The email sat in her inbox like a Moray eel in a crevice, waiting to take her hand off at the wrist.

Perhaps a slight exaggeration, that.

She eyed the subject line warily. “Don’t blame me” was not what she wanted to see on an email from the man she’d obsessed over for what felt like half her life. At some point, she’d finally admitted to herself that her fantasies about Gabe had returned long before her divorce. Once it became clear she and John were never going to have any kind of “honeymoon period” when it came to their sex life—were never going to have a sex life at all, it turned out—she’d spent forever dreaming of the nonstop adventurous sex she’d had with Gabe, telling herself she must be embellishing her memories with the shine of time passing.

Knowing she wasn’t embellishing a damn thing.

Sometimes she wondered if it was the sheer force of the accumulated years of her longing that had reached out through the ether and pulled his thoughts to her months ago, when Gabe had first emailed her.

Always email with that man. She sighed and rolled her eyes at her laptop.

Would it kill him to send a text?

She knew what Gabe would say.

Yes.

Every time she’d texted him in the past few months—frequently, before that night with him and Kate, for Merry Christmas and Happy New Year best wishes only, afterward—Gabe had replied with an email.

Clumsy thumbs and a refusal to squint at his tiny phone screen he claimed, but Callie suspected Gabe just enjoyed playing the crotchety old-timer who groused and grumped about new technology.

She opened the email.

Hey lady. Pretty sure Kate’s setting me up to get my ass kicked here, but she told me you needed a wingman next weekend? She’s still running a low-grade fever and bitching like a toddler about being stuck at home because her boss told her not to come in until she was fever-free for at least 24hrs.

What say you? Need me to watch your drink while you lay waste to the masses? I won’t take it personally if you say no. I think Kate means well and I know you two have hung out some recently, but if she’s stepping in where she shouldn’t, just say so.

I’d be happy to see you again though.

G

And wasn’t that the bitch of the thing. She’d spent more time hanging out with her ex-lover’s most recent girlfriend than she had with the man she’d once wanted with every cell in her body.

As much as she’d enjoyed Kate’s body, and still took pleasure in her company as a friend, she’d never craved Kate the way her body craved Gabe.

Pretending it was only her body that swung like a compass toward the North Pole when Gabe was in the room—in the world—was one of the lovely self-deceptions she employed to try to get through the ache of moments like reading the words I’d be happy to see you again though.

A man like Gabe shouldn’t say such things. Simple words, but they pushed him beyond charming and into the realm of the truly dangerous.

Flirting, flat-out propositioning, fucking. These she could handle.

Kindness slayed her.

She’d planned on waiting until Kate was back on her feet before returning to the club. She knew a second visit might be more frustrating than anything, because she hadn’t been drawn to public play at all. The idea of her nerves being on display while she explored what drew her to BDSM was . . . unpalatable. She could see how that might heighten the experience for some, or how she might find appeal in public play if she were more experienced. But Callie liked to do her learning in private, keeping her insecurities for those she trusted instead of sharing them with strangers.

But she also hadn’t managed to find a way to get comfortable with the idea of inviting an almost total stranger to show up at her door for BDSM 101. Maybe the whole scene wasn’t the best focus for her next adventure. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be after all.

Late at night though, when she was curled up around her body pillow in her bed, she couldn’t stop remembering the look on the face of the girl in ropes. The peace and the trust and the waiting. Her inhale when the man’s fingers had brushed her breasts. Callie imagined what it felt like to be her, immobilized and poised on a moment of desire and longing. Not knowing what was going to happen next, but trusting that it would leave her wanting more and, ultimately, fulfilled.

She imagined the feel of the ropes on her wrists. They’d looked silky. Soft. The tension of their complicated knots and coils. How still she would be, because she had no choice except to be. How freeing that might feel.

Sometimes she imagined the ropes were rough. Scratchy. Burning slightly around her wrists as she twisted and turned to escape an erotic tormentor whose touches Callie played on her own body until she climaxed, leaving her muscles slack and aching.

The humiliation and the rougher play hadn’t appealed to her. But the bondage? The caretaking of that rope Dom? That kind of submission and waiting and giving up control, with a sexual intensity and a . . . a sweetness driving it all? Yes. That had appealed. Tremendously.

