Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(59)

He would have her, and damn anything that got in the way. God knew he’d never been a man to back down from a fight.

“Are you worried about the possibility that I might die?” he asked. “Or the chance that I might not?”

Justine whirled to face him, her face reddening as the implication sank in. “You ass**le!” she exclaimed.

“What if I don’t?” he persisted, turning ruthless. “What if I stick around long enough for you to have to deal with a real relationship? Compromise, intimacy, forgiveness, sacrifice … could you handle all that? You don’t know.”

Justine glared at him. “You won’t be here long enough for me to find out.”

“Everyone’s got an expiration date,” he said. “When you love someone, you take your chances.”

Justine covered her face with her hands, clearly not above a touch of drama. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you, you obnoxious bonehead.”

He gripped her against him, letting her feel his strength, his steady determination. “You’re what’s best for me. And I’m not going to turn tail and run because of some crazy superstition.”

“It’s not a superstition, it’s … it’s supernatural causality. It’s going to happen. And don’t try to claim you don’t believe in the paranormal, Mr. I-don’t-have-a-soul.”

Jason smiled. “As a Buddhist, I don’t have to be consistent.”

Justine made an infuriated sound and tried to push him away, but he kept her against him easily. He bent to kiss her, opening her mouth with his. Justine quivered and went pliant against him, her hands groping over his back. He could feel a subtle vibration running through her, fervency barely contained in stillness. He wanted to be inside that energy, driving it higher, hotter.

Breaking the kiss, he breathed in the soft fragrance of her neck, letting it tease his senses. “Let me stay with you tonight.”

Her voice was muffled. “No way in hell.”

“Give me one night. If you tell me tomorrow morning that you still want me to leave you, I will.”

“You’re lying.”

“I swear I won’t come back unless you ask me to.”

She maneuvered in his arms until she could see his face. “What are you planning?” she asked warily. “Why do you think one night will make a difference?”

Eighteen

The way Jason stared at her made her uneasy. She didn’t trust the glint in his eyes. “I already know you’re good in bed,” she continued. “There’s nothing left to prove in that department.”

“I want to try something with you,” he said. “It’s a kind of … ritual.”

“Ritual,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

“It’s called Kinbaku.”

The foreignness of the word, three distinct and precise syllables, tapped delicately on her eardrums and made her shiver.

“Is that something sexual?”

“Something physical. It doesn’t have to be sexual, if you don’t want it to be.”

Mystified, Justine chewed on the insides of her lips. “What does that word mean?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “It’s translated as ‘the beauty of tight binding.’ Do you have any cord or thin rope?”

“Yes, I keep some in my closet for—” Justine stopped, her eyes turning huge. “Are we talking about bondage? No. No, I don’t have any rope.”

“You just said you did.”

“Not for that. I don’t like pain.”

“There’s no pain involved. It’s…” He paused, clearly considering how to convey the meaning of a Japanese word when there was nothing in English to approximate it. “It’s artistic. Ropework shaping the body into a living sculpture. The basic form is Shibari, but it becomes Kinbaku when emotion is involved.”

Justine wasn’t buying it. “That sounds like a sophisticated way of saying you want to truss me up like a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store deli. And I don’t see the point.”

“It’s like trying to explain the point of skydiving or skiing to someone who’s never done it. You have to experience it to understand.”

“Have you ever done it before?”

His face was inscrutable. “I was involved with a woman in Japan who introduced me to it. There are shows where Shibari is performed as an art form, not to mention seminars—”

“What kind of woman?” Justine asked, surprised by the bitter tang of jealousy. “Like an escort service woman or—”

“No, not at all. She was an executive at a software company. Smart, successful, and very beautiful.”

That hardly eased her jealousy. “If she was so great, why did she let you do that to her? Wasn’t she—” Justine broke off and swallowed audibly. “Ashamed?”

“There’s no shame in a willing exchange of power. The ropes are an extension of the dominant partner … he uses them to hold a woman, focus on her … guide her into deeper layers of surrender. My partner said that when she was restrained on the outside, it allowed her to be unrestrained on the inside. It revealed things she’d never known about herself.”

Their gazes held, the silence charged and impellent.