The Bound Heart by Elsa Holland Read Free Book Online Page A

mastered.
    Her kimono, a subdued sheen of taupe and greens, was the colors for spring. If he never saw a tree, yet could see Okazaki, he’d always know the season simply by the colors she wore.
    “It’s nice to have the room open again,” she said in Japanese.
    The room ran along two thirds of the back of the main house much like an English conservatory would. Everything had been imported from Japan made to order. And those craftsmen who did not reside in the Japanese expat community were sent for from Japan to craft and do the instillation.
    Opening the room was an impromptu move, as if inside the foreign space thoughts of Olive were not likely to follow him.
    Fool.
    After those kisses in the workshop today, she curled around him tighter than if he’d left her alone.
    Her panting breaths, her shaky fingers, the tentative touch of her tongue. And, he closed his eyes as he remembered, the feel of her as he pushed his fingers deep into her satin folds. The images and phantom touches rolled around in repeated loops through his mind and teasing.
    Jamie didn’t want to know what he now knew about her. That her kisses tasted of pure spring water. That her hair was gossamer silk threaded through his fingers.
    He especially didn’t want to know that she would be a very responsive lover. That they were in tune together, could communicate together with no words spoken.
    Moreover, he totally chose to ignore that being bound calmed her. That her eyes grew heavy and her breathing deepened as he worked the ribbon around her calf. No, he was going to forget that as fast as he could.
    Jamie stood as Okazaki came in, he walked over to the white-paper sliding doors overlooking the back garden and slid them open. On the other side was a narrow wooden passage with a wall of glass sliding doors.
    The glass doors gave access directly to the garden.
    Staring at the glass, he saw his reflection, and past that image, the garden. The moon painted silver brush strokes over the shrubs, pathways, and stones.
    “It’s a beautiful night.” His voice sounded tight.
    In fact, everything about him felt tight. He needed to shake the lingering mood that was all about Olive Thompson.
    “Storm’s coming,” Okazaki said.
    Clouds twisted and rolled high above the city, taking away the heat of the day. Instead, the cold, crisp spring air would wrap around everyone who walked through it. Small puffs of mist, remnants of the fading winter, pushing ahead of them as they walked.
    The smog was getting sucked up in the turmoil, pulled off the city, giving London’s inhabitants breathing room for a couple of days before the thick pea soup of murky air settled back around them.
    “Sensei would have opened the glass doors,” he said.
    The old man would sit in the wooden corridor, the glass doors open, one leg outside resting on the stone step, and his back against the edge of the glass sliding door. The place where inside and outside meets, half of me in and half of me out. That’s how it is Jamie-kun, a part of us drawn to nature and the secrets it holds, and the other to the tight patterns of our civilization.
    “Too much sake.” Her voice held a smile.
    Sensei loved his sake. He’d go all red from the smallest amount of it; he said it heated his blood, and he would slide back those glass doors to let nature in no matter the time of year, snow, rain, or humid heat.
    Jamie came back to the low, polished, wooden table and sat down on the oriental cushion, crossing his legs.
    Something about Olive pushed him too hard, inflamed him more than anyone he’d met before. Inflamed him more than was wise.
    The body had a reaction and speed all its own. Foolish people thought themselves in control. Control was possible only because the dam of emotions, of physical responses, was a manageable flow. But there were encounters, people who somehow opened a reserve, a floodgate that washed away all that control.
    Olive was possibly that trigger person for him.
    He had