"You knew?"

"I've known for weeks. I accidentally walked in on the two of them in his office a month before the launch party."

"I guess everybody's going to know now."

"This whole thing is going to be a PR nightmare. But my team can probably keep Rawn out of the fire if we stay on top of it."

"Is that what those phone calls were about?"

Conrad nodded. "I'm Cepheus' PR man. I had to get my team out there, making sure the press that were there at the hospital didn't start putting out a story we didn't feed them. It could have been bad for Cepheus if they had."

"What? If they told the truth?"

"The truth as they saw it." Conrad turned toward me in the small car, his shoulder nearly brushing mine as he did. "The truth is not as black and white as people want to believe it is. It's complicated, with lots of gray thrown in. My job in PR is to make sure the press sees the most polished and gray-free truth we can possibly put out."

"What are you going to tell the press about Madison's abduction?"

Conrad tilted his head slightly. "That she was taken by criminals who wanted to steal Cepheus' secrets."

"But we don't know that that's really what they wanted."

"Doesn't matter. If we don't give the press a reason, they'll make up their own. And their version of things could hurt Cepheus, even if it is proven to be wrong later. People believe what's right in front of them, so we have to make sure we give them something juicy but close enough to the truth that it won't come back and bite us later."

"And Rawn and Madison's relationship? What if the press gets ahold of that?"

"We'll spin it to make sure they don't try to connect their relationship to what happened to her today."

I shook my head. "I'm not sure I would want your job."

"Believe me, there are days when I don't really want it either." He slid his hand over my thigh. "I'll be at the office all day tomorrow, working on this. But on Sunday, I was wondering if you would let me take you to lunch."

"Really?" I don't know why I was surprised after that kiss we shared, but I was.

"Yes." He smiled, his hand coming up to cup my jaw. "I'd like to spend a little time with you, preferably time that you weren't forced into by a kidnapping plot."

I couldn't help but smile, too. "I'd like that."

"Good." He leaned closer and kissed me, a slow, tender kiss that threatened to make that small ball deep in my belly explode. "I'll pick you up at one."

I nodded, a blush spreading over my cheeks like I was a schoolgirl whose first crush had just finally asked her out. And then I climbed out of the car, deeply pleased that he didn't drive off right away, but waited until I was safely inside before he gunned his engine and took off.

I knew this couldn't end well. But for the moment, I was floating on a cloud.

Chapter Six.

Madison I walked into our secret room and picked up the remote that retracted the ceiling. I needed to see the stars, to feel less like I was confined and more like I was floating through space. I couldn't stop shaking, and I knew it was because of the cold water that finally forced me out of the shower. Every little noise, every little movement that I caught out of the edge of my vision, made me jump. What if they came back? What if they grabbed me again and this time the cops didn't come in time? What if...

The what-ifs were going to drive me insane.

I was wearing a satin robe from the collection of lingerie Rawn had bought for me, not out of a desire to turn him on, but out of a need to escape the lingering smells I would now, forever, associate with my ordeal. A part of me wanted to crawl into the bed and hide under the covers for the rest of my life. Another part refused to let those people win.

I pressed another button on another remote, and the wardrobe doors all slid open. I walked to the one that held the vibrators and whips and blindfolds, running my fingers over the cold, heartless metal of one of the pairs of handcuffs. Rawn's own version of a Gabinetto Segreto. I was more excited than I probably should have been the first time I saw this room. Innocence could make a person blind.

"You should be resting," Rawn said as he came up behind me.

"You said that the last time you brought me here from the hospital."

"It was true then, and it is true now."

I lifted the pair of handcuffs I had been studying, testing their weight between both of my hands.

"No, Madison," Rawn said, as I pressed the cuff through its mechanism in order to slip it over my wrist. "Not tonight. In fact, we don't have to do that ever again."

I slipped the handcuff over my wrist anyway, watching as the thick metal fell into place against the forming bruises that grew brighter with each passing hour.

"Madison-"

"I need to do this," I said quietly. "I need to take the power away from those...those freaks."

"After everything you've been through tonight, I don't think it's a good idea."

"But if we wait, I don't know if I'll have the courage to try."

