Chapter 25
Violet
Pretty sure I had said never again, and yet here we are.
. . The rope held my body like a lover’s embrace, tightening in subtle ways when I shifted my weight on the edge of Rowan’s bed.
Each movement sent the cerulean fibers pressing deeper into my skin—not painfully, but with enough pressure to remind me I was wrapped, contained, held.
Safe.
The word whispered through my mind unbidden, and I pushed it away. Safety was an illusion, a pretty lie people told themselves. But the rope. . . the rope didn’t lie. It simply was.
“How does it feel?” Rowan’s voice came from behind me, soft and low, carrying that particular quality that made my spine straighten involuntarily.
I was in a sheer sleeveless black bodysuit, bound in blue rope that wrapped around my chest and torso in an intricate diamond pattern I couldn’t fully see.
The tie started above my breasts, crisscrossing over my ribs and around my back in what felt like dozens of carefully placed loops.
My arms were free—for now—and my legs dangled off the bed’s edge, feet barely touching the hardwood floor.
Rowan knelt beside me, his piercing eyes tracking my face with unnerving focus.
He wore dark grey sweats and nothing else, his chest bare, his white-blonde hair slightly disheveled from where he’d run his fingers through it earlier.
The energy in the room simmered—thick and charged, electricity waiting for a spark.
“It feels oddly comforting.” I heard the surprise in my own voice. “Relaxing, even.”
His mouth curved into a small smile, genuine and unguarded. “The Hishi Karada wraps around your body to mimic a hug. The pressure triggers your parasympathetic nervous system—tells your body it is safe, that you can rest.”
I tested the bonds carefully, shifting my shoulders. The rope held firm but gave slightly, adjusting to my movement without biting. “And you learned this. . . how?”
“Books. Practice. Trial and error on Marie Antoinette.” He reached for more rope coiled beside him on the bed—the same cerulean blue, soft and smooth beneath my skin. “I can show you more ties if you are interested.”
“I am.” The admission came easier than it should have. “Especially the one you mentioned. With the toy.”
His eyes darkened, pupils dilating slightly. “Ah, you mean the basic crotch rope tie altered to allow a toy?”
“Yes.” My voice came out breathy, and I watched him register the change with predatory satisfaction.
But he didn’t move to begin that tie. Instead, he began wrapping more rope around my torso, adding to the existing pattern. His movements were methodical, practiced, each loop placed with deliberate precision.
“I need to finish this one first,” he said, his breath warm against my shoulder as he worked. “Then we can discuss more advanced applications.”
“Why bother finishing the tie?”
He scoffed. “Shibari—also known as Kinbaku—celebrates the body,” he explained, his fingers gliding across the patterns along my ribs. “Every knot is designed to enhance, to display, to honor the art of what it holds. It would be sacrilegious to not at least attempt to finish the tie, Violet.”
My cunt purred at the thought, but I remained calm. “I don’t like waiting, Rowan.”
“I am aware,” he said drily. “Tell me, do you know the differences between Shibari and Hojōjutsu?”
I shook my head. “No, but I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”
He smiled at that. “Hojōjutsu was a precursor to modern-day handcuffs. The knots are designed to dig into pressure points and apply stress to joints. It was meant to break the body. With Hojōjutsu,” he whispered into my ear, “It is time that becomes the torturer.”
“Oh. Interesting history lesson.” I waited until he’d made several more passes with the rope before I spoke again. “So are you going to tell me about the girl from class?”
His hands stilled for a fraction of a second—barely noticeable, but in our time together, I’d learned to read his microexpressions.
“What about her?” He resumed his work, threading rope beneath an existing loop.
“Don’t play dumb, Rowan.” I tried to turn my head to look at him, but the rope’s positioning made the movement awkward. “You were totally fixated on her like she was. . . I don’t know, someone important.”
“She might have been.”
“Might have been what?” Frustration bled into my tone. “An ex-girlfriend? Someone you fucked? Someone you wanted to fuck?”
“None of those things.” He tugged the rope tighter—not painfully, but enough to make his point. “And you are being a brat.”
“Then tell me who she was.” I refused to let this go, jealousy coiling hot and ugly in my chest. I hated the feeling, hated that I cared enough to feel it, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “You don’t just chase random women through academic buildings for no reason.”
“Unless they are avoiding their bodyguard like someone I know.” He moved around to face me, his expression serious now.
