“And that loss of identity doesn’t worry you?”

Now his smile got broader. “It’s not a loss of identity, Mistress. It’s called finding yourself.”

When his gaze shifted, Marguerite turned to discover Violet standing at the opposite end of the foyer.

Marguerite could think of no other word than reverent to describe how Mac looked at his Mistress. Not in the sense of overlooking her flaws, but of seeing everything in her he could ever need for emotional fulfillment. “When I’m with her,” he said quietly,

“I see who I really am, the mirror of my soul.”

“Mac and I are going for a walk on the grounds.” Violet pulled her gaze with obvious reluctance from her husband. “So I know Tyler would appreciate your company. Leila and Joseph have already gone to bed. He’s back at the pool house.”

“I’ll head that way.” Marguerite nodded to them both, left them with that energy pulsing between them. She wondered what it would be like to feel like that on a daily basis, to be inside one another so deeply that there were no doubts, even when you were at one another’s throats.

She took the long way, wandering through the living area, disturbed by Mac’s words. No, disturbed was not the right word, but she didn’t know what was. She just knew she had an unexpected desire to simply lie down here on Tyler’s sofa, become part of his furniture, of his daily life, and never leave again.

He rose the moment she came into the pool house. When she got close, he reached out and she automatically put her hand in his to let him lead her outside behind the pool area. There was a sloping lawn here and she could see Mac and Violet as hand-in-157

hand silhouettes walking along the pathway by the small manmade pond, a dotting of solar lights guiding them. The water glittered in the moonlight.

Tyler could tell her thoughts were bothering her, so he coaxed her to lie down with him on the soft grass in front of the bench. It was an earthy, sweet-smelling mattress, almost as sweet as the woman who lowered herself to the ground with easy elegance.

He raised one foot up to remove his loafer, then the other, then curled his bare toes into the sod.

“If there are better moments than this, I don’t know what they are.” He looked up at the starry sky, listening to the music he’d turned on inside the pool house, a classical piece. “This is my favorite time of day, when it starts getting dark and everyone around becomes a silhouette. We’re like the stars, aware of the other celestial bodies but undisturbed by them, surrounded by our own quiet world of darkness.”

“You’re composing again. And you’re right. The spirit is in space, not matter.” The smile in her voice came to him, as perfect as the music. He kept his eyes closed, letting it wash over him as he reached out and found her hand.

“Tell me what that means.”

“It means the power isn’t in the matter. It’s not the people or the music that give this moment its special quality. It’s the space between them where everything important is, where it appears nothing resides. It defines the people, the music. If you meditate on that space, you find whatever it is that you call God. Do you have a faith?

You never told me.”

“I believe in this.” He tightened his grip. “More than that, it gets too complicated. I don’t think it’s supposed to be complicated.”

“You remind me of David.”

It was a quiet statement, a bare murmur of sound. Tyler waited several heartbeats, not wanting to push. “How so?”

“When I needed to do it, I could go into his head, surround myself with his thoughts like a protective blanket.” She tilted her head, closed her eyes and he increased the pressure of his hand on hers, letting her know he was there. Quiet. Listening.

“I’d be on the bed…with my father. I’d thread my hands through the slats of the headboard and press my fingertips to the wall. I knew David was there, lying on his side of the wall, his palms pressed right where my fingertips were. So I wasn’t alone.

And though I could still feel the pain, hear what my father was saying to me, part of me was inside David. I told him that, a lot of times. I think it helped him to know it. He was a good person. Would have been a good man.” She turned her head, met his gaze with those blue eyes that were like looking into the vast expanse of the sky. “I like to think he’s an angel. Not the fluffy way people talk about, but one of the spirits who go out and guard the innocent, intervene on their behalf. Helping them survive the long cold hours of the deadliest time of night, when you’re sure pain is all you’re ever going to know. When I lost him it was like my heart stopped beating, but I could still breathe.”

“Marguerite…”

She moved to her hip, rested her fingers on his face. “He was like you,” she repeated. “You’ve been ankle-deep in it like David, unable to protect, and now you’re determined that the person you love will be protected in every way. I guess I understand that when you push so hard. You know the difference between force driven by love and force driven by hate and evil. But can you rescue a damsel after the dragon’s already eaten her, spit out the bones?” She considered it, her hair rippling over her shoulder. “Do you pity me? Knowing what you know now, would you have treated me any differently?”

