“Ben, look at me,” Matt said. He had his firm, cool voice, the one that brooked no bullshit.

He didn’t. Couldn’t. “She’s everything I’m not. She’s clean.”

“The one thing that can clean a man’s soul is surrendering to a woman’s love, Ben,” Jon said. “You just have to give her the chance.”

“Yeah, we saw how I dealt with that.”

“Because you’re fighting it. You’re fighting yourself.”

Matt took a step closer, and Ben felt that old terror, the one of being hemmed in. “Ben, look at me.”

What the hell was the matter with him? He always met a man’s eyes. But the part of him rising up, trying to choke him, reminded him of the uncomfortable moment with Peter last night. When he at last forced himself to meet those dark eyes, Matt was standing right in front of him. He put his hand on Ben’s shoulder, fingers tightening. “You can choose to be a chickenshit bastard who runs away from a gift because you’re scared it’s going to abandon you one day, just like your parents. Or betray you, like pretty much everyone did when you were growing up. That decision will eat you like a cancer, but you can drink yourself into liver disease and beat that to the punch.”

“Sounds swell. Option two?”

“It’s time to come out of the cold, Ben. You were a child, fighting to stay alive on the streets, and you did what you had to do. You deserve love. Do the hardest thing a Master can do. Get your shit straight and accept the gift. Take the risk, the first step. Is she the one you want more than anything, now and forever?”

Matt really did have his father’s eyes, so much it was sometimes like the son was channeling the sire. Not a bad thing, despite the fact the thought reeked of Jon’s New-Age bullshit. Long ago, when Ben was a kid, he’d woken up in the Kensington guest bedroom screaming. Matt’s dad had calmed him down, brought him cookies. Didn’t make him talk, but Ben had talked anyway. When he’d settled down, Jonas had given him a brief hug, a squeeze of his shoulders. Ben had tensed, but that was all Jonas had done. The man had left the lamp on low setting so Ben didn’t have to go back to sleep in the dark.

“Yeah, she is. I want her.” He wanted to say more, but if he was going to do that, he wanted to say it to Marcie. She deserved that, and way more.

“God help her.” Peter’s lips twitched. He stepped up to Matt’s side.

Ben rose, a self-defense measure. “Oh Jesus. Tell me this isn’t a hugging moment.”

“It’s not a hugging moment.” Then Peter gave him one of his bear hugs anyway, the kind where the monster squeezed his ribs and slapped his back to the point of pain, therefore making Ben still feel manly. When he released him, Peter put his hand on Ben’s face in a brotherly gesture of affection, shoved it away so his neck popped. “You’re such a dumbass.”

Matt returned to the head of the table, gesturing to all of them to take their seats. After a moment, Lucas took his usual place at Matt’s right, though he continued to regard Ben with an undecided expression. Ben had a futile wish for his coffee, but settled for taking a couple deep breaths and sitting down again. He wasn’t sure how the hell he was going to concentrate on business after all that, but he needn’t have worried. Matt had rewritten the agenda.

“You owe Marcie amends,” Matt said. “That’s the most critical consequence of your actions. But you also owe us. This circle is bound by a code, and you broke that code.”

Oh hell. But Matt was right. Jesus, he wanted penance, wanted to do something to purge this shit from his soul, the look he’d put on Marcie’s face. He had to fix it with her, but he also had to make it right with them. With Lucas.

“You’re right.” He nodded, straightened. “Whatever you think is fair.”

“Making you cry like a little girl,” Lucas said acidly, but there was a different set to his face now, one that said he might be forgiven. A few years from now. After a lot of groveling.

When they made their decision, Ben actually felt like bursting into tears. But he swallowed jagged glass, took it like a man. He deserved it, after all. Hard as accepting their ruling was, it was going to be worse, figuring out how to make it up to Marcie. But now that he’d accepted it…

He wanted her. He’d said it out loud, in front of all of them. It filled him with a strange sense of anticipation, reminding him of when each of them had come to this table, determined to make a chosen woman his. He’d spent so much time denying her, pushing her away, but he let it unfold now, looked at it from several different directions. Come in out of the cold. He felt like he was standing in the middle of a room where he’d cautiously opened a window, and then another…maybe one more. Letting the sunlight pour in.

I want her. I need her. If he hadn’t fucked it up totally, she might consider being okay with that.

“I’m nearly a decade older than she is,” he said suddenly. “When she’s turning forty, I’ll be hitting fifty.”

