“This is a really nice car,” says Kylie. I can hear stiffness in her tone, like she’s still not sure she made the right decision by coming with me.

“I always thought it would be different to be wealthy,” I say, surprising myself by already letting my guard down and talking about my past. I never let women in, and even though I’ve devoted everything to finding Kylie again and making this happen, I still expected old habits to die hard. I guess not, though, because the words come freely, and they feel good coming out. “It’s nothing like I thought it would be.”

“How do you mean?” she asks. Maybe she can tell I’m giving her something I wouldn’t even consider giving another woman because she leans in now, watching me with interested eyes as I drive us through the city.

“When you don’t have money, it feels like it’s the answer to all your problems. Sad? You think you’d be happier if you could just afford those things you want. Lonely? If you had money, you would have people knocking down your door. Unfulfilled? With money, you could literally do anything you want. The truth I’ve found is once you have money, you’re forced to take the first real look at yourself you’ve ever taken. You strip away the excuses and the what ifs. You can’t hang your motivation on what it would be like to make it big anymore. You have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re happy every morning, and if you’re not? There’s nothing left stopping you from going after what you want.”

“Did you go after it? The thing you wanted.”

“Discovering what I wanted took many years. But once I knew? Yes. I never stopped. I thought about it every hour of every day. I poured all my energy into it until I made it happen.”

“What was it?” she asks.

“You,” I say.

She looks at her lap, cheeks flashing so red I can see it even in the dim light. “You say the right things,” she says quietly. “And I want to believe them. I really do.”

“You don’t need to explain it,” I say. “You’re being careful. Doing what’s best for Dean. I admire that.”

Kylie’s sitter agreed to watch Dean as late as she needed, which is good, because there’s no telling how late I’m going to keep her out tonight. Like most nights, there are a handful of BDSM clubs we could visit, including an exclusive party I agreed to have at my mansion, but the party will go on whether I’m there or not. Tonight isn’t about me, though. It’s about trust. Kylie needs to know she can trust me before we can move forward in any meaningful way, so I’m not going to confuse things by bringing her to a club--not just yet, at least.

I may be practically ready to burst at the seams from my need to take her again in all the ways I’ve had three years to imagine, but I have larger goals than my own carnal pleasures. Ever since I saw her in the airport and felt that spark of connection ignite between us, I’ve wanted one thing more than anything else: her happiness. I’m sure I’ve said as much to women in the past, but it was nothing but lip service--a flattering phrase to draw out a smile or make them feel cared for.

Kylie is different. She always has been. There’s a perfect innocence to her. Not the kind of innocence men often talk or care about. I don’t give a shit if she’s been with men before me or if she has sinned. Her purity is deeper than any of that. I know there’s a piece of herself she holds close to her chest. She guards it so carefully that I doubt even she even realizes she’s doing it anymore, but Kylie is damaged. Whether she suffered something traumatic or was just beat down by the day-to-day of her life, I may never know, but I know it made her put up walls, walls that even she can’t get through.

More than anything, I want to bring those walls down, not just for my own satisfaction, but for hers. I want her to be free, and I know I’m the man to release her. I just need to convince her.

“I want to take you somewhere special, but the dress code is… complicated,” I say. “We need to go on a quick shopping run before dinner so you have the appropriate attire.”

“I don’t know if I can--”

“Everything is on me, Kitten. All I want you to do tonight is relax. Everything is taken care of. Everything will be perfect.”

We arrive at the restaurant a little over an hour later. Kylie is wearing the dress I bought her--a simple black thing that fits her so unbelievably well I am seconds from throwing away my good intentions of keeping her out of the clubs, and my bed, tonight. My cock is also throbbing because I picked out the swimsuit she wears beneath the dress as well, and the similarities to our time in the airport three years ago are not lost on me. Not at all.

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t just change into a swimsuit when it was time,” she says, although she doesn’t say it in a whining kind of way. I’m happy to hear a hint of teasing in her voice.

She knows damn well why I insisted she wear the swimsuit beneath her dress. She just wants to hear it out loud. “Because the last time I fucked a woman, I was surprised to find she was wearing a bikini beneath her dress instead of panties.”

“The last time you…” she starts, eyes widening a little with surprise.

“Yes, Kitten,” I say as we approach the front of the restaurant, which is a modern building with sleek blue lights that backs up to the ocean. “I waited for you. And if you decide you aren’t ready, I’ll keep waiting as long as I have to.”

