“Then why?”

“You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Only if you don’t tell me.”

His eyes roamed her face. “You scare me.”

Not what she’d expected. “Why?”

“I’ve wanted to try this place for three years, but no one would ever agree to come with me. Then you didn’t even hesitate when I suggested it. You’re everything I wanted in a woman—more, actually, because you’ve opened up part of me that I’d never acknowledged.” Knox looked at a spot over her shoulder. “So now you’re in my life, but I know it’s not permanent. And that sucks.”

Shiori jumped to her feet and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his chest. A thousand words bounced around in her brain, but she couldn’t find the right ones, so she said nothing.

Knox ran his hands down her arms and stepped back. When she looked up at him, his smile was cocky, and no humor danced in his eyes. “See you at the finish line.” He turned and jogged away.

How had that happened? They’d been having a great day. What brought on his abrupt shift in mood?

This was a reminder why she played in a club situation. The expectations there were all short-term. Like Knox, she’d become cynical that she’d ever find not only what she wanted but what she needed.

But brooding about it wouldn’t solve anything. Although she knew she’d be breaking this down piece by piece later.

Shiori saw a flash of red and realized Knox had started the course. So she moved to a better vantage point.

Oddly enough, the tires gave Knox trouble. His long legs were a disadvantage for this portion.

Next he moved to the balance beam. And again he struggled, nearly falling off at the midway point. He righted himself and finished by using huge strides to get himself to the end of the beam.

She studied his face. Such concentration. It was a little jarring to recognize he wore that same look when they were naked and he was trying to make her come.

The swinging boulder obstacle proved no challenge for him at all. He dodged, ducked, and spun and ran to the rope climb.

He didn’t need time to catch his breath. At his height, his first jump put him midway up the rope. Then he shinnied up the thing like a damn monkey. He stood on top of the wall and used the rope as a guide to slide to the ground.

Son of a bitch. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d bounced down like she had on the other side.

But when Knox faced the monkey bars, she wondered if he had rope burns on his palms.

If he had them, it sure hadn’t affected him. With his long arms, he made it across the breadth of the steel structure, utilizing only the middle bar before reaching the end. He did the exact same maneuver with the rings. He took a second to breathe before he tackled the final set of monkey bars. Then he swung to the ground.

Shiori moved along the outside of the course and saw Knox drop to all fours at the entrance to the steel tube. With those broad shoulders, it’d be a tight fit. From the moment his feet disappeared she counted one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, five-one-thousand. By the time she hit six, Knox scrambled out of the tunnel.

Immediately he sprinted and soared over the water trap and nearly cleared the sand trap too.

She raced over and threw herself at him. “I wish I would’ve taped that on my phone. It was picture perfect, baby!”

He laughed and set her down. “Need to breathe. Give. Me. A. Sec.”

“Oh, sure. Right.”

When he bent over with his hands on his knees, she stuck close by, rubbing his back.

Knox slowly straightened up and hauled her into his arms, although he warned softly, “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Be so goddamn sweet and gentle with me, Shiori. It’ll just make it twice as hard.”

Confused, her eyes searched his. “Make what twice as hard?”

He rested his forehead to hers. “When you go back to Japan. I can lie to myself about the Domme-sub aspect of this, chalking it up as a sexual experiment. I can compartmentalize our fights at Black Arts as coworker disagreements. But this? Having fun, sexy banter and then your sweet, caring touches? That I can’t explain away because I like you too damn much. And I’ll miss you like fucking crazy when you’re gone. I’d wonder what I should’ve done to make you stay.”

Floored by his confession, she had to take a few moments to force herself to breathe. How long had he felt that way? Shiori tilted her head back, needing to look into his eyes, but they were interrupted.