Remembering her earlier thoughts, she knew she’d been right. This moment meant as much to her as being presented an engagement ring, the commitment the same. Deeper in some ways, because she knew what it meant to him. While he finally understood and accepted what she was offering, it said he was now demanding it from her.

Tears were rolling down her face. Seeing them, his mouth softened. She lifted fingers to his lips, touched.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I want to be yours, Ben. It’s what I’ve always wanted. I’ve only been waiting on you.”

His lips twisted in a wry smile. “Leave it to you to get that little dig in.”

“Well, you didn’t say I had to be docile and silent.”

“And if I did?”

“I will do my very best, Master,” she said prudently. “Unless you prefer me to fall short in that area, in which case I’m certain I can excel at that.”

Though he chuckled, his response was somber, intent. “You embrace the hard stuff, love it, but I don’t ever want to push you beyond what you can bear, Marcie. You’re going to have to help me learn how to love you. I’ve done a lot of things with women, but that’s one thing I haven’t practiced much.”

She shook her head. “You’ve been practicing a long time. Savannah, Cass, Dana, Rachel, my younger sisters…Ben, you love all of us. You love Peter, Matt, Lucas and Jon. You’ve looked out for them, been part of our family, no matter what.” She met his gaze. “All those letters…you’ve been winning my heart, loving me, for seven years. I trust you. Please give me your collar, Master. I can’t bear another moment without it.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. Picking up the collar, he closed it around her throat. It lay lightly on her collarbone but had enough of a weight and a snug enough fit it stole her breath in all the right ways, sent her brain in a hundred different directions, while keeping one part of it very still, very focused.

His. His. His.

The cuffs just underscored it. He caressed her pulse beneath them, looked at her like that, all naked but for that mark of ownership. “All right,” he said at last, then lifted her in his arms again.

He carried her back out into the loft. On this side, the thick plastic curtain was camouflaged by strategically placed screens. Tonight they’d been adjusted so she could still see the equipment, the latex vacuum bed where she’d lain. Turning her attention to the rest of the apartment, she found a king-sized bed on the lower level, piled up with pillows. She assumed that one was his. But he carried her up the stairs to the open room above it, where there was another king-sized bed and a window to look out at the New Orleans’ lights. Putting her arms around his shoulders, she pressed her face into his throat, her lips there.

“I feel so floaty.”

“You were gone, baby. Off in subspace. You’re still there. You don’t worry about anything. I’ve got you.”

He laid her down in the bed, arranged the covers over her. She suppressed a sigh. She didn’t want him to leave, but she knew he didn’t sleep with women, and there was another bed downstairs. Small steps. No. No, she didn’t want that. He’d said to be herself, tell him what she wanted, needed.

As he moved back toward the stairs, she made a noise and he turned, eyebrow cocked. “What is it, Marcie?”

“I don’t want you to go. Please…come sleep with me?”

He gave her a crooked smile, one that made those emerald green eyes an even deeper color. “Where else would I be sleeping, brat? I’m just turning off the light. The downstairs bed is a guest bed. Closer to the kitchen and bathroom.”

“Oh.” When darkness descended, the lights from the city cast a dim glow over the room. She waited with bated breath until he slid in behind her, lifting her thigh with a firm hand so he could slide his cock between her legs, rest it against her sore pussy, a reminder that she would serve him whenever he desired. But tonight, this was enough. She curved her fingers over his on her breast, glad when he didn’t tell her not to do that. He put his lips against her neck, against that new collar. “Sleep. That’s my last command of the night. Just sleep.”

She was lost to dreams within minutes.

* * * * *

When she woke, it took her a moment to remember—joyously—where she was. But she was alone. Before she could panic over that, she realized two things. One, Ben was moving around the kitchen below. Two, she was still wearing his collar and cuffs. A wonderfully familiar aroma was drifting up from the kitchen, but she couldn’t quite place it since it wasn’t a normal breakfast smell.

Rising, she ran her hands through her hair. She didn’t see clothes for her, not even his shirt, and before she could think about what that meant, he’d realized she was up.

“No clothes, unless you’re cold. Just the collar and cuffs, Marcie. Come down here.”

