"Listening." He leaned back on both palms, his side touching hers. He smelled like heat, tar, smoke, wind. "You must do this all the time. Sit and listen to it."

"I do." Though she was surprised he guessed that. When Julie had arrived, she'd given up her room at the Extended Stay as soon as she'd set up a cot in the dressing room. Madison had already achieved so much, but Julie would require some insanely long hours to get the theater, staff and first performance, already being promoted, ready on time.

That was just an excuse, though. She liked exploring the silent building in the middle of the night, imagining the performances that would happen here, the responses of the audience.

"What do you hear?" he asked.

"All of it. Every performance, the characters laughing, crying, talking. The audience responding. The thumps as they rush across the stage. The audience gasping." She gestured, sweeping her arms wide. "And I won't have to imagine it much longer. Once we start doing performances, the theater stores it away. Then you can hear all that even more clearly in the silence. I think it's the way a theater breathes."

Initially, Madison had hoped to start the theater in the building she'd used for her earlier benefit, but the cost and city regulations were too prohibitive. The rural zoning had been essential, since permitting for an erotic theater might have met greater opposition in the city limits. It might have even in the county, but Logan's personal friendship with two of the county commissioners had helped, as he'd been able to a.s.sure them this would be avant-garde theater, not a sleazy strip club that attracted criminal elements.

One of the donors had offered Madison a great lease-to-own deal on a long-vacant tax write-off property outside Matthews. The picturesque town where Madison ran Naughty Bits b.u.t.ted up against the edge of Charlotte.

Inhaling the energy of this building, an infant theater about to be born, Julie knew this was where it had meant to be all the time.

She took a thoughtful sip of her cider. "You're like a character come to life yourself. Far too colorful to be real."

"Most people are colorful, if you shine the right light on them." He studied the darkened rows of seats before them. "I'd like to be a pirate stepping out from the curtains, loud and dangerous." He straightened, puffing out his chest in parody. "I'd pick the most spirited woman out of the audience, tie her to my main mast and bring out all her inner fire."

"That would be great for a scene. Oh..." She drew in a breath, grabbing onto the idea and his arm at the same time. "You come out dressed as a pirate. Your partner, she's in the audience, an aisle seat. When you head in her direction, she tries to run away, but you cut her off, like you're kidnapping her. You toss her over your shoulder, carry her to the stage... While you have her over your shoulder, you could bellow at the man nearest you: 'If you're thinking of rescuing her, mate, my cutla.s.s is far bigger than yours... Wanna see?'"

She made her voice boom, echo off the walls, causing his eyes to widen and a grin cross his face. She knew her gaze was sparkling, filled with the idea, because his reaction seemed as much for that as for her unexpected vocalization.

"Okay, but how do you transition that to the intensity of the rope scene?" he asked. "You don't want that part to be comedy."

"No, definitely. Even the audience part shouldn't be entirely farce. Except for that one joke, you would be serious, romantic, dashing. Very large, powerful and dominant, making every sub's pulse flutter. Or that part of each person that can imagine being a sub, even if we aren't actually that way all the time, or identify as that."

Des pursed his lips. "I could pull off romantic and dashing, but you'd need to pad my shoulders to make 'large' work."

She nudged him. "I've felt your grip. You can pull it off. The pirate bit would inject humor, pageantry, a hint of the s.e.xual excitement to come. Your outfit could be piratical in the audience, but on stage, you strip down to black trousers, returning us to the contemporary, and a more serious note. We could apply some s.e.xy tattoos on you, like your ladies. Do you have any real ones? Can I see?"

The lines alongside his eyes were still creased with amus.e.m.e.nt at her enthusiasm. "Yes, but I have to take my shirt off to show you."

"How horrible. I'll suffer through it. Off, off, off."

He shook his head. "Don't get pushy with me wench. I'll tie you to my mainmast."

"Is that a hugely optimistic double entendre?"

She shrieked as he reached out and grabbed her thigh above the knee, a ticklish spot. "Remember, this is hypothetical," he warned. "I'm not one of your performers."

"No, but roll with it. I might be able to make it work for another rigger. Seeing you shirtless will help the creative process."

He snorted but complied with her hopeful request. He took off the hat and playfully put it on her own head. As she adjusted it to a c.o.c.ky angle and gave him an expectant look, he removed the shirt. He did it in a functional way, telling her he was neither overly proud of his physique nor self-conscious about it. Slipping several b.u.t.tons of the garment, he pulled the whole thing over his head rather than unb.u.t.toning it all the way, and put it down next to him.

