The Bound Heart (13 page)

Her face, drawn tight as he gently, but firmly, pushed himself in to the hilt, until she could feel his belly pressed against her.

Their eyes met as she looked over her shoulders, his ablaze in triumph, and hers melting under the heat. She’d done it.

And…it felt wonderful.

She was glowed.

She could please him.

They could do this.

Then he started to move and thoughts vanished.

The heat built as he thrust. In. Out.

The ties tightened as he clasped the rope on either side of her sex and used them to draw her to him while he thrust into her.

The thick, strange sensation of heat and fullness moved into hot need with each trust. Her body clamped onto him as he pulled out. The knot pressed in and out of her entrance as he pushed deeper into her forbidden passage. She felt the full length of his shaft glide in and out. Her sex grew hotter and wetter as he tugged the rope.

Pleasure built, higher and tighter. Harder to reach and rolling so deep with need.

Her thighs shook. He drove into her faster, tugged the ropes tighter.

Olive tugged at her hands, wanted to draw them close and push up.

The frustration strangely added to the pleasure.

His hand reached down and flicked the knot as he pounded into her. Her body seemed to break.

Olive screamed his name.

Her shout hit the walls just as his roar erupted and his hands pulled her firmly against his hips and he came hard.

She arched with pleasure as it thundered through her. Sobbed as her body pulsed again and again.

Jamie collapsed on her, his cock still deep inside her.

His breath ragged next to her ear.

“Jamie…”

The ropes clung to her, wrapping her the way his arms did, and she slipped off to an exhausted sleep.

Jamie moved slightly and slipped out of her, forced himself to move and untie her legs, rubbed her flesh even as she slept to bring the blood back to them. Her torso ties were loose enough to stay on longer. He rolled her on her side tucking in behind her. The tatami pressed into his shoulder as he slipped his arm under her head and around her again.

Olive was soft and warm up against him; her breathing had slowed, and she was asleep. The sleep that only comes after sex. He nuzzled into her hair at the base of her neck.

He should move them to the bed but he didn’t want to move, didn’t ever want to move.

Being with her, their coming together was all that he had hoped. It was extraordinary, not in what they had done, that had been nice but rudimentary is the scale of things. No it was behind all of that, in how connecting with her felt.

He knew it was going to be special and it was. And more importantly, he hadn’t broken into pieces.

All those jabs of warning… he’d been a fool.

She had folded into the rope as though it were the wind wrapping around her.

Olive loved the rope and it her. The rope curled around her setting her free.

He could still see her glazed eyes as the rope was tied. And, when he’d touched between her legs she had dripped wetness over his fingers at the feel of him and his rope.

The potential was there that day in the workshop. Her panic at the removal of her brace. The ribbon calming her as it went on her leg promised she might like what he did. But this, the actuality, was more than he had hoped.

Her body had molded itself, hummed as the rope sang its vibrations through her. Her skin sprinkled with gooseflesh, her nipples pebbled, and her sex throbbed under his finger, his tongue. She was a woman to love, a woman to make sing out her cries of pleasure. Open, unhindered, uninhibited. Her face and her eyes spoke of how she felt, what was happening to her, what she wanted, and what surprised her.

When he slipped into her dark passage so soft and easy, it felt as if they had done this forever. Her muscles rippled with pleasure as she pushed back hungrily on him.

The only danger was his heart.

Even now, it wanted to burst in his chest, to break open and drown him with the promise of a life he thought he would never have with a woman.

He’d had women interested, even women he’d liked but they were always guarded. They would always be that way.

His mother played her games with his dad, and even as young as he was when his father was still alive, something used to tighten in his gut when she did it.

His dad had a place for them all to go, a decent job and still she made him put the money in her hand to fuck her for all to see.

The worst days were when she called the next man in even before his dad was all the way down the stairs. All the while her face was closed off. She doesn’t believe she’s worth it, his dad would say to him as the door to her room closed.

Yet the day his dad went back up and pulled the next man off her, fought the man and fallen off the balustrade. His mum had taken one hard look at the man who loved her as the life slipped out of him on the ground far below and simply pulled the new john back in her room and closed the door.