Ale’s card burned a hole in her wallet. Sometimes she imagined she could hear the hiss and crackle of flames behind a closed door, waiting to explode into an inferno with the whoosh of fresh oxygen opening that door would supply. She’d made Kate swear to overdose on vitamin C and get healthy as fast as she could, because the wait to see the intensely commanding Ale again was killing her.

Could she go with Gabe instead?

Her hands hovered over the keyboard. Her brain raced. Did she trust Gabe? Absolutely. Implicitly. He wouldn’t shame her for wanting this. He wouldn’t get distracted or impatient or feel awkward at a sex club. It simply wasn’t in him to do so. That calm steadiness at his core had always been part of his appeal, even before she’d learned how hurtful the history was that had led to him laying claim to that kind of imperturbability.

Gabe would be fine. Would be ideal, actually, as a wingman.

Gabe wasn’t the problem.

You’ll be fine. Stop freaking out at the idea. It’s not as if he needs to stand right next to you and observe. Observe what? She wasn’t entirely sure yet. The sheer number of scenarios she’d imagined was dizzying. He doesn’t need to see your every move. You could tell him to stay in the social area and . . . whatever. People watch.

Yes. That’s exactly what she would do. The same thing she would have done with Kate. Probably. Tell Gabe she didn’t need him to watch.

She couldn’t tell the difference between her own lies and truths anymore, and every step she took felt as if it fell on ground that crumbled beneath her feet, threatening to bring her to her knees.

Before she could tie herself into any more mental knots—before she could admit to herself that as soon as she let herself imagine Gabe joining her, of course she pictured him watching her, those dark eyes intent upon every touch Ale pressed into her skin—she let her fingers take over for her brain.

Thank you, sir.

She paused. Shit. That “sir” is going to read like all kinds of innuendo by the end of this email, isn’t it? Fuck it. She kept going.

Kate may be meddling, but you’d actually be pretty ideal for this assignment. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to the BDSM club on Chicago Avenue?

Pressing send made her temples throb. And her stomach flip. She stepped away from her dining room table, taking her phone with her, so she wouldn’t sit there and stare at her inbox, waiting for his reply to arrive.

The soft, thick blanket draped over the back of her couch was calling to her. She would curl up with her phone and see if Ale was as much fun to text with as he was to talk to, and she wouldn’t let herself wonder for even a minute about how long it might take Gabe to send her his reply.

---

“This was a terrible idea.”

Callie jerked herself to a halt on the sidewalk outside the club and turned to Gabe with an apology on her face. Clearly she had lost her ever-loving mind to set this evening up.

“What do you mean?” he asked, hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. Snow dusted the shoulders of his navy peacoat, big flakes drifting through the yellow glow of a streetlamp.

“First I take your girlfriend away from you” she said and grimaced. Gabe laughed at her brusque statement. But seriously, she knew Kate hadn’t spent time with him for weeks now. Intellectually, Callie knew Kate’s decision wasn’t her fault, but she couldn’t help feeling like the catalyst for that whole chain of events. And if that wasn’t bad enough, after a week’s worth of increasingly explicit emails and texts to and from Ale about what turned her on, what turned her off, and what she needed to feel secure while opening herself to more serious exploration. “Then I bring you to a sex dungeon, but not to get laid! Just to stand around and be my backup emergency plan? I’m seriously the worst.”

Gabe shook his head, smiling, and brushed snow off the top of her head with an ungloved hand that skimmed her hair.

She felt the touch in her toes. Forced herself not to lean into Gabe’s personal space and hope he would stroke her hair again.

“First of all, I want Kate to be happy. She knows that. So you didn’t ‘take my girlfriend away.’”

Argh.

There it was again: Gabe’s insistence on holding his lovers so lightly he might as well not hold them at all. Exactly what she’d learned she couldn’t live with. And the entire reason her fantasies and constant thoughts of Gabe were doomed to lead nowhere fast.

She might forever be half in love with Gabe, but avoiding falling all the way meant staying out of Gabe’s bed. And distracting herself with other, newer adventures.

Hence the club. Hence Ale.

