The Bound Heart (22 page)

The morning flew by. Mrs. Okazaki made a wonderful lunch for her. Jamie ate up here in the attic workshop. It had given her time to think downstairs.

Outside the sun was trying to shine. The thick pea soup of London fog was smothering the light.

Olive stretched her legs out in front of her.

“How are your legs?” Jamie asked.

He left a long rope suspended from a hook at the side of the workshop with something that resembled a swing at the end of it. Another hung down in the center of the room, the place they’d done rope before.

“Sore. Do you exercise like that every day?”

“Nearly and Okazaki occasionally joins in.”

It seemed that Jamie was very confident after he spoke with her yesterday at the gallery. Today she didn’t go out to look for work instead he’d come and collected her after breakfast and on a small patch of lawn next to the pond, they’d worked on muscle strengthening exercises and stretches for flexibility.

Jamie had explained it would helped with the rope as he started to use ties that involved suspending her with less support and for longer periods of time. It took a remarkable amount of strength not only for him to craft the suspends and pull her up and tie her off, but for her to hold the poses.

Jamie, came to stand beside her. They both wore loose black pants and shirts. ‘Work clothes’ Jamie said. Hers had been Mrs. Okazaki’s.

“Here this will help.”

He walked behind the chair she was in and then started to massage her arms and shoulders. The firm squeezes and movements of his fingers were divine as the tension seeped out of her.

“You’ll do well to have an extra-long soak in the bath each night until you get used to the workouts.”

He dropped down next to the chair and started to unbuckle her brace. The usual shakes and shivers were absent.

He looked up at her an eyebrow arched. It was a good sign. But as he got to the last buckle and the brace slipped open her leg started to shake and flurries started to fly around her chest.

“It’s stupid really. I don’t need it.” There was no need to explain, they both knew. She’d tried leaving it off after her decision at Iwara’s shop but every day, the small rope in hand, she’d instead reached for the brace. But she was building courage…

“It’s natural that it has come to mean a lot of things. Don’t let it upset you we can work with it.”

Jamie reached into his pocket and took out the piece of rope he now used on her leg every time he took the brace off. As she worked to get her breathing back to normal, he wrapped it around her calf and tied it off and like every other time the panic ebbed away.

“So are you ready for some hard work?”

He grinned at her and pulled her to standing as he rose.

“I thought I’d done the hard work. It‘s time for you to wrap me in rope and seduce me.”

Jamie shook his head as he bent down and massage her thighs and calves.

“That my dear is a reward, but only if I think you’ve worked hard enough. You girls from Whitechapel are just too soft.”

She laughed at his ridiculous words.

“Oh, Oh… that’s good. Oh…ouch.”

Olive leaned forward and gripped his shoulder for balance.

“That calf is way too tight.” He squeezed it again. “I’ll work the tightness out of the muscle.”

“Ouch.. Jamie… stop.”

She shuffled backwards out of his grasp.

“I’m wait for the bath.”

He just grinned at her, ‘too soft’ he mouthed at her and stood up.

“This is what we are going to start with.” He walked her over to the rope that hung at the side.

“Every day I want you to practice on this,” his hand came around the rope. “Suspensions and most ties in one place should not remain longer than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes is a very long time in a hold that might be supporting your full weight but where you have to hold your head, legs or arms up or it a position.”

He paused.

“I understand.” She nodded him to continue.

Really, until she tried some of these things out it was hard to appreciate all the dynamics, but what was becoming clearer were the layers of complexity and importance in what had looked like a simple erotic image in the photo plates at the shop.

“This is what I want you to do.”

The base of the rope was just above her hip height and had a swing like harness. He slipped himself into the loop at the bottom of the rope and placed the wide flat piece, like the seat of a swing, against his belly.

“We’ll start with the wide section on your belly and gradually we’ll move it off center as your stomach muscles get stronger.”

He then leaned down so his weight was supported by the swing and lifted his legs off the ground so his body was parallel to the floor and balanced perfectly on the small swing section.

Her stomach quivered. He looked beautiful. The perfect form of him. The wonderful way he was all held in a straight line parallel to the ground.

Jamie dropped his feet to the floor and stood.

“Now, you try.”

Jamie placed the swing on her stomach.

“Just lean into it.”

She did.

He then stood right in front of her.

“Reach out and hold onto me, then lift your feet off the floor. You will not have the strength to do it all in one move yet.

He held her steady as she lifted her feet.

The swing pushed hard into her middle taking her full weight.

