Unraveled

by Lorelei James

  from her and scooted into the booth next to Katie. Not because he had a thing for her, but because it put him directly across from Shiori. He poured himself a beer. “So what’d I miss?”

  “Nothing.” Katie sat between Knox and Blue. “I thought your MMA guys were coming tonight and cutting loose with you.”

  “Just Deacon. He’s parking his car. Anyone in particular you were hoping to see?” Knox teased.

  “Just you, Shihan,” she cooed back.

  A noise sounded from across the table, and he looked over to see a sneer on Shiori’s lips.

  Was she annoyed by his harmless flirting with Katie? That was interesting.

  Deacon showed up and straddled the chair next to Fee. “S’up, buttercup?”

  “Feelin’ fly, wise guy.”

  They did some weird fist-bump handshake thing.

  “Are we ordering food?” Deacon asked.

  “Not at ten at night. You are a bottomless pit.”

  He patted his belly. “I’m in training, darlin’. So will you help me burn off calories by—”

  “No! You’re such a pervert.” Fee shoved him.

  “You’re the pervert. I was asking if you’d two-step with me later.”

  “I don’t know what that is. Like the tango?”

  “Lord, I miss Texas sometimes.” He filled a mug with beer. “What about you Shi-Shi? You know how to dance?”

  “In a club with my friends? Yes. But the moving-around-the-floor-with-a-man kind? Uh. No.”

  “You don’t know how to slow dance?” Knox asked.

  Shiori shrugged. “Not really.”

  “So tell us about this two-timing thing,” Fee said.

  “Two-step,” Deacon corrected.

  Knox watched Shiori as she listened to Fee and Deacon. Normally he tried not to stare at her, but it was hard not to, with her exotic looks. Flawless ivory- and rose-colored skin tone. A heart-shaped face with a delicate jawline. Full lips. Topaz-colored eyes, slightly angled in the corners. And that hair—a black sheet that shone like onyx and fell in a straight line down her back.

  Yes, Shiori turned heads. He could admit she’d turned his head the moment she’d shown up at Black Arts, sliding into the back row during one of his classes. Laughable really, that she’d believed her beauty, grace, and power would go unnoticed.

  After she’d demonstrated that her martial-arts skill level exceeded his, he’d gotten pissy, hating that he’d felt threatened by the bit of a thing. Then he’d worried that he’d lose his stature as Shihan—the highest-ranking belt after Sensei—because Shiori was Ronin’s sister. She hadn’t pushed to take over his position, but she sure liked lording it over him that she outranked him.

  So he used that antagonistic nature between them to mask his fascination with her. Ronin was his friend, his boss, and his mentor. No way could Knox admit he lusted after Ronin’s little sister. Even when that sister was a thirty-five-year-old business shark who could buy and sell small countries and kick the shit out of just about anyone.

  As he’d gotten to know her over the past few months, he suspected what she showed people of herself was only the surface view—just as her brother did.

  “So? What do you think?”

  Knox tore his gaze away from her—acting like a creeper much?—and focused on Katie and Blue’s conversation.

  “I said I’d consider it. Deus, woman,” Blue complained. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”

  “Because it’s a great idea.”

  “What’s a great idea?” Fee asked her.

  “Running a pro-bono self-defense clinic on a Saturday at the North Seventh Girls Club.”

  “That’s in a rough part of town,” Knox said.

  “I know. Which is all the more reason these girls need a self-defense class.”

  “My guys are putting in extra training hours on Saturday, Katie. I can’t spare an instructor,” Blue said.

  “Ditto for us,” Knox said. “I can’t pull teachers away from the Saturday students.”

  Shiori touched Katie’s hand when she was busy stirring her drink. “How many instructors would you need?”

  “I thought I’d limit the class to fifty. That way four instructors would be enough. It’d just be basics.”

  “If you set it up, I’ll do it,” Shiori offered.

  “Really? Thank you!”

  Knox hid his surprise that Shiori had volunteered.

  “I’m in too,” Fee said. “Tasha isn’t working with the MMA guys, so she could be the third instructor. I know Molly isn’t a teacher, but she’s passed the class and gone on to take more classes. It’d be good for the girls to hear from a woman who’s survived an attack.”

  “Absolutely fucking not.”

  Everyone’s gaze snapped to Deacon.

  “Why not?” Katie demanded.

  “Because Molly was traumatized, and she doesn’t need to relive that shit in front of a bunch of people she doesn’t know. Leave her out of this.”

