“Nice flowers, by the way. I put them on a pedestal right outside the screen door since it’s going to be a pretty day. Thought it’d be a lovely welcome when people come up the stairs. I wasn’t sure about the tiger. What do you want to do with him?”

“I’ll think about it in a bit. I need to do my yoga first then I’ll get a quick shower and we’ll be open at our usual time.”

“But—”

“Chloe.” Marguerite put her hands over her face, laid her head over the side of the bed so all her hair tumbled toward the floor. “I really need a few minutes, okay? Let me do my yoga before I deal with anything else. I need to get on routine, all right?” She interpreted the girl’s startled silence like a judgment. She was always ready to handle everything. She was not being the Marguerite they knew. But if they could give her a frigging half hour and a shower, she could pull it all together. She refused to believe she was as tattered as her dress.

“Okay.”

Surprised by the quiet reassurance in Chloe’s voice, she stiffened when the girl laid a hand on her shoulder and dropped a quick kiss on the top of her head. “Don’t worry about a thing. You do what you need to do. We’ll handle the rest.”

“I’ll be with you in forty-five minutes.” Marguerite stated it forcefully into her palms. “Run the new black tea with peppermint and cloves as the Manager’s Special.”

Chloe came back into the kitchen to a curious-eyed Gen. “She’s freaking out,” Chloe reported calmly. “And my guess is Tiger Man’s the reason.”

“Is she coming down?”

“She’s going to do her yoga first in the back garden.”

“Does she know he’s still here?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t tell her.” Chloe’s eyes were thoughtful. “Thought I’d give her some time to pull it together. She’s seriously off balance, Gen.”

“Good way or bad way?”

A spark came back to Chloe’s gaze, even as her mouth remained sober. “Look out there at him. Sometimes it can be both, I think.”

When Chloe informed him that Marguerite would join him soon, that she was doing her morning yoga in her back garden, Tyler considered giving her privacy, time to regroup. But he wanted to see her. Just wanted, period.

Resolving not to interrupt the work of her staff, he left out the front and slipped through the latched side gate, having little trouble unlocking the mechanism.

He didn’t want to disturb her. He wanted to see her at peace among her surroundings. And in accordance with his resolve of the previous night, he wanted to learn more about his Ice Queen.

Her private area was designed like a Japanese garden with the simple designs that the culture preferred. Delicate maples, azaleas and some slow-growing, cool temperature-loving plants that he wouldn’t have thought would have had a chance in the Florida heat. He’d thought Robert had a pact with the devil. Marguerite must have made one, too. The garden was beautiful, tranquil and she stood in the midst of it completely naked.

He knew where all her scars were, but illuminated by the early morning sun they were more noticeable. The macabre angel wing arrangement of the cigarette burns. The jagged scars on her shoulder and leg where bones had cracked and punched through her skin. The starburst on her hand.

With her ankles crossed and her slim form straight and tall, Marguerite leaned forward, stretching out her spine one vertebra at a time. As she bent at the waist, her head descended below the line of the rising sun and continued down as she folded her upper body gracefully against the line of her thighs, knees and calves, the pose as much an expression of reverence as an exercise of the body. For a moment she reminded him of a solitary priestess making a low bow toward the Sun God. The light limned her form.

Sinking silently into a patio chair, he continued to watch her perform the stretching move. He could almost feel the vibration of energy coming from her. That stillness he always sensed within her expanded in this obviously sacred morning ritual and reached out to include him. His eyes coursed down her bare back to her thighs and the smooth curves of her buttocks. The soft lips of her sex were revealed by her pose. She was too thin, but then he thought of her with her teas and the way she savored the simplest bite of food. Ascetic. Marguerite maintained the discipline and simplicity of a monastic.

She was creating a place of stillness and peace for herself, like a person in a bubble of light separated from the darkness of hell only by that thin, transparent layer.

He knew from his own experience how blessed that quiet bubble was. But he’d learned it was the same as staying still after taking a painful wound. Moving might hurt worse than anything but if you didn’t move and get help you’d bleed to death.

She rose and tilted her head, giving him her profile, though her back was still to him. “Do you ever intend to respect my privacy?”

“It’s not looking like it. Not as long as you keep avoiding me for all the wrong reasons.”

“Maybe you should tell me the right ones.”