“Now, think about straightening your legs.”

Her fingers held onto him as hard as she could while she focused on straightening her legs out behind her.

“That’s it. Good job. A little higher, straighter.”

Her whole torso stiffened to support the weight. She could hardly breathe.

“Now do you feel any pain? Anything dangerously tight? Don’t crane your neck back. Good.”

She shook her head ‘no’. There was nothing sexy or romantic about this, certainly not erotic.

“Now, try and balance for a few second alone.”

“All right.” The words squeaked out of her. Her legs were already feeling like lead weights.

Gradually she let go of Jamie.

“I’m right here if you need to grab out.”

She wobbled trying to hold her balance and not tip forward or back like a see-saw. She lasted for under a minute then dropped her legs to the floor.

Her back hurt and her legs felt unsteady. Olive shook out her legs, rubbed her belly.

“Can Madeline do that?” She was breathing heavy and she had been still.

“Madeline, for all her lounging about when we prepare a photo session, works very hard at her fitness. But you’ll catch up, we’ll do it together.”

Together.

The word rippled through her and she worked very hard not to make it mean more.

“How long did you say I have to be able to do that?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“That’s impossible.”

Jamie shook his head and got into the position himself.

Ten minutes later, his form was still perfect.

He dropped his feet.

“Target ten. Tell yourself it’s possible and your body will listen.”

Both hands came and rested on her hips.

It was a strange feeling working with him like this. The sexual tension was there, well not a few seconds ago in that awful position. But now. It was always there between them. But this, focusing on something other than the sex, focusing on a common goal was good.

“Come over here.”

He slipped his hand into hers and guided her to the center of the room.

“So now we really get to work. We’re going to do a few basic harness ties and a simple suspension.”

They worked with the rope in a focused purposeful way. Then he pulled and up she went. He suspended her horizontally.

“Are you ready?” There was a smile in his voice.

“What are you planning?”

Then he used the ropes running between her and the ceiling and jumped up holding himself parallel and next to her, his hands and legs hooked around the ropes. The weight of him swayed them both in the air. He rocked his weight and swung them.

It was exciting made her laugh. The heat of him. The strength of him, it was intoxicating. Eventually he jumped down and sung her from the ground watching as she embraced the freedom, let it lift the heaviness of life away.

The softness in his eyes, the way he worked to make her safe, comfortable, and gently encourage her to take the next step, it all came together and removed any doubt about what she was doing.

Yes, yes she would work with him.

If this was what they would do each day, and she still had time to work her embroidery. Then yes, she wanted this…she wanted him.

The floorboards creaked as she got to the second landing.

The candle in her hand the only light as she walked over to his bedroom door.

She’d been tired after the rope work and at dinner. She’d taken a bath and went to bed early. Then she woke up; it must be somewhere between two and three in the morning. It felt like there was a hole in her chest, open and aching, and only seeing Jamie would fill it.

In the days that followed the gallery visit, they all settled into their routines. She worked with Jamie in the mornings after breakfast on muscle strengthening exercises and stretches for flexibility. It helped as they worked with the rope, and Jamie started to try ties that involved suspending her. It took a remarkable amount of fitness not only for him to craft the suspends, but for her to hold them.

Jamie employed a tutor who came mid-morning and she studied reading, writing, speech, and art, lots of art. Over meals, Jamie and Mrs. Okazaki spoke of Japonism, all the art and culture of Japan, and how it was expressed by western artists; and of course in rope.

The inside of her head throbbed. She hungered to take and master every single bit of information and knowledge she could. That tight, small view, which had kept her bound to Whitechapel, and the bleak choices available to her were lifting and a whole world of thought, beauty, and ideas opened up and with them, her own dreams.

She always knew there was something more. Her embroidery was part of that, a desire to create something of beauty.

Mrs. Iwara from the Modern Ladies Dress Shop contacted her for fully embroidered jackets, and she was working on a full-length velvet opera coat that Mrs. Okazaki had gotten for her as a prototype to show Mrs. Iwara. The income she would make for each one was a small fortune compared to what she made delivering twine. Each jacket would make her enough funds to live in Whitechapel for a year, a better if not still poorer and safer area of London for a few months.

In the afternoons, she and Jamie worked with the rope. They worked to practice ties, flow from one tie to the other, and invariably they got side-tracked after all that touching, his breath so close, his fingers sliding under the rope making sure it wasn’t too tight and lingering on the skin underneath; a nipple or a crevice was always close by.

