He stares down at me, his gaze hooded. We’re adrift in a sea of silence and his reaction is impossible to read, and I’m not sure what to do next. Chris is a light switch away from dark and light, pain and pleasure, and I’m far from knowing how to navigate the bumpy waters of his darker side.

But I want to master it. I want to be what he needs, not some damn whip tearing him apart. I’m not yet, though. Should I push him to deal with what he’s feeling, refuse to let him bottle it inside, where it can later explode? Or let it go for now?

He takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. I have the impression he’s looking for an answer to a question he hasn’t asked, and I’ve never in my life wanted to be the answer to a question, the way I do when Chris is seeking one.

“What I don’t know,” he inally confesses, “is how I’ll ever sleep again, after watching you almost die last night.”

No one but my mother has ever loved me enough to worry this much, but with Chris that worry is complicated. I’m smart enough to see the writing on the wall, and I don’t like what it reveals. While I was thinking about what comes next in Paris on the light, Chris was rethinking it with Rebecca’s tragedy as his guide.

“We aren’t them,” I tell him. “We aren’t Rebecca and Mark.

And I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well just let me come inside.” I’m not talking about our house and we both know it.

I barely get the words out before his mouth comes down on mine, his tongue stroking against mine, awakening my senses, the taste of him pouring through me. Hungry for him, I want his passion, I want his pain. I want it all.

I tug at his shirt, running my hands under the material, absorbing the feel of his na**d, hard body beneath my palms.

Finally. I’ve waited hours that felt like a lifetime to be this close to him, and I moan, part relief, part pleasure.

Chris tears his mouth from mine, tunneling ingers in my hair to hold me away from him, a struggle etched on his handsome face. “You passed out, Sara. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I didn’t come to Paris with Mr. Nice, Chris, so don’t bring him out to play now. And I won’t rest until we do this.” I try to lean in to kiss him again.

He tightens his ingers in my hair and sends an erotic thrill up and down my spine. Oh, yes. Good-bye, Mr. Nice Guy.

Hello, Chris.

“Gentle isn’t how I’ll deal with the kind of things going on in my head right now,” he warns. “Why do you think I walked away in the bathroom?”

“I don’t want gentle.” I don’t like what I see on his face, a battle between the burn to take me and what he thinks I’m ready to handle, and I won’t let him decide for me. “I understand what it means to need more than that. I need more, Chris.”

In a blink he’s maneuvered me against a giant white pillar separating the iron gates, his hands framing my waist. “I used to think you didn’t understand. But you do. Too well. And I blame myself for that, Sara. I didn’t want this for you.”

His guilt over Rebecca could so easily bleed into our relationship, like his fears over who he is and who he will make me become. “I told you. I’m not Rebecca, so stop going there, Chris. I read those journals. She changed who she was to be with Mark.

“You didn’t turn me into who I am now. All you did was to help me to stop hiding from who I am, and I’m glad. Don’t make me feel like I have to start again.”

Seconds tick by as he studies me, before he asks, “Who are you, Sara?”

I lift my chin. “If you don’t know that by now, I suggest you ind out before it’s too late to turn back.”

I blink and Chris has turned me to face the banister, and I catch my weight on my hands to steady myself. His hand lattens between my shoulder blades and he steps close, framing my h*ps with his, his erection nestled against my backside.

“Do you remember what I promised you back in that Los Angeles hotel?”

“Yes: that you’d stop protecting me from you. But you haven’t,” I accuse, certain now that it’s the right time, the right mood, to push him.

“Baby, I held back today to let you get over all you’ve been through. But don’t let that mislead you. You wouldn’t be here if I planned to protect you from me.” His hand splays possessively on my stomach. “What else did I tell you?”

My lashes lower, heat slicing through me at the memory of lying in that Los Angeles hotel bed, his body intimately wrapped around mine. “That you’d own me if I stayed with you.”

“Every part of you,” he agrees huskily. “That means I know you completely. All of you. And it’s time you understand what that means.”

“Show me,” I challenge, wanting him to own me, when no other man will ever come close to having this much of me.

When I never thought I’d want this much from a man. But this is Chris, and that’s the only answer I ever need.

“Show you what?” he demands.

“How it feels to be owned by you,” I dare to reply, and heat pools low in my belly at the many erotic things this might invite. “Because I haven’t felt it yet. And I want to.”

His teeth scrape my earlobe, his breath teasing the delicate skin there. “You will, Sara. You will.” He steps away from me, leaving me cold and wanting. “Turn around.”

I swallow hard, aroused by the possibilities his promise has stirred, relieved that we’re taking our journey together, past the wall the loss of Rebecca almost erected. I tentatively turn and meet his stare, and instead of hot coals and burning embers, I ind tenderness.

He lifts his chin at the doorway. “Walk inside, baby.”

My heart squeezes at the soft endearment he uses often, and the message I read behind it. Whatever journey he’s about to take me on, we’ll still be just us when it’s over.

He’s not out of control. He’s not even on the edge anymore.

He’s about to take me to the edge. And I want to go with him.

Five

It’s warmer in the house than outside, but still a cool contrast to the heat burning inside me as I walk into the living room. Anticipation tingles along my nerve endings but my steps are slow, tentative. I do not know where Chris wants me to go or what he expects me to do, but I’m ready for anything.

“Stop,” Chris commands when I’m standing beside the couch. I do and he adds, “Face me.”

I turn to ind him standing on the other side of a six-foot-long, cream-colored, high-piled throw rug. He crosses his arms in front of his chest, the brightly colored dragon tattoo stretching with the lex of his muscle. “It represents power and wealth, two things as a very young man I knew I wanted,” he’d told me when I’d asked about the design. I burn to know what made him need those things. What he wants now.

