Dani
I must have been floating as I walked to the office. I'd never tasted a margarita mixed with champagne for breakfast and it was so delicious, I might have indulged myself with a top up. It was part the fizz, but mostly the morning after glow that was causing men to make comments at me as they passed. That always seemed to happen when you were high on some other guy. They can sniff out the joy and lust, the dogs.
Harlow noticed it too as soon as I came in and put her macchiato on her desk.
“You look different? Did you get a facial or something?” she asked.
I could tell she was distracted still about her housekeeper, Fatou so I just said I had a spa evening with a friend. I had an all day training with a trauma specialist, so that I'd understand the likely effects out in the field and how to handle them with sensitivity. It was vital not to trigger women and children to the smallest memory of their abuse as it could have unpleasant consequences.
Harlow elected not to join at the last moment, with too much stuff on her mind. She stopped by in the afternoon to say she was leaving but when she looked at me her face turned to dismay. All the training I'd had that day must have made me vigilant to searching out triggers because Harlow looked like she'd had a shock.
“Where did you get that?” she mouthed with tiny shallow words. “That thing around your neck, where did you get it?” More intense the second time. Her color deepened as she stared at the pendant I was wearing.
I could feel the flush flooding my cheeks and the counselor observing us. I had no clue what to say, how to explain.
“It's a, a, flower knot,” I said.
“I see that. Who gave it to you?”
What the hell was her problem, after all? She didn't have the right to demand knowledge of my personal life. Why did she think I'd been given it? It could have been a crazy craft show buy. She knew I leaned toward the homespun, flea market style.
“Someone I know made it,” I said, trying to remain level as I'd recently been taught. From one second to the next Harlow snapped out of her wide-eyed horror stare enough to recall that a professional was taking the scene in.
“Pretty,” she said. “I'm leaving now.” Before she left, she turned to add; “Just be very careful.”
I stared at the shut door trying to work out what the hell she was talking about. That last comment had seemed so pointedly directed at the fact I had Cruz's shibari knot, the one I'd carefully cut and saved from the ropes he bound me with, tied around my throat.
When I locked up the offices, I realized a text had come from Cruz earlier, asking to meet me for dinner. I quickly replied that I'd love to. Of course I would, even if he was giving me a same day call. I wasn't playing by any rules but my own.
He selected a beautiful French restaurant in SoHo, the epitome of romantic, all soft glowing candles and exquisite rich food he could feed me from his silver fork. Again I noticed how Cruz attracted stares from each table when we entered and the women lit up like fireflies with desire flooding them. This must be what life was like as a celebrity. I didn’t know how people dealt with it.
Cruz was the furthest from arrogant and didn't appear to notice anyone around us. He gazed into my eyes like he was reading the next chapter and listened as I chattered on about my day. He'd noticed my homemade pendant immediately and it brought a smile to his face. Luckily as I'd been worried that I should take it off, especially after Harlow's extreme reaction.
But it gave him pleasure and was a constant reminder through dinner of the first night we shared. Letting him know how much I wanted to repeat it, again and again.
“I would love to tie you into complete shibari some day,” Cruz said. “You would look even more beautiful held in a rope sculpture.”
“I'm not sure if that's a compliment.” But I laughed, sure he meant it that way. I was nervous about the total exposure to him. What if he didn't like what he uncovered?
Obviously I'd done a bunch of research on Shibari, right after Bo called it when I showed him the knot. I'd never heard of the ancient bondage technique used by the Japanese. My lover was more into it as a complex form of restraint above just strapping me to the bed. He explained how there was an art to tying a woman into complete imprisonment. Little sparks of white light flooded my core imagining Cruz taking hours to tie me up. He asked whether I'd visited the shibari room at Illicit.
“I was a little distracted that night,” I admitted. “I only saw one floor of the Club's activities and that was an overwhelm for the senses.”
I didn't add that he'd devastated me by ignoring me and walking away. Water and bridges.
In the instant his smile vanished and his eyes dulled. All the relaxed pleasure we were taking in each other was washed clean away like a tidal wave clearing a beach. Cruz bolted up from his chair, knocking a wine glass over the starched linen, his face blank with the need to escape.
Cruz
“I have to leave. I have work to attend to.” I spoke to whoever was with me at the time, only enough to extricate myself from whatever situation was detaining me.
I left wherever I'd been and moved swiftly toward my task, a goal focused machine, intent on only one thing. The task to be completed.
Something, no someone, was behind me in the street, buzzing around like a bee, calling my name, asking 'What's up?' I ought to swat it and be rid of the irritation permanently. No time for distractions. I had to deal with the package.
The irritation was still with me as I entered the building.
It spoke to the doorman, saying something about a shock, some bad news. Nothing to worry about. But it followed me into the elevator. No that wasn't good. No one could be permitted to detect the package nor my involvement with it. The irritation definitely would have to be terminated.
I turned and observed the irritation—a small woman with a quizzical stare. Who was she? Why was she looking at me with huge uncomprehending eyes and trying to stroke my arm? I don't know her but she acts like she knows me.
