“Most likely my messages,” Chris says from behind me, then sets my bags down on top of the pedestal. “I’ll be right back.” He motions to an open door by the bathroom. “That’s the closet. Take whatever space you like. Nothing is off-limits.”

Nothing is off-limits. Isn’t he telling me that by having me stay here while he’s gone, he’s inviting me into his life, his secrets? It is more than an olive branch. It’s an entire tree.

I squat down next to the expensive Louis Vuitton suitcase Chris had bought me for our Napa trip the weekend before, and I unzip it. I shrug my purse off my shoulder and set it on the floor next to it. I flip open the case, and there lying on top of my things are the journals and the box I’d taken from Rebecca’s unit. I wasn’t about to leave them at my apartment, where I felt they might fall into the wrong hands. They hold her secrets, and I wonder if they hold someone else’s as well. I intend to stack them in Chris’s closet but a passage I’d read suddenly burns into my mind.

I reach for the top journal that is bookmarked and walk to the pedestal at the side of the bed, out of view from the doorway, and sit down. Pulling my knees to my chest, I begin to read the familiar passage and the words ripple through me with painful clarity. This is Chris’s world.

Suddenly, he is in front of me, towering above me. I feel him in every pore of my existence even before I dare to lift my gaze to his. I know what I must do but I am scared. I told him I wasn’t. I told myself I wasn’t. But I am.

Chris kneels down in front of me, and though he doesn’t look at the journal, it is the white elephant between us. He’s removed his jacket and my gaze catches on the bright coloring of the dragon tattoo on his right arm. I reach out and touch it. It is a part of him, his past, his pain. I want to be a part of him, to truly understand.

“Whatever you read in that journal has nothing to do with you and me.”

Emotion tightens my throat and I do not look at him. I trace that tattoo, the bright red of the wings that flex as he grips his knee. “But it does,” I whisper.

“It doesn’t.”

Reading him the passage seems the only way for him to understand. I force my gaze from his arm to Rebecca’s writing. “Like the thorns on the roses he loves to give me, I welcomed the pain of the flogger biting into my back. It is the escape from all that I have lost, all that I have seen and done, and regret doing. He gives this to me. He is my drug. The pain is my drug. It ripples through me and I feel nothing but the bitter bite of leather and the sweet silk of the darkness and pleasure that follows.” My gaze lifts to Chris’s.

Tension crackles off him and he takes the journal from me and sets it on the nightstand. “If not for those journals bringing you to me, I’d curse the day you ever found them.” He slides his hands to my face and forces my gaze to his. “You aren’t Rebecca, and we don’t have, nor will we ever have, the kind of relationship she had with Mark.”

“Mark.”

“Yes, Mark.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because he can’t just be happy with those who invite this lifestyle and welcome it. He has a thing for bringing in innocents who don’t belong in this world and training them as subs. He gets off on the power of it.”

In the back of my mind, there are questions about Mark, but there is only room now for where this takes me with Chris. “You’ve trained . . . subs?”

He scrubs his jaw and then runs his hands down his jean-clad legs. “Don’t do this to yourself or to us.”

“That’s a yes.” My voice is barely audible. And is that what he wants me to be? Am I confused about where we are going? Do I really have any idea at all where we are headed?

“It’s a no, Sara. I’m not Mark. Master and sub was too much commitment for me. I do not want to be responsible for someone’s well-being. Not beyond one session. I got my fix and then quickly moved on.”

His fix. I hate this choice of words. I barely know the man who uses them, who lived them. But it is Chris and it confuses me. “What does that even mean?”

His jaw clenches.

“I need to understand, Chris.”

His lashes lower, the lines of his face hardening. “There are rooms you go to,” he surprises me by explaining. “You can choose to be masked and I do. I don’t want faces and names.”

My mind goes crazy with what might happen in those rooms. “Never?”

“That was my style, Sara. No commitments.”

He didn’t say “never” and I press for more, for how his past affects us now. “And yet I’m here.”

“I told you. I’ve broken all my rules with you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re you, Sara. There is no other answer.”

