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He smiled. “Most of them did, yes. But I was never serious about any of them. I never collared anyone.”

“Collared?”

He cleared his throat. “Bound them to me formally. As my submissive.”

I swallowed. Submissive. I knew the term. And I knew what it meant. Sort of. “Where did you meet them?” I wasn’t sure I really wanted to hear the answer to that question.

“Here and there.”

“That’s not an answer. Did you meet them online?”

“Oh, hell, no. I would never do online dating.”

I wouldn’t either, although I had considered it. The truth was, I hadn’t had anyone serious in my life for a while either. Same as Jonah, I’d dated here and there, but nothing ever came of any of it, and truth be told, I’d never said “I love you” to any of them.

“So where did you meet them then?” I prodded.

“There’s…a club. A club in the city where the leather community hangs out.”

I gasped, and then felt really stupid for doing so. I wasn’t so naïve that I thought there were no such things as sex clubs. I knew better. But I had lived in Grand Junction for the last fifteen years. I knew it like the back of my hand. Where the hell was the sex club?

“Do you still go there?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’ve outgrown a lot of that—the scenes in public kind of thing. It’s not my thing anymore. Never really was something I did regularly. If I was dating someone at the time who enjoyed it, we would go.”

I bit my lip. “What kind of things did you do there?”

“Look, Melanie, I will never take you there. I haven’t been there myself in five years or so.”

“Still, I’m asking. What kind of things did you do there?”

“Those clubs aren’t for the faint of heart, sweetheart. I didn’t do anything wrong, and everything I did was fully consensual on both sides, but someone like you…”

“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’? I’m a psychotherapist, for God’s sake. You think I haven’t heard about kink?”

I hadn’t had any patients who were into kink, but I wasn’t ignorant to its existence.

“All right. Sometimes my s— er, lady and I would do a scene.”

“What do you mean by a scene?”

He let out another sigh. “The thing you need to understand about clubs like these, is they have a certain amount of members who are voyeurs. People who like to watch.”

I nodded.

“And then there are people who like to be watched.”

“And were you one of those?”

“Not overly. Sometimes I would do a scene with my woman in public. Most often I would do it in one of the private rooms. Except for when I was with…”

“Who?”

He closed his eyes. “Are you sure you want to go there?”

“I love you. I need to know about you.”

“I’m not into the club scene anymore, Melanie.”

“That doesn’t matter. It was a part of your life, and I want to know about it.”

He opened his eyes. “All right. But if you go running and screaming out of here, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“Good, because if you do, I will catch you. And bring you right back into my bed.” His eyes heated me from the inside out.

“So tell me.”

“I was dating—hell, dating isn’t the right word. I was sleeping with this woman named Kerry. She was a true submissive. In fact, she wanted to be my slave.”

“Slave?”

“Yes. She wanted to be my live-in house slave, at my beck and call. She wanted me to rule over her not only in the bedroom but also in everyday life.”

I was shocked. A submissive I could understand, but a slave? “You mean there are people who do that?”

He nodded. “Lots of people enjoy it, men and women alike. I knew a couple at the club who were these everyday people. The woman was the master—or mistress, as a female is called—and the man was a high-powered orthopedic surgeon by day. At home, he was kept on a leash.”

“Wow…”

“I assure you I wasn’t into anything like that, Melanie. I have nothing against people who do it. If it works for them, more power to them. Anything consensual is okay in my book, as long as others don’t get hurt. But I promise you I never even thought about taking Kerry as my slave. I do like a submissive woman in the bedroom, but I don’t want a slave at home. I want a partner.”

“I see.”

“One thing I love about you, Melanie, is your brilliance, your intelligence. You know your own mind. I could never ask you—or anyone, for that matter—to be a slave.”

“That’s good. I can tell you right now I would never be a slave. But like you said, if that works for some people, I suppose it’s a good thing.”

“It is, for some people. But anyway, that’s what Kerry wanted. And once I found out that was what she wanted, and I told her I couldn’t do it, she ended the relationship. But before, when she was simply my submissive, we would often do public scenes in the club.”

“Because you wanted to?”

“No. Because she wanted to. She loved to be watched.”

“That’s so foreign to me. I was so embarrassed when Talon and Jade, and then Bryce, and then Talon again, caught us naked in your pool.”

“That’s a little different. That was my family and my friend. It’s different at the club. There, everyone is in the lifestyle. Those who like to watch get to watch. Those who like to play get to play. Those who like to be watched are watched. Everyone is there for a specific reason.”

“So what did you do with Kerry at the club? And where is this so-called club anyway? I’m very familiar with the city. I live there, remember?”

He smiled. “You’d be surprised what can be found in the seamy underground side of the city. But to answer your first question… Are you sure you want to know?”

I nodded.

“Kerry liked to be tied up and spanked. Which I like as well. She liked other things too, things I had never tried before, and some of which I probably won’t do again.”

“Like what?”

“She liked needles.”