He was lean and hard all over, as her glimpse of his abdomen at the garden had suggested. He wasn't wearing the insulin pump or cannula tonight. It must be a day he was changing out the injection site. She saw some nicks and scars on his torso, probably the result of his very physical job. The light mat of dark hair on his chest funneled to that silky arrow of hair she still wanted to touch. To prevent herself from being too forward, she focused on the reason she'd asked him to remove his shirt.

A tattoo of a black dragon coiled around his biceps. It started as a spiral of rope and became a serpentine version of the mythical creature. The other arm had a black inked rope wrapped around his biceps, intertwined with a vine of thorns.

"One more on my back." He twisted around to show her the design, a sunburst between his shoulder blades in blazing colors of orange, gold and red, the orb outlined in another twist of rope.

"I'm sensing a theme," she observed.

"Yeah, rope's kind of my thing."

She reached out to the dragon on his biceps. It was lovely work, but it was merely an excuse to touch him. He was incredibly resilient, his muscles even at rest as evident as an anatomical drawing. She wanted to explore that terrain further, but when his gaze dropped to the contact, she withdrew.

"I'm sorry. If you're a Dom, and I'm here to see how a session works, I guess I should have asked you if it was okay to touch you first."

"Not a problem for me. You touch what you want to touch, love. When I want you to keep your hands to yourself, that's what my rope is for." He tilted his head to watch her trail her fingertips over the length of the dragon's tail. "You've an easy way about you, earthy. Did you get that from your family?"

She'd been nervous about tonight, but his lack of urgency about getting to anything fast helped to relax her. She suspected he was doing it intentionally. She probably wasn't the first nervous sub he'd had to help calm down. The realization didn't thrill her, since she wanted to think of herself as unique, an entirely unrealistic expectation. She squelched the negative reaction.

"Most people down here think I'm too direct and bra.s.sy, too New York. And G.o.d, no. My family...they're Upper East Side, old money. Well, my father is. All of them polished and contained, clear markers. No personality ooze overflow. Don't get me wrong. I love them and they're family. I'd go after anyone who hurt them with a tank, but...you know how Mowgli was raised by wolves?"

"The Jungle Book? I thought it was Baloo and Bagheera that raised him?"

"You get serious points for remembering their names, but it was wolves that found and raised him. Bagheera and Baloo were his friends. I'm not sure if that was the book or the Disney movie, or a little bit of both. It's been a while." She ignored the amused sparkle in his eye. "Anyhow, back to my point. Humans and wolves are both predators. They think in a lot of the same ways, so Mowgli wasn't a bad fit for them."

She sighed. "My family and me, it's more like they're rabbits, all snug in the same warren, and I'm a turtle with fin feet. Can you imagine anything more different? Turtles are happy swimming along in our sh.e.l.ls, our home on our backs. We're not trying to be cute or fuzzy. Our sh.e.l.l is shiny when it's wet and we're kind of wrinkly, but there's something so d.a.m.n cool and uncla.s.sifiable about us. Just don't turn us over, because it ruins everything."

His brow creased. "Are you babbling?"

"Yeah, a little. It's the manly chest, the lack of recent s.e.x, and I'm nervous about what we're going to do tonight."

He removed the hat from her head, stroking a tendril of hair away from her cheek, an oddly tender gesture. "I'm flattered by the chest comment. I don't get that too often. When's Madison getting here?"

"I decided against that."

His expression shifted into disapproval, the first time he'd looked less than affable. It made things tighten in her belly, adding to her reaction to his bare upper torso, and that was doing a good job at unsettling her all on its own. She figured he didn't get the compliment that often because he didn't take his shirt off much in mixed company. From what she was looking at, manly covered it. Who knew he'd have such distracting shoulders and pecs?

"It's not just about you trusting me, Julie. It's about safety."

"I know that. I'm not an idiot." She made a face. "I checked with Logan and he vouched for you 100%. If you make a liar out of him, he'll remove one of your lungs with a garden spade. Right?"

When he continued to give her that look, she shook her head. "I really would rather get into the moment and feel it as a sub would feel it. I don't want an audience making me self-conscious about that. I just want to feel. I trust you to stop if I say stop, or change anything that scares me or makes me uncomfortable. Am I wrong about that?"

"Not at all. But you should never just take the word of some b.a.s.t.a.r.d you don't really know on that."

That was the problem, wasn't it? She felt like she did know him. But at least it appeared he'd decided to accept her judgment. He stood, giving her a hand up to face him on the stage. He captured her other hand, too, closing the connection between them. His gaze slid over her tunic top, belted over a mid-length skirt. "Did you bring an outfit like I described, leggings and sports bra?"

