Violet pursed her lips. “In our household, that’s considered foreplay. And as tempting as it is to smack you around for being an idiot, I think you’ve been beaten enough tonight.”

“I knew what I was doing.”

“Yes, you did. It was still dangerous. She’s dangerous. You knew it, you told me about it and it was very clear tonight. She can be pushed to a point of no return.”

“She’s mine.” His expression hardened. “And I’ll take care of her.”

“I know.” After a minute, going on impulse Violet put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him close, though gently. Then, just because he’d pissed her off, she smacked him on the back and made him cringe. “Please just think it through, be careful and know we’re here if it doesn’t work out. Care about her enough to know if you need to give up, okay?”

He sighed, relenting, his arms closing around her waist and hips as he held her small body close, letting her friendship loosen the tight fingers of tension in his stomach. “I can’t do that but I hear you, Violet. Jesus, she has a good arm. I haven’t had a beating like that since Afghanistan. The Taliban broke ribs and I swear it didn’t hurt as much. Did she seem okay?” He lifted his head abruptly.

“I think she’s really rattled and scared, knocked off her foundation, which is why I didn’t go ten rounds with her. She knew what she needed at this moment. Space. I think you should give her a little.”

The step of a high heel on the landing above them made them turn. Leila stood there, a medical first aid kit in hand. “And before you go anywhere,” Violet added, “I think you should let Leila look you over. Or I will handcuff you to make sure of it. She’s as much as said in her note she’s not going straight home. You can get tended and still meet her there in good time.”

Tyler reluctantly nodded, glanced up at Leila as she came down the stairs. A professional nurse and the woman he’d trained as a submissive for over a year, she’d become a friend and lover who’d opened his heart again. Now her jade green eyes moved over him, assessing. “Well, you’ve had an adventurous evening, haven’t you, Master?”

She’d never stopped calling him that, even after they’d moved on to other relationships, the title one of affection and shared experiences that could get him hard just remembering. Until Marguerite. He took her hand and Violet’s to kiss both. “I’m blessed with the friendship of beautiful, loving women.” Tyler shifted his gaze to Mac’s unreadable expression. “And I apologize for abusing our friendship and your Mistress.”

Mac nodded, his lips twisting in a rueful smile. “Love can make the best man into a total fucking moron.”

When Leila took Tyler’s hand in hers and the two went down the stairs toward the coed changing room where she could tend him and examine him more thoroughly, Mac’s expression sobered. “Violet, that note said she went to see her brother.”

“That’s what it said.”

“Hmm. You remember when we investigated her for the S&M killer case?” Violet pulled her attention away as Tyler and Leila disappeared behind the door. “I remember.” She would never forget the case that brought Mac into her life and almost took him from her forever. The bullet and lash scars he bore were a permanent reminder of even the strongest man’s mortality to a woman’s madness. While she wasn’t ready to relinquish her anger with Marguerite Perruquet, she realized that a good part of the fury provoked by watching Tyler willingly expose himself to the risk had been galvanized by those terrible memories. She felt like she needed a large cup of wine and a mind-numbing dose of sex.

She knew where to get both fortunately. She wanted to immerse herself in the vibrant life of the man she loved so much, so that the turmoil inside her breast and all the nightmares raised by the evening’s events could be laid to uneasy rest again.

“He’ll be fine, sugar.” Taking her hand, Mac pulled her down the steps to close her in his arms, lifting her off her feet. Violet wrapped her thighs around his waist with a helpful hitch from him.

“More than I can say for you.” Cocking her head, she eyed him narrowly. But she couldn’t deny the sudden, urgent bite of savage lust that was the body’s natural response to threat and survival. “You’ve been a pain in my ass tonight.”

“I won the wrestling match fair and square. Though I think Hank’s been showing you some new hand-to-hand tricks.” His lips quirked, eyes heating as she rubbed against him, digging her nails into his neck when he would have lowered his grip to her hips. Obeying, he stopped, keeping his hands at her waist. As her lips hovered just over his without moving, he remained motionless even as his cock thickened, hardening.

“Not this one.” Her hand went down between them, cupped and kneaded him as he suppressed a groan. “But you’ll beg hard tonight before you get to come in my pussy. And I might fuck your ass first to remind you what obeying your Mistress’s orders means.”

“I love you.” His lips parted, showing teeth. “My cock and everything else is all yours, Mistress. Always has been, always will be. I’ll serve your pleasure however you want it.”