Jon nodded. “You know Rachel is thirteen years older than me. We’ve dealt with those issues.”

“How does she deal with it?”

“I think it’s harder for a woman than a man. Some days she gets a little moody about it. But I point out that when I’m eighty and she’s ninety-three, we’ll both be on walkers and mixing up our teeth in the morning water glasses.” A smile touched Jon’s lips. “We never really grow beyond a certain age. We’re all the same inside, our desires, our needs. We just get better impulse control.

Peter slanted Ben a grin. “Well, most of us get better impulse control.”

“Blow me.”

“You wish.”

Jon waved the banter aside. “Ben, if you were fifty and Marcie was twenty-three, you’d be having the obvious epiphany about your mortality, trying to sate it in fancy cars and young girls, but that’s not what this is. You’re thirty-two and in love with an intelligent, vibrant woman nine years younger than you.” His blue eyes twinkled then. “And Peter’s right. You’re emotionally immature for your age. Marcie is extraordinarily mature for hers, so you’re a perfect fit.”

“She said you told her I never grew beyond age thirteen.”

“Which makes you emotional jailbait,” Peter pointed out.

Ben shook his head, rose, went to the window. With his usual impeccable timing, Matt started hitting on today’s business. Since the legal stuff wasn’t relevant for the first couple agenda items, it gave him a strategic moment to take a breath. They’d give him that. They were his friends, after all. His family.

He thought about how Marcie had walked into his office on those killer legs, with that come-hither smile playing around her lips. More than that, he remembered her eyes. Determined, playful…nervous. He’d picked up on the active submissive in that first instance, and it ran bone deep in her. So to do what she’d done, shoving herself at him like that…it had to have been hard.

A submissive woman was often strong and driven in her career, but in the bedroom she yearned to submit, to surrender. Marcie had combined her mundane persona with her D/s one, and that was a stress. He’d seen it when she broke outside his front door and pelted his windows with rocks. She was pushed to the limits, and he’d pushed her there. While he did that regularly as a Dom, he didn’t usually do it as a man, causing that kind of pain.

He’d deal with that. This time he really had to wrap his head around it, so he didn’t screw up again. He’d spent so much time vacillating, sending out mixed signals, and he couldn’t do that anymore. She deserved better from her Master. If he could just step away from his fucked-up head, he could work it through. Normally, he used the topspace he found as a Dom to help him with that, but he wanted his next session, every future session, to be with her, so it was a chicken and egg dilemma.

He was going in circles like a damn hamster. He wanted to go to her, talk to her. Right now. He didn’t want to wait another minute. This wasn’t a legal case he had to prepare. It had to be raw, from the heart, pure instinct. They could do without him in the meeting.

Lucas’ cell rang with the ringtone he used for Cassandra. Urgent by Foreigner. Ben glanced over his shoulder as Lucas picked it up. Maybe Cass was letting him know how Marcie was doing. Maybe Lucas would hand him the phone and Cass would tell him how Marcie was doing. Yeah right. As pissed as Lucas had been, Ben had a feeling it would take a truckload of diamonds to earn Cass’ forgiveness. Even then, he’d probably have to hide behind the truck’s steel reinforced cab. Cass kept a Beretta, after all.

“Hey, Marcie.” Lucas’ obvious surprise at finding Marcie on the line disappeared as his grip on the phone tightened, his eyes darkening with pain. “When? Okay. Are you with her? Okay. Just stay with her and the others. I’ll be right there. Let me talk to her.”

He shifted the phone to the other hand as the men rose, already anticipating the somber news. “Cassie? It’s all right, baby. I know. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m on my way. You keep Marcie and the kids with you, all right? I’ll be there in a few minutes, promise.”

As he clicked off, Lucas met Jon’s eyes. “Jeremy died in Thailand early this morning.”

I went to visit Jeremy at spring break. He was good, different. He’s thin, looks like an old man, and he talks slow, moves slow. But when he looks at me, he sees me, he’s no longer strung out. He took my hand, held it. Sat with me on a stone bench and we looked at the mist-covered mountains outside the temple together. He didn’t say he was sorry, because it was as if he knew it wasn’t needed anymore. That wasn’t the same Jeremy. I cried all the way home on the plane. It felt bad to cry, but as much as I hated who he became on the drugs, he still isn’t the brother I used to have. I guess I hoped I’d get him back at some point. I was grieving him on the trip home as if he was actually dead. Please don’t ever tell Cass I said that.