When had a man ever touched her so surely, so full of focus and attention to her wellbeing, her comfort, and pleasure? Her body was fully in his care, and he soothed it as he tied her. Strokes, adjustments of the rope, all carefully and confidently done, but also sensually. They were seductions. The rope was a reason for his hands and fingers to travel where they did, to glide over her body again and again.

The rope became a physical trail of his touch, his focus, as he ensured he used the safest and strongest knots, as he ensured no part of her body carried any undue weight. That she was shaped and molded into harmony the rope.

When he finished a particular tie, when he walked around her embraced by the rope, his face held a very particular look.

Satisfaction.

Satisfaction and a stark possessive pleasure.

He didn’t have that look when he’d tied Madeline that first time she had come. No, he’d looked happy with the tie; he was more focused on the ties and the rope itself than Madeline. He had been caring, had done all the things he did for her, but not with the same sensuality. He’d held his body stiffer and further away. He didn’t stray with his touches as he did with her.

And now, she was tired of heading out after they took their pleasure together at night. Tired of being in the attic knowing he would head down to his bed after she left.

She wanted in. Inside him like he was inside her. She wanted to wake up and reach out, to feel his back with the tips of her fingers as the morning light made its way through the window and up the wall.

She could feel the heat creeping up her neck, the tension churning in her belly.

The door opened soundlessly. The drapes across the window were open and more light was in his room, a soft gray glow from outside.

She walked over to the bed. He slept in the middle, the comforter half kicked off, his chest bare and his arm over his face. The red walls were dark, out of the glow of the light. Close, it was a splash of heat. A splash of color that looked like how she felt on the inside. Burning.

A prickling awareness pulled him awake. Jamie didn’t have to open his eyes to know who it was. He knew it was Olive by her breathing. The way she breathed when she was off balance.

Jamie lifted his arm off his face, turned his head to look at her.

“Is everything all right?”

She nodded, didn’t say anything.

Tension settled in his chest. This was not a good sign. Things had been going very well between them. They’d settled into a routine, were working amazingly well together.

Now it was going to come undone.

He moved off to the side of the mattress and got out of bed.

Olive stayed where she was. Even in the faint light of the candle, he could see the telltale red on her neck.

He took the candle, took her hand, and started to leave. He wanted to take her up to the attic, make love to her, and then sink into what was wrong.

“No.” Her voice was thick with determination.

He stopped.

“I’m not going up there, Jamie.” She tugged her hand free of his and started to twist the two of them together.

“Do you want me to come down? We could sit in the kitchen, have something warm to drink and talk.”

“I want to sleep in here.” It rushed out of her and her eyes fixed their gaze on him.

His heart twisted in his chest, how was he going to step away from this?

“Olive, you know the rules.”

“But why?”

He placed the candle on the table next to the bed.

“Olive, I thought we had an understanding. Things have been going so well. I thought you were happy.”

“I sleep at the house already. You said no stay-overs, but I’m already here.”

“You know there is still a difference.”

“I don’t want to be an attic girl.”

He slipped his hands on either side of her face.

“What’s an attic girl, sweetheart?”

She tilted her head for him to kiss her; she probably didn’t even realize she did it. How with just the smallest pressure from his hands, she followed his direction. It came from working the rope together and, of course, her natural ability to tune into him. But it felt like something more.

“Someone you have sex with in the attic and send away, so you can sleep down here.”

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s not like that.”

His mouth came over hers, slid his tongue between her lips, and tasted the sweet heat inside.

She was the only one to have slipped through. The only one to come past the black door. There had been many a morning he’d wished she were right there with him, right where he wanted her to be, to taste again, and to hold. He got ideas in the morning of how he could work the rope, a variation in a tie that would look better or work better. He wanted to tell her, even though she didn’t know the technical side of rope yet, she listened, and talking about it brought it to life for him.

He lifted off her lips and looked down in the dim candle light into unreadable eyes.

“It’s exactly like that.” Her hand curled in his nemaki. “Please, Jamie.”

He was being pulled apart inside. She was giving voice to his own wants, the wants he denied himself as well as her. Would it matter so much? As she said, she was already here, was already staying with him. That she slept in another room didn’t mean he didn’t feel her when he woke at night. He did. That invisible thread that ran from his chest to hers was pulled tight so that he imaged he could feel every breath as her chest rose and fell.

Her hand tugged the robe at his chest. “Please.”

“Just for tonight.”

