“You didn’t sleep well. What do you need to make you more comfortable?”

His voice poured over her like heat. Instantly she was aware of him, the wide set of his shoulders, his height, the muscles moving beneath the soft gray shirt. Everything. Just like that her body came to life.

“I was quite comfortable, thank you.” She took a breath and forced her body to relax. “It’s a new place, and I’m a little nervous committing to this project when I don’t really know what to expect.”

Being honest was always the best policy. She found that she wanted to give him honesty. Something. Anything. She’d come to him in full-blown panic, a state so unusual for her that she hardly recognized herself. Now she had a place to stop and think about things. To force panic from her mind and begin to hunt for solutions.

He held out his hand to her. Her heart quickened. God, he was gorgeous and intimidating when nothing and no one intimidated her. He didn’t snap his fingers or insist, he simply held out his hand and waited, leaving the decision to her. She wasn’t used to human contact. She hadn’t exactly had a lot of it. It wasn’t as if she’d had a mother who put her arms around her and held her. She couldn’t remember a time when someone had held her.

She put her hand in his, and he smiled. It was as if, for her, the sun had come out. His smile took her breath and made her inexplicably happy because, she sensed, he rarely smiled and it was like a gift. His fingers closed around hers and he pulled her close to him, almost beneath his shoulder. She had the strange illusion of feeling safe.

“We’ll take the car to a small café I know for breakfast, and you can ask me any questions. It’s important to build trust between us and the only way to do that is to get to know each other.”

She nodded. “I’ve read quite a bit on the subject of Shibari, but no two poses seem alike, and I wasn’t certain what to expect.”

“It isn’t about posing, Mariko,” he said.

He reached to open the door for her. As she stepped through, his hand went to the small of her back. It felt intimate, his palm burning a brand right through the thin weave of her sweater. He smelled masculine. That same, strange outdoorsy, after-a-rain scent that she loved.

“When I come to you to ask you to be my model, whatever mood I’m in, the way you look, how your hair sweeps across your neck, those kinds of things determine how I’m going to tie you, which color of rope, the material of the rope. What you need.”

She glanced up at him from under her lashes. His expression was very serious. “I don’t understand. What I need? Why would it be about what I need?”

A dark town car waited for them. A man, looking very similar to Emilio from the day before, opened the door for them. Ricco smiled at him. “Enzo, this is Mariko. Mariko, my cousin Enzo. Emilio and Enzo are my keepers for the moment. I was in a car accident and my family is afraid I might faint and crack my head on the sidewalk, isn’t that right, Enzo?”

She liked the easy camaraderie in his voice when he spoke to his cousin. She wasn’t used to that easy. There was no laughter in her home growing up. Only duty. She also had read about the “car accident.” He’d gone into a concrete wall at well over two hundred miles an hour. The video had been on the Internet and she’d replayed it over and over, watching the car fly apart and flames leap into the air as metal flew in all directions. She had no idea how he’d managed to live through such a thing. Even the surgeon, when he’d been interviewed, had called Ricco’s survival a miracle.

“That’s right, Ricco. We’re supposed to chase after you with a pillow and get it under your head before you hit the ground.” The man laughed and closed the door.

It was only then that she saw Emilio emerge from the drive, up close to the gates, to hurry and slip into the front passenger seat. Emilio turned and smiled at her. It wasn’t quite as sincere as she would have expected, and that sent up a tiny red flag.

“Mariko,” he greeted.

“Emilio,” she answered, using a shy, demure voice. She allowed her long lashes to sweep along her high cheekbones, a gesture that usually put men at ease automatically. It didn’t seem to work on Emilio. She saw his gaze flick toward the rearview mirror, clearly watching them.

Maybe she was wrong and his concern wasn’t about her at all. “What should I call you?” she asked Ricco. In Japan she would have addressed him only formally. She didn’t want to have to call him master or sir, but she would if it was necessary.

“I prefer not to stand on formality, but if it helps you to feel more at ease with me by keeping everything strictly businesslike, Mr. Ferraro is fine. Otherwise, Ricco.”

She thought about that. Would a man determined to establish dominance over her want her to be informal with him? Probably not. “Ricco, then.” Her accent made his name sound much more intimate than she’d intended. “I know you were in a terrible accident. Are you okay now?” Her eyes met Emilio’s in the mirror. “Should I be looking for signs of physical distress?”

She hated the anxiety running through her system, making her breath catch in her lungs. For him. She recognized that she was worried about his health, and that was just plain laughable considering what she was there to do. She looked up at him, contemplating.

She’d come there trying to keep perspective, trying to be fair, when the cost to her would be so high. So dear. Already she knew her answer. She was looking for dirt. Very few people didn’t have something they wanted to hide. Ricco Ferraro was hiding most of what and who he was from those around him, but that didn’t make him a criminal. She needed him to be a criminal.

“It’s been weeks, and I’ve gone through physical therapy. I still have to go a couple of days a week, but I’m much better. The headaches come and go. I haven’t had blurred vision in a few days, and I haven’t been dizzy in a couple of weeks.” There was honesty in his matter-of-fact voice, but something warned her he didn’t like talking about his recovery in front of his cousins.

She waited until the car had pulled smoothly up to a curb and Emilio had opened the door for them. She slid out and waited on the sidewalk, looking around her. This was the famed Ferraro territory. It started right on the edge of little Italy and went on for several blocks. She had studied it before she’d ever come, and she’d spent time riding the shadows from one end to another, familiarizing herself with the layout.

Ricco’s hand on the small of her back startled her. He didn’t make a sound when he moved and that was definitely a problem for her. How she didn’t sense that he was close, she didn’t know, not when every cell in her body seemed specifically tuned to him. He gestured toward the small glass door with gold hand-painted letters that simply read Biagi’s. Many of the shops had only one name on the door, as if that were enough.