Twisted Strands

by Lilia Moon

  Twisted Strands

  The Handcrafted Trilogy, Book 1

  Lilia Moon

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Lilia Moon

  Borrowing my words to make money is a hard limit. Using them to fuel your own fantasies is totally encouraged!

  xoxo Lilia

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  Now enjoy rope artist and rope maker as the strands of the universe work to twist them together…

  xo Lilia

  Chapter One

  Matteo

  I pull off on the side of the road. There’s a rest stop in another thirty miles, but there’s a craggy rock outcropping in the scrub and brush to my right and it comes with a complete absence of annoying people who want change for a vending machine. I need to avoid rest stops until I can handle ordinary polite interactions with other human beings.

  I slam my truck door shut and give it a pat. Becky likes civilization a lot less than I do, and I usually make her live in a Seattle parking garage. She’s my escape valve when I need one, although I don’t usually drive this far to find something to climb. I leave my ropes in the truck—they aren’t the rock-climbing kind, and I don’t intend to do anything refined enough to need safety gear. Just me, a rock, and a little scrambling.

  I cross over the ditch into scrub and weeds and wild grass and look around for any signs of occupation. No people, but I’ve learned the hard way not to walk across a bull’s territory without his permission, or between a mama of any species and her little ones. The coast is clear, and I huff out a breath into the early morning air. It’s not warm enough yet to chase me back to my air-conditioned truck, but it will be soon—the arid air out here heats up fast. Most people in the rain corridor don’t even know this part of Washington State exists, but it’s the shortest route to my destination, and one that suits my current mood.

  Empty. Capable of taking all the shit I need to evict from inside my ribs.

  I sigh and take in a deep breath of dust and dry grasses. There are hints of green in the scrub, and the occasional brave wildflower, but mostly I’m walking through a gorgeous, desolate fire waiting to happen. I exhale slowly. I’m trying to put out a fire, not start one.

  I rub my hands over my face. Doxy was right. I need a break, even if my schedule says I don’t have time for one. That’s not a place I end up in very often—I gave up overwork a decade ago. But this client needed my help, or more precisely the nice people surviving the executive team’s abuse did, and it took three times as long as it should have because the assholes in charge couldn’t find their way to decency.

  Sometimes people can’t let go of the concrete around their ankles, no matter how deep the water is. I gave them more chances than I should have to choose different footwear, but to some people, freedom is a dirty word.

  So I engineered a coup instead, and now the people newly in charge can figure out what kind of company they want to be without the concrete holding them down.

  I tip back my head and try to let the bright-blue sky leach away the results of running on adrenaline for too many weeks. I’ll have some new enemies to deal with when I get back. The assholes will find themselves new jobs, and I’ll make sure it’s me they come after and not the very green people I just left in charge of a heavily remodeled company. They’ll be fine, but they don’t need vengeful ghosts in the hallways.

  The rock outcropping isn’t getting a whole lot closer. I shake my head and turn around to look at Becky, parked by the side of the road sunning her dusty self and looking like a toy. I wave, and then I grin and shake my head. I know I’ve let things fester way too long when my current favorite person has eight pistons and license plates.

  When I get back home, it’s time to make some changes. I’ve got all the signs I teach my clients to watch for, and my life is too good to let my job burn me out.

  I breathe in again, and I can feel my ribs expanding this time. Doxy was right. When a tiny pixie of a sub crosses her arms and tells you to leave the club and not come back until you’re less cranky, you know it’s time to go. Past time. She shouldn’t have had to say it. My moods were bleeding into my scenes, and when you’re a guy who ties people up for hours, that’s inexcusable.

  I’m going to owe a certain pixie sub when I get back.

  Until then, I have a road trip in front of me and a destination that was interesting enough I didn’t punch Damon in the nose when he decided he was Doxy’s wingman and gave me an errand to run. One that involves a drive to the middle of nowhere, British Columbia. Far enough away to give me lots of time to think as I fetch his order of handmade rope for the club. I think he’s hoping Dom voice and my dual passports will be enough to get it all back across the border. Several thousand dollars of specialty rope in the back of a truck tends to take some explaining.

  I give up on the rock outcropping and drop down on the dry grass, snorting as the prickles try to poke through my shirt. It’s an effect I use in bondage sometimes. Small discomforts to help hold someone tightly in their skin. I lie back and let the sun warm my eyelids. The grasses do a dance with the soft, faded fabric of my favorite t-shirt. They leave my jeans alone. Even wild grass knows better than to fight with denim.

  I cross my feet at the ankles, the weight of my boots just one more reminder that I’m not in the hallways of corporate hell any longer. I’ll go back, but between now and then, I have time to sink into the part of myself that’s been strangled by too many ties lately.

  Time to connect with my inner artist again, the one who first touched rope twenty years ago on a college co-op placement in Japan and discovered that knots spoke to his soul. The one who’s off to visit a woman who just happens to make really fantastic product. Half the ropes in my gear bag come from her online store.

