The Bound Heart (15 page)

“Yes. Yes, I want to stay.”

He kissed her hard. Pulled her against him so tight she could feel his heart beating against her own chest.

Jamie, led her back up to the attic workshop, a warm glow in the center of his chest.

“How did your work trial go?” he asked as they walked the steps.

“They didn’t like the brace.”

Her voce was matter of fact. No doubt it wasn’t the first time she’d heard that as the cause of a lost opportunity for employment.

The brace clicked as she stepped off the carpeted floor and onto the wood of the workshop floor. The sound, a reminder of both her strengths and vulnerabilities.

She clearly didn’t need the brace. There were hundreds of reasons why she’d panic when it came off. Many ways moving ahead in life could seem daunting, especially living in Whitechapel while having dreams of something better.

Olive had dreams, all those threads she collected in the off cuts bag wove a path to a better life.

He’d experienced her stubborn determination as she looked over at him for two years at the workshop.

That same stubbornness and a disregard for what people thought would have been there every day she put the brace on and kept it on.

The work he did demanded the same lack of regard for what others thought. What you needed was your own inner belief that what you did was good and needed to be shown to others. A way to reflect a part of the world back at itself.

The attic was strangely quiet with Edgar and Madeline gone, the work done.

The space was now a world for the two of them, alone.

Just them.

“Do you do a lot of work with Madeline?”

Or maybe not.

A prickle of annoyance ran through him at her question. He wanted just them, only them in her thoughts.

“I have done. Mainly photo plates but some rope, like today.”

Her face flushed.

“I saw some of your photo plates. Evie showed me.”

“I Know.” The memory of her confessions of the last visit sent a coil of lust through him.

Jamie pulled her over to the sideboard and the old leather high-backed chair next to it and started to unbutton her bodice.

Olive’s eyes avoided him when he looked down at her.

“That doesn’t mean we have sex. We did and now we don’t; we haven’t for some time.”

She was not going to be able to do the rope until they resolved this to some point where she was comfortable.

He stopped.

“Here, sit down.”

Olive sat in the old chair and he walked over and dragged another over in front of her.

“Come one let’s talk about it. What’s the problem?”

“It just feels strange, that’s all.”

“Madeline is like me; she doesn’t do love, doesn’t want a relationship. She just wants to feel desired. Sometimes she reaches out to me to feed that need. I am no longer interested. But the work she and I do with the photo plates or the rope is just that, work. It’s what we both enjoy and both make a good amount of money from, along with Edgar.”

“I didn’t like seeing you so close. I understand that you need to do that; when you do the rope, it just made me feel all tight and upset.”

“I don’t sleep with more than one woman at a time, Olive. You were very clear in your rule. I’ll not play on the side or line another woman up while we are together. However my work involves intimacies.”

The idea that she could work with him sat there between them. He wanted to ask but then he looked at the marks on his arm. The marks he had tattooed to remind him of his father, the way he’d clasped onto him as he died.

“Are you still looking for work?” he asked.

“Yes,…”

She suddenly stood up.

“I don’t want to talk about all of this anymore.”

He rose and stood in front of her.

“Neither do I.”

Her hands reached out and tugged him closer.

“You promised me some rope.”

She pushed up on her toes and kissed him. A hungry kiss. His hands came around her face. Held her as their tongues danced, their breathing sped up. He already had a tight need pulsing in the background with her watching him work.

He’d worked with Madeline for the photos, but he also wanted Olive to see him, see what he did and his skills.

He’d hauled Madeline up slowly knowing his muscles would bunch, that she would see how fit and toned he was.

Her hands ran up his sides, up his back. Every touch told him she’d watch every move. She’d watched and wanted to touch him as she was doing know. It created an unexpected usurge of pleasure.

He reached down, picked her up, and walked over to the large bed.

“I thought we were going to play with the rope.” She mumbled against his neck as she kissed him in small gentle, artless kisses that were undoing him.

“Too late. Sex now, rope later.”

