The Bound Heart by Elsa Holland Page A

have simply left and gone home.”
    He stood. Looked back at her as she sat there taking in the room.
    “I walked back to the trolley cars. One came but I changed my mind…” her voice was a fragile whisper in the space.
    “Have you eaten?”
    She nodded. “I found something to eat before I came back.”
    A weak woman wouldn’t have found his address and come here. They certainly wouldn’t have walked away and come back again.
    He wanted to reach out, cup her cold cheek, and feel the silken skin that covered his Inari Okami, his fox goddess.
    He paced in front of her.
    “Do you know why they were here?”
    She nodded.
    That taste in the workshop, as wonderful as it was, had been a mistake. It hadn’t made it easier for him to let go and it seems it had only encouraged her to take her determination to another level.
    If he cared fractionally less, he would take what would be mutually enjoyable, but it went deeper than that. She went deeper than that.
    He saw her light. He saw the brightness in her. A glowing wondrous thing that spoke to a part of him deep on the inside. Spoke to the man he wanted to be, the man he hoped he was becoming. By letting her go, by pushing her away he was more of that man. A man who sacrificed his own wants to a higher good.
    That glowing essence she emitted would be something to behold in anyone, but for a woman who had grown up where she had, had been through what she had, that light was something astoundingly beautiful.
    To have all the veils lifted on the hardness of life and within humanity, to see the worst in people, of what life had to offer and still glow.
    He didn’t want to somehow make it dull.
    Behind him the fire caught; the wood and kindling crackled in the room.
    She tugged his bedcover closer to her as he moved around the room. He saw the white creases of her knuckles as she clutched at the cover.
    However, there was something else working him as well.
    The truth was he was held together by the most fragile of threads, the rituals of his life, of his passion, and the discipline of his mind. She was as shiny and bright as a paring knife.
    And, now he had her in his house.
    The woman who could fell him.
    The woman his secret heart dreamed of; simple, open, and agonizingly beautiful in her ordinary glow.
    Upstairs was his attic workroom, his rope, and tools of his pleasure.
    Not a far walk for either of them. And a world away if he was to do the right thing… and he would.
    Stick to the plan. That was the best course of action for him and for her.
    He walked over to where she sat. She wasn’t looking at him just yet. The light picked up the red in her hair small streaks of fire in her auburn locks.
    “Warmer?”
    “Yes.” She gave a soft cough to clear her voice. “Thank you.”
    She was unexpectedly demure, but that didn’t fool him. She was like water that eroded stone.
    Jamie slipped his hands into his pockets. He’d touch her if he didn’t and that struck him as particularly dangerous.
    Two years he’d tried to put her off, and where were they? They were here, at night, in his house, and him with his hands rammed in his pockets as if that was going to help either of them.
    “Isn’t someone waiting up for you? A parent? Family?”
    “My sister.” Her eyes met his. “I said I was meeting someone and not to expect me.” Red welted her cheeks.
    Oh, God, help him.
    His body still remembered the feel of her on his tongue. The taste of her in his mouth. The soft heat of her breast in his hand. The damp satin of her sex.
    He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets.
    “I’ll get you home.”
    Her eyes dropped to his britches. His state was obvious and her color rose.
    The inside of his chest hurt. She had no guile whatsoever.
    Olive worried on her lip and stared at his shape pressing the fabric of his trousers, growing further in the tight revealing fabric as she stared.
    He took a hand out of his pocket and reached out. Her breathing changed as he slid his