"It's okay to tell me things or not tell me things. I just want you to know you don't have to be in control all the time. I love the Dom stuff and, yes, I have a lot of sub in me, but that's not who I want to be 24/7. When it fits and it happens, it's lovely, over the top, out of this world. But I can be a partner, too."

"I know," he said after a long pause.

"Which part?"

"The over the top, out of this world thing."

She elbowed him, but the teasing helped. He slid an arm over the back of the bench and watched the kids a few minutes, not saying anything. Then he spoke. "I want you to meet someone. Okay?"

"Sure."

He whistled through his teeth, catching the attention of a pale boy with a shock of dark brown hair and striking golden-brown eyes. "Mylo, come here."

When the boy approached, he gave Julie a once-over that had her brows lifting. The kid was maybe twelve.

"Hey, don't be eyeballing my girl," Des admonished.

"Yo, you finally got yourself a hot and stacked lady, dawg. You're learning from my moves."

"And there are countless ones to learn," Des said dryly. "Tell Julie how you explain your pump to the ladies."

"Oh." Mylo lifted his T-shirt, showing her the pump holder on his belt and the injection site. The holder was black fabric with an embroidered set of fangs on it. "I do the Twilight soulful look on them, because I got the Edward hair, see?"

He ran his fingers through it artfully and took a seat next to Julie with a flourish. When he stretched his arm along the back of the bench, it was in front of Des's arm and close enough to press against her shoulder blades. His body canted forward while his eyes delved intently into hers. Julie shot an amused, faintly alarmed look at Des, and he gave her an encouraging wink.

"I tell them 'yeah, baby, this device, it supplies me with blood for sustenance. That way I can be close to you without the need to bite your very fine neck, except for the occasional kiss...with just a touch of my fangs.'"

"And that works?" Julie asked dubiously.

"I have a bunch of Facebook friends, all girls." Mylo straightened to fish out an honest-to-G.o.d business card. "You could be one of them. Visit my page, 'Edward Can't Touch This.'"

"Hey, Mylo, come here." The young girl with purple hair waved at him. "I need you to give me a boost on the bars. You're the tallest."

Mylo grinned. "See? Even to the young ones, I'm an addiction." He tossed Julie another outrageous ogle as he rose and made a noise that sounded like he'd tasted something delicious.

"You be good to her, Des-man, or I will."

As the boy headed back to the others, Julie choked on laughter. "Oh my G.o.d, who was that kid? His mother so needs to sign him up with a talent scout."

"I know it's hard to believe," Des said deadpan, "but he is a drama student." His expression became droll. "Goes to one of the magnet schools for the fine arts, which is where he gets away with such a cheesy routine."

"Hey, you put that kind of confidence behind it, a cheesy routine can make a girl's heart flutter. Add to that the hair and the charm. Wow. Glad I'm sitting down. My knees are weak."

Des made a grab for one. She scooched out of range and held up a hand. "Now, other than the fact everyone should meet that kid, why did you specifically want me to meet him?"

Des put his arm around her and drew her closer. Now that he wasn't trying to tickle her, she was amenable to it, her hand naturally falling on his thigh. "He's learned to deal with his diabetes and his life in a way a kid would," Des explained. "With imagination, by creating a role for himself. He's able to stay a kid. Though it's not always fun for him, he's got the child wonder thing happening, the belief that reality is still a choice, not a requirement."

His expression became serious. "I didn't have that. I constructed who I was on a flat concrete slab of reality and built who I was there. Rope gave me a place to step outside of that and into an alternate version of myself."

He adjusted to touch her face, slide his fingertips along her shoulder. Though he paused as if sorting out his words, he had Julie's full attention. His voice, when he spoke, was low and honest. Rough.

"When I touch you, it's different. I don't step outside myself. Instead, I go deeper in." He gave her a crooked smile. "I found wonder at last. I don't want to give up that fantasy yet, Julie, especially when I've just found it. It was why I touched you so soon after meeting you. I wanted to make sure you were real. The spider only gave me an excuse."

She looked down at her lap. "You make it really hard for a girl to be p.i.s.sed at you."

Yet she only half meant it. She was still more irritated than she knew she had a right to be. Or maybe not. She couldn't quite put her finger on it but, as wonderful as hearing his words was, what had happened still bugged her, the way he'd shut her and Betty down so decisively.

"I'm sure you'll manage being p.i.s.sed at me when needed," he said wryly, as if reading her mind. "I tend to bring it out in women, as you noticed with Betty."

