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  “Amazing? Commanding? Mysterious? Sexy?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed. “Even Dom guys who are all that.”

  “But he’s not the dumb one here.” A few new tears threaded her confession. “I am.”

  He huffed. “Tess—”

  “I fucked it up, okay?” She was really clinging to this one—another nonsurprise, considering how doggedly she pursued everything from domestic terrorist cells to her new CrossFit classes. “This isn’t his issue. It’s mine. Somewhere along the line, I didn’t just blur the line. I stomped right over it. So just tell me. Be honest, Colton. That’s why I’m going through this now, right? I did this to myself. Damn it.”

  “Okay, red light.” He pushed her back enough in order to get a straight-on view of her face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She responded with a dutiful, deep breath—perhaps one of the most gorgeous sights he’d ever seen—though a week ago, it would’ve flown right over his head as the truth it really was. Her strength and talent at work had blinded him to a truth that was there all along: Tess Lesange really was submissive.

  Stunningly, perfectly so.

  “I tripped up,” she began again. “On the expectations side of things. Does that make sense?”

  “Not entirely. Go on.” He said it after a long moment of studying her. He’d always noticed the obvious things about her beauty: her collector doll eyes, vibrant hair, and of course, those plush, pouty lips. Why had he never looked further? Observed how her eyes turned velvety when she talked of naughty things? Noticed how her cheeks flushed dark pink…and her back straightened, trying to relieve the pressure that built in her aroused areolas? Of course, he was rarely treated to the view he had now, with those puckered peaks stabbing at her tank top, making him harder by the second…

  “We—the griffin and I—walked into that play room with open eyes,” she explained. “I wasn’t expecting hearts and roses and collars afterward, and neither was he.” The rose hue took over more of her cheeks. “This may sound weird, but…I think it made me more relaxed. Like I was a different person in that room, you know? No worries about what I’d say during the afterglow, or how awkward our goodbye would be. I just focused on each moment as it happened.”

  “Yeah. I get it.” He reached for one of her hands and squeezed. “And no, it’s not weird.”

  It occurred to him that the last time he’d done this, they’d been at lunch at Mundo. Like then, a palpable current zipped between them, sizzling with connection. To Tess, little had changed about that fun, friendly spark. To him, everything had changed. In seconds, all his mind’s eye could see was her nude beauty, spread and bound and clamped beneath him. Then her eyes, dilated and dark. Then her chest, rising and falling, as she waited for him to feed his cock into her wet readiness…

  Damn.

  Just get through this, and everything will get easier. She’ll move on, you’ll move on, and so will the memories.

  “So…” She sucked in a rickety breath. “What the hell’s wrong with me, Dan?” When he pulled a little, wanting to just get her close again, she climbed all the way into his lap. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  He wound his arms around her, hating himself for her tears but, with disgusting selfishness, welcoming them—at least now. He’d been off-balance since Friday too—and only now did he realize the reason why. He craved the darker edges of D/s, which meant the balance of lavishing his subbies with his softer side too. He’d never skipped on aftercare with a submissive—until Friday.

  Dumbass.

  Maybe now he could right the axis again. For both of them.

  “Tess. Sweetheart.” He buried his lips against her hair, savoring the citrus of the product she lavished on it. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  “Which is why I can’t stop blubbering?”

  He stroked fingers up and down her spine. “You know damn well what’s going on. Say it for me, Ruby. Let me know you understand.”

  She swallowed hard but uttered, “Sub drop?”

  “Good girl.”

  “But it’s been three days.” She angled a little to raise her face toward him. Her irises were full of dark-green tumult. “Three days, Dan. Typically, a submissive will display signs of sub drop for only a day or two after the dynamic with their Dom, especially after a scene of just an hour.”

  He snorted and wasn’t shy about it. “Which textbook did that one come from?”

  “All of them.”

