Patrick reared his arm back and readied his serve.

“Love-thirty,” he said, then tossed the ball into the air. It landed smack in the middle of the net. He pulled a second ball from his pocket, then missed again.

Across the court, Jack cracked a grin. “You suck today.”

“Fuck you.”

He was sucking. Majorly. Again. But he had an excuse—he was distracted, and had been for five whole days.

His next shot made it over the net. Patrick ran to meet Jack’s return, but his brain wasn’t there. It was on Cassie. Thoughts of her had him struggling to concentrate, here and everywhere else.

Her request last Friday had woken up something primal in him. But it worried him too.

She wanted to be taken savagely. Without her consent.

He wasn’t sure he could go through with it. Where was the line between fulfilling a fantasy and committing a crime? How could he avoid crossing it while still making it good for her?

He was determined not to fuck it up. Being asked to do this, to be trusted that much, took what they were doing to a new level. They were definitely in BDSM territory, and as much as he’d played at things over the years, he was completely out of his element.

Jack scored, winning the match. He threw Patrick a shit-eating grin. “You need a rest, old man?”

“You’re an asshole.”

But a rest would be good. It would give him a chance to ask his friend some questions. Patrick gathered up a few wayward tennis balls and made his way to the net.

“Looking to get your ass kicked a third time?” Jack asked.

“Actually, I’m all played out. Do you think we could head over to your office for a bit?”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t going to be hitting on my students for a while.”

“I’m not. But I need some—” He paused. He’d never done this before. “—lifestyle advice.”

Jack’s face went serious. His jaw ticked in understanding. “Let’s go.”

Jack had always been extremely confidential about his sexual proclivities, living the BDSM lifestyle in private. He was a professor at Harvard Law. If people found out he got his rocks off spanking and flogging and tying women up, he feared it might affect his career. So he was all about discussing things in secure places.

By the time they got to Jack’s office, Patrick couldn’t feel his fingers. It wasn’t that chilly—it was certainly going to get worse—but it was cold enough.

Fuck. He needed a vacation.

Jack closed his door behind them. “What do you need?”

Patrick leaned against a chair. “Things with Cassie have progressed, and I’m wondering what you can tell me about breath play and consensual non-consent.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “Try not to kill her, to start.”

“Don’t be a dick. I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Jack sat at his desk. “I thought you two were just fucking. Have you gone beyond that point?”

He didn’t know. “Things got kind of…intense last weekend.”

“Intense how?”

Taking her in every orifice, intense.

Gagging her and making her come so hard she cried, intense.

Telling her things I’ve never told anyone, not even you, intense.

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s a fucking understatement.” Jack frowned and steepled his fingers together. “This is dangerous stuff, Patrick. They call it edge play for a reason. It requires a shit-ton of trust, and being able to read one another. Are you sure she wants this? Are you sure you do?”

Patrick pushed off the chair and paced around the room. Cassie wanted this. He knew that. They’d talked more about it over the phone since last weekend, and she’d said she liked the idea of being tied up as part of the fantasy. To have her mouth covered when she started to scream. Patrick should’ve been disgusted. Appalled. Anxious as all shit over the idea of her wanting him to be so vicious.

But, fuck. It turned him on.

“What does it say about me if I do?”

Jack was silent for a beat too long. “I guess the question is, why do you want it?”

“Because she asked me to.”

“So these are Cassie’s fantasies,” Jack confirmed.

“I thought they were—hers I mean—but I want them too.”

“And that bothers you?”

“I don’t know that it bothers me…”

He hadn’t been bothered by anything they’d done together, from telling her to shut up to gagging her. He’d thoroughly enjoyed watching her struggle to speak, rendered helplessly silent. He’d loved her body’s reaction when he’d had his fingers inside her pussy and her ass too, his elbow shoved against her spine, making her like things she’d never tried before, feeling her give in. And, God, hearing the strain in her voice when she finally broke under the force of all that pleasure…it was the hottest, most powerful thing he’d ever experienced.

