by Eliza Master
The Twisted Rope
The Shibari Series #2
Eliza Master
Contents
1. Golden Lotus
2. In Japan
3. Erik
4. To Africa
5. Her Weapons
6. First Night in Cameroon
7. Wild Yohimbe
8. Second Night
9. The Interview
10. The Land
11. Renata’s Apartment
12. Kamber
13. Appetizers
14. Sildenafil
15. Darwin
16. The Farm
17. Stumps and a Scrape
18. Esperanza
19. The Barceló
20. Back in City
21. The Check-Up
22. The Key
23. Teachers
24. At Tiffany’s
25. A Tryst
26. Kenny Does His Job
27. Yohimbe and DNA
28. The Trap and the Dart
29. Kenny Quits
30. The Freezer
31. Plane Tickets
32. A Safe Place
33. Where is Adam?
34. Tim McIntire
35. Atitlana Burns
About the Author
About the Publisher
1
Golden Lotus
The exotic flower hovered, pink and friendly. The scent was familiar and delicious. Renata reached for it, but his shaft came instead, warm and thick. She devoured him as she was being consumed. Desire saturated her body and poured into her cleft, waiting for release. Renata heard a woman moaning, or maybe it was her own cry. She saw dark locks below her navel, and Alexa’s smile greeted her. Behind her, Adam was in a trance, moving in time with her friend. “That’s what I’m talking about, oh, baby,” he said, and he spanked Alexa loudly. She laughed. Adam pulled Renata to him and entered her, but he started to kiss Alexa. Renata didn’t mind one bit. After all, this was Alexa’s welcome home present for her.
Renata was thankful that Alexa had forgiven her. She had her lover and best friend back again. They had talked while Renata was away and realized how much they cared about each other. Alexa had fallen even more in love with her friend, and she’d moved past the trauma they’d suffered together.
It was Renata’s first night back in San Francisco, and Alexa had planned a big surprise for her, something she knew Renata would never plan for herself.
Alexa poured a dusty powder into some chocolate milk and placed three tall glasses on Renata’s counter. As it dissolved, she wondered if it would work. Alexa had read the package, and it did say that the results weren’t guaranteed. But maybe just the idea would be enough to get her party going.
Handing one cup to Renata and one to Adam, Alexa proclaimed, “Bottoms up!” She tapped her glass against those of her friends, and the three drank down the thick liquid.
“It’s all natural—just herbs, see?” Alexa told them. She flashed the box at them. It looked like something from the vitamin store. The name Golden Lotus was emblazoned across the front. Underneath, it proclaimed Women’s Formula.
“So, it’s just for ladies?” snorted Adam. “Doesn’t matter—I’m in touch with my feminine side.” He smiled. He wasn’t worried about the stuff working on him. The offer to enjoy a night with two women had come as a surprise. Alexa had made sure in advance Adam knew that there would be no strings attached.
“I saved it for tonight, so we could all do it together. Adam agreed to come along as part of the surprise,” Alexa said to Renata with childish glee. Adam blushed, and the girls laughed and clinked glasses without him.
2
In Japan
Renata tapped her toes on the no-nonsense gray carpet in her office at Agri-Gen. It felt good to be back at work, to be useful and needed. Renata’s oak desk was polished, and her office had been cleaned. She checked the inside of the desk drawers. Everything was neat and organized. She had been away for more than four weeks. She turned the computer on and went to her inbox, where she found more than two hundred new emails. After a while, the messages grew foggy in her brain, and Renata sighed deeply.
She pushed her chair back from the desk. After taking a deep breath, Renata tried to empty her mind. Her job and all that she needed to do loomed in her mind, so she felt energized, not quiet at all. With a second attempt at calmness, she pictured Hirono-sensei.
She saw him sitting on a small carpet. Shinji Hirono was the quintessential zazen monk. His naive smile and open face made him look like a child, even though he was an old man. Renata had always wondered how old he really was. She had never asked him; that would have been rude. In fact, she never spoke to him directly. No one in her group did. It hadn’t seemed strange at the time, but now it did.
Renata had signed up for meditation training in Japan. Danny had told her that he’d learned shibari from a Japanese master. She wondered if Dmitri had also learned his skills in Japan. This meditation training was a one-sided Vipassana experience, which meant that only the instructor spoke. The student’s manual had been very clear about it: no one was to speak at all. This was to allow raw, personal essence to emerge, unencumbered by the boundaries of language. Everyone participating had agreed to these terms. It was a relief for Renata, and she found she looked forward to the assigned time of not having to try to communicate. Instead, she could passively take in whatever wisdom came her way.
Hirono-sensei did talk, and in English. Sometimes it was just one phrase for the whole sitting. One time he’d said, “Entering the forest, he moves not the grass.” Renata made herself memorize the line by repeating it over and over in her head. She fought against her mind’s running dialog. Her thinking was rebellious, always questioning the monk. Was it true that someone could enter the forest and not move the grass? Maybe that forest didn’t have grass! And why was it always a he that did things? Was there some deep meaning she was missing? During the sittings, she constantly wrestled herself back into meditation.