When her fingers passed over the bullet scar at his abdomen and shadows gathered in her blue eyes, his arms tightened around her. “She’s not a killer, Violet. She’s a very troubled lady but I’ll lay good money she’s as crazy about him as he is about her. It’s going to be okay.”

Violet squeezed her eyes shut, nodded. “God, I’m never going to stop wanting you.

Loving you. But what…” She shook her head, trying to drive lust back a bit. As much as possible with the muscled, two hundred-pound body of her large husband so close, his cock strong against his snug jeans. “What was that about her brother?”

“Her brother’s dead, sugar. Remember? He killed himself at age fourteen. With their mother.”

Chapter Two

Get Violet or Leila to tend those cuts.

That had been the hardest sentence of the note to write. She’d never allowed herself to cosset her subs, left that to The Zone staff she’d paid to do so. But she had wanted to do it for Tyler. Had wanted to touch each bruise and cut, every welt. Place her mouth over them like a mother wolf, feel his hands touch her, hold her, exchange comfort.

What was she? Who was she?

She sat down on the concrete block ledge of the roof of the Bank of Florida building, the tallest building in the city, a monolith that overlooked a panorama of glittering lights this late in the evening. Swung her legs over the edge so they dangled, braced her arms and stared down hundreds of feet to the street below.

There would be fewer wind currents on a dive from a building like this versus a jump from a plane. A BASE jumper, those daring skydivers who preferred to do their jumps from a stationary structure such as a building, bridge or cliff, would relish the challenge. Leaping out among a forest of buildings, testing the body’s ability to work with the small amount of wind and the chute to find a way safely to the ground.

She was tumbling in such currents now, her chute twisted, tangled, not sure of her heading, unable to prevent herself from smashing into any surrounding structures. Yet she kept thinking about Tyler. Tyler at the bottom, Tyler able to catch her despite terminal velocity. But she’d hit that bottom so long ago and not died. Not technically.

She dreamed of David at least once or twice a week. His eyes a mirror of her own, their two bodies locked together, rolling end over end toward some unknown conclusion. His end had come but hers had not. And one night not too long ago when she dreamed her dream of falling, it was not David’s eyes she’d seen but a tiger’s. But the look in them was the same. Unconditional love, the desire to protect. She’d known it in her brother’s eyes, knew it was real in the dream as it had been in life, but she didn’t know if she was imposing it as dangerous, wishful thinking on Tyler.

Drawing her knees up, she rested her weight just on her buttocks, the soles of her feet over the edge. Forward and back, forward and back like one of those children’s toys that once were so popular, the ones that had rounded bottoms and could never fall down, never be knocked over. There had been a punching bag like that, too. No matter how hard it was hit, it came back up for more.

She felt a wind current move over her. It was unimpeded up here where this tallest building had no competition. It tried to lift her, push her. As if that wind knew her natural state was to plunge, to tumble, to finish what had been started so long ago.

Could she survive reinvention? Redefinition of herself? Did she want Tyler that much? Did she even have a choice?

“It would have been so much easier if you’d let me go with you, David.” And the ironic thing was, to be with him forever all he’d needed to do was let her go. Her words were soft, spoken to the spirits that still lingered here, that stood by her. “But for the first time in my life, I may not be sorry that you didn’t… His pull on me is so strong. I never thought there’d be anything stronger than the call of this place. But he’s there…here…” Her fist clutched over her heart, dug into her breast. “And though it makes me hurt so badly, makes me want to hurt him for tearing me apart, tearing me open, I want him there inside me, too. He forced his way in. And every part of me…” She shook her head. “Now I want him so much, I can’t breathe. And I’m so afraid he doesn’t understand what that means. I’m not sure I do and I’ve always had to be so sure of everything.”

Not just her heart and soul but her body, exhausted as it was, was still throbbing for him. She needed to go home, take care of it the only way she’d ever been able to release herself. Though there was a desolate ache that went along with the thought, she knew she was going to do it, because whatever she did when she next faced him she at least had to have some control over her hormones.

Rising, she stood on the ledge and looked out into the night. Felt the cold touch of nightmares pull at her, whisper their seductive promises. But tonight, instead of her will having to summon the strength to resist them alone, thoughts of Tyler’s body, his voice and those eyes invading her dreams coaxed her back from the ledge.