“Second . . . I’ve been missing you,” he said simply and Callie’s heart stuttered. “It was hard to reconnect with you like that, and then have you gone again. I like having you in my life, Callie. So I’m always going to want to spend time with you no matter what the plan is. I’m just happy to have you back in my world.”

Double argh.

Damn this man and his ability to be so open about his feelings in some ways, while being so closed off to them in others. She was a total fucking goner. An idiot.

Gabe hooked a finger into one of her coat pockets and tugged so lightly she could have resisted easily.

She didn’t want to.

Callie let the gentle pressure pull her forward until she was standing chest to chest with him, the clouds of their breath mingling in the cold night air. The scent of vanilla and old leather rose from Gabe’s skin and triggered the kind of memories that made her pulse speed up and her lips tingle.

“Plus, sex dungeon. Seriously? You had me at hello.” He smiled and kissed her forehead, which should have felt paternal. Or friendly. But the press of his lips clung to her skin like a sensual benediction, staying with her far too long as she shivered, laughed, and took a step back.

Great. Her body hummed like an engine that had been revved and then returned to idle. Warmed up and ready to go.

She laughed out loud. This would either be awesome or the worst idea ever.

Risks had always been worth taking with Gabe at her side.

She tucked her arm through his. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

---

On a massage table near the doorway to the social area, a shirtless man wearing jeans spooned a woman who was naked except for her black lace corset. Her makeup was smeared across her face and she pillowed her head on one arm, looking too worn out and exhausted to move. The man wrapped a forearm around her waist and pulled her close, murmuring in her ear and pressing kisses to her long hair. Callie couldn’t hear what he was saying, and even observing the intimate moment felt like eavesdropping.

Ale touched her elbow and directed her toward a far corner where the lights were dimmer. A naked woman with small breasts and boy hips was cuffed to a set of horizontal bars on the wall, arms and legs spread. A delicate gold chain connected the clamps on her nipples and matched the color of the shiny gold vibrator her Dom—girl Dom? Domme? Top? Does it matter? Probably—pressed between her legs. Swaying lightly in her restraints, the woman shivered and moaned, the gold chain trembling.

“She’s most likely been told not to come,” Ale murmured in her ear, his breath warm. “Of course, she will, sooner or later. Then she’ll be punished.”

Callie frowned. This was exactly the kind of thing she’d wanted to ask questions about the last time she’d visited the club. Having Ale as a tour guide did indeed have many advantages.

Having Gabe at the bar in the social area on the other hand, grilling the bartender about who made the club’s equipment, was an as-yet-to-be-determined factor. Advantage or disadvantage . . . it could really go either way. Although Gabe was damn near pursuing new career paths as a sculptor after seeing the giant wrought-iron rack in the other play room, so at least he was happy. He’d squeezed her hand when she’d left him sitting at the bar to wait for Ale on one of the couches near the fireplace. She’d ignored the shiver of pleasure that had run up her spine.

The woman in restraints cried out again, pulling Callie’s attention. The grin on her Domme’s face was feral, her tiny sharp teeth biting into red lips. Punishment was clearly imminent. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“The punishment is the point. The orgasm denial is simply a frame for that story with those two. With another Domme, the goal would be to make the edging last as long as possible.”

A frame for that story. Hmm. The words echoed in her head. She liked them. Liked the idea that her own exploration could be seen as a story.

Once upon a time, there was a kinky girl who fell asleep for a hundred years. . .

She snorted at her own melodrama. Then she woke up, and wanted to fuck everything.

Callie waited until they’d moved far enough away that no one would overhear before she asked Ale the question that had been hovering in the back of her mind ever since her first visit to the club. “Does it matter to you? What the subs look like physically, or is it their willingness to submit that’s the turn-on?”

Slowing next to her until they were barely walking around the rest of the room, Ale took a moment to think before answering. Few of the other stations currently in use. The music throbbing in the background was electronica, but a hypnotic, slow kind that played at a volume that allowed quiet conversations to feel private. “It’s a mixture of both. A beautiful woman who isn’t into BDSM is pretty to look at, but I would have only a temporary interest in fucking her. A woman who wants to submit however”—he turned his head to smile at her—“or is interested in exploring whether or not that is one of her kinks, is intriguing to me. And yes, I still prefer to be attracted to her. You, for example, are extraordinarily appealing.”