"She loves you. Love can make you crazy." That was probably why she wasn't completely over her irritation, but she tried to shift the mood. She tipped up his bill cap and touched the fading purple streak in his hair. "I think you're wrong. I think you already discovered your child wonder side, just later in life."

"Is that your way of saying I'm emotionally immature for my age?"

She shook her head at him and sighed. "Okay, I can leave it there for right now. But when the time comes, I'll be here, Des. I won't run. I can handle it."

"That's just it." He shook his head. "I don't want you to have to."

c.r.a.p. Why couldn't he just have agreed? He had to go and push one of her triggers. Men.

"Why?" She got up and faced him, keeping her voice down with an effort. "Why do men have to be so proud? I get that you're a tough guy who replaces roofs for a living. You walk on your hands forty feet above the ground and drive a truck. I've been up close and personal with your b.a.l.l.s. I know you have bigger than average ones."

His expression flickered dangerously. "It's about controlling my own life, Julie. I didn't have a mother, and I d.a.m.n well proved I don't need one. Even if I did, that's not what I want from a girlfriend."

"Would you care to outline my role so I don't step outside the boundaries? Am I not allowed to care about what happens to you? Because whether or not you want to admit it, I suspect your health is a little higher on the list of things your girlfriend should know about than for the average guy."

He went to a full scowl. "The state of my f.u.c.king internal organs is not going to run my relationships or my life."

"Your vital organs do run your life, by keeping you alive to live it. If you refuse to acknowledge I have a vested interest in that, that I can be helpful to you, then you're telling me I'm the same as a session hookup you leave at the door of a club."

His brow creased. "Julie, that's not true. You know that."

"Yeah. Mostly." She took a breath, glancing over her shoulder to make sure their argument wasn't reaching anyone else. "I get that it takes time to let someone inside that kind of door, but you're giving me the impression if I expect it to ever open, I'll be waiting a h.e.l.l of a long time. All because you want to hang onto control of everything behind it."

"I just told you what I want. Why can't I just have this with you for at least a little while, without having to get into all that?"

He was right. But he was also wrong. She couldn't explain why, but she was going to go with her gut, that Betty was right. She doubted Des would have let the nurse be so embedded in his life if she was an alarmist. He lived on her property, for G.o.d's sake. That couldn't be coincidental. Maybe it had boiled down to: Okay, I'm going to need someone to help me monitor my health, but I'm choosing the person.

"Yeah, you want the fantasy. I get it. But while Mylo is playing his charm games, he's handling what needs to be handled. Those numbers Betty is worried about sound serious. If Mylo's numbers looked like that, would you tell him to ignore them?"

"That's different."

"Is it? It doesn't sound like you have too much time to indulge reality-dodging." She tried to step back from the worry that suddenly had her by the throat, because the truth lurked in the shadows of his expression. Softening her tone, she touched his hand clenched on his knee. "Our relationship doesn't have to be perfect for it to be wonderful."

But he'd shut down. His fist didn't open, and his expression had become just as closed, his eyes shifting so he was staring stonily at the kids.

"Fine," she said quietly. "I need to get back to the theater. I'm not trying to run your life, Des. I just want to share it. If you can't let go of enough control to do that, I think we've got a bigger problem."

She wanted him to reach out to her, to stop her from leaving, but real life wasn't like that either. Each of them had to work out their own s.h.i.t for this to work. So, though it hurt like a son of a b.i.t.c.h to do it, she picked up her things to leave. He kept his eyes on the playground, but she touched his shoulder, a quick digging in of her nails and clutch of his shirt, and then she forced herself to walk away.

"You know where I'll be."

Chapter Fourteen.

Julie finished retying cables and tucked them back on the shelf of the sound cabinet. She didn't have to be doing this busy work, but supposedly it was helping her not to think about how mad she was at a certain Dom, roofer, rigger, man, child, idiot, thing.

"All about control," she said sarcastically. "Yeah, staying in control of your own death. Great. You'll still be dead. I guess you'll be in total control then. Jerk."

She sighed and wandered out to the center of the stage. Center of the world, centered mind. To her, it was the still point of the universe, a place where answers could be found. She took a few meditative breaths.

"I can't control this," she said aloud, speaking to the darkened chairs of the audience. "That's the real problem, isn't it? When you fall in love with someone, you get this mistaken notion that you have some kind of veto power over the things they'll choose to do with their lives. Maybe you do for the smaller stuff, or the stuff they can let go because they're willing to share those things. But how you live or die, I guess that falls under the single vote category. Maybe he thinks about it differently. It's a choice about how he wants to live."