I turned toward Rawn, my heart torn to pieces by the emotion that played across his face. My strong, but broken hero, so afraid to love because of the potential for disappointment. All I could think of when I was held captive was how he was afraid to be with me because of his work-a career he never chose and never wanted-had the potential of keeping us apart. But here I was, the girl with MS who could end up in a wheelchair-or worse-next week, next month, or next year, the girl who managed to get herself kidnapped, stolen away from him. He was so afraid he was going to hurt me, but I was the one who was hurting him at every turn.

Life is a joke. And I wasn't going to let it get the better of me.

I handed the other end of the cuffs to him and said, "Please."

Rawn studied my face for a long second before he gently turned me and guided me to the bed. He picked me up like a bride on her wedding night and laid me gently on the bed before replacing the handcuffs with a soft restraint already suspended from the headboard of the bed. Then, he ran his hands slowly over my body, as he made his way to my ankles, roughly pulling my legs apart. He lifted my right foot and kissed the bruises forming around my ankles before strapping another soft restraint around it. Then, he repeated the same process with the other.

He crossed the room and returned a moment later with a long, silk scarf that he gently wrapped around my eyes. "Lie still," he whispered in my ear.

Panic began to build in my chest. I was suddenly back in that van, a strange man's hand over my mouth, the salty taste of his skin on my tongue. The front of my bathrobe began to separate, and my first instinct was to strike out. I pulled at my restraints and tried to smack away the threat, but it was too tight, too well secured. I cried out, tears of fear and anger filling my eyes.

"It's just me, baby," Rawn's voice whispered near my ear. "It's just me."

He nuzzled at my neck, his scent and the heat of his breath washing away some of the fear. It didn't disappear altogether, but it lessened. And, in that moment, that was everything.

Rawn pressed his lips to my neck, to the little hollow at the base of my throat. And then his tongue was lighting a fire along the outside edge of my breasts, against the very tips of my nipples. When he laid a blanket of tiny kisses along the outside of my ribcage, along the upper edge of my hip, my breathing began to quicken. His hand slid up the length of my thigh, meeting his mouth and then working its way back down, scouting out the trail he was taking along the outer edge of my body while my center screamed for his touch.

I had thought for a while this afternoon that I would never feel his touch again. I had been convinced that this was to be my last day on this earth, my last chance to breathe in the scents of this place, of this time. I had thought the last night Rawn and I lay in this bed together would be the end of it all. So, now, as his hand moved around the top of my knee and closer into the central parts of my aching body, I knew better than even Allison's death had taught me to cherish every touch, every kiss, every desire fulfilled.

"I want you," I said far sooner than I had intended. "I want you inside of me."

"Patience," he said, his voice deepened by need.

I shook my head, rolling it almost violently against the pillows. "I need you."

I felt his weight shift on the bed. A moment later, my ankles were freed. Then my wrists. When he lifted the blindfold, I wrapped my arms tight around his neck and pulled him down to me. I captured his lips with a heat I'd recognized in him, but never felt in myself. I needed this and needed to forget what it was like to be so completely out of control. I needed to see his desire and to feel it grow out of control inside of me. I needed to know that I had power, that I had the power to drive this dominant alpha male over the edge.

Rawn seemed to have no problem with the turn in our play. He buried his mouth against mine, rolling his body over me and pressing a knee between my own. I don't know when he removed his clothes. At the moment, I didn't really care. I needed him so desperately that I reached between our bodies and grasped him, pulling him against my wet, throbbing center. I cried out as he pressed himself inside of me, arching my hips until he was as deep as physiology would allow.

We rocked together under the stars, once again fulfilling my personal fantasy. Funny how a fantasy, when it first begins, seems like it's all about sex. For me, it was about feeling pleasure while lying under the thing I studied for so long, the thing that brought me an intellectual pleasure that was so much more than the physical pleasure I had known before this, before Rawn. But now...it was so much more than just pleasure. It was a spiritual connection, a mingling of the souls that I had never understood was possible, let alone desired to experience. A spiritual awakening that would forever change the way I viewed the world and the stars. An awakening I could only have had with Rawn.

"I love you," he whispered against my ear over and over again in the moment before he swelled and cried out with his orgasm. A second later, my own voice raised to join his, as pleasure moved in waves through my body, rocking me to the edge of sanity and pulling me back, only to push me over once more.