After that day. Jamie became impossible. Raged at the girls, didn’t trust any of them, threw insults at the johns. He’d walk the streets at all hours, break shop windows and scatter the contents in the street, run for his life as the bobbies whistle blew. No one and nothing calmed him or got close.

Then one day he raced into the brothel courtyard out the back and this oriental man sat there tying knots, one more beautiful than the next. The oriental handed him a small length of rope and showed him a simple knot and his love of rope began.

His view of women had softened as he grew up but a part of him swore to keep them at arms length. Especially the ones who hid. That was all of them… until Olive.

The beast that he was, roared at her soft, wide-eyed ‘Oh’ as he slipped into her dark passage. The blush on her cheeks as she flushed with embarrassment at her own dark need. All the signs were there for him to see, to know where she stood, as well as where he stood. No guessing, all there in a close intimacy no one had ever let him into before.

Her shoulder pushed at his arm as she roused.

“Jamie?”

He kissed the soft curve of it and pulled his body away, reached down, and took off the sheath he had gotten from the small wooden box placing it back to be cleaned later.

“Let me loose.” Her voice was husky and soft.

Would he ever be able to do that after tonight? The fear of her breaking that dam inside of him was gone. Perhaps it had all been an illusion. Perhaps he had felt what it would be like between them and balked.

He moved closer and her lips met his, feather light, as gentle as settling dew. All those tight feelings in his chest dangerously loosened up.

“What?” Her breath filled the space between them; he drew it in. It was so sweet, so full of the flavor of her.

He wanted.

He wasn’t even sure what he wanted, but the want was there. It may be one of the first times in his adult life that he didn’t know exactly what he thought, felt, and should do.

“What? Why are you shaking your head?” Olive wriggled to sit up then gave up, and looked up at him in a soft curl of warm flesh.

Jamie worked fast to untie her.

“Give me your arms.” What could he say? He didn’t even know what to think about the feelings she caused.

He leaned up over her. God, he wanted to keep her tied to the post, keep her right where she was right now. But that wasn’t what men like him ever got. A woman like Olive. A woman like her just for him.

As happy as she was now, his rules would eventual bring unhappiness, they always did and then that it would end.

Jamie moved back giving her some space.

She winced as she brought her arms back over her head and held them out for the cuff to be untied. His fingers shook; the imprint of the rope was a beautiful thing on her soft white flesh.

“Come on, we need to get you cleaned up.” The idea of washing that soft white skin was already making him thicken. She was beautiful; but that wasn’t it. It was that it was her. Olive, a woman who hid nothing.

He stood, reached down clasping her hand, and pulled her to standing.

“Do you need the brace on?”

She shook her head no and held onto his shoulder. She still had the ribbon he’d tied earlier.

They then proceeded to untie the rope from around her body. Her eyes were all hooded again and he was thickening with need to have her again.

After all the rope was off and lay on the ground between them, she took a step and her legs faltered.

Her hand shot out to grab hold of him.

“Easy. Here let me lift you.”

Pink pinched her cheeks. “I’m too heavy.”

Had she forgotten how he’d carried her up the stairs? He shook his head at her and lifted her like the lightweight she was.

It was automatic to calculate the rope and leverage needed to put her in a harness. She would love the feel of being wrapped in rope and floating. He imagined her in a suspension hold, floating there for him. For him to swing and touch.

He took the few steps over to the basin and settled her with the bed against her hip to hold her steady.

“Here, stay still.”

A delicious pull of awareness, of sensual need sat between them. Normally, they should be relaxed. The deed done, but it was as if they had not just exhausted themselves with pleasure; it was as if they had done nothing. It coiled through him making him hard; and he wasn’t alone. Her eyes were hooded, hungry with new need.

“Olive?”

Her eyes looked down.

A smile spread over his face. Did she have any idea how special this connection between them was? He did. This wasn’t something to wash away; this was something that burned the soul.

At the basin, he picked up a cloth. The water was cool as he squeezed the excess out. He looked back over his shoulder at her. She was still looking at him through those shy, downward eyes. Her cheeks pink from her thoughts.

She was going to kill him.

He walked back cloth in hand, lifted her chin to face him.

“Olive, look at me.”

Those eyes were like rain-splashed puddles with no bottom.

“I’m going to clean us up.”

