My hand trailed off her neck down her breast bone. Abbie caught it with both hands and kissed the center of my palm. Eyes shut she held my hand against her mouth, her tranquil face more telling than words. The small touch shook me. What would happen when I lay bare-skinned with her?

Walking to my bed, blonde hair swaying to her waist, she smiled over her shoulder, saucy and full of promise. She parked her rear on the edge of the mattress, a self-a.s.sured woman. Her confidence was a gift unwrapping me. f.u.c.k, I wanted to give her everything. I'd start with a pair of socks. I grabbed thick white tube socks from my dresser drawer. Giving back meant sharing me, my past, the story that brought me to this point.

Talk about opening boxes better left closed. I'd do it. This one time.

I exhaled loudly, my cheeks puffing out as I knelt down at her feet. Dipping my head, I untied her shoelaces. "About four years ago, a friend took me to a s.e.x club in Atlanta on a dare." I eased the shoe from her foot and tossed it aside. "It was a carnival. Explosive. Exciting. f.u.c.king weird." I undid wet laces on the other shoe without looking up. "You could say I went all in for BDSM. I came back from that trip and found a club in LA. Within a month, I was working with a mentor."

"Four years ago." She made a quiet humph sound in the back of her throat as I removed her shoe.

"My friend said he wanted to show me something that would blow my mind." I peeled off Abbie's rain soaked socks. "He certainly did."

I rubbed her icy feet, the toenails dark red. No tan lines left over from summer sandals. The lack of them humbled me. Four years I sought s.e.xual enticement, and she faithfully put on her flats day in and day out, working two jobs all for the love of someone who messed up. Abbie was the one paying that bill. Love was a curious emotion, a string of wants and needs and demands, best savored when freely given. In all my thirty-five years I hadn't had that with a woman.

Sitting back on my heels, both hands rested on my thighs. Abbie was blonde hair and big eyes. No questions. No recriminations. Listening and thinking. I could feel her mind summing up her last four years with mine.For all my accomplishments, I was the one coming up short. She humbled me, a good thing since I could be a hard a.s.s, moving through life where I wanted, when I wanted.

I scrunched up a sock and set the open end on her cold toes. "It was a hobby, not a way of life." I tugged thick cotton past her heel up her ankle. She was a ragdoll, letting me dress her. "I never stayed with one partner longer than a few months." My voice sc.r.a.ped out words as I positioned the next sock. "It was s.e.xual playacting...like theater only you're the actor."

"A scene." Lack of light turned her eyes a shade of charcoal blue. The room blended shades of black and white and all the greys in between. Finite edges blurred.

"Yeah. Exploring fantasies, letting go."

"And you were the Top."

"Most of the time." I was glad for the simple, mechanical job of putting on the other sock.

"Most of the time," she repeated me. "What made you switch?"

My switching. I took another deep breath. "The Dominant person has all the responsibility." I cradled her foot, rubbing slowly. "Sometimes I wanted a break."

"Like a partners.h.i.+p trading a burden." That piece of wisdom imparted, she wiggled her toes. "Why are you putting socks on my feet?"

"Women are more comfortable having s.e.x when their feet are warm."

She c.o.c.ked her head like a confused kitten.

"Easier for you to c.u.m, babe."

Gentle laughter rolled through Abbie. I liked how fast her mind a.s.sembled what I'd said. Even better she understood me. f.u.c.k. Having that was a load off my shoulders because the clock was ticking on our last night together. I didn't have time to waste on long explanations. Unraveling the last four years as succinctly as possible was hard enough.

With her feet covered, I nudged her calf. "Stand up." I unb.u.t.toned her jeans. Undressing her was a domestic ch.o.r.e I relished.

"Sometimes I wanted to turn back the clock and have the normalness of regular girlfriends of vanilla s.e.x." I hooked my hands on her waistband and pulled. Wet jeans stuck to her skin. Being methodical was safe. The ugly part was coming.

"Pretty soon, what you're doing isn't enough." I peel pants down her legs. Her jeans pooled inside out around her ankles. I patted the bed and Abbie perched her b.u.t.t.

"I've read that. In one of the s.e.x books at the store. It's like a drug that never sates you."

"It is a drug. Eventually the s.e.xual fix dulls. Some people need a new risk to get the same s.e.xual high. Others go through partners like Kleenex."

A quick lob and her jeans landed in a heap on her shoes. I was getting tired of hearing my own voice. On my busiest day I didn't talk this much.

"Not a lot of long term monogamy in kink. Few go the distance. There's a lot of negotiated monogamy." I gave the term air quotes.

A major rule of kink was judge not thy fellow kinkster. I get it, but I'd swear I was turning into my dad with his crusty, old school ideas. He was always vocal about idiot celebrities and their five minutes marriages. I had a good idea what he'd say about negotiated monogamy. I also had a pretty good idea the things I'd done would disappoint him. s.h.i.+t. My dad coming to mind as I undressed a woman was the last thing I wanted.