  “Then all of them don’t know shit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He embraced the excuse to press a palm to the side of her face. “For starters, you picked Catacomb for this little stunt of yours. Since that place isn’t listed in the tourist guides or on the lifestyle directories, I assume you researched the choice—meaning you know it isn’t textbook either.”

  Her lips compressed. “It wasn’t a ‘stunt.’”

  His gaze descended. Tense or not, he loved looking at her dark-strawberry mouth. It was his personal fetish, making him clench all over, battling the new surge of his erection. Fuck, how he longed to kiss his apology into her. Hard.

  Instead, he settled for muttering, “Sorry. Bad choice of words. But I stand by the intent.”

  “I know.” Her response was equally soft, staying in the cocoon sealed by his hold. Shit. When she got all raspy and trusting like this, all he wanted to do was turn into her real cocoon, never letting anything or anyone hurt her—a thought that opened the way for other conjectures. Troubling ones.

  What really would’ve happened if he hadn’t been there at Catacomb?

  A Friday night, at the dungeon known for allowing its players to walk on the harder edges of BDSM. Some Dom would have noticed her and taken her submissiveness as permission—for anything. Screw the limits, let alone a safe word. Who knew better than him that dickheads could find their way past any barrier, even a screening process like Max’s?

  “Tess.” No use holding back the intensity of his anxiety. “Why did you pick Catacomb?”

  His desperate tone seemed to puzzle her. “Are you pissed that I picked it or that I didn’t tell you?”

  “Both.” At least he could give her this truth. “And I’m not pissed. I’m—”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Tess! Goddamn.” He constricted his grip. “I’m… I’m scared, okay?”

  That got her attention. Should have. Fear wasn’t his default mode. It was the rare gear, and he hated indulging it. But this time, it had gotten the jump on him. Bitten him so hard, his throat turned his next words into sandpaper.

  “You could’ve been sitting here dealing with a lot worse than sub drop,” he accused. “A lot worse.”

  She sighed. Looked tempted to roll her eyes. Neither helped his tension. “You want to give me some credit here? In case you’ve forgotten, I peg lying assholes for a living.”

  “Through surveillance footage and radio chatter,” he rebutted. She fumed a little and tried to pull away. He yanked her back in, purposely letting her chest press to his. “Things are a lot different in a dungeon, and you know it. When the light is dark, the air smells like leather, and a Dom is looking at you like he wants to take you to heaven and back”—he paused, savoring the catch in her breath and the dilation of her eyes—“the bad guys aren’t so easy to discern, are they?”

  Shit. Why hadn’t he taken off his jacket? Her nipples were probably tighter now, incessant buttons that would stab past her shirt and his, teasing his skin with their erect heat…

  “You know what?” He drew her in even tighter, molding her thigh along his. “Even I could be a bad guy.”

  Her breath snagged again. So did his. When they inhaled again, they also did it together. One rhythm. One energy. Just another couple of inches, and he could turn it into one kiss too. One taste…

  Her lips parted. Fuck, her lips.

  “How bad?”

  He pulled on her. Another inch gone. Her whisper still vibrated the air. He co
uld practically taste her now. The salt of her tears. The thickness of her desire. The promise of how good both would be, swirled together on her tongue…and his…

  What could one kiss hurt?

  With a groan, he jerked back.

  Everything. It could hurt absolutely everything.

  What would she taste on his tongue? Would she recognize the flavors of her griffin once her eyes were closed, her other senses opened? What then? Even if she didn’t make the immediate connection, what would such a move do to her—processing the kiss from one man while dealing with the fallout from being dominated by another? Why the hell did he even consider fucking up her brain that way? Had he gone insane?

  In disgust, he faced the inexorable answer to that.

  Yes.

  When it came to thinking about anyone hurting even a hair on Tess Lesange’s head, his head rammed into the socket marked insane.

  “Bad enough,” he finally answered her. “Which you should take as another lesson, damn it.”