He dropped her on the bed and followed her down.

Tugged at her clothes as she did his.

The brace was a little awkward. They laughed as he fumbled getting it off and tying a small rope around her leg to ease her discomfort. A discomfort which was notably less than the last time.

Then nothing was between them, her soft flesh was in his hands, her breasts pushed against his chest, his length pressed along the warm, wet folds of her sex.

Soft circles of his hips against her core and she made mewing sounds that made him go harder than calcified rope.

His balls pulled up closer to his body and need pulsed with each heartbeat that thudded through the length of him.

His fingers found the damp between her legs, slid in, thrust, as her hips pushed up towards him.

His knees pushed her legs wider and hands moved in a steady rhythm inside her, the soft-pillowed flesh clasping his fingers in her need.

For a single moment, he had to remind himself that he didn’t go there. That it wasn’t a place he would enter, not with her, not with anyone.

Maybe especially not her.

It wasn’t his father that made him this way. Wasn’t his last words as he clutched his arm so tight the bruises imprint the shape of his fingers for a week.

Oh no, it was his mother, a woman who ruled every man she came across with the power of her box.

“Jamie.”

Olive tugged his hair, ran her hands down his back, scrapped and dug her nails into him as she arched under him, panted into his mouth as he held himself just above her, just out of reach as he watch her. Watched as her face twisted with the agonies of building pleasure.

He pulled his fingers out of the magic allure of her flesh.

“No, no, no, don’t stop. Jamie please just a bit more.”

He drew back.

“It’s coming sweetheart.

He turned her over, pulled a pillow over and under her hips, tilting her up for him.

Olive would get what he gave every woman… what he chose to give them. It kept them at arms length and it told them every time they came together they were never getting all of him.

“Jamie, hurry.” Her voice a rich syrup of want, ragged and hungry with her body’s demands stabbed at him.

It made him harder, pushed his own need up higher. And under all of this, that old anger, the one that made him cut through all the sheets on his mother’s bed with the broken glass from the mirror.

And, for the first time, as he looked at Olive, her freedom and openness in showing her need for him, the trust in her eyes as she shook her beautiful bottom at him to hurry up, the rules bit him back.

He reached out and pulled a sheath and the lubricant out of the bedside drawer; he rolled on the sheath and squeezed the lubricant over his hands. Kneeling behind her, between her legs, he circled his fingers around that rosebud of tight muscles and slipped his finger in. One, in and out, and then another.

He moved them as she pushed her hips back against him. Purred under his touch, twisting him tighter.

His head hurt. He wanted to pull her closer and at the same time determined to do the opposite.

In and out his fingers moved as he gazed down at the, at her. This was the ravenous fantasy of most hot blooded males. The chance to slip into the prohibited back passage. He was envied by men, the focus of women who wanted a taste of something darker.

He slipped in a third finger. Loosening, preparing, and building her pleasure.

Olive looked over her shoulder at him. Her eyes glassy, cheeks flush, sweat beaded between her nose and toplip.

“Jamie…” Her eyes softened, her mouth curved in that open smile. “Come into me.”

His heart cracked.

“Come into me, Jamie.”

He positioned his cock and pressed in. Hot. She was burning hot as the tight ring of muscle at the entrance clasped around him.

“Don’t look away.” His voice was hoarse.

He leaned down over her back, slowly flexed his hips, moved into her and then out.

He slipped his hand around her head, supported her to look at him while they moved together.

His hips pumped in a slow solid rhythm, her body pressed into the sheets as she pushed back on him, her fingers clawed into the fabric.

Everywhere he looked at her, she showed him what was happening for her. Right now the white creases of her clawed fingers spoke volumes; her tension, her want, her hunger, all there in the way her hands clamped onto the bedding tighter than a buttery’s hold to the underside of a leaf in the rain.

“Olive…”

He nuzzled her hair, nipped her ear lobe. He push in as deep as he could go. Held still as he leaned forward and found her lips, and kissed her drawing her essence in, as if her light, her beauty would became a part of him. Wash away the shadows that hung forever in his soul. Then he started to move. Move from a place deep inside of him.

