He was silent for a bit, silent enough to make her worry, to make her wish she’d said nothing. See, she was already too clingy. God, what had happened to the woman who’d plunged into a firefight?

“First,” he said at last, “I completely agree. There’s no way you can make a decision about us in two days. I never expected you to do that. What I want is for you to decide that we’re worth a shot, and stay with me. See how it goes.”

“I don’t want you paying for stuff and—”

“Then we make a damn budget and cut it down the middle. If you want to eventually get your own place nearby, to prove something to yourself, fine.” The spark of temper was oddly reassuring. “That’s not what this is about and you know it. What if you had come back healthy and whole? Do you think you’d want me any less? Do you think I’d want you any less than I do now? How did you feel about me before that bomb exploded, Dana? Tell me.”

She wanted to resist him, but she couldn’t fight her own honesty. “I couldn’t wait to see you again.” The unconscious word choice formed a lump in her throat. “I dreamed of you. Wanted you so much it hurt.”

His fingers slid over the ache, caressing the throat bound in his collar. “You do see me, Dana. And I see the woman I met a year ago. The woman I still want, the woman I can’t wait to discover more about every day.”

She blinked back tears. “How do I know you aren’t staying with me out of pity? I do know you, Peter. You’re honor bound to save the damsel in distress. You don’t know anything else.”

“I’m honor bound to stand by the woman I love,” he responded. When a little sob escaped her, he traced her tears, kissed them away. Dana had to hold on to him, so hard her nails dug through his shirt. Maybe she imagined it, but the voice that spoke against her ear had a suspicious break to it. “I’m only scared shitless that you might not want to stay. I’ve never held a woman against her will.”

“Oh, really?” she managed. “What do you call forced into a cab and flown off in the middle of the night? You have a problem with ‘no means no,’ Captain.” He gave a shaky half laugh. “Don’t change the subject. You’re so worried about what’s happening in my head. How do I know you aren’t staying with me out of some weak-assed dependency?”

She swatted at him. “Peter Winston. I haven’t said I’m doing anything yet.”

“If we trust each other, we’ll both know the truth in time. We’ll know it’s love, real and true.” Guiding her now-captured hand to his jaw, he let her feel the resolve in his mouth, touch his lips, so she couldn’t mistake his meaning. “In the long run, the doubts won’t matter, Dana. You’re going to become more self-reliant every day, and one day you’ll know for sure why you’re with me. I know how important that is. You’ll start giving me shit about being overprotective, and I’ll shout back. We’ll fight, make up, the way couples do. But you’ll always admit I’m right, because you want me to be happy.” It startled a snort out of her. “I wouldn’t count on that one, Captain.” He shifted beneath her, tightened his arms. “You’ve lost your sight, some of your hearing. You haven’t lost your brain, your sense of touch, smell, your inner strength.

Your soul.” His fingers touched the Lord’s Hands, sliding along her shoulder blade.

“Every time a soldier goes into battle, he’s believing in something more than his physical body. Whether he calls it God, luck or his own damn gut, he does. The body’s a crutch, sweetheart.”

He put her hand on his heart, and did the same with his own, the heel pressed to the high curve of her breast. “This is the real deal, what we all rely on when everything else is taken away. Tonight, for a few precious seconds, you knew that. I saw it in the way you held yourself, the way you walked to me and handed me that leash back, regal as a princess.”

Because of him. His refusal to let her hide from herself, his willingness to use his friends and all their seductive talents, as well as his own, to tap into the deepest part of herself, a part that wasn’t destroyed by that bomb. A path to re-creating the rest. And he was asking her to rely on his heart while she took that journey.

Closing her eyes, she pressed her lips together. “Peter . . . my family is gone. Gram died I guess the way a person’s supposed to go, but my parents, my brothers . . . They were taken, in a way. I’ve never considered myself damaged, just good at getting along and doing what needs to be done. But you’re offering your heart to me. Even if I could look past any worries I have about whether or not that’s real, I’ve got a terrible fear about that.”

Despite her best attempt, her voice broke. She tried to steady it, trying not to fall apart, but here were the damn tears again. “That fear says, ‘How much more do I have to lose?

How much more can I take?’ I feel all alone, anticipating the day you’ll be gone, like everyone else.”