His mind was already imagining her in the different ropes he had, in the different ties he could do. She made him want to do beautiful things. Things that made that humanity of hers shine through and melt the viewer down to their soul. Together they could do that.

When the cool cloth touched her skin, gooseflesh rippled and shimmered over her body.

Jamie moved the cloth slowly, enjoying the shape and color of her skin. The way it was red where the rope had tied her, leaving its indents. A shadow of their bonds, a shadow of what had passed, beautiful to him in an indescribable way. A lattice of ownership.

Her skin was particularly sensitive to the rope. The indents were deep, the rivulets clearly defined with their faint pink against her white skin. He could photograph her with just the indents. Tie her, mark her, release her, and then take the images.

He’d thought about it before. But it had never worked. The skin was too elastic to show the rope, the skin color under the flash washing everything out. But not Olive’s skin. It was a canvas.

He looked down at her. She was back to looking from under her eyelashes again. He did smile now.

“So, what happened to my bold Olive?”

Her chin lifted.

“She’s here.” Then those eyes slipped back down and her voice softened. “I’m just thinking.”

And she smiled and looked back up to him, her eyes hiding nothing, and the air between them got so thick his knees started to feel weak.

He slipped the cloth between her legs holding her eyes. Her lids lowered just fractionally, and he kept his hand and the cloth there moving in slow circular movements. Dipping down, he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard.

“Jamie…” her hand came onto his shoulder.

Her voice, hoarse as her legs opened wider. Her noises, the rock of her hips showed she wanted him to push hard, to move faster. Yet he stayed slow. He kept his touch light.

Her hand reached out and grabbed the dresser to steady herself. He sucked her other breast into his mouth then grated his teeth over the hard peak of her nipple. He went back and forth until her breathing was frantic and her hips chased the touch she needed. Then he pushed against her hard and circled once, twice, and on the third, she clutched at his shoulders and cried out. Her small, neatly groomed nails pinched into his skin.

Jamie caught her before her legs gave way. He threw the cloth to the sideboard then carried her over to the bed, flipped back the covers with one hand, and put her in.

By the time he was back at the dresser and re-wet the cloth for himself, she was deep in sleep.

He was tighter than the twists in his rope as he slipped into the bed behind her. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. Her hair, a wonderful collection of auburn hues that was every color in the light, was silk in his face.

He would hold her while she dozed, and then take her home.

Jamie reached out eyes closed, he needed to get her home. The sheets were cool where they should have held a warm, sleeping Olive.

He pushed up on his elbow and scanned the room. Her clothes were gone.

His chest con
stricted. She had left in the clothes she’d come in.

A tight band circled around his chest and tightened with each stroke of the clock as it ticked in the room that was now far too still.

Something could be happening to her right now.

The cloak would hide much, but men were no fools. And he thought she wouldn’t have been either.

Damn it, what was she thinking?

He never went after a woman before Olive. Never followed them and knocked at their door. This would be the second time he set about London looking for her.

Yet he was not a man to let a woman he was with come to any harm.

It took forever to hail a cab. He jogged to the largest thoroughfare and found one eventually. The cabbie was not pleased to hear the Whitechapel address. They agreed on an exorbitant price despite the fact that he didn’t look like a rich man. However, he needed the cab to wait to take him home and there was danger at this time of night for the driver sitting on the street with his carriage.

It took fifteen minutes to get to Olive’s sister’s place. After banging on the door and having very heated words with the husband, her sister came to the door.

The family resemblance was strong, but the sister’s face showed she had an entirely different character to Olive. The sister’s countenance was hardened, had the tight look women around here had by the time they understood the nature of what life would hold for them.

How had Olive stayed as she had? Open, hopeful, a pureness that had very little to do with the body and everything to do with the spirit.

“I need to know where Olive moved to.”

“I told you last time, honey. I can’t tell you that. If Olive wanted you to know, she would have told you.”

“She was with me tonight and went home alone. I’m worried something may have happened to her.”

“She was ‘with’ you tonight?” She moved forward, looked over her shoulder, and then leaned on the door suggestively. “I can assure you I’m a much better person to be ‘with’ of an evening than Olive.”

It took a moment for her tone to register, her salacious manner to sink in.

The sister laughed.