Other times, Hirono-sensei would turn to someone in the group and say more specific things. He would say things that Renata didn’t understand or that had nothing to do with her. Once he had opened his eyes boldly and turned to a Japanese man and said, “Your daughter.” He said lots more to the man in Japanese after those two English words. The man bolted up and left the room. Renata never saw him again.
Hirono-sensei had spoken directly to Renata only twice during the month she attended the meditations. The first time he said, “Protect yourself!” He growled it out like an attacking bear – very unlike his usual calm demeanor. Within a moment, he was back in zazen mode. It was like he’d never spoken. Renata wondered what the monk meant and if he had actually said that. Could she have imagined it? The others in the room didn’t even turn their heads, and they continued on in what appeared to be peaceful bliss.
The other time Hirono-sensei spoke to Renata was on her last day before her flight back to San Fran. He recited a poem. Then he repeated it deliberately, exactly like the first time. He locked eyes with Renata while he said the verse. She had committed Hirono-sensei’s poem to memory, but she didn’t really understand it. She’d often whisper it like a mantra:
A lonely hut on the mountain peak towering over a thousand others.
One half is occupied by a warrioress and the other by a cloud,
Last night it was stormy, and the cloud was blown away.
She whispered the verse mantra-style now from her office chair. It ushered out the buzzing thoughts that had been distracting her. The curtains of her mind drew apart, and Renata saw a brief vision of her office. She was standing on an intersection of many lines. She was in the center of a star. The universe had brought her to where she was supposed to be. R
enata let the energizing feeling of the meditation ground her, and she gently opened her eyes
Renata checked her office again using her own system. She wanted to make sure no one besides the cleaners had invaded her workspace. Renata read the furniture like a blueprint. She inspected the angles of desk, chair, lamp, and even the files’ vertical positions inside the lower desk drawer. All of the files were off line, but only slightly. They were tipped to the right. It was as if the building had shivered, shifting everything minutely. Renata set up her security before starting work.
Working with the biggest object first, Renata lifted the desk and nudged the four legs into alignment with the four corners of her office. The room was a confident rectangle that resonated with Renata. Next, she lined up the floor lamp, setting it in its own virtual square in the middle of the right side of her desk, opposite the window. “Who said a circle can’t fit into a square?” she chuckled to herself. The file cabinet and the drawer interiors were a quick fix. She thought of all the money people spent on surveillance, while she simply used the lines of the universe. In less than seven minutes, everything was righted.
The month in Japan had been a much-needed respite from life for Renata. When she wasn’t at the meditation training, she looked through shibari books. They were written in Japanese, but had illustrations and diagrams that were easy to follow. She bought rope and practiced on herself in her free time. Because the art of tying had been born in Japan, it didn’t have the American ugliness of punishment associated with it. She hadn’t felt that ugliness during Dmitri’s shibari show at Club Destiny, and he seemed like a sweet, easygoing guy. He was powerful but not at all abusive. That was the kind of shibari that Renata liked – the gentle kind. She made a commitment to do at least one shibari class while she was there.
Danny’s death had affected her more deeply than she’d expected. Even though they hadn’t known each other that well, she felt like she had lost a family member. Renata prided herself on her tough shell. She had deep feelings, but she’d learned to keep her emotions in check until Danny died. Her grief was haphazard. Renata had trouble controlling her tears and sometimes cried in inappropriate places.
Once, when she was grocery shopping, she’d felt tears well up in the middle of the aisle. The tears turned to sobbing and people stared, but Renata couldn’t stop. That evening she booked her trip to Japan, telling Erik she was taking a month of vacation time for personal reasons. He wasn’t happy, but he’d accepted it, asking, “Is everything okay?” Erik was genuinely concerned. Renata’s resolve melted. She thought of canceling her plans just to fall into his embrace. But he was very busy, Renata reminded herself, so his intermittent attention wouldn’t be enough.
Renata’s place in Kyoto was on the second floor above an irezumi shop, a tattoo parlor called Inkrat Tatts. The sign was in English. It was written in a brush-stroke font, a common style among shops that had a lot of tourist traffic. Her stairwell passed the studio window, and Renata became a daily observer of the intricate body art being created. Sometimes she would sit on the stairs and watch.
Japanese men would lie on a tatami mat with only a loincloth for modesty. Some of the guys were already mostly covered in tattoos, and several artists had to contribute to the ongoing designs. It was unusual to see someone get more than one tattoo at a time. One man with skin the color of tea smiled up at Renata while he was getting a tiger tattooed on his chest. The men and their tattoos pleased Renata. They didn’t mind when she sat on her step and watched the work, and Renata enjoyed the eye candy.
Yume was the only female artist at Inkrat. She waved Renata into the shop one afternoon. Yume practiced her English while tatting a beautiful koi onto the back of a pretty Japanese girl. Talking with Yume was like chatting with the stylist at a salon, and Renata felt like she was back in San Francisco. Renata desperately needed to get her thick locks trimmed. Her mane was becoming wild.
