Free The Bound Heart by Elsa Holland Page B

it except him. Okazaki was in the small house at the back of the garden and knew better than to answer his door at night. No staff stayed overnight; he simply didn’t want people in the house all the time.
    The banging came again, determined beats of the doorknocker on the wood echoing through the sparsely furnished foyer below.
    Maybe they’d go away. His shoulders ached and the backs of his hands had some rope burns.
    The session tonight had been productive, the start of ideas for Paris; however, the pleasure that should have been there wasn’t. Madeline was striking, it was wishful thinking to say she was intuitive in her understanding of the rope, she wasn’t. However, as usual, she rallied for Edgar and as the camera sent it’s blinding flash into the small space she glowed.
    With all the tension of the last week, he should have been as hard as nails, could have asked her to stay back. He had in the past, and they’d both enjoyed where he’d taken them, but now…after his taste of Olive, well he just wasn’t interested.
    There it was again. Hurried, urgent thumps beat the knocker on the wood and echoed the sound up the stairs. If the door to the small sitting room had been closed, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have woken.
    The clock read eleven o’clock as he passed the mantel and left the room. Then he headed down the first flight of stairs, rounded the landing, and descended the last flight. The glass panel above the door let the orange glow of the gaslights into the foyer.
    The knocks came again, jarring this close.
    Jamie reached over to the umbrella stand and took out a hefty walking stick, braced, and flung the door open.
    Her eyes flared and she almost lost her balance as she lurched back.
    He stood there, not able to place her here, now.
    Some part of him did because his hand reached out and dragged her in, even before the realization sunk in.
    “Olive?”
    His heart started functioning again and so did his head. It was late. She was walking around at night…in London. Anything, absolutely anything, could have happened to her. She was a beacon to the depraved with all her soft, luminous light.
    His stomach roiled.
    She stumbled as she stepped in and her brace clicked an arrhythmic staccato as she moved restlessly on the tiles. It flared something fierce in his belly, which flew up into a tight mess in his chest as he closed the door and placed the stick back in the umbrella stand.
    Then he turned and confronted her.
    “Olive, what were you thinking?”
    His hands clasped her shoulders, slim and fragile bones under tender white skin. God damn it, they’d snap in the wrong hands. He shook her hard.
    “Answer me, Olive.”
    She was too passive as he shook her, her usual gumption missing. He felt a flutter in his chest.
    Then his eyes registered her face. She looked wretched. Under his palms, she was freezing cold.
    “I,” she shivered. “I’ve been waiting outside.”
    His eyebrows came down and his jaw clenched his teeth together.
    “Blast it, Olive.” His arms slipped around her back, behind her legs, and lifted her up.
    She wriggled.
    “I can walk. I’m just cold.”
    A spike of anger flashed through him at her ridiculous statement. At her disregard for her wellbeing.
    “You’re frozen.”
    Then to his satisfaction she rolled into his chest and ran her arms around him sending his heart wild.
    He took the stairs two at a time.
    She was not light in a full lift, but his proclivities had him fit and strong. You didn’t haul a woman up in rigging for pleasure and not develop some strength.
    Satin soft hair rested under his chin.
    “This was ill thought out,” he growled into her. “Highly inconvenient to call this time of night, you do realize that?”
    Each step up, his heart beat faster; his mind flashed images of her pale skin framed by his bedding. And rope, lots of soft, loving rope, coiled around her, imprinting her flawless porcelain skin with pink rivulets and indents.
    Her