He bit back a smile. “What kind of yoga do you practice?”

“Kundalini.”

“Tell me about that instead.”

Her slender shoulders lifted in a sigh. If she were truly annoyed with his presence, he would have left, slipping away as quietly as he’d come, but he saw the loosening of her fingers, the easing of the tension in her back. Understanding dawned, making his heart lurch. It also made him rise, go and stand just behind her.

“They didn’t tell you I was still here. You thought I’d just left without saying anything.”

When she folded her arms up against herself defensively, he slid his around her.

Crossing his limbs over hers, his palms against her shoulders, he held her in a close embrace, his clothed body against her bare one. “Marguerite, I would never do that to you.”

“You shouldn’t matter this much to me. Let alone this soon.”

“I know. Kind of knocked me on my ass, too. Tell me about this kind of yoga. Stop worrying about it.”

Her lips curved and she closed her eyes, shook her head. “It raises the energy coiled at the base of the spine—the serpent power—and draws it up to the crown chakra to connect you to Divinity. There are two forms of energy, Divinity, Shakti and Shiva, male and female. Kundalini is the synergy of them. Their union brings energy and power, peace.”

“So the bringing together of the male-female helps open you to divine guidance.” He turned her to face him, threaded his hands through each of hers, palm to palm, holding them up on either side of them, a tranquil mutual breathing pose. “Sounds like a wise strategy.”

“Do you ever give up?”

“Do you want me to?”

She stared up at him. “No,” she said at last. Her cheeks flushed with color. “But it’s not about what I want. It can’t be, because I’m not what you think I am.”

“And what do I think you are?”

“I’m not like Leila, or your others.”

His fingers squeezed her, mild reproof. “I know that, angel. You’re Marguerite Perruquet, an extraordinary Mistress, a Ka-See-Ka who takes her submissives to unparalleled levels of physical ecstasy and emotional fulfillment. You’re also the woman who trembles in my arms, who becomes something entirely different when I dominate you, a woman who craves my touch, my cock. You’re not a submissive in the normal sense. You’re nothing in the normal sense. You’re extraordinary,” he repeated.

“You’re idealizing me.”

“No. I’m telling you that I want you, light or dark, every shade in between. That’s the formulation of trust, unconditional acceptance.” He locked his gaze with hers.

“Remember, I swore it to you. No matter what happens between us, I’ll always be there for you.”

After she gazed up at him for several moments in silence, with thoughts obviously swirling behind those vivid eyes, he noticed a slight change in her expression.

Somewhat more calm, a wary acceptance of his presence.

“Teach me this,” he repeated quietly. “Let me do this with you.” She closed her eyes again. He pressed his hands against her palms. “Should I undress?” he asked.

“No.” She opened her eyes in alarm.

“It’s not necessary?”

“No…it’s Chloe and Gen. They might have heart attacks. And good staff is hard to find.”

“How about you? Will you have a heart attack?” Reaching out, he caressed her throat with his fingers, his eyes laughing.

She recaptured his hand, put the palm firmly up against hers. “Behave. This is spiritual.”

So was touching her throat, he thought. As well as watching the changes that occurred in her body, her eyes. But he let his hand be retained.

“Yoga uses a combination of poses called asanas, breathing techniques and chanting to reach a certain meditation state where the finite self can merge with the infinite, achieving a higher state of consciousness.”

“Are we going to chant?”

“No.” She appeared amused at his look of male concern. “For me, the breathing and the poses are enough. I like the silence, prefer it. You hold the pose, integrate it with the breathing. As you do so you think about that base power center, the coiled serpent at the bottom of your spine. You imagine the track of the breathing as circular, moving up from the base all the way to the crown chakra and then looping back again. The way of all spirituality is circular, cycles.”

“You use this at The Zone. When you had Brendan breathe with you at the first.” She acknowledged his insight with a nod. “Part of that was a method called quantum breathing, which is a way of synchronizing yourself with the energy of the other person, for healing or connection. But there’s some of this in it as well. Through this, I can get to the soul and consciousness of the subs I choose, connect with them more easily. It also helps keep me focused. I don’t always know when I walk in what my intention is with the sub I’ll choose but the ritual of the breathing, the clearing of the mind, that helps reveal that intention. Ready?”