  And she had a really sexy voice on the phone.

  I grin as my cock half-hardens. “We’re in a field, dumbass.”

  He doesn’t say a word. He just puts those sexy tones on mental playback in case I’ve forgotten.

  I snort. I had to call because she has a really inefficient website for her B&B, with no availability calendar and no reservation system. However, it’s the nicest place to stay in Crawford Bay unless I want to pitch a tent in the woods somewhere, and I’m hoping to sweet talk its proprietor into letting me see all of her wares.

  My cock rises hopefully.

  I shake my head again. Definitely a dumbass, and not much for metaphors either. It’s Liane’s ropes I’m after. I’ve ordered from her for years. She’s the finest artisanal rope maker on the continent, and I want to see what she’s got laying around her back room before it lands on her site and vanishes. I also need to convince her to raise her prices. There’s no way Damon should be able to afford her ropes for the club.

  That probably makes me an elitist shit, but I’m cranky enough today that I don’t care. Rope bondage has become the latest cool thing in kink, but I learned it at the feet of people who believe that tools should be honored. Liane Granger’s ropes deserve to be in the hands of people who’ve spent years earning the righ
t to touch them.

  I huff out a breath and roll to my feet.

  One deserving rope master, incoming, although I need to ditch more of my temper before I get there or she’ll probably run screaming and never sell me anything again.

  I head back down to my truck. There are very few things Becky and enough miles of open road can’t fix. Especially when there’s a ropes lady with a sexy voice at the end of it.

  Chapter Two

  Liane

  I curse and catch the end of my spindle before my latest reckless acquisition swats at it again. I glare at the kitten who somehow took less than ten seconds to convince me that I needed to become a cat person. “I can take you back, you know.”

  He pounces at the air where the spindle used to be, playing with shadows only he can see and utterly ignoring the chastisement in my words.

  I reach over and stroke soft fur, which isn’t all that easy when the target thinks my fingers are magically procured prey. “I think I’m going to call you Trouble.” In two short days, he’s upended my sweetly ordered life, and not just out here in my studio. I somehow thought he was going to curl up in the sun on the window hammock I rigged up from some scraps of fleece and some really bad instructions on the Internet. Instead, he’s spent the morning chasing every part of my current project he can get his paws on. Which would get anyone else summarily ejected from my studio, but he’s so cute I can’t stand it—and his piteous cries when I left him up at the house made me feel like a serial killer.

  I scrub my knuckles under his chin, which produces a purr bigger than he is. “We need to figure this out, tough guy. I have a new client incoming, and he wants to see how rope is made. Since he didn’t order the special variety with kitty claws included, that means you need to let me finish my prep work.”

  He looks up at me with big orange eyes. Innocent ones that have no idea how the waffle batter ended up on the kitchen floor, who turned the toilet paper in the powder room into a bird’s nest, or why the hemp twine took a trip under the studio shelves and had a clandestine affair with some runaway Egyptian cotton.

  The hemp twine might be salvageable. The rest is going on the rapidly growing free-kitten invoice.

  Trouble butts against my hand and I scoop him up, keeping him well out of reach of the yarn strands neatly laid out over my thigh. “The next time India tells me I need more company, I’m going with the blow-up doll. You’re going to put me out of business.” The rope business, anyhow. My sporadic B&B guests will probably think he’s adorable.

  However, since it suits me to be the very part-time owner of a B&B and a full-time rope artisan, Trouble and I need to work things out. I look around my studio for something that might amuse him while I play with strand patterns. I should be making more of the basics that sell well off my site and earn a reasonable amount for the hours of work I put into them, but the idea that woke me up this morning isn’t one of those. I’ve promised myself an hour or two to work on it after I get the essentials done, starting with the strands of handspun draped over my legs.

  I run my fingers over the short lengths. They’re just samples, spun up so that I can talk blends and twist with the guy who should arrive later today, but recreating them isn’t on my afternoon agenda. Fluffing pillows is. And making sure I have enough fresh fruit and eggs on hand to make him breakfast in the morning.

  I do a quick internal check, the same one I’ve been doing for ten years now. Making sure the work of the day still feels more like fun than work. I exhale when it does. I let enough guests stay with me to keep the boredom at bay, but I know I could be full every night if I wanted to be. I don’t, and I’m deeply grateful to be solvent enough to have choices.

  Solvent thanks to the sudden hot market for handmade rope.

  I close my eyes again, remembering my embarrassment the first time I asked a customer why he wanted twenty feet of artisanal hemp braid—and he answered. I spent the hours after that Googling shibari and kinbaku and discovering a whole new world. One that loves rope as much as I do, and is willing to pay for it, and for that, I’m truly thankful. But it’s added an odd edge to my craft, knowing that the work that sets me free is often used to tie other people up.