“Don’t you wonder how two sisters might be different or the same? I can assure you all of Olive’s other men friends were more than interested to find out… for a price.” She stepped closer and ran a suggestive finger along his belt. “In fact, they never seem to make their way back—”

Jamie grabbed her wrist and pulled it away from its downward decent.

“You wouldn’t know the first thing at how to turn a man like me on,”-he stepped closer-“where is Olive?”

There was a flicker of concern; she looked back over her shoulder and her mouth opened.

“If you scream for your husband, I can assure you he will be hospitalized. I imagine that would put considerable strain on your finances if he was out of work.”

Those shrewd, angry eyes, the ones that were disturbingly similar to Olive’s squinted at him. She rattled off an address not far from the Split Tart and deeper into the maze of this hellhole. If Olive lived in a boarding house there, she would be in dire trouble out alone at night through that part of town and dressed as she was.

The cabbie upped the fare to go in deeper.

He worked his way through the boarding house common areas. Then knocked on each door to make sure she hadn’t been dragged into one of the rooms. A half hour later, and scraped knuckles from more than one fisticuff, he had found no sign of her. No one knew her.

He either went home and worried if he’d missed something, drove the streets in case she was on them somewhere, or he sat in his carriage in case she did live here and was yet to arrive.

It had taken him time and a lot more money than Olive had to get here as fast as he had. If Olive had left the house only shortly before him, she may still be en-route. The other option was her shrew of a sister had given him the wrong address. For a sister who clearly wanted to have the conquest of Olive’s men, she was very protective. Unless.

The thought tightened around him; the idea that Olive had grown up with so little affection. Unless the sister didn’t want Olive to have the chance at something good.

It was clear on his last visit and this one that he had better financial means. A loving sister or a loving mother would have done whatever they could to facilitate the opportunity.

It made him want to go back. But what was there to say. He could scream his lungs out at them and it would only give him a sense of satisfaction. He knew their character well. He knew the hard bitter crust that settled on women when they’d lost all hope.

As the first glow of light promised to leak into the night, he was sure it was now the latter. Olive lived somewhere else in this filthy hellhole. The idea of it irked him.

He got home, his insides were burning with anger and frustration.

Then he remembered Evie. He didn’t know where Evie lived. Olive had borrowed clothes and said Evie thought she looked nice.

If anything was going to happen to Olive, it would have happened already; but not a single part of him would be able to concentrate until he found out.

Edgar would know.

It was another fifteen minutes to Edgar’s home. The cabbie made another small fortune and looked a tad happier for it.

The sun was starting to rise in earnest. But today’s haze over the city took away its glory. It was going to be a wash of gradually brightening mist today. No clean beams of light.

A short trip later and into a red brick apartment block, Edgar opened the door.

“For fuck’s sake, man, you have no timing at all.”

“I just need Evie’s address.”

Edgar puffed up. “What for? She’s not for the likes of you, mate.”

Jamie felt his eyes roll. “I’m looking for Olive. I think she might be there.”

“You’re a fucking complex bastard, you know that. Listen, Evie’s here. I think she gave Olive a key to her room.”

He turned and whispered to someone inside, most likely Evie.

They needn’t have bothered; he heard everything.

Edgar turned to give him the address.

“I’ve got it. Room 24, 130 Brookfield Lane. Whitechapel.

And there he went again, back to the dirge of the world. What was it with these women who lived there?

It was another twenty minutes before he was in front of another Whitechapel boarding house door. Jamie knocked at the door.

After some moments, he knocked again. Tried the knob. Locked. If she was not here. His heart twisted at the thought.

All manner of images went through his head. Images of her lying somewhere at the side of the road.

He knocked harder.

“Olive!”

The key clicked in the lock.

His heart beat fast, hands clenching and unclenching. Could it all go any slower?

The door opened.

A flash flew through his torso, washed through him like a lightening blot.

Her hair was all mussed. Her eyes groggy. An old dressing gown clutched to the front of her.

“Jamie?” A sleepy but healthy Olive answered the door.

Something wiped out his mind, no thought presented itself as his hand reached out, and he stepped forward, the door slamming shut behind him as her warm, whole body was pulled against his. He cupped her face.

Then he tasted her.

