“Leave it, please,” Win panted.

Edward, his naked back sweaty, kissed her neck just above the soft leather collar he’d placed there for the scene, and which he’d been about to remove now that they were done. Before now, before Winter, he’d been indifferent to the idea of having a woman wear his collar—a piece of jewelry outside of a scene and a custom-made proper collar when they were playing.

He wanted Winter to wear his collar. Hell, he wanted her to wear a real collar, maybe something with worked leather and chain link, twenty-four seven, just so she never forgot who she belonged to.

He shoved the bottle of lube, dildo, and nipple clamps off the bed, then collapsed down beside her.

Her nipples were pink and still hard, even after the multiple orgasms. He toyed with one, just because he could. She whimpered for a moment, then arched up into his hand, obediently offering herself to him.

“Princess, my princess.” He grabbed a piece of her hair and used the end to brush feather-light caresses down the center of her naked, flushed body. That was the first thing she did, when she walked into his apartment—take down her hair. He liked that he was the only one who ever saw it down. The length and thickness of it was like a secret only he knew. After a month of playing in hotel rooms, they’d switched to his apartment, where they’d been playing for the past five months. He’d outfitted the spare bedroom as a playroom, with an extra high bed fitted with restraints, a few strategically placed hooks in the walls, and a straight-backed chair.

When he teased her belly button she bent her knees and spread her legs, offering her well-used pussy to him.

There had never been a more perfect woman in all of time and space.

“I love you,” he said.

Winter’s eyes popped open.

He’d been holding onto the words, afraid to say them, but that was a stupid fear. “I love you, Winter Storm, my princess.”

She turned wide eyes to him. “I love you, too. I never thought…”

“Never thought that a BDSM relationship could turn into something more?” She froze, and he laughed. “You know, I went into Pat’s that day, hoping to have a munch so I could find women to play with. In the past I always needed women, plural. Multiple partners.” He cupped her breast, placed a tender kiss on her nipple. “That’s because I hadn’t met you. All I need is you.”

“Something more…” she whispered.

Edward realized he hadn’t been clear. He wasn’t going to repeat the mistake from the beginning of their relationship. “I want you, not just as my sub, but as my girlfriend. No, not just that.” He grinned down at her. “My fiancée. My wife. Move in with me.”

Winter rolled off the bed, staring at him.

He sat up. “Okay, I’m going about this all wrong, and maybe I should wait, give you space, but you said not to do that again, and I don’t want to wait. I want to be with you.”

“You barely know me,” she whispered.

“I know you.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t even know what I do for a living.”

“You’re a social worker.”

“Fine, you know that, but there’s so much you don’t know.” She shook her head, and a tear slid down her cheek.

Edward’s joy faded, to be replaced by dread. He knelt on the bed, held out his hand. “Winter, come here.”

“I can’t. Oh, I want to, but I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Come here.”

“No, don’t you see? I can’t.”

She turned and bolted out of the room. Edward stared at the open door in shock.

What the hell? How had that gone so spectacularly wrong?

He jumped off the bed and ran into the living room. She was wearing her dress, the same one she’d worn when they met at Pat’s.

He swallowed. “I did that wrong. Don’t worry, we’ll go pick out a ring and I’ll propose properly.”

“A ring? Oh, Edward. Please don’t.”

He took a step back as if she’d slapped him. “Don’t what, Winter?”

“Don’t make this hard.”

He finally got it. “You like fucking me, but not enough to date me, is that it?”

She let out a sob, shoved her feet into shoes, and raced for his front door.

“Stop,” he ordered, heart breaking.

She paused, hand on the doorknob, and dashed out into the night.

Edward gawked at the door, mouth open and heart shattered.

Win drove recklessly, barely able to see through her tears. She stopped outside her family’s home, where she still lived with her mother. Her mother who was on disability and had COPD but still smoked menthols all day long. Her home where her brother occasionally crashed in between stints in court-ordered rehab. It was the great irony of her life that she spent all day trying to help her clients put their lives in order, but she couldn’t even help her own family.

There was plenty of work waiting for her inside—all the paperwork she never got done during her workday, the chores necessary to keep up the old house that they couldn’t afford to sell. If her brother was there, she’d have to deal with him, all while her mother smoked cigarette after cigarette while she used her tarot cards to try and tell the future, calling out to Winter to come look every time she dealt a hand that was particularly good or particularly bad.

Her time with Edward had become her refuge. His apartment was clean and quiet. They laughed and talked, and he did things to her, made her feel things, that put even the raunchiest pieces of fiction to shame.

He wanted to marry her.

Edward Donal, the rich, handsome Dom, wanted to marry her.

Couldn’t he see how ludicrous that was?

Couldn’t he see how unfair it was to make her want him so much?

Winter shifted into drive as the sky opened up and it started to pour down rain.

Edward stared at the glass of whiskey he’d poured. He’d already had two beers, but that wasn’t going to get him drunk fast enough, so he’d had to switch to whiskey. The hangover was going to be brutal.

There was a knock at the door.

He straightened. “Winter.”

Racing for his front door, he threw it open. His apartment was on the second floor, with a small landing just outside his door. The front door was protected by the overhand of the roof, but rain pelted down on the landing, and on the woman standing there.

She hadn’t had time to put her hair up, and it was wet and plastered to her, like a long, dark cloak.

“Come inside,” he said.

“No. I shouldn’t.” Rain wet her face, and made it look like she was crying. She heaved a breath, and her thin dress clung to her breasts. “But I owe you an explanation.”

Edward crossed his arms. “You don’t need to explain. You don’t want to date me, just fuck me. I get it.”

“No! No. That’s not it.” She shook her head. “We have communication issues, you and I.”

“There’s no you and I. Not anymore. I won’t top you anymore. I realize I want more than that.”