She did, her legs shaking a little from last night’s exertions, and at the reality of what it all meant. Rising in his bed, coming to him as his, first thing in the morning, every day for the rest of her life. He was wearing only a pair of faded jeans, no shirt, and saliva gathered in her mouth just at the sight of him. As he straightened from doing something with the oven, she obeyed her first desire. Her eyes and mouth soft, she walked right into him, put her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek to his bare chest.

“Good morning, Master,” she said against his skin.

He slid his arms around her tight, held her that way a long moment, lips in her hair. “Good morning, brat.” Then she gave a little yelp as he hit her bare bottom with the heated spatula. “Go kneel on the pillow by my chair. Going to feed you some breakfast. We have to be in the office in a couple hours for the Chen meet. I assume you’re ready for that?”

“I will be. Um, if I have clothes.”

“Much as I’d love to see Chen’s reaction to you sashaying in bare-assed naked, I had Cass pack you another overnight bag. Max brought it last night when he dropped you off. Do you have your Pickard job in the afternoon?”

She nodded.

“Tell him not to send you on any more investigative jobs that involve going toe to toe with security thugs or I’ll have his ass.”

“I handled that guy just fine.”

“Yeah, you did.” He gave her a bolstering grin, but a sharp look right along with it. “I mean it.”

She pouted a little bit about that, started working on how she was going to get around it, just as he brought a sizeable piece of warm chocolate cake to the table, not yet iced. He’d brought a bowl of icing to take care of that. She stared at the plate, her mouth now watering for other reasons. “You made me cake.”

Start every day with chocolate cake. That way, no matter what else happens, the day started with something perfect.

She lifted her gaze to him. “Are you worried about how the day will end?”

“Only if you’re not going to be part of it.” He tossed the spatula and the oven mitt onto the counter, then sat down on the chair, swinging his leg over her head so she was kneeling between his spread thighs. Her gaze couldn’t help going downward and thinking about how good that chocolate icing would taste, spread on his cock.

He tweaked her breast, making her yelp. “Behave, brat. You get sick on icing, it’ll spoil your appetite for the cake.”

She didn’t think anything could spoil her appetite for the man in front of her. Now all the way through forever. He liked the bad girl in her, would always like that. As much as she liked the bad boy in him. “Yes, Master.”

“Save your strength. You have a busy day ahead. Tonight, after Pickard, I want you to come back to the office. Bring that mask you wore on the parking deck.”

She looked up at him, but she had to open her mouth fast for the bite of cake or she would have been wearing it. She gave him a narrow glance as he patted at her lips with a tsking noise. Then the taste hit her. “Oh God. Oh my God. This is as good as sex.”

When he laughed, it captivated her, the way it made him look younger, happier. She’d missed that side of him. But as he continued, her thoughts went to an entirely different but no less pleasurable place.

“I turn the car over to the auction tomorrow. So tonight I’m going to fuck you on the hood, exactly the way you were taunting me to do it on that security footage. Then Lewis can have it.”

She vividly imagined it. Ben, tying her wrists to the rearview mirrors, bending her over the hood in those teetering heels, hand smacking her ass to get it good and red before he rammed into her… She was getting short of breath just thinking of it.

“Oh, Cass said that your package arrived, whatever that means. She put it in the bag and told me I wasn’t allowed to look.”

“Oh. Oh.” Marcie brightened, momentarily distracted from lust. As she started to scramble off the pillow, over to the bag, she caught herself just in time. “Master, may I… I have something for you.”

He gave her a quizzical look, but nodded with warm approval at her remembering to ask permission. It pleased her down to her toes. Then he got a devilish glint in his eyes. “If you do it on your hands and knees.”

Which she was sure gave him quite a view of her ass and pussy as she moved the few necessary feet to the end of the kitchen counter. Opening the bag, seeing the wrapped package, a tiny smile bloomed in her heart. She loved the K&A women.

As she came back to him, she noticed he was just as fascinated by how her breasts swayed heavy and full in the all-fours position. During the night, he’d replaced the bar with the nipple rings strung with the emeralds, the ones she’d worn to match her clit piercing. Studying them and the movement of her breasts, he was getting hard and thick again against the jeans. It was obvious from that spread thigh position. They might just be late to that meeting after all. She could hardly wait. But first she wanted to give him this.

The package was wrapped in paper covered with a toy car pattern, a silver bow on top. He lifted his brow and she grinned. “The night at Surreal…”