Chapter 1: The First Knot
The air was neither warm nor cool, but still. It smelled of aged leather, of metal oiled to a quiet sheen, and beneath it all, the faint, clean scent of hemp. Drake stood in the center of the room, the cold of the flagstones seeping into the soles of his bare feet. He was naked. The confidence that armored him in boardrooms and courtrooms had been left, folded neatly, on the plush chair in the anteroom with his five-thousand-dollar suit. Here, he was only form and breath and waiting.
A chain rattled softly against stone.
Mistress Mikasa emerged from the shadow of a heavy oak frame, her movement silent. She was smaller than him, slighter, dressed in simple black trousers and a sleeveless top that revealed the lean, defined muscles of her arms. Her black hair was pulled into a severe knot. She held a coil of deep indigo rope, the color of a midnight bruise.
She didn’t speak. She began to circle him, a slow, predatory orbit. Her eyes were dark, assessing, missing nothing: the slight tension in his shoulders, the involuntary flex of his abdominal muscles as he breathed, the rapid pulse visible at the base of his throat. She was reading him like a schematic.
Her first touch was clinical.