The rug tickles my ni**les and the cool air caresses my bare backside. I am exposed. Swallowing hard, I wonder how Rebecca did anything remotely like this in front of an audience.

Did she trust Mark the way I trust Chris? Or just love him the way I love Chris?

Chris caresses my back, and the erotic pleasure pulls me away from the grim place my thoughts have drifted. Sweet friction brushes down my spine with his touch, then over my waist, until his inger inds my tailbone and continues downward. In anticipation of where he will go next, my breathing is suddenly shallow, almost a pant. And when Chris begins the highly intimate, slow glide down the crevice between my cheeks, my sex clenches almost painfully.

“Did you like it when I spanked you, Sara?” he asks, his palm caressing my cheeks the way he had the night he’d actually spanked me.

My skin tingles beneath his touch and I can hear my breathing, short little pants I can’t seem to control. “I . . . I don’t know.”

His hand stills, his ingers widen and tense. “Did you like it when I spanked you?” His voice is low, taut, illed with command.

Somehow my hair draped over my face and my arms tunneled around me are not protection enough from this soul-searching moment. I squeeze my eyes shut, aware that I’ve exposed more than my body to Chris. I’ve exposed a part of me that I burn to understand, yet can’t seem to fully embrace. But I want to. No, I need to. I need to do this.

“Yes,” I inally whisper. “Yes. I did.” I hold my breath and wait for the reply that doesn’t come. One second. Two. No words follow. I start to get up.

Chris’s hand presses between my shoulder blades and holds me there, and the warmth of his breath teases my neck and ear.

“Stay as you are.”

Then he’s gone, and a wave of unexpected, irrational panic overcomes me. It’s all I can do not to sit up, and I take a deep breath and try to analyze what I’m feeling. I’ve just made a revealing confession that wasn’t easy for me to say out loud, and the last thing I expected, or needed, afterward was to be left lying here, na**d and bound.

This isn’t what I expect from Chris. This is the behavior of the Master in Rebecca’s journals. Of Mark. I feel insecure, uncertain. And damn it, I hate the deep insecurity that never seems to stop haunting me, making me question what I know of the man I love, who is nothing like Mark. He isn’t. I know this.

I force another deep breath and repeat that reassurance in my mind, and then suddenly Chris is with me, touching me, and I feel his na**d body aligned with mine. The tension inside me fades, warmth spreading over me where I’ve been chilled.

He turns me to my side to face him, his erection thick between my legs, his hand branding my rib cage. His eyes meet mine, and the insanely impossible mix of wicked dominance and sweet tenderness melts away any remaining insecurity.

He strokes the hair from my face. “You do know that there’s nothing wrong with liking it when I spank you, don’t you?”

Heat loods my cheeks and I look down, taken of guard by the return to our prior, explicitly erotic, conversation. His ingers slip under my chin and force my gaze back to his. “It’s just you and me, baby, and I’m not like anyone else who’s ever been in your life. There’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of with me, ever. You can embrace who you really are, and we can be whoever we want to be together.”

My gut clenches at the reference to the way my father and Michael tried to create me and control me; Chris has hit the sore spot. It is a testament to how much he’s become a part of me that he sees this in me, when I hadn’t allowed myself to see it until this moment.

I burn to free my hands and touch him, yet at the same time I want them bound. I want to know where we will go next. “I know,” I whisper. “I know, Chris, and it matters more to me than you can imagine that you aren’t just saying that. You mean it. It’s just going to take me some time to fully get them out of my head.”

“We’re going to strip away all the insecurities they put in your head, baby,” he promises, and he slides his c**k back and forth between my legs, sending darts of pleasure down my thighs and back up again. “You and me and a whole lot of pleasure.”

I gasp as he presses inside me, stretching me, and I try to reach for him but can’t, because of my bound hands.

He thinks my past is haunting me, so I can’t handle more than straight-vanilla sex. He thinks that my shyness means weakness, and I want to tell him he’s wrong. But with the feel of him inside me, the heat spreading through me, I can only manage, “What are you doing?”