  Tess sat up a little more. “All right.” She parted the air with outward sweeps of her hands. “All right. I get it. Yes, Sir.”

  Every word of it, even the last two, was sweetly compliant—raising every red flag in his brain again. There was only one reason she’d capitulate so fast about this.

  “You’re going to go back.” He didn’t hold back the brutality of the snarl. “To that place. Aren’t you?”

  She bolted to her feet. Folded her arms. “‘That place’?” she retorted. “It’s not the middle of Bogotá, okay?”

  “You’d be safer in Bogotá. At least you’d be conscious of the danger you’re facing.”

  “I don’t need a chaperone.”

  “Right.” He angled back, also crossing his arms. “Because you did so well handling everything from your first visit. Those shadows under your eyes are just my imagination. The corn chips on the counter and that empty ice cream bowl in the sink, same thing.”

  “Stop it,” she seethed.

  “No,” he snapped. “You’ve holed up in here like a hormonal teenager, Tess—for three days. Ignored calls and texts. Sleeping patterns off. Is this the behavior of a submissive who’s acting in her best mental and physical welfare?”

  He made damn good points—but as the words spewed out, they felt and sounded all wrong. He was channeling his inner griffin, including the arrogant and ruthless knobs cranked to eleven.

  Tess’s furious flush confirmed it.

  “Get out.” She arrowed a stiff arm toward the door.

  He didn’t blame her. He also wasn’t going to heed her. “All right, all right. Wrong choice of words again. But—”

  “No,” she spat. “No wrong words. Wrong concept.” Before he could react, she turned one of the throw pillows into a throw pillow. It smacked his head with a whump. “You know what? Go screw yourself, Colton. Seems to be what you’re hell-bent on doing anyway, so don’t come in here and grandstand about my precious submissive safety when I offered it to you in the first place.” A new wince crumpled her features. “Thanks for that new tune in the key of humiliation, by the way.”

  He fell into one of her big leather easy chairs. “Jesus, Tess. I never meant—”

  “I know, I know. It’s why you’re even sitting here.” She refolded her arms and toed the throw rug. “Let’s move on.”

  “Right,” he rejoined. “As in, me screwing myself.”

  She sank to the floor next to the chair. Dan almost groaned from the irony of it. Since stepping through the door, he’d done nothing but fight images of her submissive perfection. Fate wasn’t going to let him have the win. His fingers ached in their fight not to reach out, press her head against his thigh, and whisper how much he loved seeing her like this, perfectly lowered on her knees. Yeah, even with the sassy smirk that wiggled at her lips.

  “As interesting as that would be to watch,” she said with equal sarcasm, “you know that I respect and value you, wherever you’re at in your life. That includes the boundaries—or whatever the hell they are—of your journey as a Dom. But as the guy who keeps saying how much he respects me in return, you have to support where I’m at with my submissiveness too.”

  She might as well have lobbed an anchor down his gullet. “You’re right. And I’m sorry.”

  He flattened his hand atop hers. She bent her head, briefly pressing her cheek to his knuckles. Her fiery hair brushed his skin as she raised back up, searing him for another breathtaking second, before she pulled back completely.

  “It’s not a matter of right or wrong,” she murmured. “It’s about being real. It’s hard for me to do that sometimes.” A breath wobbled in and out of her. “It’s hard for me to do that most of the time.” She looked to the darkness beyond the window. “Perfection isn’t perfection if you’ve had to lie to everyone, even yourself, to get it. But I want this—need this—part of my life to be the real deal.”

  Though her gaze was still averted, Dan lifted one side of his mouth, hoping she felt the energy behind it. “‘This part of my life’,” he reiterated. “Because the other parts aren’t real?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not important right now.”

