She swallowed, sat up. “Yet for six months…”

“I did nothing. Yeah. I’m chickenshit, what can I say? I wasn’t sure if it was one-sided.”

“No,” she decided. “You weren’t afraid. You were waiting.”

He gave her hair a tug. “You’re a hard woman to bullshit. Like your boss. Were you two created in the same alien pod?”

“Actually, we exploded from the same chest, complete with teeth.” But Janet put a hand on his lips, tracing them, her thoughts whirling. “Why did you wait?”

“I knew you were the type who made the first move. My job was being ready with the right second one.”

She smiled at that, but his expression became thoughtful. “What we just did…it wasn’t exactly like I expected. It took over until it wasn’t clear who was what, if that makes sense.”

“If done right, that’s exactly where you hope to get.” She lay back down on his chest, slid her fingertips through the light mat of hair there. “When Matt first took me to a club, introduced me to things, I was still in a very resistant phase. Jon was there too, and he sat with me for a while. While he was keeping me company, he drew my attention to a couple. The man was tied to a frame, and she was whipping him. For the half hour we watched, she used a variety of emotional and physical means to shake him up, break him down. When I first started watching, all I saw was the bondage, the pain, but Jon made me look at their expressions, their body language.

“In time, I saw what he was seeing. The Mistress was as wrapped up in things as the sub. There was a thread between them, so vibrant and strong that it quivered every time one of them uttered a word or made the slightest motion. His body was gleaming with sweat, and I could see the marks she’d left on his back and ass. When her fingernails glided over them, he quivered as if he was being touched by a Goddess, totally enraptured by her will. But I also saw her expression when he reached that state, the softening of her mouth, the way she gravitated toward him.”

She shifted, propping her chin on his shoulder. “Are you familiar with the yin and yang symbol?”

“The little black and white circle decal a lot of kids put on their cars?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Though adults have been known to put those on their cars too.” Janet pinched him, but she settled deeper into the curve of his body, fingers tucked under his shoulder beneath her, her other arm stretched out so she could stroke his bare hip the way he was stroking her back. She traced a line to his upper thigh, shifted her knee so it rubbed with sensual idleness against his testicles.

“Jon said that when a session starts, it’s like the black side of the symbol, with the small white spot in the middle. The Dom is the black, surrounding the sub, making her feel small, safe, like a cat in a box. Have you ever noticed how cats like to do that, get into a small box, as if being contained by that limited environment makes them feel safe? The Dom takes over, takes control. Psychologically, physically, giving the sub a limited world within his commands. If they’re doing it right, eventually the sub lets go of control, surrenders. When the session progresses, something amazing happens. The other side of the symbol. The sub’s energy grows and surrounds the Dom, the white taking over. The Dom becomes the black speck, like a sorcerer in the middle of an energy cloud, amazed by what’s been unleashed by their interaction with one another. It’s a form of rapture, for both. Yin and yang. A circle and balance both.”

“That sounds like Jon’s kind of thinking.” He smiled against her forehead.

“It’s the kind of truth you can hear, but until you reach it yourself, you don’t feel it, believe it. And then it feels like it came straight from your own soul, even if someone’s already said it.”

“Yeah.” She could feel him thinking that through, so she stayed silent until he worked it out, spoke. “I think you’ve got it right…based on how it felt to me. When we first started talking about this, I admit I found it hard to understand. Especially after you told me about what had happened to you. It seemed like the last thing you’d want to do is take away someone else’s power, give them pain.”

He tightened his arm around her back, preventing her from drawing away. “I get that it’s not the same thing now, but when you were on the wrong side of that coin for so long, it seemed odd to me that you’d stay so close to the line, even on the right side, if that makes sense.”

“It does.” She pushed down her automatic defensiveness. “People come to this for so many different reasons. There’s no one single motive for it. When Matt and Jon showed me that side of things, I realized what a profound difference there was between it and what Jorge did to me. Such that every session I did with a sub was a big black line on the universe, underscoring that difference. I was saying this is what holding power over someone for mutual pleasure is. The power of that synergy, of that yin and yang, is so much more than Jorge ever found imprisoning me the way he did.”

