Page 50 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

I'd laughed, caught entirely off guard. "Yeah. She is." It hadn't been what I was thinking, but Bonds was sexy, if you didn't know her.

"Were you thinking about asking her something?"

"What?"

She'd continued, unbothered. "I'd be up for it."

I'd laughed out loud at that. "Her? Baby, you never could read women. She's wound up so tight the very idea would make her head explode."

Pamela had just smiled. "You never know."

Then Jessica had kicked. The first time I'd ever felt it. Pamela taking my hand and pressing it flat against the curve of her stomach, and then the small, unmistakable pressure of a foot or a fist pushing back.

I started the engine.

Something was bugging me about today. I ran back through it looking for the variable I'd missed.

The handshake. That was where it started.

She hadn't tightened.

I went through it again, slower. Every exchange in the wing. How she'd held my gaze during the climbing-wall argument and hadn't looked away first. The way she'd spoken to me in front of Jessica. And she'd touched my arm in the lobby when she'd said I wasn't so bad.

Nothing I'd done today had shaken her. The pattern was gone.

Patterns were my stock in trade.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. Jessica, asleep, cheek smushed against the car seat, the ponytail splayed across her shoulder.

Bonds was different.

If she kept that kind of thing up, she might get interesting.

23 - UNDER THE TABLE

Lacey

Ricardo drove me to a restaurant I'd never been to, one that promised something the moment we pulled up. It sat on a quiet side street downtown, the kind of place that didn't announce itself. Golden light spilled from tall windows framed in heavy velvet. He came around and opened my door, offered his hand as I stepped out. I was wearing the dress he'd asked me to wear, short, loose, and silky, brushing high on my thighs, the neckline low enough that going braless had felt like the obvious choice. He'd been specific about it on the phone, and I'd liked that, a man who knew what he wanted me in. The air raised a shiver on my skin that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Le Jardin Noir was dark and intimate and quietly expensive. Wooden beams crossed the ceiling, the walls a deep charcoal that drank the light. Real candles flickered on every table. The air smelled of butter and garlic and roasting meat under a faint thread of old wine, and jazz covered the conversations without making anyone raise their voice. Half the tables sat in nooks made private by tall wooden screens and heavy drapes.

Ricardo spoke to the host and asked for one of the deepest nooks, the one where a floor-length cloth draped to the ground on every side. The host smiled like he understood something and led us there. We slid into the curved booth, the cloth brushing my bare legs. It felt like a small hidden world of our own.

The conversation was easy at first. He took my hand across the table, his thumb circling my knuckles. "Tell me about your week, Lacey. Any tiny hearts that needed saving?"

I laughed, warmer than I expected. "A few." I told him the sweeter stories, like Jessica, and skipped the challenging cases. He listened like it mattered, asked real questions, his dark eyes never leaving my face. In return he told me about a piece he was writing for guitar, a slow piece he'd been working on late at night, thinking about the way I'd moved against him the last time. The memory of that night pulsed and pulled at me.

We ordered a heavy red. Ricardo poured, the wine catching the candlelight, and I let the first sip spread through my chest. I was surprised how relaxed I felt across from him, the second man I'd ever slept with, and under the calm ran a steady insistent want. Every time I shifted, the dress rode higher. My nipples tightened against the thin fabric. I was already wet, and we hadn't finished the first glass.

He leaned in, his voice dropping to the register that always tugged at me. "There's an ulterior motive to tonight."

I raised an eyebrow. "What?"

A small smile, a little shy at the edge of it. "Remember I told you the biggest thrill for me is public? Where you might get caught. That's always been the fantasy."

The want pulled tighter at the words. I'd loved it too, the idea of it, watching people at the club knowing eyes were on them. "Yes," I said, breathier than I meant. "What's it got to do with the restaurant?"

"It's a fantasy of mine. Something I've seen in films, read about. Never actually done." He went a little red and cleared his throat. "I'm young, and I grew up religious, so I've only let myself want these things for a few years. Shorter than you'd think. I love the idea of you getting corrupted. Janice thinks that's a bad thing. What she doesn't know is I got corrupted too. Books, films, an imagination that always ran too hot. It brought me here."