Yeah, that was it. Sometimes she hated how the stage could speak through her so easily, making all sorts of annoying, f.u.c.king sense. Real life wasn't a play. It was supposed to be contradictory, and all about bullying the people she loved into doing what she wanted them to do because she wanted them to stay...

A lump formed in her throat, making the next words come out thick and hard. "Stay forever."

The pain rose up to choke her, and she shoved it down. "Stop it, you moron. You don't even know what the deal is. It could be some chronic condition, not life threatening." No matter that all the information she was getting suggested otherwise. "Regardless, he's not dead yet. Not even close. Okay, yes, maybe closer than most people in terms of statistics and odds, but-"

She cut herself off at the faint vibration that went through the boards under her feet. Familiarity with the theater told her someone had entered the building. She'd locked the front, so it had to be the stage door. Her heart lifted. The rented equipment had been taken away a couple days ago, and the first read-through of Done Right with the cast members was tomorrow night, so she'd told Harris to take today off for a quick breather. Which meant the only one coming to see her had to be Des.

Yes, she was mad at him, but she wanted him here to yell at, to figure it out with her. To help her feel better about what he had to decide for himself, d.a.m.n it. To hold him and tell him she didn't understand, but she would try, because it wasn't so much lack of comprehension of his feelings as it was fear of something happening to him beyond her control.

She moved into the wings, intending to meet him halfway. A heartbeat later she strangled on a scream as large, rough and frighteningly unfamiliar hands clamped over her throat and waist. They spun her around. A foot hooked her calf, knocking her to the floor. A knee in her back pinned her like a speared fish.

She smelled a foul odor, male sweat mixed with something else like mothb.a.l.l.s, a noxious, untended scent. She squirmed violently and screamed, though she knew the noise dampening curtains and their lack of close neighbors made that pointless. Her hair was seized and her face slammed into the boards. Blood flooded her mouth and she was afraid bones in her face had been broken.

"Stay still and don't talk. Don't turn around and look at me, or I'll do it again. I'll keep doing it until you're still."

His voice was high and thin, at odds with the weight pressed on her and the size of his hands. What made the falsetto terrifying was the unmistakable sound of excitement, the erratic whisper of his breath. She couldn't tell his age. She needed to fight, but he'd struck her face so hard the first time a repeat performance might crack her skull.

But you have to fight. You have to.

He didn't want her to see him. Whatever he planned, that could mean he intended to leave her alive. He had all the advantage in strength and position. Every movement sent shards of agony shooting through her back and neck. He was already putting dangerous pressure on her spine. He was a big man, she guessed, or maybe he just knew his pressure points.

"Good," he said as she became still. "Now shut up and don't talk. Don't make a sound. You do what I tell you to do. That's what you like. I've seen it, here on the stage. You like it when a man tells you what to do, ties you up. You're going to get wet for me. It doesn't matter how much you fight. I might even like it if you fight a little so I can rough you up more."

His hands were squeezing her a.s.s, pawing between her legs. She felt sick and more terrified than she ever had, and that made her furious. But her rage would just goad him. "Yeah, you'll fight because I tell you to do it. And then I'll-"

Her attacker made a choking sound, and suddenly his weight was off her, a screaming relief. A thud was followed by a crash, then brief-very brief-sounds of a struggle, more choking.

Julie scrambled to her knees and spun. Before her was a scene she'd expect to see on stage, only this surreal drama was happening in the wings.

She recognized her attacker vaguely, and guessed he'd attended one of the shows, perhaps even sat in the front rows where her casual glance would have registered him. An overweight man with thinning blond hair and blue eyes that would have been attractive if they weren't br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with madness. He had a weak mouth and chin, but large hands far more powerful than the man himself looked. He was wearing blue jeans that had been opened to show a pair of wrinkled pale blue boxers beneath.

It nauseated her, but she was glad that was as far as he'd gotten. If his genitals had been hanging out, she was sure she would have vomited. As it was, she was having a hard time keeping her last meal down and not toppling over. She was dizzy from the rush of adrenaline, the blow to the face, and the wave of terror still gripping her, her mind not yet believing she was safe.