Gone was the playful dominance, replaced by something harder.
More cautious. “She was not a woman I knew personally.” He held my gaze.
“But I believe she may be connected to the murder on campus.”
The jealousy evaporated instantly, replaced by sharp focus. “Connected how?”
Rowan sighed, moved back behind me, and returned to his work with the rope. I felt him creating a new anchor point at my back, his fingers brushing my spine with clinical efficiency. “I do not know. Not yet. Hence why I wanted to speak with her.”
“That sounds like bullshit.”
I couldn’t see his face, but I heard the scowl in his voice. “Why would I lie—”
“If you wanted her number, at least be man enough to admit it instead of—”
“Tfu! You are not listening with your ears or thinking with your head. You are listening to your gut and thinking with your heart,” he said as he tightened a knot for emphasis.
“Don’t turn into a fucking fortune cookie to avoid admitting the truth! Why were you checking her out?”
The rope tightened again. Not enough to hurt—it actually felt incredible—but enough that I felt his frustration through the ropes. “I already told you. She may be connected—”
“And I already told you bullshit,” I growled the last word, my throat raw with anger. “Stop fucking lying to me.”
He tightened the rope even more. “I would not lie to you, Violet. But I need to hunt down—”
“Hunt down?” I laughed as I said it. It was a cruel laugh, incredulous and dismissive. “You’re not the police, Rowan.”
“The police will be clueless to catch this thing, and it will kill again unless—”
“This thing? What do you mean by thing, Rowan?”
His hands stilled. I felt some slack loosen the knot he was working on before he moved back around to face me. “Promise me you will not overreact to what I am about to tell you.”
“I can’t promise that. I don’t know what you’re about to say.”
“That is fair. Give me a moment to think, please.” He moved back behind me and continued securing the knot he’d been working on. It took a long while for Rowan to finish his knots before he moved to stand in front of me in silence.
I had experienced some heavy silences in my first life. After I’d been catfished and kidnapped at nine, there was the frozen and terrified silence of that first night I’d spent blindfolded, bound, gagged, alone, and cold.
The still silence that radiated from Rowan was heavier than either of those. It felt as if he were shouldering the weight of the world with that silence and waging a war within himself on how to break that silence.
I took a tiny breath and said, “You just said you would not lie to me. Unless that was a lie. . . please tell me what you meant and what you’re thinking.”
“I would not lie to you,” he said with a nod. “The woman from class was not entirely human, Violet. She was a shifter.”
I blinked at him, processing the words. “A shifter? Like. . . like a werewolf?”
“Perhaps. Or another type of shifter. I could not determine her specific animal without closer proximity.”
“Okay.” I forced myself to remain calm. “Let’s say I believe you. How do you know she was a shifter?”
“I could smell her.” He said it matter-of-factly.
“Shifters have a distinctive musk—wild, earthy, carrying notes of whatever animal they can become. And I could hear her heartbeat. It was running at approximately one hundred sixty beats per minute while she was standing still. No human’s resting heart rate runs that fast.”
I stared at him. “Smelling her seems invasive, but you could hear her heartbeat. . . from across a crowded lecture hall?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not possible, Rowan.”
“It is possible when you have enhanced hearing.” He returned to his work with the rope, apparently unconcerned by my skepticism.
“You have heard those urban legends about people being changed from nearly a decade ago? The extremely rare and bizarre side effects from a pharmaceutical drug? How some allegedly underwent odd mutations?”
“Of course I’ve heard stories, but those are all. . . I mean, they’re just tabloid bullshit.”
“You are going to have a hard time believing me about all I have to tell you if we cannot get past this,” he said with frustration. “How can I prove this to you?”
I shifted on my knees, testing the bonds. The rope held firm, my arms secured behind me, the cerulean fibers wrapping my torso in a familiar embrace I’d grown to crave. I faced his bedroom door from my position on the bed.
“I don’t know, Rowan. It just sounds—”
“Wait here,” he said as he headed towards the door.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer, just opened the door to his bedroom and walked out into the hall. “Say something. Whisper it.”
This is ridiculous. But fine. I’ll play along.
“This is stupid,” I whispered, barely putting any voice behind the words.
“This is stupid,” he called back immediately, his voice carrying easily from wherever he stood.
I blinked. Lucky guess. Has to be.
“Go further away,” I said.