He was a fool to say it, to open the gate. One inch given, a mile taken. How often had he seen that in the knock shop?

He tugged at the belt around her nemaki, slipped the soft, cotton, sleeping robe off her shoulders and onto the floor. Her hair hug loose over her shoulders and down her back. Her small pale breasts peeked out of the soft, silken mass of hair. The wonderful warm silk of her skin glowed in the candle light.

And no brace….

“Isn’t there something missing?” His eyes flickered down to her leg.

“I have a ribbon.” She had it tied to her calf.

She looked happy about the new found freedom.

“It’s easier with all the shoes on and off here. And… I want things to change…”

A cue for him which he didn’t take.

Jamie leaned down, nudged the tresses aside, and took her breast in his mouth. Sucked at the beaded nipple as his hands ran over the surface of her, her waist, the flare of her hips, the round curve of her bottom. He moved to the other breast, her hair falling over his face as he sought out the other nub.

“Jamie.” Her hand gripped his shoulder. “I dreamt I lost you. We were in a park and then next minute you were gone. I searched and search but you weren’t there.”

Pleasure at her words raced through him.

“I’m here.” A ripple ran through him.

Rule number one, he did not do love; he did not do love or anything remotely like it.

The aching tug in his chest mocked him.

He needed to step back, take some distance.

However, for tonight, he would go closer to the flames; feel what it was to let this piece of sunshine as close as he dared.

The marks on his wrist glared at him in warning. He moved his hand out of sight, down along the flare of her hips as he nipped at the pebbled flesh in his mouth.

She gasped.

Moaned.

Made the sounds that upended his discipline.

Inside was the fiercest battle. His body hungered for things he promised himself he would never have and would never fall into.

Jamie guided her to the bed, climbed in beside her, and pulled her close up against him.

His fingers found the warm heat of her, slipped between damp folds, and pushed inside. So silky smooth. He moved his fingers, moved them less for her pleasure and more to feel her. To feel the soft glide of pillowed flesh over his fingers, his knuckles, his palm. The satin suction as she squeezed, the slight undulation as he pressed the tip of his finger in that spot. The one that had her panting under him, grabbing at him, frantic with need.

There were times in the past when he’d had a battle with himself about the rules. But never like this. Never with a hunger and a want that was soul deep. A need that made him want to let the rules go and just see where things would go without them.

He slid down her body, moved her legs over his shoulders, and pushed his face into the damp center of her. The gentle musk of her smell, the soft brush of the hair over his cheeks and his nose, all acting to inflame him. He ran his tongue over her folds, pushed up to her stiff little peak, and flicked it with the tip of his tongue.

He sucked and licked as she filled the room with her sounds, as her hand twisted in his hair, and her hips bucked up against his face.

He moved his fingers inside her.

Felt her thighs squeeze the sides of his head as she called his name and pulsed against his lips.

His heart was beating hard, the dampness of her around his mouth, his chin, and cheeks. He moved up on his knees, kept her legs up against his chest, wrapped his hand around his cock, and rubbed it across her damp sex.

He rimmed the head at her entrance circling around damp warm silken flesh. His balls pulled tighter to his body, blood flowed to only one place, and that wanted to plunge deep into her core, deep into the very place he had set a lock on.

That he wanted it so badly, that he wanted her around him so much, was all the warming he need. She was here in his bed when no one had ever slept here before. And now where was that breach in rules leading him? To another rule begging to be broken.

Olive panted in front of him. Her chest with her small, pert breasts heaved with each breath. Her hands clasped in the sheets with her wonderful silken mass of hair spread over his pillows.

He was right at the door of her, the taste of her on his lips, and in his mouth. A trace of her essence floated up through his nostrils. He was losing his mind as she drenched him with her scent.

He reached down, took her engorged bud between his thumb and finger, and pinched.

It sent her over again. The soft clasping of her sex kissed at the tip of him as he held at her entrance.

It would be so easy to slip inside, to forget all the rules.

She was so damp, so wet; he used it to move his fingers down, to slip them into her dark passage, and prepare the way. He moved in her as he let her legs fall down over his arms, opening and tilting her hips back.

He moved himself, wet from her juices, lower and pushed into the soft puckered place he allowed himself. A hot, tight ring of welcome as he eased himself in. Then he let the need take over and he pushed in and out of her. He held her under her knees and tilted them wide and back against her chest.

“Jamie….” Her voice stretched full of ache, her eyes glazed and pleasure drunk on the releases she had experienced.