“What does it feel like I’m doing?” he asks, nuzzling my neck. “I’m making love to you.”

He squeezes my backside, and I moan at the erotic rough-ness in his touch as he pulls me hard against him, sinking his c**k deeper inside me. Filling me completely. And this man does ill me completely, in all ways. I want to do the same for him. “But I thought you were going—”

“To make love to you,” he inishes for me, and his c**k is stroking back and forth, pumping in and out of me, driving me wild. “Yes, baby, I am.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I argue weakly, nearly overtaken by pleasure. It’s a struggle to simply keep my eyes open, but I ight the sensations overwhelming me to plead my case for my readiness for more. He thrusts hard into me, and I’m all but over the edge. Desperation rises in me and with no hands, I have no weapon but to blurt out my protest. “Chris, damn it. Stop. Listen to me.”

His eyes meet mine, and this time I ind hot coals and burning embers. He thrusts again, a wicked smile on his lips.

“I’m listening. Can’t you tell?”

I pant through the pleasure, determined to convince him I’m ready for that “more” we both crave. “Because I was slow to admit that I liked it when you spanked me, doesn’t mean I can’t handle it when you do. Please. Spank me now. I like it.”

His ingers curl around my neck, dragging my lips a breath from his. “I’m going to do that and a whole lot more to you, Sara. Just not now. Not tonight.” His mouth closes over on mine, soft and sensual, but no less wickedly dominant.

I mean to resist, to inish arguing my point, but this kiss is laced with deep longing and passion, a kiss unlike any we’ve shared since I stepped on that plane hours before. He called me his addiction. He is my addiction, my passion. He’s my reason to breathe, and when he begins to move inside me again, I am lost to the sway of our bodies, to the thrust of his cock. Lost to how much this man completes me.

He rolls me to my back and reaches for the sash around my wrists. Reality slams into me and my eyes snap wide open.

“No,” I say, folding my arms close to my chest. “I don’t want you to free me. You didn’t . . . we didn’t . . . We’ve done slow.

I’m done with slow.”

He grabs the sash along with my hands, rough in that sexy way he can be rough, and I silently rejoice at a glimpse of this side of him. “What we did is called avoidance,” he declares and his mouth lowers, lingering near mine, his breath a warm, wet promise on my lips. “And this, right now, is me savoring every second of making love to you. And in case you didn’t know, you’re the only reason I know what that means.”

My breath freezes in my throat, the impossibility of how far we’ve come in such a short time overwhelming me. “I am?”

“You have to know that.”

I’m instantly awash in emotions, and yes, still so intensely, wonderfully, overwhelmed by this man. “I do,” I whisper. “I know because I feel the same way about you.” I try to reach for him but can’t. “I need to touch you.”

He reaches down to untie my hands, and I swear I see him tremble as he tosses the sash aside. With desire? With love? He’s as afected by me as I am him, and it’s this connection I never expected, and I never want to lose. Our eyes lock and hold, the air thickens around us, and words are not needed. We understand each other. We need each other. Chris is inside me, hard and thick, but this is much more than sex. He’s right. It’s making love.

His mouth slants over mine and his tongue presses past my teeth, stroking me at the same moment he curves his hand beneath me and lifts my hips. And with his actions, it’s as if a branch snaps and we tumble into a wildire of passion. The Chris I know doesn’t lose control—but he has, we have, and I’m climbing out of my skin, trying to get under his. His mouth is on my mouth, my neck, my nipple, suckling and licking, and his c**k is driving into me, slow and then fast, fast and then slow.

Time fades and Chris is merciless, punishing me with hard pumps of his cock, and sweet, wicked licks of his tongue. I am lost and found in this one place, in this one man, and I desperately try to hold back, to make this last, but can’t do it. I dig my ingers into his back and I clench around his shaft, dragging him deeper, but never deep enough. This man can never be deep enough.