She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and smiles. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“You’ll learn to trust me before long.” And then you’ll learn to submit. Fucking hell, it’s hard to walk comfortably when Kylie has me hard all the time, but I know once I’ve built the proper foundation of trust, there is never going to be anything as sweet as breaking her in as my submissive. She’ll learn to relish it as well, in giving herself up to me and testing the strength of the trust and the bond we’ll form, knowing it’s stronger every time it stands up to the test.

“At least one of us is confident of that,” she says, but her voice carries the same note of teasing.

It’s good to hear her loosening up, even if it’s just a little.

The maitre d’ welcomes us at the door. “Mr. Price,” he says with raised eyebrows. “It’s an honor to have you and your lovely guest tonight. We’ll prepare a table and equipment for you at once. Please, feel free to enter the diving room at your earliest convenience. We’ll clear the queue.”

I nod my thanks, walking Kylie through the restaurant with my hand splayed wide on her back and my body language clearly saying she’s mine to anyone who might try to enjoy too long a look at her.

“You really weren’t kidding about the diving thing?” she asks nervously.

“You’ll be fine. It’s just with snorkels. Although I guess the harpoon gun could be a little intimidating.”

She pales a little. “Harpoon gun?”

“How did you think we’d catch dinner? With a fork and knife?”

She glares at me and I can’t help smirking. There will come a time when she’ll learn a look like that is going to earn her a special kind of punishment, one that leaves both of us sweating and breathless, but not yet. There will be plenty of time for all that.

We pass a small group of well dressed men and women who chatter in the lobby outside the dive room while they snack of hors d'oeuvres. Kylie draws jealous eyes from the women and hungry eyes from the men, but I pay it no mind. The whole world could be condemning us for all I care, so long as she’s mine, nothing else matters.

There are several dressing rooms inside the dive room, and I excuse myself to slip into compression shorts and set my suit and tie aside. Kylie goes into her own dressing room and changes out of her dress. I take my time enjoying the view when she emerges. Her swimsuit is a black one-piece with several strategically placed cutouts, which give more than enough room for my imagination to fill in the blanks.

She holds her arms in front of her body when she comes out, clearly self-conscious, but I love how she can’t keep her eyes from wandering my bare torso greedily.

I give a sharp look to the dive instructor, who catches my meaning immediately. Don’t even dare look at her. He carefully keeps his eyes fixed somewhere between a few feet over my head and the floor while he explains how the equipment works and the general safety guidelines.

Basically, you point the harpoon gun at a fish, pull the trigger, and don’t forget to go up for air when you feel like you need to breathe. Nothing complicated.

“Come here,” I say to Kylie. I lead her to the snorkels and masks, which look like they were just cleaned. I help her get hers on before securing my own. I hand her a harpoon gun next, jumping a little when she swings it in front of me. I laugh, reaching to take her hand and point it at the ground. “Careful with that. I don’t think they’ll cook me, even if you stick me with a harpoon.”

“Sorry,” she says with a laugh. “I’m a little nervous.”

“Don’t be. I’ll be right beside you the whole time. You’ll be fine.”

We walk to the edge of the wood platform, which ends in a six inch drop straight into the open ocean behind the restaurant. The water is lit by dozens of floodlights placed by the restaurant in the fishing grounds, so I can see quite a ways down despite the time of night. I take Kylie’s hand and give her a tug as I jump in, taking her with me. She yelps just before we hit the water.

We sink down in a cascade of bubbles. Kylie spins slowly around, taking in the scene around us. The floodlights are carefully placed to avoid making the underwater ecosystem look artificial. The light filters through cracks in the coral and between large rocks, giving everything a greenish blue glow. Fish are everywhere, some swimming in schools of a hundred and no larger than my thumb nail, while other, larger fish drift by, some close enough to be illuminated by the lights and others nothing more than shadows in the distance.

Kylie motions to me that she’s going up for air.

I follow her to the surface, which is still inside the room we jumped down in. “What if there are sharks?” she asks.

I hold up my harpoon gun. “I’ll keep you safe, Kitten. Just worry about finding a fish that looks good enough to eat.”

She gives me a somewhat skeptical look, but takes a deep breath and dives back down. I follow after her, letting her get just enough ahead of me that I can enjoy the view of her ass while she kicks her way through the water. I’m hard as a rock in seconds from the thought of having her again. The darker part of me is trying to figure out if I could make her cum before we had to go up for air, but I told myself I’d give her time. I know there’s a sexual attraction between us. That much is abundantly clear. What I don’t know is if Kylie feels like she can trust me enough to let me into her life. And her son’s life. So I’m keeping focused on what matters most tonight. I don’t just want to fuck her one last time. I want to make her mine for the rest of my life.