She shifted her gaze to his throat. Her shyness was silly, she knew, but it didn't change it. "I want you to be able to do the candle thing you mentioned. So I figured I'd just undress. On one condition. That you leave your shirt off."

His lips curved. "Quid pro quo?"

"Well, if I'm going to be fully without, asking you to leave a shirt off seems reasonable."

"It does. The jeans okay?"

She nodded. His were loose enough at the waist that she saw a hint of hip bone, and when he'd turned to get up, she'd glimpsed the rise of his b.u.t.tocks, telling her he wasn't wearing underwear. That look would work for her just fine. Especially since the stretch of the denim in the groin area suggested she'd already successfully engaged his attention.

"All right." He touched her chin, drawing her eyes back up to his. "I need to be sure we're on the same page. This isn't a performance. And even if a Dom and sub are doing a session in front of an audience, it's not a magic show. It's real, or it doesn't work."

"I get it. Sometimes even when actors are just rehearsing, they get caught up in the characters. But when the scene is over, it's over."

"Yes. But the best performance happens when you become the character. When this kind of session is done right, the two people involved are open to one another during it. When it ends, something has changed in each of them. It's a gift they can carry, that binds them, even if they're not in a relationship. If a scene is done right, you're completely naked."

"I said I was okay with that. I've been in theater forever. Costume changes sometimes happen barely out of range of the wings."

"I said naked. Not undressed. They're different." His voice was calm, rhythmic like waves, but what was beneath it was deep enough to pull her under in tropical, wet waters.

Though her knees were quivering, she used the grip of his hands to counter that. "I told you I want to do this. It feels like you're trying to scare me out of it."

"No. I just want you to understand what it is and isn't. I can't let you stay detached, Julie." He increased his hold on her. "You have way too much going on beneath the surface for me to deny myself the pleasure of diving in."

Her pulse jumped at the sudden shift in his expression, a glimpse of something hungry. "But you can say stop at any time," he continued. "And if you feel uncomfortable or afraid, you tell me. Okay?"

Yep, she had all the control. Control of a bag of wild cats, all of whom were wanting to tear loose, make her act in inexplicable ways.

Des let go of one hand and picked up his shirt. He kept a firm clasp on her other hand, leading her through the slit in the curtain to the stage beyond it.

He'd prepared for her arrival. A table held neatly coiled figure eights of black rope and a glittering pile of silver carabiner clips. Next to them were a half dozen pale ivory candles and a lighter. A backpack was on the floor, leaning against the table leg.

Several ropes were hanging from the support beams above the stage, with hooks attached to the ends of the lines. Maybe she should have brought Madison. What did she really know about Desmond? What was he going to do with those hooks?

He stopped, perhaps feeling her hesitation. "Anything you want to talk about, we can," he said. "If you change your mind about having someone here, we can do it another night when you can give Madison some advance warning. We can go get a pizza or something."

She swallowed. "No. I think I made the right decision. What I need... I need your help feeling right about it."

At his quizzical expression, she colored. "It's going to sound stupid, but when we were looking at the orchids, you had this way of tapping into what I am... I mean, what I felt. It made it okay. I think I would have let you do anything to me right then."

His jaw muscles flexed, suggesting her bald admission had elicited a primal response, barely held back. She felt it in the strength of his grip on her hand, but he only said, "Okay."

Pressing his shirt in her hands, he tilted his head down so they both looked at the cloth bunched in her grip. "At the end of our session tonight, I'm going to put my shirt on you."

The worn cloth was soft, and she resisted the female urge to lift it to her nose to smell. Hard and strong he was. Broad chested, not so much. She glanced down at her D-cup b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "I don't think this is going to fit."

"We'll b.u.t.ton what we can. I think the effect will be interesting."

He took the shirt from her, walked it over to the table and left it draped over the pack. Moving to the side stage, he drew back the curtains. As they retracted, he revealed the darkened theater, the empty chairs.

He returned to her, a masculine figure moving through alternating shadows and shafts of light. Any words she'd planned to say dried up. He didn't tell her to be quiet; his expression and body language did.

Turning her to face the front of the stage, he put his hands on her shoulders. "Close your eyes. Feel the theater breathing like you talked about. Imagine there are a few hundred people out there, all silent and waiting, watching. Each of them imagining themselves in either your shoes or mine, or both, bringing their own personal stories to life in a million different ways. We inspire their imaginations, but we're also oblivious to them, because that's the point."

