“Last night, you tried to tell me something. While I was fucking you.”

The morning sun cracked the skyline at a little after seven. The days were getting longer, pushing out the nights of the longest, most miserable winter of my life.

“Which time?” Diana replied with sleep in her voice.

“In front of the window. With the flashlight in your mouth.”

“Mmm.” She didn’t say anything after that. I thought she’d forgotten the question. “Oh yeah. The north star.”

“What about it?”

“It’s steady in the sky. So if you were going to make me move around, you missed the point.”

“Thank God for the flashlight.” I kissed her shoulder and got out of bed. “I’m making breakfast. What you do you want?”

“You’re cooking?”

“I’m ordering in.” I got into last night’s pants

“Coffee. And scrambled eggs.”

“Okay, fifteen minutes.”

“And bacon.”

I kissed her. “Anything else?”

“Two pancakes. No. Three.” She held up three fingers. The bite mark on her ring finger was gone, and the bruising wasn’t more than a pale yellow. I was going to have to do something about that.

“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

“I’m not. Just hungry. I’ve been too sad about Dad to eat.”

Laying my lips on her shoulder, I closed my eyes and told myself how much I loved her. More than the day I met her. More than the day she left me a note that hurt more than any other betrayal. More than I deserved.

“I’m going to knock you up or die trying.”

“Challenge accepted.”

When I was almost to the bedroom door, she stopped me. “I never filed the deed transfer, by the way. So half the loft is still yours.”

“A win for me.”

“The gospel according to Adam.”

“Amen.”

I left it there and called for breakfast. Serena was going to have to be dealt with. And Stefan. Their gossip could only be destroyed face-to-face. Probably with Diana present. I didn’t want her involved in that crowd. It had been a hard limit. I’d told myself it was because I didn’t trust the culture, but that wasn’t true. I hadn’t trusted her. I hadn’t trusted her stamina as a sub. My instincts had told me her submission wasn’t real.

The doorman buzzed as I set out the plates. Diana appeared out of the bedroom, hair still wet, wrestling her sweater on over jeans as she walked. She hit the button on the intercom with a flat slap.

“Is it food?”

“Yes,” the doorman squawked.

“Send him up.” She let the button go. “Hide the furniture. I’m going to eat anything that doesn’t move.”

“Sit.” I held the chair out for her.

She sat. I put the cloth napkin on her lap, but just as I was pushing her in, the doorbell rang. She was up like a shot, slapping the door open to a delivery guy holding a huge thermal bag with a receipt on top.

“Ah. Yes! Mine!”

“Sign, please,” the man said from behind the bag.

Diana slapped her pockets, looked around. “Pen.”

“I can’t get it,” said the delivery guy. “If you reach into my pocket—”

“I have it.” I got the pen I’d used to mark her the night before and signed on the dotted line. When he took the paper back, I noticed a tattoo on his hand and was inspired.

I wasn’t going to put a ring on her finger. I was going to do better.

She dug into her eggs and toast first. Watching her eat food I’d provided gave me a flood of satisfaction. She moved to the pancakes before I’d even finished my toast.

“Oh,” she said around a mouthful. “I found out about the window. So sad.”

“Really.”

“Yes. Are you going to drink your coffee?”

I popped the top off my cup and poured my coffee into hers.

“Remember Nadine?” She jammed a bite into the corner of her mouth while she spoke and sopped up maple syrup with a triangle of her next bite of pancake. “The kid with the blanket and Lego… hey. Wait a minute. You didn’t steal that child’s Legos?”

“I did not. Those were all new.”

“That would be truly sick.”

“The window, huntress. Stay with me.”

“Nadine’s soon-to-be ex-husband. So sad. It’s just getting uglier and uglier.” Her pace slowed. She poked at her next bite instead of shoving it in her mouth like a hostage.

“Do you think we could have become that?” I asked.

Her head cocked at a slight angle. One eyelid dropped a few degrees. She was trying to read me. “I don’t know. Except that you broke a window.”

I laughed. “I forgot about that.”

“Are you serious?”

I nodded and she laughed, dropping her fork as if she’d just heard the craziest thing she’d ever hear in her life.

I tapped my finger on the edge of my coffee cup, bent the plastic edge, then let it find its shape again. “Insolent,” I said.

“Can you drop it? How long are you going to—”

“I lied.” I interrupted her because she was upset at me for the wrong thing. She’d be plenty upset at the right thing in a minute. “Not technically. He did live in his mother’s co-op, but he inherited it and it was really very nice.”

“Okay? So?”

“I let you think he was a threat so you’d be scared of other Dominants, but he wasn’t. At least not to your safety.”

“What kind of threat was he then?”

She wasn’t going to cut me any slack. She was going to drill down until I scraped the bottom of my worst behavior.

“I gave you the impression that he was a slob who never left the house.”

“And he’s not?” She squeezed more syrup onto her pancakes.

“He was… no. He’s not.”

“He was what, Adam? Come on. Don’t hold out on me. Was he tall? Handsome?”

Insolent had been sharply dressed, handsome if you’re into that kind of thing, calm, and well-spoken. He was Dominant without being a dick, and he’d had a good sense of humor about the entire thing. But I’d walked away from him with a nagging fear.

“I was pretty sure you could fall in love with him,” I said. “So I made him sound unattractive. It was petty, and I’m sorry.”

“If we see him at the Cellar, I want you to point him out. I’ll be the judge of who I can fall in love with, thank you.” She took a stack of pancake slices in her mouth and let the fork scrape her teeth on the way out.

“I’m letting my membership to the Cellar lapse,” I said, changing the subject.

“Why?”

“I have you. I don’t need the scene.”

She flipped open a Styrofoam container with the edge of her fork, revealing a stack of bacon in a napkin. The move wasn’t motivated by curiosity or hunger. It was too contemplative for that. It replaced words she wasn’t ready for.

“What?” I asked. “Nothing you say is going to turn me off.”

She smirked and speared a strip of bacon. “When we met, I didn’t think people needed to talk about sex. Then, five years in, I felt like I couldn’t talk about sex and I wanted to. And now, well, I guess I’m surprised by what I’m about to say.”

I let her bite the bacon and put the rest on her plate. I didn’t need to encourage her to finish her thought.

“Whether it’s the Cellar or not, it doesn’t matter. But…” She took a deep breath and looked down at her lap. “When people watch, it really turns me on. They can see you dominate me, and it’s like… that makes it valid and real. Three-dimensional. But because it’s you, it’s safe and I can get lost in it. Being your toy in front of people is like a drug. I see myself through their eyes and through yours. And I go out of myself…” She shuddered. Her eyes met mine, their blue as clear and intentional as the tide. “If you don’t want that, I can live without it, but I really like it. The Cellar seems like the best place to get it.”

I didn’t want to smile. I didn’t want to tell her what letting people watch did for me. The way it multiplied the effects of my domination exponentially.

“Can I think about it?” I asked.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She wasn’t. I’d claimed her. Earned her back. She’d been mine to accept or reject for weeks, but I hadn’t believed she’d stay until she did what she’d been too afraid to do when we were married. She told me what she wanted from our games.