her jealousy. “If she was so great, why did she let you do that to her? Wasn’t she—” Justine broke off and swallowed audibly. “Ashamed?”
“There’s no shame in a willing exchange of power. The ropes are an extension of the dominant partner … he uses them to hold a woman, focus on her … guide her into deeper layers of surrender. My partner said that when she was restrained on the outside, it allowed her to be unrestrained on the inside. It revealed things she’d never known about herself.”
Their gazes held, the silence charged and impellent.
Justine didn’t know what to say. She was amazed by her own reaction, the darts of heat that went through her. She had to admit that she was intrigued. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would end well. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to refuse.
“I can do that for you,” Jason said, “if you’re willing to trust me.”
Her lips had gone dry. “Should I?”
“I hope you will.”
“That’s not a yes.”
“It’s not a no.”
Justine let out an uneven laugh. “Damn you. Why don’t you just say yes?”
“Because trust is not something I can talk you into. It’s your choice. What does your gut tell you?”
“I don’t trust my gut, either.”
Jason was silent, waiting patiently.
She didn’t understand herself, why she was even considering it. The rational side of her brain was aware that he was tempting her into some kind of novelty sex. But her intuition pulled toward a different understanding. As she stared into his midnight eyes, a word came to mind … “charmer.” Not the modern definition of the word, but the ancient biblical meaning: a worker of spells, binding blessings or curses to an object using knotted cord.
One night, and then he would leave.
“Promise you wouldn’t trick or hurt me,” she said suddenly.
“I guarantee it.”
Flutters awakened inside her as he fitted his hands at her waist. “What if I don’t like it? What if I want you to stop?”
“You’ll have a safe word. The second you say it, I’ll stop.”
“What if I forget my safe word?”
His lips twitched. “All you have to do is answer a security question, and I’ll send you an e-mail to reset it.”
Justine smiled uncertainly and took a nervous breath. There was no compelling reason to trust him; in the most objective terms, they hardly knew each other. And yet somehow he seemed to understand her better than any man ever had.
“Okay,” she managed to say. “You can spend the night with me. And in the morning, you’re out of here. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She led the way to her bedroom, excruciatingly aware of his footsteps behind her. She turned on the bedside lamp and opened the closet door.
“Cinnamon,” Jason said, as a whoosh of spiced air was pushed outward by the motion of the door.
“It’s a clothes sachet.” Actually the fragrance was from the besom broom she kept at the back of the closet, the rushes heavily anointed with cinnamon oil. However, she wasn’t about to start displaying all her craft-related accessories—not her broom, candles, or crystals, and especially not her spellbook. Standing on her toes, she reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a bundle of soft red hemp rope, no more than five millimeters in diameter. Hesitantly she gave the little bundle to Jason.
After running his fingers along the fibers to make certain they were soft, Jason glanced at Justine quizzically. “What do you use this for?”
“Spell-casting circles.”
“It’s perfect. Do you have any more?”
Hesitantly she retrieved two more bundles. As Jason took the rope, Justine thought there was something interesting in the idea of using rope from her rituals for a ritual of his. She watched him unroll one of the lengths of hemp. “You’re not planning to mummify me, right?”
He shook his head. “I only know a few basics. But a Shibari master would need more rope for complex patterns and suspensions.”
“Suspensions?” she asked with vague alarm. “Hanging in the air? Like a Christmas ornament?”
Jason grinned briefly. “Don’t worry. You’re staying on the ground.”
She let him draw her to the bed. His manner was relaxed, deliberate. A ritual, he’d said. She understood the value of rituals, designed to provide structure and meaning. But sex as a ritual was a new concept. How had Jason guessed at something she had never known about herself?… That her innermost desires might extend to something like this. What had been the giveaway? What had she said or done?
She remained standing as he sat on the edge of the mattress. He pulled her between his spread knees. “What if I like this?” she asked anxiously. “What does that mean?”
He understood what was worrying her. “Everyone has secrets. Twists and kinks they wouldn’t necessarily want other people to know about. There’s nothing wrong with having fantasies.”