A snap of the neck would be fast and painless. The elevator door slid back and another irritation stepped inside to join us. No terminations before witnesses. I had to wait until I was alone with the irritant before terminating her.
The elevator opened at my floor and I stepped out with the first irritation still hanging on my arm. She would not shut up with inane talk, snapping her fingers to attract my attention, intent on distracting me from the task. Nothing can be permitted to prevent completion. Open the door to the suite, enter, close the door. Search out package. Eliminate irritation. Eliminate package.
“Cruz, Look at me. Not like that, look at me properly, into my eyes.”
Hand lock to throat.
“Look.at.me. Come back to me. Cruz, you're hurting me.”
A simple flick of the wrist will snap her spinal cord.
“Look at the shibari knot. It's now. You're here now, in the present, with me. Remember shibari.”
My brain jolts and I'm gazing at a small tied up knot, like a flower, that she has tied around her slender throat.
Shibari.
Where am I? I'm in the master's dojo on top of the mountain. No, I have to eliminate the package. The world is in danger and I need to protect it from the package that will try to destroy it. Walk to shibari room, unlock door and enter. Package still immobile. No need to untie her. A single strike of the blade and she will bleed out.
“Oh my God. Cruz, put the knife down. Look at me. You're here right now. With me, Danielle. You're here. It's now. Look at the Shibari. Look at it Cruz, look at the knot you tied. Do you remember tying that knot? Do you remember being joined with me then sleeping wrapped around me all night?”
I do remember that. The first time I've felt at peace since my time with the master in Japan.
“What's happening? How did we get to my apartment?” I feel like I've been living a quantum jump of five different realities at once. The girl in front of me with the stricken and concerned face was familiar.
> “You don't remember?” she asked. “What's the last thing you remember?”
Right now, I don't remember anything.
Dani
I couldn't say what was more terrifying, that the man I was falling in love with was brandishing a lethal Japanese sword or that he had a woman tied up in a web of rope, cowering in abject horror. She must have been there for hours at the very least.
Worse than all that was that Cruz had gone through some kind of blackout or seizure and turned into someone else. He stood up from the table in the exclusive restaurant and walked out as though he'd never met me. I dumped my charge card on the plate and chased after him before I lost him for good. If my card didn't cover the meal, they could think we were runners for all I cared. Cruz walked like some kind of living zombie to a building I realized was his apartment and strode past the doorman's greeting like he wasn't there. I told the guy he was in shock after some bad news.
When I followed him into the elevator, having decided to call EMT as soon as he was safely in his space, Cruz turned to me with awful murderous intent in his eyes. The cold stab in my gut was worse than being dumped or abandoned. He dropped it when the old lady got on the elevator to go up to her friend's place and I figured he'd come down from whatever.
But I was wrong. It was only my sudden inclination to try the trauma technique I'd learned that day that halted his hand pinching the life from my neck.
When he came out of it, as suddenly as he went in, the look on his face was more shattered than either of the two women panicked by his threatening moves. The dagger fell from his hand and clattered to the floor. He grabbed me and clung to me as though the world was ending and we the last two people left. Except there was also the frightened girl in the sling. I held him, his heart pounding into my chest wall and knew without doubt he wasn't faking. He was more horrified than any of us and kept moaning the same thing into my neck.
“Did I hurt you? Did I hurt you?”
“No, I'm fine.” I reassured him and held him until his heart rate slowed almost to normal.
“I would never hurt you,” he groaned, stroking my hair for comfort.
“I know you wouldn't. I know that.”
Then I gently extricated myself from his hold. His eyes still held a shock of horror as he tried to figure out what he'd done and where he went to between romantic dining and psychotic spree.
Was my perfect man a Jekyll and Hyde? Was that even a real thing? That a human being could have a split personality where neither side knew of the other. He seemed to have totally shaken free of the other one, the scary psycho killing one, that I'm positive had been about to snap my neck at the instant he lost it. There was still the question of the woman he was keeping imprisoned in a web of rope. The pendant I'd been fingering all day seemed a lot less exotic all of a sudden..
I picked up the short sword from the floor and carefully cut through some of the ropes holding the woman until I could help lift her free. She clutched my arm like a wild thing and uttered a single word.
“Wolf.”
Standing part behind me, she wouldn't budge her eyes from Cruz. Expecting him to lunge for her at any moment. The one day training I'd had was sufficient for me to know she was on high alert, in complete terror and expecting to die this instant.
“You're okay. Everything's going to be okay. He's not going to hurt you, I promise.”
The girl's breathing was too rapid and her fingers gouged into my arm.
“Wolf.” she wailed again.
I turned to where the man I thought perfect was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a confused look as he fought to figure out what, where, why.
“Cruz, is this… is this girl Harlow's housekeeper?”
He looked up at me and at the girl as though he'd never seen her before.
“Harlow.” The girl came alive at the name she knew and nodded her head vigorously. “Harlow.”
“Cruz, I have to take this woman back home.”