The part of me that is never confident, that is never completely convinced this talented and famous man can really want me, struggles with this answer, but yet, I feel this way about him. He has become my escape and my sanctuary. I think he is telling me he sees me the same way, but I know we are lying to ourselves and each other if we think nothing else matters. “You can’t just shut this all out, Chris. You can’t just meet me and be who you were before. I need to understand it and be a part of it.”

“No. You don’t.”

“But you took me to that club last night. You wanted me to understand.”

“I wanted you to understand where Mark would lead you and why I wasn’t going to let that happen. Rebecca didn’t belong in this world and you’ve read how it tormented her to be here.”

“You told me I don’t belong in this world, either,” I manage, choking on the words.

“You don’t.” His jaw clenches. “Which is why I tried to warn you away and why I tried to walk away.”

My stomach knots. “You still can.” I start to get up, suddenly needing an escape, and this time Chris can’t give it to me.

He shackles my wrists in his hands and pulls me to him, between his legs, on my knees. “That’s just it. I can’t and I don’t want to even try. And I don’t want you to, either.” His expression softens and he brushes his knuckles over my jaw. “You’re inside me now, baby. All the rest was how I stayed outside myself and I’ll be damned if I let it tear us apart.”

I soften instantly at his confession and my hand slides to his face. “It’s the unknown that scares me, Chris. It’s what you need, the pleasure inside the pain, that I can’t possibly understand, and that terrifies me. I need you to make me understand.”

“You do understand, Sara. More than you know. More than I wish you did.” His mouth closes down over mine, hot with demand, and I know he believes this conversation is over, that he means to end it with the wicked caress of his tongue against mine, the possessive splay of his hands on my body. But I refuse to be this powerless, to be silenced with the very passion that drives me to need to understand this man.

“No,” I gasp, and shove against him, breathless as I meet his gaze and demand, “Make me understand, Chris.” And on some level I know this is that unknown place I’ve craved to go with him, that place he hides from me, that place he wants to take me. This is where we have to go, where we’ve always been headed.

Five

“You want to understand?” he asks, his voice low, his eyes ripe with challenge.

“It’s not about want. It’s about need, Chris. I need to understand.”

He considers me, his expression impassive, but his pale green eyes shimmer and then burn. “Stand up and take off your clothes, Sara.”

After a moment of hesitation, I decide his command is as close to an agreement as I’m going to get. It’s enough. I stand up and walk to the bottom of the pedestal and Chris shifts to sit against the bed. In spite of this power play he is using on me, or perhaps because of it, there is something wickedly erotic about standing before this man and undressing. This brings my vulnerability back to the forefront. It is an act of trust, and my chest tightens at the implications of giving myself to him, of why he might need me to do this. I think . . . I think he needs to know that I’m not holding back, that he’s shown me his dark side, and I am still willingly his.

Yes. I am willingly his. Suddenly, I want him to know this more than ever.

With a lift of my arms, I peel away my T-shirt and toss it away. My hair catches on my mouth. I tug away the long, dark brown strands and Chris’s gaze settles on my mouth. My sex clenches because I know he is imagining my mouth on his body and I very much want my mouth on his body. But he is always in control, deciding what I do and don’t do. I vow right then that he won’t tonight. Now, yes, but not all night. At some point before he leaves for Los Angeles again, my mouth is going wherever it damn well pleases. I cannot be naked quickly enough. He will leave in the morning for a week. There is much unresolved between us. Too much.

I strip away my clothes in seconds, and I’m pretty sure the art of the seductive, slow striptease is really not my forte. I’ll work harder at it when I want to tease him and not me. I just need Chris right now. I need to be naked with him, all barriers gone. I need him to know that I want to understand him because he matters, because we matter. Because life made me believe that what is blossoming between us wasn’t possible, but maybe, just maybe, it is.

“Come here,” he commands urgently as I toss aside my panties, his voice gravelly, affected, and I revel in the impatience in him that matches mine. It is still hard for me to believe I affect him sometimes. He is so many things that I aspire to be: strong and powerful, confident and in charge of his life, his destiny. It moves me to know I make this man as hot as he makes me. It makes me stronger. He makes me stronger.