“Just now, you realize that? You’ve never had a sub girlfriend before?”

“What does that mean?”

Winter threw her hands up. “You’re rich and handsome and crazy good in bed. Why aren’t you already married?”

That surprised him. “Work. I was focused on work, on landing this project. And I didn’t really date in LA. I didn’t need to. I went to the club.”

“So you had tons of gorgeous submissive women you could play with whenever you wanted?”

Something in Edward started to relax. “I wouldn’t say tons…”

She gave him an exasperated look, and he wanted to wrap her in his arms. He started to take a step towards her, out into the rain, but she held up her hands.

“What if you’re just settling for me?” she asked. “Because there is no club. I don’t want to be your…your…” She waved her hands in the air. “I don’t want to be what you have to settle for, because you’re in Baltimore.”

“You’re not, Winter. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted this way, as both a girlfriend and a sub. Hell, if you said that you didn’t want to have anything to do with BDSM I’d still love, still want you. I’d learn to be the best damn vanilla lover in the country for you.”

She pressed both hands over her mouth and let out a sob.

“Princess, is that why you ran?” He stepped out into the rain, wrapping her in his arms. Water sluiced down his bare back, soaking into the PJ pants he’d pulled on. “I love you, Winter. I love you.”

She pushed him back. “You can’t.”

“Okay, now I’m confused. Do you love me?”

“Oh, I do, I do, but—”

“Do you trust me?”

“That’s not—”

“Do you believe me when I tell you I love you?”

Her gaze searched his face and she nodded slowly.

“Then be with me. Stay with me.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “You don’t understand.”

“Damn it, Win.” He stepped back, balling his hands into fists. The urge to turn her over his knee and spank her until she stopped being so stubborn was too strong for him to risk touching her.

“People like you don’t marry people like me,” she whispered, voice thick with tears as rain continued to pour down her face.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I live with my mother, and occasionally my drug-addict brother. My home life is a mess. I live paycheck to paycheck and the only splurge I have is when I eat at Pat’s.”

“You’re worried about money?” he asked. “Princess, I’ll give you money if that’s what you need.”

“That’s the problem, don’t you see? You don’t know what it would be like to be in a relationship with me. You’d have to deal with my mother, because I would have to. My brother would show up and he’d steal from you, or try and talk you into giving him some cash.”

Edward stared at her, shocked. Never, in the six months they’d been seeing each other, had she mentioned any of this. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the rain. “You were my escape. My chance to be free. To be happy.”

Edward scooped her up, lifting her into his arms, and carried her into the apartment.

“You have to let me go. I just wanted to tell you why I had to leave. I owed you the truth.”

“You did, and thank you for telling me. Now you’re going to sit and listen.”

He set her on her feet and with a smooth movement yanked the wet dress down and off. She shivered. “Edward, please…”

“No, you talked. My turn.” He grabbed a throw off the back of his couch and wrapped it around her naked body, before tugging her wet hair out from under the blanket. “Sit down.”

“Edward.”

“Sit. Down.”

She sat on the couch, looking tired and sad. He shucked his wet pants, ran to his bedroom and grabbed dry boxers. He found dry towels in the linen closet—god bless his housekeeper who also did the laundry—and went back to the living room.

He sat beside her, wrapping a towel around her hair. Kneeling in front of her, he rubbed her cold, damp skin with the towel.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is,” she pleaded. “Don’t make me love you even more than I already do.”

“You still love me?”

“I think I’ve loved you since the beginning, though I’ve been trying to pretend I didn’t.”

“And I love you. None of the rest of it matters.”

“Edward, that’s not true.”

“We can deal with all the rest of it—your mom, your brother, the fact that you’re massively underpaid.”

She let out a watery laugh.

“We can deal with all of that, as long as we’re together.”

“You don’t know what you’re agreeing to.”

He studied her. “What would Padraig say?”

In the months they’d been together he’d always joined her for her weekly lunch at Pat’s, and Yvonne and Padraig took turns taking credit for their relationship. She’d told Edward about Mia.

“That’s not fair,” she said.

“I’m not planning to fight fair. As a matter of fact, I’ll do something no good Dom would, which is tie you to my bed, and keep you just on the edge of orgasm until you agree to marry me.”

Win’s mouth dropped open.

“Yes, I will use sex to manipulate you until you agree to be mine.”

Her eyes welled with tears. “You’d hate me in the end. And that would be worse, hurt more, than just walking away now.”

“I won’t hate you. I love you. That’s what matters.”

“What about when you move? You’re not in Baltimore forever.”

“I could be. I’m sure there’s lots of call for professionally bossy people. Or you come with me, if my next contract is someplace you want to live.”

“My mother—”

“We’ll hire someone to take care of her. Or, if you don’t want to do that, which I respect, she can come with us too. We’ll buy a house with a mother-in-law suite in every city we live in.”

Win stared at him. “You’d…you’d do that?”

He laced his fingers with hers. “You and me, princess. You and me against the world.”

Win pressed her lips together, tears welling in her eyes, “I want to say yes.”

“Then say yes.”

“Say you’ll always love me,” she begged, “no matter what.”

“I will always love you. No matter what.”

Win’s eyes searched his face, and he hoped she could see how serious he was. He would fight for this woman, protect her, love her, until the day he died.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

She threw herself off the couch, into his arms. Edward held her tight.

After a moment she let out a soft laugh.

He kissed her forehead. “What’s making you laugh?”

“Yvonne. Padraig. They’re going to want credit.”

He smiled down at her. “I owe them both, for making sure you texted me that day.”

“We might have to get married at Pat’s.”

“I’ll marry you anywhere.”

On the one-year anniversary of the day they met, they had the reception at Pat’s.