The flirtatious words sat uncomfortably on her skin. The idea of her looks being something that made a man want to spank or torment or fuck her did not appeal. Too much like getting hit on in a club. Her voice crackled with frost. “How so?”

The small smile that danced on Ale’s mouth said he was not offended by her sudden withdrawal.

“It’s your body.”

Of course it is.

“The way you stand, in particular. You plant your feet so firmly on the floor. I will not be moved. But then you lean with so much . . . yearning in your shoulders. Please let me move. Make me. Your body tells such a story. One that makes me want to find out what you’d let it say in other situations.”

Ooooookay. So. Not like getting hit on in a club, actually. Not at all.

Her feet, the ones he’d described as being planted so solidly, felt more frozen than firm. The tension in her lower back held her stiff and awkward when what she wanted to be was fluid. Flexible. Pliant.

As if sensing her discomfort, Ale kept talking while they meandered through the room. Smells came and went, teasing her, as they passed different stations. Candle wax, musk, roses, surprisingly. Not as much leather as she’d expected, actually, which was a bit of a shame. Leather was a smell that really worked for her, although the whole vibe of the leather scene she’d investigated online hadn’t particularly drawn her interest.

Echoes of Gabe, whose leather and vanilla scent was always in the back of her throat these days.

She snorted to herself. No wonder the smell is such a turn-on. Damn, you’re predictable.

“But in the end, submission is a powerful part of attraction for me,” Ale said, taking her lightly by the elbow as he steered her around a cluster of observers who stood in a silent crescent around another exhibition of rope work. This time, the couple receiving the attention was comprised of two men, the larger, more muscular man on his knees before a smaller figure, which messed with her expectations.

And sparked an idea.

Curious, she pushed for more information. “And a man who wants to submit? Does that attract you?”

Ale laughed quietly and his grin widened. “It has, although not as often. And usually as part of a couple wanting to play with me. I don’t generally scene with men by themselves.”

“Generally.” Hmm, intriguing. The picture of a man on his knees before Ale was stuck in her head now, and she found it surprisingly erotic. For all the experimenting and exploring and inclusion of other lovers in their bed she and Gabe had indulged in, she’d never been in a sexual situation with two men at once.

Interesting. . .

“Generally.” He repeated, still smiling as if remembering someone in particular. “But it’s hardly a rule, so there are certainly exceptions.”

She wondered if she could ask about the story that lived behind his eyes and smile. But they turned a corner into another alcove and she was distracted by a confusing piece of equipment bolted to the floor in the middle of the small, shadowed space.

The slim padded length reminded her of a balance beam from gym class, with strange handles sticking out in a variety of directions. Narrow cushions, like the knee rests in a Catholic church pew but with vastly different connotations, paralleled the main structure but lower down.

“And that’s for?” Her mouth was dry, her brain clicking over image after image in wild abandon. She rubbed her palms against her thighs because they itched.

“Tying someone up and spanking them. Fucking. Almost anything you can think of to do with someone’s ass.” Ale’s voice was so cheerful in his blatant appreciation that she found herself laughing while swimming in a swirl of explicit pictures in her head.

Something about her heightened nerves and sudden bout of frantic swallowing must have communicated itself to Ale, because suddenly he paused in his explanation and fell silent, eyes locked on hers, pupils dilating.

“You like the idea of things being done to someone’s ass, yes? Your own, or are you picturing someone else here, while you observe?”

“Jesus. I don’t know. Both, now that you’ve said it.” She fanned herself, but frowned as she did it. “It’s strange. Because the idea of watching someone . . . like that . . . is definitely a turn-on. But the last time I was here, I wasn’t comfortable watching some of the scenes. I mean, at all.”

“Figuring out your own kinks is part of the fun, Callie.” Ale rested a hand on her shoulder and the weight of it steadied her. Slowed her pulse and her breath and her frantic brain. “Maybe your voyeurism requires an intimacy of some kind to really work for you. If you know the people you’re watching, it’s sexy, but if you don’t, it’s just awkward. Or maybe you only like to watch certain scenes. Teasing or orgasm denial, the intimacy of spanking by hand but not so much the distance of the whip. Or maybe it’s all just new and intimidating and you’re feeling slightly overwhelmed.”