The soft opening of her mouth, the lips that were innocent, stubborn, and daring. Her tongue, as it slid over his, pushed back into his mouth to taste him in return.

Her arms wrapped around him.

He drew her in closer savoring the delicate heat of her body, as it pressed against him in all its smooth, undulating warmth.

The night passed through him in flashes. Her moans, her cries, the way she’d pushed back on him, her back arched, her fingers clawing into the cushion as she called his name.

They both were breathless when he lifted his head. Her cheeks, patched with red. Her lips, swollen and full, glistened with the dampness of their kiss.

“I was planning to bring you home.”

“I didn’t want to be a bother. I know you don’t want anyone around in the morning.”

He wanted to deny it; but he couldn’t. It was clearly the message he’d given her. Yet it annoyed him.

“Shall I make us toast and tea? Evie said it was all right to help myself. She said she had some jam from a special admirer.”

“You mean Edgar? He’d take off a body part to give her a pot of jam.”

In a short while, they sat at a small table pushed up against the front window. The smell of warm tea and toast.

He watched the way she ate the toast, and the way she licked her fingers. Nothing lurid came up. No. He just knew that for all his knocking of Edgar running after Evie, right now, he’d go fight off a street gang to get Olive a pot of jam.

“Come and see me tonight.” He reached into his pocket and put money on the table. “I don’t want you taking buses or tramcars. Take a cab.”

“I don’t want your money, Jamie. I don’t want to have my life feel other than what it is because we are sleeping together. You’ve made it clear you don’t hold a girl for long. I don’t want any habits I can’t keep up after you go.”

“You have too much stubborn pride on things that mean very little. This is so I don’t lose focus wondering if you are all right. I know you don’t mind the trip and, despite my concerns, you are very capable of taking care of yourself.” He held up his hand to silence her response. “Coming home, dressed as you were, was not one of your best decisions.”

“Mmm” was all she said. But she smiled. Her small, beautifully shaped hand took the money and slipped it into her dressing gown pocket. “Perhaps I can help sort out your ropes or repair some of your clothes. Something in return. Two friends looking out for each other.”

Two friends. He could do that. Give her those latitudes he had never given another woman, because they were friends.

“So tonight?”

“I have a job trial today. A haberdashery.”

“That’s far too good an opportunity to pass up. Especially for a worthless sort like me.” He grinned at her.

He was bloody grinning.

He was a moody scowler. A hard bastard to please. He made women chase him. Kept them at a distance, had his rules. Then there was Olive.

“Tomorrow then? Come after the job trial.”

Her face beamed back at him.

She could play hard to get. Make him sweat. Chasing her down to check on her and asking her to come again left him wide open to be manipulated. He’d seen the girls at the knock-shop recognize that moment and dive right in. Their wardrobes got better, new jewelry, trips out of the whorehouse to the pub or a stroll.

Yet Olive hmade no coy moves after he so clearly showed his concern. No, she simply stood there and beamed. All that dangerous hope for what she wanted this between them to be was pinned to her chest despite her saying they were friends.

How was he ever going to get through this?

Without doing a thing, he was being drawn to her, helpless like a sailor to a siren’s song. That song had in fact been sung Friday after Friday for the last two years as she stood in the workshop luring him with her open need.

And he thought he had stayed clear. That he would have a taste and walk away. The song had been sung and he was now helpless to recall its effect.

“Listen, Olive, I’ll be working tomorrow, but I want you to come see what I do.”

She looked at him uncertain. Damn it he wished this was just easier between them. He felt all kinds of things he never felt with women in the past.

“With the rope?”

“Yes and photos. Edgar will be there with a model I use, Madeline. I want you to come and see what I do. Then stay after they leave.”

Her smile went.

“It’s my work, Olive. Just come and see.”

His heart beat faster.

It had never occurred to him that she might reject him because of his work. Perhaps because it had never occurred to him he would ever be in the position to want a woman whom he wasn’t working with.

She looked at him solemnly.

“Tomorrow then.”

The vice around his chest disappeared. He leaned forward and took a bite of the jam toast sitting in her hand as she whispered her consent. With her laughter filling the small room, he closed the door behind him as he left.

Much too dangerous was Olive Thompson
.

But it was too late to turn back now.