“Yes and yes.” He needed to touch more of her suddenly, intensely. He sat up, putting his back against the bench seat and pulled her over onto his lap, held her in the cradle of his arms. She settled in with surprisingly little resistance, twining her arms around his neck, pressing her face to it. “Even knowing you wouldn’t want me to do either. But I love you, Marguerite. That encompasses everything. Pity, respect, a whole oceanful of admiration. Desire. I couldn’t have pushed certain things so hard if I had known about your life before but I would still have tried to make you surrender to me.

Because to me that’s about trust, not violence, and I think you deserve someone in your life you can trust. Though I admit the passion I have for you is so strong that sometimes it’s close to violence.”

“I like the fact you never lie to me,” she said after a moment. “And I wanted what you did that weekend. What you’ve done to me since. It’s hard to admit I understand a submissive’s mind so well now from their side of it. You didn’t give me the option of maintaining shields. And for the first time that I can remember…” Her voice lowered to a whisper against his skin. “I feel loved. And I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”

“I’ll be strong enough for both of us, angel,” he promised.

Rolling her head back on his shoulder, she gazed at him, a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth. “Arrogant man.” She parted her lips when he touched his fingers to them. Bit him. He smiled, though his body was rousing at the lazy heat in her expression. But when she tilted her head back to look at the stars and became quiet again, he let her be at peace, content just to hold her.

Tyler’s gaze drifted down the lawn to where Mac and Violet were. The two of them were just defined shadows. When they stopped and turned to face each other, something about their posture suggested the conversation had gotten more serious.

Violet’s gestures were even a bit nervous. Mac was still, as if he’d become a statue. Then he reached out, his fingers touching her face, slow, almost reverent. While Tyler watched, he went to one knee, framed her hips with his large hands, leaned in and pressed a kiss in the center of her stomach, bowing his head.

“Is she… Did she just…”

He glanced down, saw Marguerite was watching them, too.

A moment later, they heard the wind bring a snippet of the conversation. Violet’s quick joyous laughter, tinged with a sob. Mac rose, taking her hands, leaning down to meet her mouth in a sweet, chaste kiss. A kiss that became less chaste very quickly.

“Yes,” Tyler said. “I think so.”

Marguerite rose, leaving the warmth of Tyler’s lap to watch the couple. They resumed walking, only now they were like one person, Mac’s arm around her shoulders, both of Violet’s arms around him as they moved through the night.

Together. Now not just a safeguard for each other, but for the life they’d created.

When Tyler’s arms slid around her from behind, she pushed away, but of course he caught her hand, pulled her back, this time holding her so she couldn’t get away. “Let me go,” she said.

“Do you always want to live with this death grip on the past? It doesn’t define who you are.”

“Hypocrite,” she said, bitterness burning her lungs. “When you see blood instead of wet earth between my toes, do you think it didn’t define who you are now?” He threaded his hands through her hair, which he’d taken down with his fingers when they sat with the others having after-dinner drinks. Teasing, flirting, gentle romance that seemed diametrically opposite to this moment of pain.

“You can honor what your past has made you without enshrining it, worshipping at its feet, dedicating yourself to it for life like a monastic taking vows to serve a cruel god. What do you want, Marguerite?”

He asked it in a voice that sounded to her as relentless as time and power. Not the power of man, but the power of the wind, the sun’s heat, the determination of flowers to push up through the earth every year and prove that beauty could rise from the rich earth of the grave. The power of water, cycling through tide after tide, like the power rising in her now. For dinner she’d changed into a strapless top that hugged her hips and a soft gauze skirt that floated around her calves. His hands moved to her shoulders, her neck, his warm strength touching her bare skin.

“What do you want?” She tossed it back at him. “Children, I’m sure. I can’t give you those. I can’t give you anything, be anything remotely close to normal for you.”

“What do you want, Marguerite?” He tipped her chin up.

“Don’t touch me. I don’t want to be touched right now.” That was no more true than for a figurine of porcelain, too thin to be handled. She did want to be touched, she was just deeply terrified, deep in a part of her that knew only fear, that his touch would break her into pieces, an explosion of shards small and thin as confetti, lost to the wind as if she’d never been.