So many words flying by her dazed senses, as Ale ran through scenarios she’d only barely imagined as if they were standard fare for his and his partners’ appetites.

“Yes,” she said, swallowing again. “That. Definitely overwhelmed.”

Overwhelmed. Turned on. Reeling with too many choices and not enough information about her own wants and desires. What sounded good? On paper, almost everything. In real life? She had a feeling her tastes weren’t quite that broad.

“We can keep it simple, if you want to play a little.”

“Simple.” Terrific. They’d discussed this in the past week—Ale offering to be more than just a tour guide—in detail, but still she was reduced to parroting his words like an idiot. She was also feeling more than a little silly about having brought Gabe with her. Now that she was standing in the BDSM club with Ale, the dungeon monitor he’d pointed out strolling regularly through the rooms, it was clear that the overall risk of danger was extremely low.

Of course, you could have waited until Kate was feeling better, if safety was what really worried you.

Better not to think too deeply on why she’d chosen to accept Gabe’s offer instead. Before she could gather her thoughts, Ale demanded her attention with nothing more than a straightened spine and a direct look.

“I’d like to press you up against this wall and hold you by your wrists so you can’t move.” He’d stepped into her personal space and his breath brushed her face. Her heart picked up the pace. “And then I’d like to touch you. Anywhere I choose. How do you feel about that?”

Gah. She’d read about this. They’d messaged about it. Negotiations.

This BDSM thing of talking about everything beforehand was going to kill her. It made everything so…deliberate. There was no I accidentally did this kinky thing with this guy before I realized it. Everything was a choice. Was lifting her foot and taking that first step off the cliff’s edge on purpose.

“Do you always describe everything you want to do and then ask how your. . .” she didn’t know what to say. Sub? Playmate? All the words made her want to giggle, when giggling wasn’t at all what her body wanted to do right now. Her body wanted the wall-pushing and the restraining and the touching, yes, please. “How your partner feels?”

“No.” He shifted his weight from one foot to another and her heart jumped, but he didn’t move closer. “But we don’t know each other that well, yet. So I’ll check in with you a lot.”

Ah ha. So at some point there might be more touching without asking. But not yet. She stared up at him, at his mouth, at the firm line of his upper lip curving while he watched her.

“Callie?”

Right. The question. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire as she answered. “I feel good about that. Yes.”

He barely waited for her to finish before moving smoothly forward with one step, backing her up with her body until her ass met the wall. She inhaled so deeply that her chest pressed against his, making her feel even more trapped. Adrenaline surged in her system, pushing her heart to race faster, her lungs to pull in more air, tensing her every muscle.

The drift of Ale’s hands down her bare arms sensitized her skin, lifting the tiny hairs on her arms until they stood to meet his palms. When he reached her wrists, he circled each on with a hard hand and pulled them up until her hands were pinned above her head.

She closed her eyes.

Before she had a chance to think, he shifted his hands until her wrists were crossed and held in just one of his hands. She thought that if she tugged and twisted, she could probably break free. But she didn’t want to.

Ale’s free hand roamed her body at will, his gaze steady on hers as he touched her. Under her jaw where her pulse thumped hard, and down the side of her throat. The drag of a fingertip where her neckline dipped between her breasts.

When his fingers skated over the fabric of her halter top until they found her nipple, then pinched and pulled until she rose up on tiptoe, she gasped and knew he heard it.

“Do you like things that hurt?” he asked, repeating a question she’d already answered in writing.

“Sometimes. Not…” She was having a hard time thinking straight with his thumb rubbing back and forth across her nipple, then circling around it. When he paused to pinch again, she moaned. A word she’d come across during her reading popped into her foggy brain. “Not always. I don’t think I’m a, uh, pain slut.”

Although she was starting to see the appeal.

“I don’t think so either. You weren’t particularly drawn to those scenes. But a little bit turns you on.”

“Yes.” Spoken on a gasp.

“And makes you wet.” A statement, not a question, but she had the rhythm down now and knew she was supposed to answer.

“Yes.”

“And you’d like to explore that more.”

“Yes.”