“Move your head.”

She twisted around under him so their lips fully clasped, tongues, lips, breathing, all desperate as they thrust at each other faster.

He was in real trouble, every taste told him that, every thrust told him that.

His whole back tightened, his gut tensed, and he moved his hips faster. She couldn’t keep up; she flagged in the rhythm and mewed, gasped for air as her pleasure rushed forward.

His hand held her head, kept his tongue deep in her mouth and thrust into her once, twice, three times, and over they both went, muffled cries ripping apart in their mouths.

His head spun.

His body pulsed in waves of release.

She was a balm, an elixir on wounds long curled in the dark. She reached down into a place that scared him, a place that was soul deep with need. An endless pit of longing for something that frightened him to death.

Jamie rolled over to the side and took her with him. Pushed his face into her silken locks as they fell over him.

“Olive… Olive…” It was all he could say. All he could think as he kissed the strands and silken tresses.

He closed his eyes and let sleep take them.

When he woke, the workshop was dark.

A faint ting, ting, ting, sounded from downstairs.

Okazaki was signaling food. They must have slept for some time.

Jamie pulled the sheath off, got up, washed his hands, and came back with the cloth and wiped Olive down as she stretched in feline satisfaction.

The tension from the photo shoot a world away.

“I’ll bring us up something to eat. And you’ll need a robe.”

“There’s a green one by the door.” She pointed across the room.

The one his models wore.

“Don’t wear that. I’ll bring one up. Can you put a couple of chairs around the table over by the back window?”

She looked to where he pointed. A small rectangular table sat up against the window. The wood was polished to a high shine and there were already place mats for mugs of tea on the surface. It was a good place to look at photos when Edgar brought them round as it provided natural light.

“I can do that.”

Her smile tossed his heart around in his chest.

He kissed her quickly then slipped on his trousers, pulled on his white shirt and jogged down the stairs.

His body was loose and light. And, that ball of warmth sat in the center of his chest again.

“Kom-ban-wa.” Okazaki greeted good evening as he came into the kitchen.

There were two trays on the kitchen table and a third on the side.

She knew Olive was still upstairs.

Her eyes traveled over his face.

His mouth pulled up in a half smile.

Okazaki nodded.

“Good to be happy, Jamie-sama.”

“I need one of the imported kimono robes from Kobe. Didn’t you mention there were a couple that were faulty that couldn’t be sold?”

Her eyebrows rose.

The robes were a fortune sold to the upper classes. Even damaged, they were something ordinary people never had a chance to touch, let alone wear.

“I have one you can have.” Was all she said.

She went out. The basement door under the stairs opened and the light clicked on.

In a few minutes, she was back with a beautiful silk robe over her arm. It was fashioned as a kimono but made specifically for the western market as a house robe.

The silk was a soft lilac with wisteria embroidery cascading down the front, back, and kimono styled arms of the garment. A wide sash to tie it closed.

His face beamed.

He placed the garment over his shoulder then leaned in and picked up the trays.

“E-ta-da-ki-mas,” he wished Okazaki good appetite and she nodded turning back to fill the last tray for herself.

He headed back up the stairs and pushed the attic door open with his shoulder.

Olive stood naked in the soft orange gaslight above her.

In a few long strides, he was at the table and placed the trays down. She had hurried over to help take them from his hands.

“It smells good.”

A good sign, she would like the cuisine.

“I have a robe.” He lifted it off his shoulder and opened it out.

Olive stepped back a hand pressed against her face. She stood in front of him naked, glowing in pale skin and auburn hair. Her full breasts, the tan nipples, and the flare of her hips around her red thatch.

A possessive flash arced through him. He wanted her, wanted her past the sexual need, past the rope, past his usual girls at a distance. He wanted her so close he alreadyfelt her on the inside of him. He wanted to be able to look up and see she was somewhere close.