I didn't care if I ever saw the stars again, as long as I could lie in that moment for the rest of my life, however long that might be.

"I was so afraid I would never see you again," Rawn said moments later, as we lay wrapped in each other's arms.

"Me too."

Tension rolled through his body, and his hand tightened into a fist. "I could kill that man, the one who grabbed you..."

"Don't," I said, running my hand slowly over the side of his face, letting my thumb hesitate over his lip. "Don't let anger turn you into someone you aren't."

"But what they did to you." He touched a faint bruise that was beginning to appear under my eye from one of several blows I had endured, before his fingers moved to the lump hidden under my hair from the fall that caused me to black out and awaken to the craggy face of my rescuer. "I'll kill anyone who hurts you."

"It's over now," I said. "Now we just have to figure out who they were and what they wanted."

"We will."

I rolled in his arms, turning so that my back was pressed to his chest. "Why was Conrad there?" I asked, the memory of him coming into the room and pulling Mellissa into his arms burning bright in my mind.

"I asked him to watch over Mellissa when Annie told us your captor said her name. I wanted to make sure they didn't make a second attempt to grab her."

"Why Conrad?"

"He's a friend. I trust him."

That made what I needed to say next a little harder. I remembered Rawn telling me that he and Conrad went clay pigeon shooting from time to time, but I hadn't realized their friendship went that deep. It made me feel a little sick to my stomach as I said, "There's something that I didn't tell you earlier because I wasn't sure how you would want to handle it."

"What?"

I cleared my throat, even as I drew his hands up against my chest, forcing him to hold me tighter. "You remember the sticky note I told you about, the one that said, 'Don't trust Conrad?'"

"I remember."

"It was in Mellissa's desk."

"Yeah?"

"And she was the intended target."

Rawn pushed himself up a little so that he could look over my shoulder at me. "Do you think that has something to do with this?"

"What if Conrad is the inside person? The one who knew who I was and told them? What if that's why they were asking me questions someone inside the company should have already known the answer to? Because he only has access to the products that are ready to launch, not the ones that are still in development?"

Rawn was quiet for a long time. I was a little afraid that he was angry with me for accusing his friend of something so nefarious. But then he asked, "Who would have written the note and warned Mellissa?"

"Maybe he did it himself. He was sitting at Mellissa's desk the day before Russell told me to take over for her. In fact, he thought I was Mellissa."

"Did he ever meet Mellissa? I mean, before today?"

"I don't know. At the launch party, maybe."

"Then he would have been able to give the kidnappers a description."

"Maybe he did and they're just morons."

Rawn chuckled. "Maybe."

"I just..." I leaned back into him, pressing my head into his shoulder. "I heard a familiar voice, but I haven't been able to place it. I know someone I've met before was there, someone who knew who I was and was able to tell them that I was your new assistant."

"We'll figure it out. You don't worry about it. Let me and the security people at Cepheus take care of it." He kissed the side of my face lightly. "I won't let anyone hurt you ever again."

I turned back into him and kissed him roughly.

"I know. I trust you."

Rawn dropped me off at the apartment I shared with Annie, insisting on walking through the rooms before he left to make sure no one uninvited was waiting there for me. In the bright light of a fall Portland day, it seemed silly. But it set my fears to rest anyway.

"Is he going to let you go?" Annie asked, as she curled up on the couch.

"He wants us to go. He thinks I'd be safer at my parents."

"Good. Thanksgiving at your house is always so much better than trying to do it on our own, or going to my folks'...God forbid!"

I laughed, remembering the one year Annie dragged me to her parents' house for the holidays. Her mother, as much as she wanted to think of herself as a well-rounded woman, couldn't boil water, let alone cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner. We all ended up with food poisoning that year. But it wasn't any better than last year, when I took a special accelerated course that required I stay in Portland for the holidays. We bought frozen turkey dinners from the grocery store and ate them on the couch while watching horror movies. It was quite an experience.

"My mom is thrilled. She's been baking pies for a week already."

Annie clapped her hands. "Yeah! Your mom's pumpkin pie is to die for." And then she paled a little. "Sorry, Madison, I didn't think-"

"No, you're right," I said, as I reached over and patted her knee. "They are to die for."