Release is sweet bliss, jerking my h*ps and stealing my breath. Every nerve ending in my body is alive and tingling with pleasure. Chris buries his face in my neck, his body quak-ing, and I feel the warm, wet heat of his release illing me. A new wave of pleasure washes over me, and it’s far beyond physical. I’m overwhelmed by how right I feel with this man.

“I really do love making love to you,” he murmurs, and when he lifts his head to stare down at me, I love the wildness of his hair and the sated heaviness of his deep green stare.

My lips curve. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, and gives me a quick peck on the mouth.

“Don’t go away.” He pulls out of me and stands up, and I gasp from the hollow ache of his sudden absence. He gives a wicked bark of laughter at my reaction, obviously pleased with himself.

I raise up on my elbow to watch him, and yikes, the sticki-ness between my thighs assures that I’ll stay right where I am or make a mess. Oh, the joys of reality after hot sex. My gaze ixes on Chris’s na**d, sexy backside as he walks to a doorway on my left. Okay, so maybe reality is pretty darn good. Who cares about sticky? Chris disappears inside a room and comes back with a towel in his hand, the full-frontal view reinforcing my feeling lucky.

He grabs a pillow from the couch and then settles back on the rug, ofering me the towel. I’ve barely had time to clean up when he pulls my back to his front, and we share the pillow.

Sprawled on the loor together, na**d, limbs twined together, I’ve never been happier. Chris is dark and damaged, and I think I’m far more damaged than I’ve ever acknowledged. But together . . . together I think we can ind our way to the light.

“I am never going to look at this rug the same way again,”

Chris says, nuzzling my hair.

“That makes two of us,” I agree with a laugh, but my smile fades when my gaze catches on the sash Chris used to tie me up. We’re so close to inding true peace with each other, I don’t want anything, especially my silent worries, to ruin it.

“Please promise me that my hesitation over spanking didn’t make you doubt I can handle what you want to share with me.”

I force myself to dig deeper and face what is really bothering me. “And it’s not because of Michael. I’m not fragile, Chris. I won’t break because of some deep emotional wound, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He rolls me to my back and his hand settles possessively on my stomach. “Baby, I’m not about to sit back and let that man be what’s in your head. I’ll give you other things to ill the space. Good things. Pleasurable things.

“But Michael aside, there was no way I was spanking you after what you’ve been through the past few days. Not when there’s a risk the experience might hit an emotional nerve.

Sometimes a BDSM-type experience helps you escape. Sometimes it takes you deeper into the pain, and forces you to face it and deal with it. You’re too new to this for that to be predict-able. You don’t know what you like, nor how you react to it, and neither do I.”

I have a sudden memory of Chris tied up in the club, screaming for the woman behind him to hit him harder, and I know why he became the master of helping others escape. He can’t give someone else control without the risk of them opening a wound and starting an emotional bleed. Not unless he goes to painful extremes. Beatings.

“We did exactly what I intended tonight,” Chris continues.

“We worked on trust, and you gave me enough to lie down na**d in the middle of this rug and completely submit to me.

Trust is everything, Sara.”

He curls around me and I shut my eyes, absorbing the sensation of being wrapped in his strong arms, and I hope that he can ind the same trust in me, and us, as I have.

I blink into the beam of sunlight from the balcony and inhale the warm, musky scent of Chris, who is still wrapped around me. But rather than feeling warm and wonderful, there’s a vague sense of unease inside me. Something feels of. Maybe it’s the new place or the time zone change, and I wonder how long we’ve been asleep.

“Chris! Oh, Chris, baby, where are you?”

The female voice echoes from the stairwell, approaching quickly, and the sound is like a bucket of ice water. I go cold, aware that this is my source of unease and what woke me.

“Oh holy hell,” the female says, and I can tell she’s at the top of the stairs now, no doubt gaping at us where we lie on the rug. “Wow. Chris. A little early in this trip for female friends, isn’t it?”

I linch at her obvious meaning and try to sit up, but Chris’s leg and arm shackle me. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong.