As he put the collar on her throat, she followed it there, passing her fingers over his wrist, then down to the wide strap, lined so it wouldn’t chafe. A waterfall of decorative chains fell from it. It had a D-ring loop, with a pendant. Touching the oblong disk, she realized it was a medallion. Because she’d replayed every detail she remembered about him that night, her throat closed, already knowing.

“It’s the St. Christopher’s I wear.” He increased the collar’s constriction, resulting in a violent contraction low in her belly. Her fingers trembled where they rested on his thick wrist. “You know the rules, Dana. While you wear this, I’m your Master. You’re mine.

You follow my orders; you do what I tell you.”

“But I didn’t . . . I refused to call you that.”

He touched her chin, lifted her face, and she sensed him so close, the idea of his mouth hovering so near overwhelming her. “Are you going to refuse now?” he asked.

She swallowed. A hundred denials leaped to mind, but it wasn’t her rational mind running things now. “No.”

“No, what?” His tone sharpened, making her jump. She responded automatically, pushing all worries and concerns aside.

“No, Master.”

“Good.” The deep, sensual pleasure in his voice rippled through her. “Because we have some business to handle before I bathe and dress you the way I want.” Taking her arm, he guided her back toward the main source of that marsh breeze. She heard the creak of a screen door opening, and he was leading her out before she could balk.

She hated it, but her legs started to tremble. The give of the boards suggested she was being led onto a boat dock. That meant they were surrounded by water, and she was completely naked. One misstep, and she’d be in the water. Her fingers crept up to hold his hand at her waist, knuckles burrowing into his palm. She was thankful he didn’t admonish her for lack of trust, but squeezed that hand, reassuring her without words.

She started when something dragged against her skin. Before she could panic, he stopped, guided her hand to touch long, waving grass. It apparently grew up along the sides of this part of the dock, tall enough to tease her bare ankles. As the strands moved under her palm, she took a deep breath, focused on their motion. Her nostrils flared, bringing her the aroma secreted in their sun-soaked stalks and darker, moist places near the waterline.

“The smell is so vivid, you can almost see it, can’t you? C’mon, sweetheart. I want to take you to the end of the dock.”

When she straightened, he led her onward, no hesitation, a smooth pace that had her stomach jumping like the frogs she could faintly hear croaking, which meant they were making quite a racket near the dock. At the end, he let her feel the edge of the dock with her toes, then put her hands on a piling. The wood had a worn texture under her palms.

“Now, if I vanished all of a sudden”—he stroked a hand along her tense shoulder—“which is not going to happen, there’s one of these every five feet or so, and a rope runs between them. If you want to come out here, you can follow that rope, sit on these boards, get some sun. When you reach this one”—his grip increased over hers—“you’ll know it’s the end, because there’s a knot to the rope.” He showed her that, his fingers sure on hers. “Below that is the water, and my boat. I’ll take you out on it soon.”

“Great. I’ll probably get seasick.” She was having trouble enough walking on solid surfaces. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think about the unstable glide of a boat.

“It’s a smooth, easy ride. I paddle it most times. A lot of nights, I sit out here and drink a beer after work. Listen to the frogs, all the night sounds, until the bugs outnumber my zappers and drive me back into the screened porch.”

She yelped as something ice-cold touched her, and he caught her waist before she instinctively leaped right, which would have taken her into the water. She grabbed his biceps anyway, cursing him. He chuckled. “Language, sweetheart. It’s a beer. There’s an outdoor mini fridge here. Want a sip of mine?”

She tried to draw a steadying breath, wondering if she was the only one who realized she was completely naked in broad daylight. “Not going to offer me one?” His hand, cool and wet from the beer’s condensation, drew a line down the outer curve of her breast, slow and easy. “No. You’ll drink from mine, if you ask nice.” Yeah, he knew she was naked. As flustered as she was, she detected full awareness of it in the sexy intensity of his voice. “But first, we’re going to get that business out of the way I was talking about.”

He shifted to set down the beer, then straightened to bring both her hands up to the piling.

Looping a coil of line around her wrists, he guided her hands to a metal hook embedded in the piling before he drew up the slack, locking her wrists against it.