  I reach out and stroke a length of my newest creation. Silk and jute, melding the softness of one with the staying power and earthy aliveness of the other. The man who wants it speaks of his ropes just like I do and speaks of his wife with the utmost respect.

  And still.

  I take a deep breath. My head and I have had this conversation too many times. I sold plenty of rope to dog owners and horse breeders before the world of rope bondage found me, and I rarely asked those customers any questions. It isn’t my business what grown adults choose to do with their free time, and really, it’s not judgment that lives inside me. It’s something trickier. More ephemeral. A desire that my art be used for good. For all my Googling, and all my chats with clients since, I’m still not entirely sure what it is that some of my most beautiful rope truly does once it leaves me.

  I shake my head as Trouble makes a flying leap at one of my thigh-draped strands and tumbles himself into a basket of rolled hemp instead. “Right. I’m no artistic genius. I’m a craftsperson with good customers and bills to pay and a cat who’s clearly going to put me in the poorhouse by next week.”

  Trouble sets his front paws on the brim of the hemp basket, not quite tall enough to peer in.

  I scoop him up, but I’m laughing as I do it. “Don’t even think about it, buster. Hemp is a lot tougher than you are, and the guy who’s coming to visit definitely knows how to use it.”

  “Yes, he does,” says an amused voice from the doorway behind me. “But I don’t generally tie up kittens.”

  Oh, damn.

  Chapter Three

  Matteo

  If cocks could laugh, mine totally is, because this joke is definitely on me. Any ideas I have about just being here to pick up some rope die a fast death the moment Liane Granger spins to face me with a kitten in one hand, bits of string in the other, and rosy embarrassment rising up her cheeks.

  I take a step forward and close the door behind me. Then I grin, because the kitten is in her handshake hand and I’m pretty sure he’ll get the string if she tries to juggle. “I’m Matteo Ignatius. The annoying client who wanted to see how his ropes are made and your houseguest for tonight.”

  She blows hair off her face and smiles wryly. “I’m your totally disorganized host, and you’re not annoying at all. You’re just early. I got this little guy two days ago and we haven’t sorted out how he’s going to let me work just yet.” Worry crosses her face. “You’re not allergic to cats, are you?”

  Her cheeks are still rosy, and the hand holding the strands of twine is dancing gracefully with her words. I step closer, bemused and attracted, two things that rarely happen together, especially when I’m still chasing off the vestiges of cranky. “No, not at all. Would you like me to take the kitten or the yarn?”

  She looks down at her hands and closes her eyes, and by the time she looks back up again, she’s clearly decided to laugh at herself. “The twine is probably safer.”

  I reach for the kitten, amused. “I’m not generally a guy who chooses safer.”

  Her entire body stills as my hands cup hers to slide the fuzzy orange creature into my care.

  The kitten takes a long look up at me and yawns, wide enough to break his face.

  Liane chuckles, unfrozen again, and the sound goes straight to my gut. “Oh, sure. One look at the big scary man and you’re going to go straight to sleep, are you?”

  I’ve been called big and scary before, but not usually while I’m holding a kitten. I wink at her. “I’m only scary when I have permission. And since I don’t have yours or his, I promise to be on my very best behavior.”

  Her eyes widen a little.

  I back up a step. I don’t have permission to touch, and the wild strands of hair in every color of the brown rainbow are calling me to temptation.
And it’s not just her hair calling. I’m a man who really appreciates curves, and hers are siren song for my hands and my ropes. The ones I can see under her flannel, anyhow.

  I take a breath. I’m moving way too fast, even if it’s mostly inside my own head. I’ve morphed from being a cranky bastard to a horny one, and both those guys need to take a big step backward. There’s a stool next to me, half tucked under a high bench that’s strewn with swatches of rope. I take a seat, shift the sleepy kitten to one leg, and gesture at her work. “Is it okay if I touch?”

  She smiles. “Please. Fiber is meant to be experienced with your hands.” She moves in closer. “I can take Trouble. I made him a place to sleep. Maybe if he wakes up there, he’ll learn it’s meant to be his bed.”

  In my experience, kittens are about as biddable as thunderstorms, but I have no argument with having both hands free. I lift up the bundle of fluff on my leg and settle him into what looks like a bed fit for kitten royalty, lined with fleece and neatly screwed to the window ledge where it will catch the best sun.

  Liane chuckles as Trouble yawns wide enough to eat a full-grown trout, settles his head on his tail, and falls over, already snoring. “It’s about time you crashed.”

  He’s a smart kitten who knows he’s landed in a heap of goodness. “He’s cute.”

  She grins at me wryly. “He’s a menace, but now that he’s conked out, let me try again on being a decent hostess. I can take you up to the house so you can settle in, or I’ve got snacks and drinks laid out in the kitchen if you’d like to help yourself.”

  I shake my head and reach for the nearest rope sample. It’s something sturdy, jute maybe, but I can feel the conditioning as I bend it in my fingers. She hasn’t just made these samples—she’s done everything I would do to get them ready to be used.