  “If Molly were here, she’d remind you that you’re not the boss of her,” Shiori said with a sniff.

  Katie smirked. “Yeah, what she said. And it won’t hurt to ask her, at any rate.”

  Deacon’s gaze winged between Shiori and Katie. “Since when do you two trust-fund babies have Saturdays open to help the less fortunate? Ain’t that primo shopping time at Saks?”

  Christ, Deacon, do you have any fucking tact?

  “Maybe the next time I’m there I’ll take you on as a charity case and buy you some goddamn manners,” Katie snapped.

  Fee put her hand over Deacon’s mouth when he started to retort. “We all wonder why you don’t talk much, and when you do . . . aye yi, Yondan. Be nice or I won’t do that quick-step thing with you.”

  The only person paying attention to their interaction was Gil. Katie and Blue were back in a heated discussion. And Shiori was . . . looking straight at him.

  “Still mad at me for chasing off weasel dick from the bar?”

  “Maybe.”

  Knox grinned. “I know what’ll make you feel better.”

  “That’s not in the cards for you . . . oh, ever, pervert.”

  “You’re the perverted one, since I was talking about dancing.” He leaned forward. “Come on. Dance with me.”

  “Why are you being so insistent about this?”

  Because I’d like to know what it’s like holding your body against mine when we’re not trying to choke each other out. “Because it’s a rite of passage that you missed—at least as part of your American heritage. What kind of American would I be if I didn’t fill that gap?”

  She rolled her eyes—but she didn’t say no.

  Knox took that as a yes.

  Immediately he was on his feet, moving in behind her.

  Gil said, “Just a heads-up, Shiori. Dancing is nothing like grappling. But if he grabs your ass, I expect to see a wicked hip throw from you.”

  Everyone laughed. So Knox didn’t take her hand until they were out of heckling range.

  Shiori looked at him when they stopped in the middle of the dance floor.

  He put her hands on his shoulders and snaked his arms around her waist, pulling their bodies close.

  She tried to hold herself stiffly away from him. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Relax. Move with me. Let your body rest against mine.”

  “This feels unnatural.”

  “You’re overthinking it. Close your eyes.”

  She nestled her cheek against his chest and closed the distance between their lower halves.

  The slow, bluesy music was the perfect tempo to sway together.

  When she sighed and melted into him, he felt the insane urge to press his lips to the top of her head.

  “This is nice,” she said softly.

  “You really haven’t ever danced like this?”

  “No. I went to an all-girls school. In college when I w
ent out with my friends, we went to clubs where we all danced in a group. We did some dirty dancing as a joke.”

  “So no drunken groping and sloppy kisses at your friends’ wedding dances?”

  “Wedding dances aren’t a big thing in Japan. Or at least not in my circle of friends.”

  “Glad I’m your first.”

  She laughed. “I’ll bet you had girls lined up to slow dance with you.”

  A compliment? He waited for her to tag it with an insult, but she didn’t. “Yes, I did. You’re looking at the slow-dancing stud of Westwood Hills Junior High.”

  “And what made you such a hot commodity?”

  “I was tall, for one thing. Other boys in my class hadn’t hit their growth spurts yet. It was awkward for taller girls to dance with shorter boys. The other appeal of dancing with thirteen-year-old Knox was I figured out girls might say they didn’t want a boy’s hand on their butt, but if you made the move gradually, they didn’t notice until you’re rubbing circles on their ass and then they realize they like it. So I could cop a feel, but not in a threatening way.”

  Shiori tilted her head back. “You think I didn’t notice your big hand is on my ass?”

  He grinned. “Well, you didn’t put me in a wrist lock, so I figured it was okay.”

  While she kept her eyes on his, her hand traveled up his neck to the back of his head. She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled. Hard.

  Sweet baby Moses, his knees nearly buckled.

  What the ever-lovin’ fuck? How could he like that? Why did he want her to stop and yet . . . at the same time he felt desperate for her to continue.

  Knox returned his hand to her lower back.

  She released him but kept the lock on his eyes.

  “What?”

  “Not the reaction I expected from you.”

  “That’s not a reaction I expected to have either,” he said without anger or sarcasm.

  “You confuse the hell out of me, Knox Lofgren.”

  “The same could be said for you, Ms. Hirano.”

  They studied each other, almost as if it were the first time they’d met.

  Shiori curled her hand around his neck and stroked the pulse point by the hollow of his throat. “How many songs have we danced to?”

