“If I give you a few days, then will you talk to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is killing me,” he said softly. “Absolutely f**king killing me to see you so miserable and scared and looking at me like I want to cause you harm. When all I wanted . . .”

Amery wiped her fingers under her eyes, completely unaware she’d been crying. “When all you wanted was what?”

“For you to understand who I am. To show you this part of me.”

That caused her to cry harder.

The tense silence between them stretched until Amery felt a black hole had opened up, threatening to swallow them both.

The cab pulled up out front.

Before Ronin unlocked the door, he stood behind her and spoke into her ear. “This isn’t over between us. I’ll give you time to come to terms or process or whatever you need. But you owe me the courtesy of a conversation. You need to listen to me with an open mind. And sooner, rather than later, would be better for both of us.”

This was the Ronin she knew—the one she wanted. Reasonable, but determined. Amery wanted to throw herself into his arms, bury her face in his neck, and just breathe in the scent of him. Pretend nothing had happened.

When his words for you to understand who I am echoed back to her, she realized this secret would’ve come out eventually.

The cab honked.

“I’ve got to go.”

“One week,” he said hoarsely. “You call me or come to me within a week or I’m coming to you.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SHE didn’t sleep well. Tired of tossing and turning, she rolled out of bed at nine and cleaned her loft from top to bottom. Pathetic that she’d fallen into that old habit of scrubbing the shit out of everything when she was upset. Next would she start wearing the finger-to-elbow rubber gloves her mother favored?

No. You are not your mother.

Marion Hardwick would never put herself in a situation like the one with Ronin in the first place. But if she had made a judgment error, she’d walk away and never look back. She’d never give him a chance to explain. She’d never satisfy her curiosity about what made a man like him tick.

So, if she wasn’t like her mother . . . then why was she acting exactly like her? Cutting Ronin off at the knees and refusing to hear him out? She hadn’t already judged him . . . had she?

God. This was so f**ked up.

Since she’d had such a good go of numbing her mind with cleaning, she tackled her office. By the time she’d showered off the grime, the clock read five. All she wanted to do was hole up and eat pizza and a pint of Oreo mint ice cream. Lose herself in bad TV. Watching back-to-back-to-back episodes of Storage Wars was better than fretting about the fact that she’d called Ronin a killer.

A killer, for god’s sake.

Talk about a knee-jerk reaction out of fear.

Talk about stupidity.

She’d immediately judged something she didn’t understand as . . . bad? Wrong? Scary? Freaky? When she’d been fine with it before when Ronin used scarves instead of ropes? When she didn’t know what it was besides that it turned her on?

She didn’t know enough about bondage or whatever the f**k it was to form a subjective opinion. Since education was the only way to dispel fear, Amery cracked open her laptop and punched shibari in the search engine.

Holy shit. Over eighty thousand hits showed up.

Okay, maybe she was living under a rock; obviously it wasn’t as obscure a practice as she’d initially believed.

The first thing she looked up was the definition.

Shibari/kinbaku is the technique of using ropes to create sensual, dramatic, and erotic bondage that has roots in 16th-century Japanese martial arts, 18th-century historical Japanese judicial punishments, and 19th-century Japanese theatrical productions.

She read further and learned that the practices were originally based on the jujitsu bondage punishment called hojojutsu. No wonder Ronin had an interest in it, since the practice had been borne out of the martial arts discipline he’d trained in his entire life. As far as she could tell, hojojutsu had been around since the time of the samurais. When samurais transported prisoners, they’d used ropes to bind and control them after capture. Some samurais became well known for their rope handiwork, which had to be functional and yet humane. Competitions arose between the samurais—the more intricate and distinct designs, the more respect the rope master garnered.

Amery also learned the terms were slightly different branches of the same bondage discipline. Shibari was more artistic, focusing on the beauty of the finished rope design on a human canvas, composed of elaborate patterns and often demonstrated as performance art. Kinbaku, while employing many of the same knots and wraps as shibari, was more sexual in nature. A bond between the rope master and the one being bound focused on skin contact during the tying process, oftentimes with knots strategically placed to heighten sexual response.

When Amery finally closed her laptop a few hours later, her head was swimming. But the questions foremost in her mind remained. Where had Ronin learned how to do it? If kinbaku was as much a part of him as he’d claimed, then he’d need to practice to reach master status.

Do you really think with the way he looks and his forceful persona he’d be short on female volunteers to be stripped naked and tied up and then f**ked by him?

No.

It wasn’t anger that surged but jealousy. And that was just too f**king weird because she had no right to it.

Did she?

Frustrated, she shut off her laptop and flipped on the TV.