Page 38 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

"I'm sixty percent a new woman. Forty percent still the one I was last time." I exhaled.

She nodded slowly, eyes back on the road. "Sixty is movement. I'll take sixty."

The car was quiet for a minute. Streetlights flicked on, gold pools spreading across the pavement.

After a beat she added, "And while we're on Ricardo. I should tell you something."

"What?"

"He's been asking about you."

I turned in the seat. "Asking what?"

"Whether you were coming tonight. Whether you were okay after last time. Whether you said anything about him." She kept her eyes on the road. "I told him you were fine. He looked relieved. Then I told him you were probably coming, and he looked—" She paused on it. "Like a man who'd just spotted a thing he wanted. That's my read, not the word he'd use."

That lit something.

"I told you he was into the innocence thing," Janice said. "What I didn't clock until this last conversation is that a woman who almost let him and then stopped him is even more desirable than a woman who just let him. He's been thinking about you, Lacey. He's been thinking about you specifically."

Part of me wanted to laugh and say good. The rest went hot and quiet and unsure.

"I want to be the woman who finds that flattering," I said.

"You are flattered."

"That's not the same thing."

Janice glanced at me, amused. "It will be."

She pulled into the parking lot.

By the time the engine cut, my heart was beating hard again. The difference from last time was that it didn't feel like dread. It felt like anticipation.

"Ready?" Janice asked.

I looked at the dark discreet building, then back at her. "Sixty percent."

She grinned. "That's my girl."

Ricardo was waiting outside, leaning against the wall beside the entrance in black suit pants and a silver dress shirt that fit him like expensive fabric fits a man who works out seriously. No tie, top button open, thick dark hair swept back again. When he saw me his smile started slow and shifted into high gear by the time he straightened up.

"You made it."

"I made it."

"You look dangerous, Lacey."

He said my name differently from the way he'd said it the first time. Less polite. More awake.

"That was the goal," I said, and was surprised how steady it sounded.

Janice stepped up beside me and looped her arm through mine. "Come on. Let's get inside before she talks herself out of it."

Ricardo guided us toward the same high-top table we'd had last time, the reserved card already waiting. His hand grazed my bare shoulder as he leaned close.

"Sit." His voice was very near my ear. "Breathe. You're safe here."

It wasn't quite a request. Last time the certainty in his voice had reassured me. Tonight the reassurance was still there, but underneath it was the fact that I wasn't saying no on principle anymore. The word safe resonated differently when safe included the possibility of doing what I'd run out the door to avoid last time.