She hesitated. “Another part of it was confirming to myself that I wasn’t him. That though I did what I did to get away from him, it wasn’t the same. I can hold control over others, and I don’t cause harm. I don’t take without giving back in equal or greater measure.”

She tilted her chin, met his eyes. “I’m self-aware enough to know that might be a coping mechanism rather than truth, but if you can find an illusion to bring balance to your reality, it makes every day possible, manageable. Right?”

“Yeah, it does. Other things do that as well. Moments like this.”

She had no disagreement with that. She laid her fingers on his lips. “I guess we need to be thinking about clearing out.”

“Yeah.” But neither of them moved. She studied him, pondering, then realized there was nothing to think about. She simply refused to let go of him. “I want you to come home with me, Max. Share my bed tonight.”

His gray eyes kindled with heat, telling her they’d be doing more than sleeping. Probably several times. She was going to need some painkillers in the morning. That was fine—she’d gladly swallow down a bottle of Advil to pay for a night like that.

“Yes ma’am.”

Chapter Thirteen

He stayed until Monday morning, something she hadn’t expected herself to offer. But he helped her prune and trim the shrubs, edged the walkway. They took strolls around the district, ate at small holes-in-the-wall restaurants that offered better food than opulent ones. When Saturday night came and they were sharing takeout on her living room floor, watching television, it seemed natural to invite him to share her bed once again. Especially when he carried her up there and gave her a memorable bedtime story.

On Monday, he offered to take her to work, if she didn’t mind going by his place that morning so he could pick up clean clothes. She didn’t mind. She hadn’t minded waking up with him curved around her body, the smell of him on her skin, the lingering stickiness of his seed between her legs from the couple times they’d come together in the night. Her designer pillows had spent the weekend scattered about the floor of her bedroom like a flock of colorful sheep. There hadn’t been room on her bed for them and a sprawling, large man like Max. She liked the new look.

Showering with him had been an indulgence that almost made her forget it was a workday. He’d given her sore back muscles a thorough massage under the jets. When he’d moved down to her lower back and hips, she’d let out a noise that he observed sounded close to orgasmic. He’d also knelt and sponged off her thighs, cleaning in between while she watched him, bemused, threading her fingers through his wet hair.

He placed an almost chaste kiss on her mound, her clit, her labia, then suckled beads of water off her skin, tongue making slow, heated circles beneath the spray that had her gripping the wall bar and her thighs loosening. His hands slid up behind her buttocks, supporting her as he worked her up to a slow, decadent climax that sighed out of her body. He hadn’t asked for anything after that, simply standing to give her a kiss, letting her taste herself on his wet mouth.

“Later,” he’d murmured, though he’d been hard against her abdomen, enough she rubbed against him, teasing. He’d turned away with a glint in his eye that promised he’d want to get back at her later for that. “We better get to my place if I’m going to have us to work on time.”

When they arrived at his house, he parked her at his scarred kitchen table with an excellent cup of coffee they’d picked up at the corner, from a store with bars on the windows and graffiti on the outside walls. She sipped it, studying the dismal backyard he had, neatly mowed but otherwise devoid of flowers or even a decent shrub. No cover for an approach, she realized. He had a clear view of any of the neighboring houses, small shoeboxes like his own. He might have grown up poor, but she expected his mother in Texas had had at least a flower box, little touches to make even a poor house a home.

Ah well. Inside his safe, all his guns, grenades and rocket launchers were likely arranged with the proper feng shui.

She smiled into her coffee, then heard the sound of a vehicle stopping out front. From the roar of the diesel engine, she guessed an old pick-up truck. When she heard a door slam, she assumed a neighbor was picking up a carpool companion. However, a moment later, a large man strode into the backyard and onto the broken concrete walkway, headed toward the back door. While he moved confidently, she noted a hitch in his step, a slight limp.

It was more than the clean-shaven jaw and close-cropped dark hair, handsomely peppered with silver, that told her this was one of Max’s brothers-in-arms. He had the same alpha-male-capable-of-handling-anything expression. She wondered if they ran them through a press at BUD/S graduation, stamping it on their faces.

She was sitting in the corner nook, not visible until he opened the door and stepped in, but his eyes went to her immediately. She’d surprised him, she could tell, and she expected that didn’t happen often. “Sorry,” he said genially. “I didn’t realize Max had company.”