  Not enough. “Two. Why?”

  “How long do you plan to keep me out here dancing with you?”

  Knox slipped his hand up her back and beneath her hair to curl around the side of her face. “Junior-high Knox had worked out a strategy that if he could keep a girl in his arms, moving body to body, by song three she would let her kiss him.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. She still had a bump on her lower lip from their angry grappling match on Monday night. He swept his thumb over the mark. “Dammit, Shiori. I’m sorry about making you bleed.”

  “It’s rare for me to say this, but I deserved to get knocked down a peg. But if you really wanted to prove you’re sorry . . .”

  Their gazes met.

  His cock had been behaving. But between the sexy way she’d commanded his attention by pulling his hair and the invitation that she’d welcome his mouth on hers, his cock immediately grew hard and hopeful.

  “It’s my lucky day, because the third song hasn’t even started.” Knox tried to keep his gaze secured on hers as he angled his head, debating on a sweet or a fiery kiss, when an arm hooked around his neck, pulling him away from Shiori.

  “Quit hoggin’ her. My turn to show Shi-Shi how real dancin’ is done,” Deacon drawled.

  One shot to the kidney and Deacon “Con Man” McConnell wouldn’t be dancing with anyone, his masculine pride demanded. Who the fuck did Deacon think he was that he could just interrupt a private moment?

  Just as Knox was about to follow through with some bodily harm, Deacon wrapped his hand around Knox’s neck and gave him a head butt. Under his breath Deacon said, “Sit the fuck down.”

  He broke Deacon’s hold and walked away, trying to keep his temper in check. Instead of going back to the table, he detoured to the bar.

  The bartender, a hot twentysomething with bleached hair and a fake tan, aimed a blindingly white smile at him. “What’ll it be, handsome? Shot of Jack?”

  “I’ll take a Coke.”

  She filled a glass with ice and soda before he got his wallet out. “No charge for designated drivers.”

  He dropped three bucks on the bar top and headed back to his friends. Only Gil remained at the table. “Where’d everyone go?”

  “Katie got a phone call and left. Fee decided Blue had enough to drink so she took his keys and drove home. Deacon . . . I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “He’s dancing with Shiori.”

  “I’m surprised he stuck around as long as he did. He’s seriously on edge.”

  “And he’ll be like that until his next fight is over.”

  Gil picked at the bar napkin beneath his empty beer glass. “He’s gonna get his ass beat.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because Deacon doesn’t care about winning. He cares about fighting.” Gil glanced up. “Sensei Black is a jujitsu master. He’s been a fighter. But he’s not an MMA coach. No offense, but neither are you. If Black Arts wants the fighters on their roster to win, you’ll have to recruit coaching talent, not more fighters.”

  The rivalry between Black Arts and ABC had lessened as the two dojos were under the same Black Arts umbrella. And it pained Knox to admit it, but Gil was right. Ronin had added ten new fighters to train at Black Arts. Out of five bouts in the last fight—which was more of an amateur “smoker”—they’d had one winner. ABC had four winners out of five.

  “You pissed off at me now?” Gil asked.

  “No. I’m frustrated because I know you’re right. And I don’t know what I can do about it.”

  “As of this week you’re in charge. If there’s ever been any time that you can make a change, it’ll be in the next two months when Ronin isn’t here.”

  Knox’s gaze sharpened. “You’re suggesting . . . what exactly?”

  “Make the Black Arts MMA program a priority by hiring a high-profile professional trainer. That way maybe Black and Blue Promotions can move out of the smoker category and get into the real fight-promotion business too.”

  “Did Blue tell you to talk to me? As one second-in-command to another?”

  Gil shook his head. “My first loyalty is to Blue and ABC. But I also know ABC would’ve had to disband if it hadn’t been for Ronin’s assistance. A stronger Black Arts MMA program only strengthens our position. I’m not looking to sabotage either dojo; I’m only looking to bolster the entire organization.”

  “Let’s say I agree with you. A high-profile trainer doesn’t come cheap. I don’t have financial discretion at Black Arts, and if I bring someone new on board without Ronin’s approval, he’ll just shitcan the guy the second he’s back in charge.”

  “You don’t have financial discretion, but Shiori does,” Gil said slyly. “If you can convince her to back your plan, she’ll free up the funds to pay a trainer’s salary. And don’t discount Hachidan Black’s reputation as the real deal. I’ll bet you’d be surprised by the number of trainer applicants you’d get just on that alone.”