  He almost growled. Just like he almost took advantage of her submissive position to push her for a truth she’d never trusted him with. He knew parts of it, simply from relentless observations over the last year. Her parents were tangled in it, as well as a pair of sisters. She spoke kindly of them from time to time but never to them. No phone calls on her birthday. No fond “when I was little” family memories. How did it all figure into her bigger picture? She knew affection, of course, but craved intimacy and honesty. That explained why she’d never defined him by his wealth and why his scars didn’t matter to her either. It was also a clear explanation of why the BDSM dynamic drew her in so deeply.

  And why she could never learn that the friend who’d refused to be her Dom had turned into the Dom who’d rocked her world.

  And in doing so had gotten his world rocked just as hard.

  Shit.

  There it was.

  His reality.

  As explainable as it all was—he hadn’t been with a subbie in a year; her first-time eagerness was a blowtorch of a turn-on—it was, in every incredible and disgusting sense, a gigantic truth. For now, and probably forever, a small part of him would always think of himself as her Dom.

  Which transformed into another intractable truth.

  Her happiness was now his ultimate goal—at whatever price he had to pay.

  He glanced upward. Hey, Big Guy. Bet you didn’t expect to hear from me so soon. But here I am, ugly as ever, putting you on notice. You ready to forgive this black soul for a few more sins?

  He sure as fuck hoped so.

  Chapter Eight

  On Tuesday morning, Tess sucked it up enough to stuff her sore breasts into a bra and report to work. By then, the lingering discomfort in her nipples was eclipsed by the enduring ache in her spirit, and chasing down terrorist assholes was the best therapy she could think of.

  Returning to the routine of life—the banter of the morning-show DJs, the latte in her cup holder, the morning sun glinting off the hotels along the Strip—helped toward setting Friday night in perspective. It had been a dream come true, but it was still only a dream.

  And the griffin?

  He still occupied every other thought she had, a force powerful enough to sway her at times. His sensual fingers, his growl of a voice, his branding iron of domination… She’d been changed in so many ways by that hour beneath his control, as if he’d been sent by fate to be her perfect fantasy lover. She even saw the purpose behind the mask that had irritated her so much in the beginning. Without his anonymity, she wasn’t sure she’d have flown so high into their intimacy.

  So high…

  It was crazy, wasn’t it, that a stranger could actually set her truth free the most? Yet it made the most sense of all. Since he was still a stranger, the pangs of remembering him didn’t cut so deep.r />
  So she tried to tell herself.

  Constantly.

  The battle wasn’t eased by the thoughts that took up space between the hot memories. Every one of them had only one face in them.

  Dan.

  Sleek as his leather jacket. Rugged as his faded jeans. Dark as the night that had brought him…when he’d filled her world with sun again.

  Like she’d ever needed an excuse to let him in her brain.

  Still, these thoughts felt…different. He’d been different that night, all intense and touchy and pensive, after inviting himself in with the subtlety of an ogre. She’d been mortified, of course, that he had—not that he’d never seen her Pony PJs and bedhead hair before. And not that any of it mattered anyway, now that they were going to stick to the friend zone.

  It was the other shit she couldn’t bear for him to see.

  The tears. The aching. The weakness—over a man she couldn’t name, much less identify, even if he’d shown up at the door right alongside Dan.

  But Commander Colton, for all his pushy protectiveness, had understood. Held her, consoled her, even washed away her fears that three days of sub drop wasn’t more freak-worthy than zombie Ebola. He’d told her she’d get through. He’d talked her back into stumbling one step in front of the other until she could run again.

  Now, as she left the conference room after the morning staff briefing, she was pretty sure she’d have to Freaky Friday that shit back at him. In a number of huge ways.

  He’d done the stumbling thing before. He could do it again now. He’d get back up again too, stronger than before, because that was what Dan Colton did better than anyone else she knew. She’d be here to help him do it, too—exactly as he’d been there for her.

  The confidence bolstered her a little—a little—as she marched to the break room, hoping somebody had set the coffee maker to “Molasses” this morning. Nothing like a little overcaffeination to help a girl call her best friend and tell him one of his archenemies was on the short list for a huge presidential favor.