He was on his a.s.s, legs sprawled out before him like a kid who'd fallen down on the playground. Desmond was kneeling behind him. A thick length of stage rigging was wrapped around the man's neck and pulled taut in Des's hands. While they might not be as large as this man's, she'd felt Des's strength and knew they were as strong or stronger. Particularly when fueled by the cold, still rage she saw in her Dom's eyes. She'd thought he'd been angry the day Pablo had messed up, but what she saw in Des's face now was death, plain and simple.

As the man tried to flail again, Des twisted the rope around his neck. When he choked, Des spoke in a mild tone even scarier than his expression.

"You don't want to be moving. Just like you told her, hmm? Very bad s.h.i.t is going to happen to you if you fight that rope. The windpipe is absurdly fragile. Slightest amount of pressure for no time at all and you're dead. No one here's going to give you CPR, and we'll take our d.a.m.n f.u.c.king time calling 911."

She had never been so glad to see someone, and especially him, who'd she'd already been hoping to see. It had been him she'd heard when the floor boards vibrated, because that had happened seconds before she moved to the wings. Her attacker had already been lying in wait for her, a frightening thought, but it was okay. Des was here.

Her relief made every detail about him crisp and clear. The tension in his wiry frame, the murderous fire in his eyes, the tautness of his mouth. She wanted to bury her nose in his T-shirt and take the largest breath she could to dispel the smell of the other. She felt it so overwhelmingly she knew she was in a little bit of shock, but it didn't matter. She was completely certain inhaling Des's scent alone would reverse time so this hadn't happened. But the hard shuddering of her body as she looked into a human monster's eyes told her differently.

"She wants you out of this world," Des observed. "And I'd grant her any wish she wants right now."

"I saw...they want this."

"Consent, a.s.shole," Desmond snarled, setting off another round of choking as his grip constricted. "It was the d.a.m.n f.u.c.king t.i.tle of the performance."

Julie saw that Des's hold was keeping the man in an awkward position where he couldn't get his feet under him. When he started to thrash again, panic overcoming sense, she watched the rope dig into his throat.

She knew she should be doing something, but she was numb. Her eyes locked with Desmond's, and he held her in that look, helping to steady her. Blissful safety was there. He continued speaking, like the calm flow of a river.

"The more you fight," he told his wheezing captive, "The more I'll tighten my grip. Instead of you pa.s.sing out and waking in jail, you'll wake in h.e.l.l with the Devil grinning at you. And that thought just makes me smile."

Shouldn't she be telling Des to stop before he killed him? Maybe she was trusting he knew what he was doing, that he wouldn't murder someone...even if that someone had tried to hurt her.

Des kept speaking to the man, though his vivid gaze remained on her face, seeing far too much. "It would make me smile because I want you dead, the way I want a good cup of coffee in the morning, a pizza on Friday night, and this woman beside me any d.a.m.n time of the day. If she wants you dead, right here, right now, you're done. She's your judge, jury and maybe your executioner, if that would make her day. h.e.l.l, if it would give her no more than a second's pleasure."

The male had stopped struggling. His breath rasped, his eyes bugged out. He'd figured out his situation and his body quivered, his terrified eyes on Julie.

"So what do you say, love?" Des asked. "You hold all the power. Does he live or die?"

He was right. She wanted him dead for hurting her, for thinking it was all right. She didn't want him in the world, a reminder of how frightened and helpless he'd made her in no more than an instant, reducing her to a victim. It must have shown in her face, because Des chuckled, cold and hard. "Down you go, then."

The male's eyes rolled back, his breath rattling. Julie's breath caught and she stretched out a trembling hand, her legs still not strong enough to propel her from the floor. "I...no. Des, no."

Des eased the inert form to the floor as tears spilled down her cheeks. "I didn't mean. No..."

He put the man on his stomach and did a swift hog tie, severe enough that his chest and knees would have been off the floor if he was on his stomach. Then Des was stepping over the body, coming to her.

"I didn't want you to... I didn't mean it."

"I know that, love. He's alive." Desmond dropped to his heels and pulled her to him, holding her close. The first touch of his hands on her, the strength of his arms, was actual heaven. She'd never felt a relief so strong. "I just wanted him to p.i.s.s himself when he thought you meant it. I wanted you to take back every bit of power he thought he was about to take from you."

She cried harder, and he held her tighter, but it could never be tight enough. "If you didn't mean that about being with me all the d.a.m.n time, I will hurt you," she sobbed.

"Trust a woman to remember these things even in the midst of trauma and hold it against a guy." He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and answered her just the right way. "Count on it." He held her, stroked her, until the world righted itself and she had a coherent thought.