“Undress.”

My gaze snaps from Chris’s arm to his handsome, unreadable face, searching there for what he is thinking and inding nothing but wicked demand. I’m not surprised by his command; Chris has a thing about getting me na**d while he remains fully clothed. It’s about power and submission. His power. My submission. I haven’t always given it to him willingly. Or maybe I have; maybe I simply haven’t admitted it to him, or even myself.

I toe of my shoes, like I’m playing strip poker and I’m discarding the least intimate article of clothing irst. I might be willing to be submissive, but that doesn’t mean Chris as a dominant isn’t a bit intimidating. And sexy. So damn sexy.

Next I reach for my jacket, and even now, as much as I want this, as much as I trust him, I feel vulnerable and exposed as I toss it aside. I want to understand why. But I’m also aroused by undressing for him. It seems that being vulnerable and exposed with Chris turns me on. On another occasion, undressing for him might be a seductive game to draw out, but this isn’t one of those times. I’m ready to have it over with and to know what comes next.

I don’t look at Chris as I quickly remove my T-shirt and then slip out of my velvet sweats. I’m left with a red bra and red panties, and I hesitate only a moment before I just go for it.

I unhook my bra and toss it aside. My panties go next, kicked away with a brush of my bare foot. And now things are as Chris intended. I am na**d and he is not.

His gaze does a slow, hot slide down my body, and I’m shaken by how intensely erotic it can be just having this man look at me. I’ve experienced it before, yet it’s no less explosive when it happens. I’m aroused beyond belief, na**d when he is not, and while this has bothered me in the past, it doesn’t now.

It’s part of his control, and he was right earlier. I not only like him being in control, I’m done trying to analyze why being at his command is almost a physical need. It simply is. And I like it.

“On your knees in the middle of the rug,” he orders.

I go from aroused and conident to a spike of nerves and a racing heart. On my knees? This is like nothing he’s ever asked, or rather commanded, of me.

I was completely at his mercy, na**d and on my knees, in the center of a soft wool rug. The similarity between Rebecca’s journal entry and this moment is striking, but it’s the diference between the two that twists me in knots. Rebecca was writing about Mark displaying her in front of the club, about how that had upset her. I’m here alone with Chris, who I’m certain would never do such a thing. She wanted what I have.

“Sara,” Chris prods softly, that tenderness back in his voice.

My gaze lifts from where it’s fallen to the rug, and the concern in his face echoes what I’ve just thought. Chris would never hurt me.

“I’m good,” I say, answering his silent question. “We’re good.” I step forward, letting the soft ibers twine in my toes and lead me to the center of the rug.

Chris’s expression turns hot and dominant again, and my ni**les tighten with his scorching gaze. Slowly, I lower myself, kneeling before him, his submissive in a way I have never been before this moment.

I’m certain whatever comes next will be some sort of dominant Master-type thing, like in Rebecca’s journals.

But Chris steps forward and kneels in front of me, his palm settling on my cheek, ingers caressing, and I blink at the afec-tion in his eyes.

I cover one of his hands with mine. “I thought you had no gentleness in you today.”

His lips curve slightly. “I guess you’re corrupting me.”

I smile at the reference to what I’d once said to him. “I like corrupting you.”

“As I do you.” Slowly, his ingers slide from my face, his palm caressing my bare shoulder. “Don’t move.”

Chris pushes to his feet and crosses to the curtain, where he removes a satin-like sash. My pulse leaps with the memory of the painting he’d done of me: na**d, in the center of the loor, and tied up. My mouth goes dry. I know what he’s going to do with that sash.

The instant he turns back to me, I see the hunger in his eyes. Gentle Chris is gone. A darker, more predatory Chris is present, stalking the woman in his sights. And my breath hitches, just thinking about being that woman.

He squats in front of me and his gaze rakes over my breasts.

The imaginary touch is like velvet rasping over my skin. My ni**les tighten with the invisible friction and I ache for the wild rush of his touch.

“Lace your ingers together in front of you.”

He expects my hesitation; I see it in his face. I give him none, doing as commanded. His expression is unreadable; he simply wraps the long sash around my wrists and hands several times, then ties it of, leaving a long piece of the silk dangling to the ground.

He twines the dangling sash around his hand. “You’re at my mercy, you know?”

“Is that supposed to frighten me?”

“No. It’s not. And if it did, I’d untie you now.”

“Isn’t it you who told me the painting of me bound like this wasn’t about bondage? It was about trust.”

His eyes widen slightly, and then narrow. “I also said it was the kind of trust I don’t have the right to ask for.”

“You don’t have to ask,” I whisper. “You already have it.”

“I know that, Sara. Now the question becomes, what will I do with it, and will you hate me when I’m done?”

“No.” Despite the binding, my ingers ind his hands. “I won’t. I can’t hate you.”

“We both need to know if that’s true.”

“It is,” I insist.

I want him to argue against or conirm my declaration but he gives me neither of those things. He simply leans in and kisses my forehead, a tender act that deies the way my hands are tied and what is surely to soon happen between us. And then he moves beside me and his ingers splay across my back.

“Lean forward and put your hands in front of you on the rug.”

I see the hard glint of challenge in his stare, and read the silent message he intends for me to see. If I can’t handle this, I’ll never be able to handle the dark secrets locked in his mind and in his past that he intends to reveal. And deep inside, Chris believes I’ll hate him before this is over, whatever “this” is.

And so it begins. Test number one, of what’s sure to be many.

My chin lifts in rejection of him assuming my failure. Then I walk my ingers down the rug and stretch as far as I can.

Chris’s hand goes with me, a gentle weight that doesn’t press.

It’s simply there, full of potential pleasure. For several seconds neither of us moves, and the sexual tension in the room crackles around us.