Well, at least if she was tied here, she couldn’t fall into the water. But her breath was still getting short, the restraint doing funny things to her insides, anticipating what he was planning.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

He let his hand slide down her arm to her back, down to the curve of her buttock. Then, as he had the night in the club, without preamble or permission, he eased his fingers between her legs. She gasped as he stroked the wetness there, brought it back out and painted the moisture over her lips before he took her hand to his mouth, let her feel him taste his own fingers, a quick swipe of his tongue. “You’re ready, Sergeant. Now, I gave you one clear order when you left. What was it? You’d better remember it.” A few hours ago, she’d been huddled in a dark room. In a way that didn’t ignore or minimize her physical limitations, he was nevertheless acting as though they had no bearing on how he intended their relationship to progress, as if she’d returned whole and wanted to try out a 24/7 Master/sub relationship with him.

Holy God. She yelped as a strip of heat sizzled down her backside. The switch.

“Yep.” His voice held dark satisfaction, a thick stew of lust. “Liked the results so much last time, decided to get my own. Answer me quick, Sergeant.”

“You told me to keep my ass down, sir.”

“And did you?”

“No, sir.”

“There are a couple soldiers who likely wouldn’t be alive if you had. You did your duty as a soldier, but you overrode your Master’s command. You did right, but you still have to be punished, don’t you?”

“Yes, Master.” Her fingers gripped the post, her mind whirling.

“How many lashes do you think you deserve for risking what belongs to me?” She swallowed again, feeling a fear different from any she’d felt in the past long months, fear wrapped up in building need. Slick arousal was trickling down her thigh.

“Five,” she stammered out, sensing that hand getting ready to flick again. With his strength, she didn’t think she’d last more than five before screaming her lungs out. How close was the nearest neighbor?

“Really? Hmm.” He shifted to her other side, and when his hand ran down her flank, she jumped, anticipating the switch. “I’ll ask you the question again, after I give you the five you prefer.”

Oh, son of a bitch. She was wrong. Not only in her answer, but in how many stripes of that branch she could take without screaming. Her skin was tender from too much sitting, too few workouts, and the next one felt like bacon grease in an open wound. Two, three .

. . The cry ripped from her throat, so loud she heard the echo. The faint frog and bird sounds disappeared. He didn’t pause. Four and five.

Gasping for breath, she whimpered with shock and relief as he rolled the cold brew over her buttock, slow, easy, taking out the stinging throb. Back and forth, as the hand holding the switch took a firm grip of the other cheek, kneaded it with casual, indulgent pleasure.

“It’s softer, Sergeant, but it’s still a nice ass. Now, you going to try for the right answer to that question?”

She nodded. “However many my Master feels I deserve.”

“Bingo, sweetheart.” He pressed against her back then, and she sucked in a startled breath as the switch bent across her throat, below the collar, hauling her head up against the side of his jaw. He pressed his groin against her aching backside, and he was hard as a rock, making her want to widen her stance. Her nipples ached below that restraint, every reaction she had responding to the demand of his body.

“That suspended second in time, when I didn’t know if Jon was going to tell me if you were dead? There aren’t enough lashes in the world to make up for that feeling. Then there’s not telling me what was happening, not calling for my help. I could stripe your ass bloody in a heartbeat, Sergeant, for those things. I mean that.”

“I didn’t want you to come to me out of pity, damn it.” His anger goaded her pain, her heart wrenched between emotions and lust.

“I would have come because you belonged to me the second you met my gaze at The Zone. Which is why, tomorrow night, you and I are going to visit my local club here. I’m going to remind you of that, open those eyes of yours to what you’re more than capable of seeing. If you do that, maybe, finally, you’ll be ready to take cautious steps toward embracing a new life for yourself. The way you should have been doing, all these months.”

A fetish club? Was he crazy? With lots of people and noise, and ways to fall and run into things and not know where she was or . . .

His hand settled on the collar. “You’re already worrying. Dana, how long have you been a sexual submissive?”

“Most of my life,” she whispered. “I’ve known about it since high school.”

“And like a lot of them, you have trust issues, until the right Master takes you in hand.” One of those large hands dropped, squeezed a sore buttock again, earning a gasp.

“Between now and tomorrow, you’ll feel better about that. You’re going to serve me the way a slave should. I’m going to keep you hot and wanting, all day long. You’re going to talk, a lot, and tell me everything going on in that head or heart of yours. You’ll trust me with everything. If you hold anything back, if I suspect at any time you’re hiding anything from me, I bring you back out here, and we go again. Believe me, I’m pissed enough to take pleasure in beating your ass a few more times.” She heard the rough emotion under the hard words. He was controlled, but that roughness, what it implied, was harder to face than a hundred more times at his whipping post. She didn’t want to care how he felt. She’d kept herself walled up, feeling as if she’d fucking tear the world apart if she let loose, but he was strong. Maybe tougher than her.