She felt wonderful; she felt like he needed her to feel. That part of him that liked the power that came from what he did, that came from taking a woman in this way. It was there, but it sat like a tarnished glow compared to the sweet light she offered him.

She offered the chance to let the angst go, let the power and the distance slip away for one soft, gentle moment.

‘Weakness, son, there’s nothing but weakness once you slip between a woman’s legs.’
His father’s hand had grabbed him hard in that final squeeze before he died. When he was old enough, he’d had the purple bruises tattooed as close to the exact place as he could remember where his father’s fingertips had dug into his wrist.

Jamie woke her before dawn. “Come on, time for you to get back to your own bed.”

“Jamie, no.” her face looked wretched.

“Come on.” He steeled his jaw. Tugged at the sheets and lifted her away from the warm cocoon she’d curled into. “I don’t want you here all night.”

Her face fell. Hurt settled tears in her eyes before she looked away.

Slowly, she moved over to the other side of the bed, the side furthest from him.

Her hand came up and the telltale swipe across her face made him feel like the rotten bastard he was.

But that was who he was.

He’d made the rules clear and he was going to stick with them.

He got up, and she moved past him and pushed him back on the bed.

“I can get there myself.”

“Olive. If I break one, I will break them all.”

He rubbed his face with his hands. She was blotching red as she slipped back into her robe. Damn it, but he was feeling bad. He had an odd feeling in his gut as if he knew he was doing something terribly wrong. But he couldn’t take it back.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t broken them all in your mind already.”

She picked up the candle.

“You talked to me of the artist’s way, of living a life that rings true, that is not confined by others and their expectations and judgments. I’ve left my brace off. Yours is still buckled so tight around you, you can’t get out.”

Her words slapped him in the face. He reared up and walked over to her by the door.

“Olive, if you don’t like it, you can leave. That was always the case.”

She tilted her head to the side. Her face showing that she thought he was an idiot. The worst part was that he felt like an idiot.

“I don’t want to leave, Jamie. I want us to be free to be ourselves. But do you know what I’ve finally realized? I’ve realized we’re not alone. Every time you slip inside me, what ever made you this way, who ever made you this way is right there between us. You are somewhere on the other side of it.

“That’s not true, Olive. I’ve never withheld myself from you when we have sex, when we use the rope.” He was starting to get loud now. He leaned closer to her. “I am very present.” He stalked away from that angel face, from that steel will under soft freckles. “Olive, you want something that is not there, someone that isn’t me. This is who I am; this is just how I am.”

“I’ll be your model. I’ll do naked shots, and I’ll do the performance in Paris. I don’t want to. It makes my stomach ache just thinking about it. Sharing what is so intensely personal to me.”

He rubbed his hand over his face again. It always came down to this. Women wanted more. Wanted what wasn’t there. They somehow had the knack of looking into your darkest corners and saying, ‘open that if you love me. Expose that or we’re done.’

That was what she was demanding. That was why she came to the bedroom. She wanted the impossible.

“I’m not interested in coercing you. If you don’t want to do the performance tell me, and I’ll work with Madeline. This”—he motioned between them—“we are not about the competition. I never dreamed we could work together. I think you are a natural and it would work. But no coercion.”

“You’re not. I’ll do it because I love you, out of one-sided love. Self-sacrifice for the benefit of someone you love.”

A fierce pleasure racked through his body at her words, warring with the agitation and frustration.

She loved him.

Not the longing from a distance that she’d had for him when he worked at the bookshop; no, she’d entered his world, followed his rules, unfurled herself for him, showed him without reserve time and again who she was, and how she felt as they came together.

There was no doubt she loved him. It was there even as her hurt and anger at being asked to leave the bed sat between them.

Her face scanned his; he knew what she wanted from him.

He tilted his head. The red got deeper around her neck.

“One-sided love. Unreturned love. Whatever it is, I feel that for you.” Her hand came over her heart and it created a painful ache in his own.

“Olive, please. Don’t do this.” His voice hurt as he spoke, his throat tight as it held back the words he wished he could say.

She had never asked and he had given more of himself to her than anyone else.

But he had his limits. She would have to be satisfied with where they stood.

“This is it, Olive; this is all I have.”

She shook her head no. Tears were streaming down her face freely now. He should have let her stay in the damn bed. All he needed to have done was get up himself, get dressed, and get on with the day before she woke. She would feel like she woke up in his bed and he would not have broken a rule. But no, he had to play it in the open, and now he could lose her.