She pulls her harpoon gun up and squeezes the trigger. There’s a small burst of bubbles and the harpoon bursts out, missing a fish by about ten feet. I laugh, releasing a burst of bubbles that draws her glare. She makes a gesture that seems to say, and you can do better?

I take aim and fire, but my shot misses almost as badly as hers. I curse in annoyance, but my irritation is forgotten when I see the delighted smile on Kylie’s face. She gives me a taunting waggle of her eyebrows from behind her goggles. She presses the button to retract her harpoon, which is connected to the gun by a string. She aims at the same fish and fires again, this time catching it with a direct hit. She does an adorable celebratory dance underwater that looks like something between drowning and a seizure before kicking up to the surface.

I follow her back up and take a deep, refreshing breath of air once we’re on the surface again. “Nice shot,” I say.

Her wide smile falters. “I feel kinda bad. I just shot him…”

I can’t help laughing. “Him? You mean the fish?”

“Yes, the fish. He’s just…” she pulls in the line from her gun and hoists the fish above the water. His fin is still flapping slowly. “Oh my God. He’s in pain,” she says, horrified.

“Here. Close your eyes,” I say.

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t you trust me?” I ask.

She watches me for a few seconds before closing her eyes with the faintest hint of a smirk.

I detach the harpoon from my gun and sever the fish’s spine as humanely as I can. “It’s done,” I say. “He won’t suffer anymore.”

She blows out a breath, head bobbing a little as she kicks to stay afloat. “I know it’s dumb. I eat fish and meat all the time. It’s just different to kill it myself.”

“It’s not dumb. It’s kind. You’re kind.”

She looks away. “Well, you still need to catch a fish for yourself. And with that aim of yours, we should probably get to it before they all go to sleep.”

I give her a mock glare. “I only missed so you wouldn’t feel as bad about missing like you did.”

“Right,” she says, biting her lip. “Then it’ll be no problem for you to hit the next one.”

“No problem,” I say.

It’s nearly half an hour later when I finally manage to harpoon a fish. We’re both exhausted from swimming, and I don’t know about Kylie, but my stomach is already rumbling. “Come on,” I say. “This way.”

“Shouldn’t we be swimming back toward the dock?” she asks.

“I planned a little surprise for us.”

“Should I be afraid?”

“Probably. I’m about as good at driving a boat as I am at shooting fish with harpoons.”

I take her to a section of the restaurant's dock where a small boat is tied up. I help Kylie inside first and then climb in myself. We both sigh with relief to be out of the water and take a moment to enjoy sitting. I set our catches on the side of the boat and turn on the engine, which is little more than an outboard motor with a handle for steering at the back of the boat.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I told you.”

We’re both knocked to the side when I steer the boat into a wave at the wrong angle because my eyes were focused on Kylie’s cleavage and the way the drops of water from her hair are trailing a path that I wouldn’t mind joining them on down between her breasts.

“You weren’t kidding about being a bad driver,” she says.

“I was afraid of water most of my life,” I say. “I guess I’m behind the curve on nautical pursuits because of it.”

“You were afraid of water?” she asks, frowning. “I don’t take you for the type to frighten easily.”

“I had an older brother who was trying to walk across a waterfall when I was fourteen. His name was Kyle. I spent my life looking up to him. He was invincible, as far as I was concerned. It was a stupid thing he had done hundreds of times with his friends, but he stepped on a slick rock, lost his balance, and hit his head before he fell about twenty feet down. By the time they found him at the bottom of the river, he had already drowned. After that… it felt like I was drowning if I even thought about getting in water above my knees.” I laugh at myself, surprised again by how much I seem to be telling Kylie without planning to. “Listen to me, talking like I’m on some fucking therapist’s couch.”

“No,” she says, reaching to touch my knee. “If I am going to trust you, I need to know you. What happened between us three years ago was…” she clears her throat and gives up searching for the right words. “What I’m trying to say is, yes, I felt something. I felt like I wanted to be part of your life, as crazy as that was. But I can’t afford to attach myself to a mystery anymore. It’s like I told you, I have Dean to think about. Maybe before him I could’ve just enjoyed the ride and waited to see where it took me. But if this is going to work now, I need to know you. The real you. So don’t apologize for it.”

I nod my head. “It’s just not me. Talking about myself like this. I’m used to keeping everyone at arm’s length--hell, I’m used to keeping them outside the fucking door.”