What the hell was I going to tell my boss about Fatou's disappearance? And my involvement in it. Harlow was sure to call the cops.
“Don't leave me. I won't ever hurt you. I won't hurt anyone if you only stay.”
I crouched beside him and held him to me. I heard the poor girl cowering behind me gasp with horror at my bravery, or stupidity. Her body was howling to get far, far away.
Whatever had happened to Cruz, I knew it was over. For now. And I knew that something I'd said or done in the moment had forced him out of his dark side.
I couldn't abandon him now.
The Romance Continues . . . A Message from Savannah
I hope you enjoyed reading this fourth part of the Club Illicit series of Billionaire Bonded romance novellas. And first in a series of three CRUZ Novellas.
Part Two of CRUZ will be available before Christmas, with plans for the Finale to be published between the holiday and New Years.
To join my readers group and receive advance copies please use this easy peasy form
http://eepurl.com/bjy-S1
You may also enjoy the “Billionaire Encounter” series of BDSM bondage shorts- BOOK ONE available HERE
A boxed set serial of BILLIONAIRE ENCOUNTER Parts 1-4 Available HERE
And please consider taking a moment to post a review of Club Illicit at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk – I love to connect with readers and discover what you want to read in your tales of Illicit romance.
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Love is all around
Savannah x
Now read Club Illicit Book 1 featuring the start of Cole & Harlow's passion.
Chapter ONE
He looked familiar.
But then I'd often thought that on glimpsing a guy across a crowd. In the street, in a bar, so many times over the past six years I thought it was him. But it wasn't.
So my eyes were deceiving me again and it wasn't Cole across the bar but some other hot guy with brushed back dirty blond hair and a five alarm, just slightly lop-sided smile. Disappointment scoured through my core and rose to settle as a dull ache in my heart.
“Harlow, are you listening? OhmiDemiGod you're on the other side of the planet.”
“Lily, sorry, it's just that- I thought I saw someone I knew.”
“In this place? It's full of banker boys and lawyers- not your usual sandwich filling.”
“Yeah, you're right. This glacier wall of expensive black suits is definitely not rough enough for me, so it couldn't have been him.”
Except he wasn't wearing a suit or even a tie and the wide rip of his shoulders would never be contained by a stiff corporate uniform.
“Shall we get out of here? Head back to normal country?” Lily said, clicking her fingers in three swerving clicks before my dazed stare.
“What? Yeah okay, let me just run to the washroom and then we can go reconnect to the real world.”
I pressed through the crowd of raucous tense banker boys toward the back of the bar. Each one of the men in black looked down on me as I squeezed through, checking my chest out like the latest Apple gadget. Lil was right, we never came to places like this, full of men who moved money around all day, bought expensive boytoys and thought nothing of human beings.
To them women were items they looked upon as one more commodity to be shifted about for personal gain. Lil and I were both looking for someone just a little more genuine.
Finally I made it into the women's washroom, deserted in the male-dominated downtown bar. It was pitch dark inside, dark gray walls trimmed in pale gold with pinpoint lights set into the plaster giving off only the shadiest of illumination. I looked in the mirror and leapt back, my heart sprinting into my throat.
“Whatthefuck?” The man's face on the other side loomed right up into mine, completely oblivious to me as he did his thang into the urinal between us. Crap- the mirror was a two way straight into the men's next door,. It had to be set i
nto the wall right above the john for a window view. And it looked as though the guys had no idea we girls were set to spy on them.
I giggled at the idea of getting my own back just a little on all the men who'd looked me up and down like a heifer at market. I moved across to the actual mirror, equally dark but at least it was only my own reflection staring back out at me. Wan, I'd describe it.
Sometimes I wondered why Lily and I even spent evenings out in bars, hoping to meet the guy who'd turn out to be different than the rest. More and more I was coming to realize they were all the same.
Or perhaps I'd been spoiled young. There weren't many like Cole. At least I'd never found his equal in six years of hoping. Perhaps that was why I imagined glimpses of his face everywhere.
I dug my lipstick out of my slingbag and leapt back from the mirror again. This time the male face was right above my shoulder behind me and oh my fucking heavens, divine.
“Sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you.” His voice like desert island sand.
It was him. I'd know that seductive tone anywhere, coming from pillowing lips. His face had changed but was even more gorgeous if that was possible. The boyish charm had become rougher and more chiseled. The eyes still danced and twinkled but also held a world of experience that almost looked like sadness.
It was the hair that had thrown me off. Cole's had been military close-cut last time I saw him, but was now back to a dirty blonde mop pleading for fingers daggering back through the sides.
“This is the women's, you know. Are you afraid of the spy mirror?” I said. My heart had not stopped racing this time and not from the shock of a stranger looming up behind me in the gloom. But because this stranger was the love of my life.
“I could be. Where's the spy mirror?” I pointed to the two-way glass and dropped my hand quickly, before he saw how it was quivering uncontrollably.
CRUZ: Billionaire Bonded Romance Suspense (Illicit Book 4) Page 8