“Why did you come to Japan?” Yume chirped.
“To study zazen meditation,” Renata replied. She paused a moment, and she added, “And a friend of mine died.” Renata’s eyes filled with water. Dammit, I’m out of control again.
“I’m sorry. You are very sad?” Yume paused the tattoo and stroked Renata’s arm lightly.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Maybe you get a tattoo to remember?” Was the woman drumming up business? It didn’t seem likely, as the irezumi shop was always full. In Japan, it seemed like everyone had plenty of cash. She hadn’t seen any homeless people since she’d been there, and everyone was super polite. Despite the high cost of living, there was virtually no theft.
It’s probably an offer of companionship, Renata reasoned.
She remembered the huge angel wings on Danny’s back. That was a powerful tattoo, and it had reflected Danny’s personality. Renata missed him, and she was sorry she had skipped his memorial. She’d never received the details of how he had died. Cherise had told her that Danny was found in the jail room at Club Destiny. She said he was self-strangled. Renata didn’t know what that meant exactly, but Cherise said it was suicide. Renata didn’t think so, but she didn’t know what to think. Shibari was dangerous; that she knew. One could die a slow death by circulation loss or a quick one by accidentally hanging or choking oneself. Was that what had happened?
She hadn’t pegged Danny as suicidal. Then again, he had lost his baby sister, and she knew he had been grieving. He’d gotten the wing tattoo in her honor. Renata imagined Danny’s wings carrying him to his sister.
“You could get a tattoo,” Yume said, touching Renata’s arm again. She was finishing up the koi. The fish had green and pink scales, and it was gorgeous. Yume wrapped the girl’s back in clean gauze and gave her some instructions in Japanese. The girl left, and Yume gestured toward her vacant seat. “Maybe a tombou?”
“What’s a tombou?” Renata asked.
“I’ll show you.” She opened a binder of tattoo designs and pointed to an ornate dragonfly. “Do you like it? I think the tombou is good medicine for you.” Renata did like it, but she was hesitant to commit to the almost tropically colored wings.
“Could you do the tombou in white?” Renata had seen a white tattoo in a magazine once, and she liked its subtlety.
“Of course.” Yume got up to get white ink and a clean instrument. While she was preparing, Renata watched the other artists at work. “It will be beautiful,” Yume said when she returned.
“Will it hurt?” Renata was suddenly worried.
“Yes, it will,” Yume said with a warm smile.
“All right.”
Renata took off her shirt but left her bra on. She lay face down on the tatami mat. The white ink was bold, and Yume’s strokes were steady. It did hurt. Renata’s personal dam had broken, and the water flowed out. The tatami mat was wet with Renata’s tears.
After two hours, Renata had a tombou between her shoulder blades. The dragonfly was lithe and delicate. It was fresh, so the lines were blood red. Renata would have to wait for it to heal before she’d be able to see the white ink drawing. Now Renata had wings like Danny. Renata’s salty tears had washed away her grief. She thought she felt the wings of her new dragonfly flutter.
“I hope you like my tombou, Danny,” she said aloud when she was back upstairs. It smarted, but the pain felt cathartic. “It’s for you and your sister,” she continued. “I don’t know what to do. I wish you could answer me back. I might be in love with my boss, but maybe it’s just sex for him. Gosh, he is so hot. You’d like him too, I know you would. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Can you hear me?”
3
Erik
A business meeting had been arranged for the night after Renata’s return from Japan. Erik was acting as Agri-Gen’s representative. His crisp, gray suit and satin tie reminded Renata of her first day on the wet sidewalks of San Francisco. They had glistened with gold flecks and promise, and so did the handsome man who was negotiating with her tonight.
The meeting was on Agri-Gen’s tab. Renata knew that Erik was going to present a proposal from the senior partners. Renata had grinned when he told her about the meeting, and that dinner would be at The Jardin. The Jardin was an expensive restaurant with entrees costing $150 and up. Renata couldn’t wait. It would be the most expensive meal she had ever been treated to. Erik made the arrangements like it was a wedding proposal. She put on a tight black dress and matching pumps. On top, she wore a red lambskin trenchcoat, and for jewelry she wore gold earrings and a simple chain necklace.
Her phone rang. “Hello,” Renata said.
“Cab for The Jardin?”
“I’ll be right down.” Renata settled into the taxi, excited for the special night.
Renata stepped into the fancy restaurant.
“Can I take your coat, madam?” asked a young man in a blue uniform as Renata entered the posh restaurant.
“Sure.” Renata let the young man help her remove it. She wondered if he would want a tip later.
“Do you have a reservation?” asked another gentleman in a matching outfit.
“I do. I’m with Erik Lundgren.”
“Right this way, Miss.” The man led Renata down a few steps into an elegant dining area. The tables were covered in white tablecloths, and the chairs were royal blue velvet. Did Renata smell garlic and rosemary? Her mouth watered. Then she saw Erik at a table for two. There was wine in a bucket and bread in a basket.