Since Amery didn’t have anything better to do, and she figured he couldn’t see her anyway, she decided to observe him in teaching mode with what looked like advanced black belt students.
After the sixteen students rose to their feet, he paired them off. Even when they were performing warm-up exercises, Ronin corrected strikes and postures. And more than a few students tensed up when he assisted them. Sensei Black definitely ruled with an iron fist.
As she watched him interact, she didn’t see a glimmer of the Ronin she knew. No smile. No banter. His posture was as rigid as the set of his jaw.
The disjointed feeling should’ve made it easier to slink away from this man she didn’t recognize. But it locked her in place, keeping her hopeful she’d catch a glimpse of her lover.
When the grappling started, she expected he’d sit on the sidelines, but he surprised her again and forced each student to demonstrate the technique on him.
Or maybe a more apt description was they all tried to demonstrate the technique and their teacher summarily dumped them on their face into the mat.
It wasn’t Ronin’s facial expression or body language that telegraphed his displeasure that not a single student had properly demonstrated the technique. He barked out an order and even Amery jumped.
A student left and returned within a few minutes with Knox.
Shihan Knox practiced the technique and immediately employed it perfectly. Amery suspected Ronin had sandbagged his response. Then the sensei challenged Shihan once again, after he’d given a slow-motion demo on the basics of the technique.
That time Shihan ended up in a submission hold.
As he did the next time.
That’s when Amery realized neither man had held back.
And still, even with Shihan Knox in the room, there wasn’t any sign of the Ronin she knew. She really didn’t recognize him when the kicking sequence began. Sensei’s kicks were hard and lightning fast against the practice bag.
How much have you ever really known of this man?
After she’d calmed down, she’d been grateful when he disabled the attackers that night. But now seeing how quickly he could explode into violence and how impassive he remained through it, she knew he’d kept a large part of who he was hidden from her. Right now his ability with ropes didn’t frighten her nearly as much as his easy segue into calculated violence.
She fought a shiver and stepped back.
At that moment Ronin looked up and she swore he knew she was there, breaking the rules.
Amery ducked down and managed to sneak out before anyone caught her.
Or so she thought.
An hour later when Ronin showed up at her place, he was in a mood. Usually after he’d washed away the sweat and violence that clung to him after hours in the dojo, he reconnected with that Zen vibe and he rarely let her see his agitation.
Not tonight.
She knew if she asked what’d wound him so tight, he’d refuse to confide in her, but she guessed his students’ lack of progress played a big part in his edginess—not that she could mention she’d watched him with a class, since that was a total breach of the “no observation” rule.
Hoping to improve his mood, Amery offered to use her personal massager on him, joking that it’d finally be used as the manufacturer had intended. Instead of what she’d planned, rather naively, it turned out—to rub every inch of the vibrating head over his muscular body to try and soothe him—Ronin had set his own plans into motion.
Only after he’d caressed her, aroused her, and divested her of every stitch of her clothing did she notice he’d cleared off her coffee table.
“Ronin? What are you—”
“You know what I want,” he murmured against the curve of her neck as he knotted her hair on top of her head with a pen. “If you don’t want this, tell me no.”
Her mouth remained closed.
“Good.” Then he brought out camouflage rope.
She shivered when his fingertips traced the outsides of her arms to her wrists.
“Arms behind your back. Make sure you’ve got good circulation because this might take a while.” He brushed a tender kiss across her shoulder. “I’m practicing tethered turtle on you.”
While his touches were gentle, she sensed him hanging on to his control by a thread. Since he’d demanded honesty from her, she deserved the same courtesy. “You seem on edge.”
“I am.” Ronin’s voice burned her ear. “Why do you think I enforce the ‘no observation’ rule in my dojo, Amery?”
Shit, shit, shit. Master Black had seen her through the two-way glass or else his super-ninja instincts had sensed her.
Or maybe . . . Yondan Deacon told him you were skulking around after your lesson.
Dammit. Maybe letting her roam free had been some kind of test to see if she’d follow the rules even when there didn’t appear to be anyone around to enforce them.
Well, she’d flunked that test big-time.
“I asked you a question,” he said in that pseudo-reasonable tone.
“No, sir, I don’t know why you have that rule.”
“I set that rule to allow my students to fail in private because failure is the best way to learn, adapt, and change.”
“Are you going to punish me for my failure since I broke that rule?”
“No. You were under Yondan’s supervision tonight; it’s his call on how to deal with it.”
That wasn’t reassuring. “So this turtle pose or whatever it’s called isn’t a punishment pose?”