The bed creaked subtly. "You wanted real monogamy."

"Yeah." I sat back on my heels, staring at the bones of Abbie's knees. My ribs expanded and contracted as if I'd hauled a hundred pound weight around. Explaining the past wasn't the burden. Reliving it was.

Abbie's pale calf curved, slender and toned. She probably didn't eat three square meals a day in her daily rush. Brus.h.i.+ng her hair aside, I kissed one knee cap and then the other. Both hands slid up the back of her calves, skimming stubble she missed when she'd shaved her legs. I kissed her knee caps again, warming the skin with my mouth. Abbie scooted forward, her b.u.t.t abrading the sheets, the hush of skin on cloth seductive.

Head resting on her knees, I breathed in Abbie. The peace. The completeness. It was her. She was my resting place. Nails skimmed my shoulders and neck with the softest swirls, sending a tender s.h.i.+ver down my back. My body quivered when her fingers raked the back of my skull. The scratching sounds her nails made...the taste of her skin on my mouth...the parts added up, emotional, sensual, fulfilling. I traced tiny figure eights on the backs of her knees to the music of Abbie breathing by my ear. The sound was life.

Her hair tumbled over my shoulders. For all my control, it felt good this way. No script. No rules. Just a man and woman touching.

"Mark. You have to finish," she whispered above my head.

"I know." I pulled away, brus.h.i.+ng her hair back and holding her face with both hands. "Once I tell you this, I don't ever want to say Lacey's name again. When we're in bed, it's you and me. No one else. Understand?"

Abbie's eyes widened. "I do." The set of her face was younger than mine but wiser by far. She prepared to add to the equations in her head.

"Once I dated Lacey, I left the scene. No more clubs. No black bag. Everything. We were together for about a year when I got a text from my mentor. Lacey saw it." I let go of Abbie, our faces inches apart.

"You hid it from her, so she had lots of questions."

"She was curious."

"And you fed her curiosity." Light glinted in Abbie's eyes. We were close enough I could see the grains of her smudged mascara.

"She was insatiable, a fast learner. I took her to a s.e.x club, got a private room, and she was hooked."

"You were her mentor/trainer."

I nodded. It wasn't the best set up. I was knowledgeable but by no means an expert. But I wasn't sharing. My chest squeezed at past memories, conversations, arguments. s.e.x by itself was a physical act. Put emotions in the picture and everything gets messy. I was territorial to the nth degree.

Palpable longing radiated off Abbie. It was in the down-turned corners of her mouth, her brows pus.h.i.+ng inward. "I wish I could've been the one," she whispered.

I brushed hair off her cheek, soothing her. "No, babe. I'm a better man now."

She mulled that over, nibbling her lower lip. "I like the man you are, but I'm not letting you off the hook. You've got to finish this."

My mouth was on her kneecap, kissing, tasting. "I wouldn't have it any other way." Getting the words out was a painful and cleansing exercise, a confessional cutting me as it worked its way into the open. I breathed in Abbie's skin and said, "It wasn't long before she asked to try new things."

"Like negotiated monogamy."

I laughed, the ugly raking sound pus.h.i.+ng Abbie away. "No. Dangerous things...breath play, fire play...knives."

"Breath play. You mean autoerotic asphyxiation." Her eyes narrowed on me. "And something went wrong."

Sweet, smart Abbie was figuring this out.

"I had a hard time saying no to her. Breath play had always been a hard limit for me. Too risky. I just wasn't interested."

"But you gave her what she wanted anyway."

Boundaries were pliable things when you loved someone. Life was better when you had them, honored them, worse when you blasted them to pieces. Lacey had called it freeing. She'd argued change was good. People affected each other for better or for worse whether we liked it or not. You couldn't be with someone long term and not change.

"We were four months away from getting married. I gave her what she wanted. Or tried to." I stared at the sheets, the scene unfolding before my eyes. My throat dried, making me work to get more words out. "It didn't go well. You've got to know what you're doing. I didn't. It ended badly."

The choking. The wheezing. Lacey on the floor. She came to in seconds and brushed off my concerns, but I never got over the sight of her eyes rolling back into her head. What kind of a monster does that to a woman?

"She was hurt?"

"She pa.s.sed out. It was brief, but in the morning-" I collared my neck, my pulse racing under hand "-she had bruises on her neck."

"But she was okay."

"Yeah. She was okay."

The bruises faded. That didn't change the bad taste in my mouth about what I'd done. Kink messed with deep places. It'd been an exotic playground. Then it nearly suffocated me, a muddy swamp I wanted out of, but the sludge and my inner s.e.xual entanglement sucked me back in.