“Spread your legs, Callie.”

She was warm, almost hot. At the edge of her awareness, she could hear the cries of the woman cuffed to the wall escalating again, and the murmur of the crowd that watched. Someone stopped at the edge of the alcove in which they stood, a shadowed figure who watched them for a moment before moving off, perhaps to return. Perhaps not. She didn’t know, and was distracted by the not knowing.

Ale’s hand sliding up the outside of her thigh, pulling her loose skirt up with it, focused her attention again. She looked at him and was caught by the expectant intensity of his gaze.

What?

Spread your legs, Callie.

Ahh, he was waiting for her, hard thigh just nudging hers.

She closed her eyes and inched her feet apart to let his leg slide between hers.

He didn’t move. The hand holding her wrists squeezed. “No. Open your eyes.” She did. He was staring at her gravely. “If we do this, you don’t get to hide what you’re feeling from me.”

She licked her lips, nervous, and hoped he’d think she’d done it on purpose to be sexy. After a moment’s thought, that seemed unlikely, so she confessed. “I’m nervous. Feeling surprisingly shy.”

“I know.”

Of course he did. She was the newbie. He was the experienced one. Probably nothing she did or felt was a surprise to him. The realization was slightly deflating, sobering.

“That’s part of the turn-on for me. That I’m pushing you past your comfort zone.”

Okay, that works.

Knowing that he was doing it on purpose—was making her feel nervous, exposed, when she wasn’t one hundred percent sure what she wanted—surprised her with how much it turned her on.

Good.

She didn’t want someone who made her feel like this by accident.

Ale’s hand slid under the edge of her skirt.

The murmur of conversation, a butterfly’s wing at the edge of her hearing, stiffened her back again. People. Watching, listening, gossiping. The slow melt of her will froze, pushing the languor from her muscles in tight cramps. Her fingers clenched into fists.

Ale paused. “What’s wrong?”

She didn’t know if that was a trick. Wrong word, that. Not a trick. He didn’t seem like he was angling to catch her out in some kind of BDSM bad behavior. But she also didn’t know if admitting to uncertainty, of trying to change what Ale had in mind, would make him stop. Would make him walk away from her because she wasn’t a natural at this stuff.

She already knew she didn’t want that.

“Please tell me. We don’t know each other well, so I need you to talk to me when something is happening that you don’t like, or I’m going to cross too many boundaries and not in the fun way.” His hands restraining her own gentled, holding her more loosely. “Your wrists just went rigid in my hand. Not like you’re embarrassed or turned on, but as if you’re scared. And if that’s a good kind of scared, I’m happy to work with it. But I don’t know you well enough to say yet if that’s the case or not. So please. . .”

“Is this why we’re supposed to have safe words?” she asked first, hesitating.

“I don’t know you well enough yet to trust that you’d use one,” he said, shaking his head. “Right now, stop and no will work, although feel free to use red to stop or yellow to slow down if you like.”

She hadn’t thought about that before. How much trust Ale or another Dom would need to have in a sub. Knowing the trust she craved was a two-way street made brought the beginnings of that feeling alive in her chest.

And helped her find her voice. “I’m not scared. But I don’t think I can do this here, with people watching. Not if we’re going to go past this point.”

“I can work with that.” Tipping his head toward the archway back to the social area, Ale explained, “There’s a semi-private room off the social area, called Lassitude. Semi-private, because it’s only curtained off. No one would be able to see you, but you’d be able to hear them. And they would hear you, if you were loud.”

The curve of his lips told her he intended for her to be loud indeed.

Going to this Lassitude room would mean strolling past the bar area. She’d be able the check in visually at least with Gabe as she passed. She didn’t want to ask Ale to stop and talk to Gabe—although she could picture it, these two men engaging in friendly but testing conversation—but she was surprised at how much the idea of seeing Gabe again before she let Ale touch her further made her relax. “Yes. I think that would work. I’m sorry.”

Ale shook his head, releasing her wrists and then tugging her forward into a hug. The press of her breasts into his hard chest was ridiculously soothing for a man who was working out ways to get her into sexually torturous positions. “Don’t apologize. You don’t know what you want yet. We’re supposed to be figuring that out. And maybe you will decide that nothing appeals to you. That’s okay too. The important part is not to start with any bad experiences. I meant to talk to you more before going that far. You were just so . . . melty. I let myself be tempted.”