“Damn it, you’re not alone.” He tucked her head underneath his chin, his arms becoming steel bands, every muscle hard and sure against her. “I knew you for one night, went off to damn Afghanistan for a year and couldn’t shake you. Your scent, your voice, everything you are. I’m willing to take the chance that fate knows something I don’t, that it’s going to give us a long time together, time to make this thing we’ve got deeper, harder and more powerful and peaceful than we can imagine. So that if we do lose one another to something in the future, even if it’s old age, we’ll know every second was worth it.”

He lifted her up, so she felt his gaze on her face again. “As for how much you have to take, you have to take it all. Every bit of love and life you’re given. I bet that’s what your gram taught you.”

She thought of that, all the way home.

Home. When he opened the door, guided her through it, Dana took a couple steps, stopped and breathed it in. His home, one he wanted to share with her. One he wanted her to be a part of, to make it theirs.

Thinking about that now, she moved forward, using her fingertips to find her way, drifting along the easy chair with the stuffed kitten, the side table, the table with the vase and chess set. She already knew more about where everything was here than she had in the place she’d stayed for months. As if she wanted to know this place. Or already knew it, somehow. Just as she seemed to know him. He moved behind her, slow. He was keeping pace with her, but remaining silent, as if he understood she was debating something important.

She felt his tension, that murky undercurrent she’d felt off and on from the first moment he’d darkened her door again. Those were the emotions that would tell her what he was truly thinking and feeling. Would he give her those if she asked, or did he think she couldn’t handle whatever they were? And was he right?

But he kept following her. Slow steps. Each time she stopped, he did as well, always a little closer to her, closing that distance, ratcheting up that tension. Her pulse elevated with the increase in heat, from him or her, she couldn’t tell. When she got to his bedroom, she turned at the foot of his bed. He hadn’t put the dress back on her, but he’d wrapped her in his suit coat. The hem of it brushed her thighs. Letting the jacket slip off her shoulders, she stepped out of her shoes. Then, after a brief hesitation, she turned her back to him and removed the thong, then the stockings, a slow slide of silk down quivering thighs.

He’d given her a safe word. Freedom. The implications of the word hit her, the word he’d chosen so randomly a lifetime ago. Under his restraint, she’d soared higher that night at The Zone than she ever had in her life. Until tonight. Or the next time they came together in this desperate-tender-rough-everything way they seemed to have.

She left the corset and collar on. They gave her the confidence to make a frightening choice, to say the word aloud.

“Peter.” She knew she’d whispered, because she couldn’t hear it, but the name echoed in her heart.

“I’m here, sweetheart.” He was, right in front of her, and she reached up, cupped his face.

Not as Master and slave in this moment, though it was there, a deep bond between them.

“You said, if I decided to stay, accepted that I was yours . . . you would make love to me in your bed.”

His hand was over hers, gripping hard. “I meant it.”

“So do I.” She hesitated as he pressed a kiss to her palm, her body already shuddering, anticipating the pleasure they’d bring each other. “I’m scared. I’ll probably stay scared and mad for a while. I want to trust you, but it will all take time, won’t it?”

“Yeah.” He slid his arms around her, hitched her up so her legs could curl around his hips, feel the arousal he pressed between her thighs. “A really, really long time.” Her lips curved. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing, Captain.”

“Yeah, we are, Sergeant. It all means the same. And I know how much you love wearing these”—his hand swept down the corset, came back to rest on the collar—“but for this, I want it to be skin to skin. I want you to know if it’s all stripped away, nothing but us, that I’ll be there for you, with you.”

She swallowed. Nodded. Then halted him by holding his hands for a minute. “Skin to skin, Peter. Please give me everything. Don’t be afraid I can’t take it. Stop holding back your emotions from me. I need to know I’m not made of glass. I need everything you are, too.”

His fingers gripped her harder, and she held her breath.

“I’ll try,” he said at last. Then he was unhooking the foundation garment. The sensation of being unwrapped, unbound by him, was as arousing as being laced into it. His hands made all the difference. Releasing the collar, he let it all fall away. With his palms he soothed the lines the tight fit of the corset had left. Then he lifted her off her feet, carried her around to the side of the bed and laid her down, stroking her face before he came down and covered her lips with his.