"What about Signor Arcuri?"

I swallowed the knot in my throat and reached for Abbie. At this point, I was anesthetized. Numbness seeped through my limbs. Idly I caressed her calf, the patch of stubble on her leg grounding me.

"She met him at a conference in Europe about a week after that night." I hesitated. "She came back and I knew something was up."

"She lied to you."

"Yeah. She lied to me." My voice grated each syllable. "Two months later she broke off the engagement."

"And you haven't had s.e.x since."

My gaze touched Abbie's night-shaded cheeks. "Not since you."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

So there it was, his s.e.xual past sketched out in spare, brutal detail. Mine fit somewhere between college groping and a long, self-imposed dry spell. Mark was new, rich landscape for me. The relaxed s.h.i.+ft of his mouth told me he'd come up for air for the first time in a long time. Maybe since the woman who'd forever remain unnamed left him?

I collared my neck, my pulse bouncing against my hand. "I get it now."

He found his way out of a dark place, but would kink find its way out him?

"I didn't scare you off?"

"No."

He scrubbed his mouth, the whiskers abrading his palm. I loved the s.e.xy noise. His hand fell away, revealing his panty-melting smile. A version of kink would always be in Mark, flirting with his psyche. The woman who won his heart would have to accept the blurred parts.

I wanted that woman to be me.

"Stand up, babe," he said, stroking my thighs.

I did and his hands slid up my thighs, the baby fine hairs standing on end wherever he touched. Both his hands bracketed my hips leisurely gathering the side seams of my panties. Blue-grey eyes dark with l.u.s.t raked me. He'd take his time and I'd have to accept it.

Mark tugged my panties down an inch. "I don't have a plan for what we'll do." He kissed the inside of one thigh and then other. "Other than getting you naked."

"s.e.x needs a plan?"

The panties slid an agonizing inch lower. He kissed higher up one thigh, his sandpaper laugh vibrating on my skin. "s.e.x should never be a half-a.s.sed effort."

My eyes squeezed shut. His mouth trailed feather-light kisses over my inner thighs. I was more sensitive there, the skin lighter and highly receptive to his tongue laving me with tiny licks. Antic.i.p.ation went from soft fluttery throbs to all out bolts of electricity. My hair tickled my nipples. My lungs hardly worked. The tip of Mark's tongue traced a fine line just above my mons.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

"What about you?" Eyes opened, I glimpsed him bunching plain blue cotton around my hips. He didn't want my panties off. He wanted me exposed.

Mark's hand combed through my pubic hair. "If I put myself inside you, I'll never leave."

The condom he'd left downstairs. I didn't like but it made sense. I'd always promised myself I'd never be one of those clingy girls, but I wanted Mark to stay. He rooted through the curly triangle as if searching for something lower on my mons. Thumb and forefinger stopped above my cleft. Mark gently pinched skin above my c.l.i.toris, yet he didn't touch the pink nub. He rolled my flesh above it between two fingers.

Heat zinged me, shooting down my stiffening legs.

Mouth dropping open, my body pulsed everywhere. Mark's admission cracked open the door for him to stay. I'd fight for it, but his fingers found a livewire inside me. The back of my thighs banged the mattress. He worked skin above the point where my l.a.b.i.a met. It wasn't my c.l.i.toris, yet the untouched nub throbbed.

Mark crouched deeper between my legs. One hand urged my thighs to spread wider. The other hand rolled what felt like a small stem under my mons. The angle was awkward for him. Elbow bent at my navel, his forearm rested on my abdomen as his hand played with me.

My mouth flooded with saliva. On the verge of drooling, I swallowed hard. "Shouldn't we...I mean, wouldn't it be better if...we, we lay down?"

"You're standing up for this one." Mark flashed a wicked smile.

Heat like melted wax dripped down my inner thighs. His fingers played with me, working the stem above my c.l.i.toris, a part of me I'd never felt before, a part of me I didn't even know existed. The pleasure shocked me.

Panting, I grabbed his shoulders. "Wha-aat are you doing to me?"

His other hand touched the apex where my l.a.b.i.a met. Air hissed between my clenched teeth. That single point of contact, his fingertip tapping skin above my c.l.i.toris singed me with pained-pleasure.

"This spot where your two outer lips meet-" He drew an instructive tight circle on the apex "-is your front commissure." He kissed the top of my cleft and licked it.

Warm breath. A soft kiss and softer tongue low on my mons. My legs wobbled. I groaned, bending deeper over Mark, digging ten fingers into his surf G.o.d shoulders. A hot ball roiled inside me, kinetic desire crackling through my body. My hips jerked. I wanted to hump his hand.

His fingers rolled the odd stem hidden in my mons. "And this part is the shaft of your c.l.i.t. It's a root hidden inside you, the bundle of nerves ending at this tip."