“I was feeling pretty tempted myself,” she admitted, sinking into his embrace and reveling in the security that surrounded her there. This was what she wanted: the caretaking and attention and listening, backed up by this man’s clear sense of command and desire to push her sexual boundaries.

Ale dragged a fingertip down the bare skin of her back, bumping over her vertebrae, and she shivered again. The backless, sleeveless halter top she was wearing was ragingly impractical during a Chicago winter, and she was so, so glad she’d chosen it.

Yes. All the yes, please.

They walked out of the play room and back into the social area. Couples and small groups of people mingled and chatted like they did at any party, although there were markedly more naked people at the club than most parties she’d attended. Ale parked her against the wall just outside the play room—she could still hear the sounds of spanking, the moans, some fake-sounding, some real, from inside—and squeezed her bare arm.

“Stay.”

Heel. Sit. She snorted to herself at her reflexive snark.

But it really had sounded like a command to a beloved pet. One that needed a firm hand.

When Ale disappeared into a narrow hallway just past the fireplace, Callie glanced over to the bar.

Gabe’s look was a force field of concern radiating at her from lowered brows and a firm mouth. He didn’t stand from his seat at the bar, but she could see that every muscle in his body was tensed and ready to launch him toward her if she indicated with so much as a wiggled eyebrow that she needed him. Having declined to dress up for what he’d once called “guard dog duty” in an email, Gabe’s too-long, messy hair, tight, faded T-shirt, and frayed dark jeans made him look more like an off-duty bouncer than an artist. She’d caught women staring at him with obvious interest from the first moment he’d walked in the door earlier, and if she hadn’t known how seriously he took his guard dog status that night, she might have had to acknowledge the subterranean river of possessiveness that rumbled through her at the sight of those speculative looks.

Gabe lifted his chin, questioning.

If she didn’t want him bulldozing his way into her kink experiment, she knew she needed to reassure him. Even if what she felt was slightly shaky and hugely turned on all at once, Gabe didn’t need mixed signals from her right now. So Callie fanned herself with a comically exaggerated eye roll, until Gabe’s shoulders dropped and his eyebrows unkinked.

Funny how easy it still is for me to understand his every look, even after all those years apart.

Funny. Worrisome. Flip sides of the same coin.

She’d been able to read Gabe like a book from the first night she’d met him. Or at least she’d thought she had, until she’d finally figured out that Gabe had never let her in deep enough for her to know more than the surface. She’d learned more about Gabe in one conversation on the night she’d gone home with him and Kate than she had during the entire time she’d been involved with the man in her twenties.

The pang under her sternum at the memory made her hands twitch, needing to clutch, to protect. To strangle the woman who’d mocked and shamed Gabe with accusations of clinginess and neediness simply because he’d loved her more than she’d loved him, until he’d fundamentally altered how he loved. Gabe might always have grown into being comfortable with open relationships, but he never again let himself expect or ask anything at all of another woman—or let a woman offer him love, whether or not he asked for it—and the magnitude of his loss made Callie’s heart ache for him. Made her wish she’d been able to create a space for him in which he could have found his way back to trusting another human being not to hurt him with how big he could love. She kept her face neutral as she looked at him now across the club, knowing the last thing she could afford to do was let Gabe see pain in her eyes.

Pain. Or yearning. Neither of those things are for him anymore. But Ale . . . Ale will welcome every ounce of both and love you more for them.

Love wasn’t the right word perhaps, but it would do to replace the feelings she had every time she looked at Gabe.

The bartender appeared at Gabe’s elbow, mouth moving. When Gabe glanced away from her, her combined relief and sense of loss echoed the moment Ale had loosened his grip on her wrists. Like she’d made an escape, even if she wasn’t sure she actually wanted one and planned on throwing herself right back into the fire.

Shush. Tonight isn’t about that. Isn’t about Gabe at all. Or the end of my marriage either. This is about me and what I want. What gives me pleasure.

Forget about all the rest.

For her own sake, she had to let go of old ghosts tonight, before she forgot how to let go of them at all.