His lips brushed her ear, making her shiver. "There's being a story and telling one, and this is being a story. If the crowd stirs, even just a little, I'll silence them with a look, a raised hand. I won't permit anything to distract you or intrude on your experience. That's part of my job, part of what you can trust me to do."

It had been years since she'd performed on a stage, so it was peculiar to feel a bit of stage fright as he created an imaginary audience watching them.

"Everyone is quiet. Now it's just us."

His captivating voice, too deep for his frame, too compelling for an individual who looked like a roadie and who might be too young for her, held her in place. Through the touch of his hand, the stroke of his voice, he evolved into the Dominant she'd felt on their first meeting and in that unforgettable moment at the orchid garden.

She told herself it was just performance. He possessed that incredible charisma that incited crushes from so many actresses for their leading man, even when he was a total d.i.c.k outside the role he played onstage. She didn't have that risk of being crushed by reality. They'd set the boundaries. She could be swept up in her own character, enjoy it without losing perspective.

But he'd said he couldn't let her hold herself apart. This wasn't a performance with a review write-up tomorrow. This was intended to be an experience.

He swept his hands down her arms and back up to her shoulders, his fingers caressing her throat. She swayed and he closed the gap between them.

"When I do a scene, my submissive is the center. She's everything."

He removed the barrette from her hair so it spilled over his hands. He combed through the thick locks, tugging harder with each pa.s.s, sc.r.a.ping it all together as if he was going to create a ponytail. Only instead he loosened his grip, spread her hair back on her shoulders, then did it all over again, digging into her nape, her scalp, mixing force with the tug. Her eyes had closed again and she was swaying with his motions, a spiral of reaction inside and out.

"I'm going to undress you, Julie," he whispered. "I want you to feel my hands on you, get you used to me touching you, taking control. All right?"

As she'd said, there was little modesty in theater. She didn't see her body as a glowing treasure that had to be hidden until some presto moment where she'd reveal it to an awestruck lover. It was just a body. They were all sizes and shapes, and fit society's definition of beauty at different levels, but in the end, a body was a body. Everyone had one.

On the other hand, her body had never been unwrapped as if it was a treasure. A far different experience from matter-of-factly stripping off outer garb while cast and crew members pa.s.sed by like orbiting planets.

"When I tell you I'm undressing you, I'm demanding a paradigm shift in your head. Answer me, love."

She moistened her lips. "Yes. Okay."

His fingers curved around her waist, slid around and plucked open the tunic's sash. "Lift your arms."

When she did, he pulled the tunic off of her. He did it slowly, so the silken fabric caressed her skin as he drew it away from her. He didn't remove her bra or skirt yet. He wrapped his fingers over her waist again, fanned them out so they were caressing her ribs, his smallest finger below her waist band and tracing her hip bone. He rubbed her lower back with his thumbs, loosening the muscles there. His chin remained against her pulse, just below her ear, so his breath stroked sensitive nerve endings. She unconsciously tilted her body up toward that stimulation. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s wanted his strong hands cupping and caressing them, and her nipples ached at the thought of him capturing them in his fingertips to pinch and play.

The shift rubbed her backside against him, and he made an approving noise. "I love a naturally sensual sub," he said. "No calculation from the mind, just following your own desires. Move anyway you wish, love. It's like the orchids when the wind or sun touches them. They lift and bend and, even caught on their stems, they can't help straining toward what they want."

He unzipped her skirt, so it slipped to the floor. When he drew back, she suspected he was examining her underwear. She'd chosen black lace for both bra and panties, and the panties were the boy short style. His palm slid over one cheek, rubbing the lace against her flesh, then he slid a finger beneath, drawing the fabric up further to expose the curve.

"Gorgeous a.s.s," he murmured. "When we're done tonight, my rope will be marking it. I'll leave that language printed all over you."

Unclasping the bra, he slid it off her arms. He didn't cup her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she hoped and expected. He took off her underwear so she was naked, and moved to face her.

She wasn't expecting that, him mostly dressed and examining her from head to toe. He'd let her hair drop back on her shoulders, so some of the strands had fallen forward onto her right breast, others spread over or behind her shoulders.

"Put your hands behind your back."

When she did, it straightened her posture and she realized she'd been hunching. His eyes glowed and he cupped one breast, giving it a light stroke. She was trembling.

"Cold, love?"

She shook her head, and he nodded in satisfaction, as if he'd antic.i.p.ated that answer. "Do you have any old injuries that could affect your joints, your back?"

She shook her head. "Nothing more than the usual aches and pains of middle age."

"Yeah, they catch up with you. I'm going to be gentle with you tonight, but I like to ask. From here forward, you move only as I tell you to move. If you need something you tell me. Yes?"