His fingers went to the fastenings of her jeans and worked at them deftly. Justine kicked off her sandals and held on to his shoulders, feeling bewildered and scared and excited as she lifted one leg out of her jeans, then the other. Jason pushed up the hem of her knit shirt, and she pulled it over her head. Seeing the tiny copper key dangling from the chain around her neck, he asked, “Would you mind if we took that off?”
Justine hesitated before lifting the long chain over her head and setting it on the nightstand.
Jason touched her breast over the unlined bra, stroking the curve with the pads of his fingers and then the backs of his knuckles. Leaning forward, he pressed his parted lips against the deep curve. She felt him breathing hotly, sucking through the fabric until it was wet and her nipple jutted into the delicious ache.
“What’s your safe word?” he whispered.
“Chicken.”
He smiled and unfastened her bra, drawing it from her shoulders. Pulling her to sit next to him, he made a soothing sound as he felt her trembling. “You don’t have to be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid of that. I’m afraid I’ll feel silly.”
He considered that. “Sex with dignity is never really an option.”
“Yes, but—” She gasped as he hooked a finger into the side of her panties and eased them down.
“Relax.”
“I’m not good at relaxing.”
“I know,” Jason said kindly, tugging at the other side of her panties. “That’s why I’m going to tie you up.”
Her breath caught as he slipped her panties off. She clamped her inner thighs into a prim, tight seam, acutely aware of his every movement. She watched as Jason tied a simple knot with a loop at the end. Lifting her ponytail, he laid a length of the rope around the back of her neck. “I’ll start with a lightning harness,” he said, threading a section of cord through the loop. “It won’t restrain you in any way.”
“Why is it called a lightning harness?”
“It makes a zigzag pattern.”
Justine stared at him fixedly as he knotted the cord at the high center of her chest. Now that he had begun, he had the intent look of someone trying to solve a complex puzzle, or someone absorbed in a fascinating hobby.
Jason leaned forward, clamping the loop with his teeth to hold it in place while he reached around her back with both arms and rigged the rope across. Justine jumped a little, feeling his mouth so close to her skin, the searing rush of his breath. He drew his head back, cre
ated another loop, and repeated the process. Each time he wrapped the rope around her back, he used his teeth to hold the front loop in place. With each new loop added, he moved lower and lower on her body. The rope began to form a zigzagged web across her torso.
“Most of these are slipknots,” Jason said. “Any time you want to stop, I can have you out of this right away.”
Justine didn’t want him to stop. It felt unexpectedly pleasant, this slow and meticulous binding. She spoke like someone in a trance. “Can I talk while you’re doing this?”
He threaded another loop. “Talk the whole time if you want.”
“This is like a new sport: extreme macramé.”
“Are you uncomfortable?”
She shook her head. It was strange to feel snug and so exposed at the same time. Her breasts protruded between the lines of rope in a way that made them feel larger, fuller. The harness had formed a light corset that seemed to contain and concentrate all the sensation in her body. Justine could feel her heartbeat between her thighs and at the insides of her elbows and the tips of her breasts. When the last loop had been threaded at her navel, Jason tied it with a hitch knot. His hands moved over the web of cord on her torso, his palms warm and soothing.
“More?” Jason asked, looking into her eyes.
Justine nodded.
His voice was soft. “Stand up, honey.”
She complied, her heart beginning to pound as he drew the rope between her thighs and up behind her to loop around one of the back cords. Another pass between her thighs, so that now a cord lay on either side of her vulva. This was more directly intimate, more erotic. Justine cleared her throat and said shakily, “That could turn into one heck of a wedgie.”
“I’ll keep it loose.” He ran a finger beneath the cord. She gasped a little as his fingertip brushed the verge of soft, sparse curls. “Does this feel okay?”
Justine could hardly speak. “Yes.”
A finger slipped gently beneath the other side, his touch wicked and knowing. “Not too tight?”
She shook her head.
With his finger still hooked beneath the cord, he slid his knuckle to the shadowed channel between her thighs, and circled gently at the top of it. Her knees went weak, and she gripped his shoulders to keep from falling.