He wanted it too. To take her by surprise. To feel her thrash and hear her protest and knowing he could have her anyway.

“I think it bothers me that it doesn’t bother me.”

“And why is that?”

Patrick continued to pace. Stupid law professors and their stupid Socratic methods. This was why he’d never needed a therapist. He had Jack asking him questions until he ran out of air. “You know I’m kind of an asshole, right?”

“Your words, not mine.”

“Well, with her, I can be that—not the nicest. I can let this heartless beast out, this part of me that’s angry at everything, the part I try to shut down and sublimate through empty sex with strangers because I can’t do a fucking thing to change it. She likes it pretty goddamn rough, and I can…give in to that. But I’m not gonna actually hurt her. What she’s asked me to do, it’s this deep-seated fantasy she doesn’t even get, and it woke up stuff in me too. And we’re not just fucking. We talk. Sleep together. Make breakfast in the morning. Shit I never do, with anyone.”

Patrick stopped talking, stopped pacing too. He turned to face his friend.

“So, Cassie is different,” Jack said.

“Yeah. She is.”

Relief came like a linebacker, suddenly knocking the wind out of him. Everything with Cassie had been a break from the ordinary, and maybe that’s why this was coming to the surface. Maybe wanting this was something he’d buried, because when would he have figured out that he liked this on a one-night stand? No woman would meet a guy in a bar and say the things Cassie did. But perhaps this was what had always crackled between them—a dark, intense attraction that had driven all their verbal clashing. A secretive thing they both shared that he’d never known he wanted before.

It was why he couldn’t stop himself. Why be broke his own rules to be with her, again and again and again. The desire had always been there. Cassie just lit a fuse in him. She was the burning match, but he was the kindling, and he wanted to chase that fire until they both exploded.

“Then I don’t think wanting that says anything about you,” Jack said. “Except that you’ve found someone who trusts you with the most secret parts of her being.”

He put his glasses on, turned to his computer and started typing. Patrick settled into a chair.

“There’s no safe way to do breath play,” his friend began. “But if you’re going through with it, you have to know what you’re doing. Never apply serious pressure to the front of her throat. Listen to make sure her breathing doesn’t get too shallow. Don’t wait for her eyes to lose focus, or for her to struggle, for you to stop. And always, always make sure you can feel her pulse.”

“Got it.”

“Have you taken a CPR course?”

Patrick nodded grimly. “We have one at work every few years.”

“Good. I’m assuming you’re smart enough to have established a safeword?”

“Of course,” Patrick scoffed. “I do actually know a thing or two about this.”

“You came to me for advice. Now shut up and take it.”

“That’s usually my line.”

Jack rolled his eyes, typed a few more things and clicked on his mouse. “I’m sending you some articles. Read them thoroughly. If you have any questions, let me know.”

“And take two aspirin and call you in the morning.”

Jack did not seem to appreciate the lighthearted commentary. His lips were tight in a way Patrick had never seen before.

“I’m warning you, Patrick—do not hurt her. Or you won’t only have Lilly banging down your door. You’ll be answering to me as well.”

He’d never seen his friend’s Dominant side, and he had to admit, it schooled him.

“Understood.”

They grabbed a bite to eat after that, changing the subject to the situation with Brady and Sam over a pint and sweet potato fries. They were talking about Jack and Lilly’s plans to give the troubled couple some space by babysitting Allegra and Hope for a weekend when Patrick’s phone buzzed with a text.

Cassie’s name read out on the screen. His stomach pitched with happiness.

“This day can suck a big bag of dicks,” her text read.

Patrick couldn’t hide his smile. “Is that an invitation?”

“Unfortunately, not tonight. I have more work to do, and I’m exhausted.”

“Pobre cosita.”

The teasing Spanish words for poor thing came to him quickly. Amazing, the pieces of language that had stuck in his memory after all these years.

“Don’t you dare get me horny. I have to stay focused.”

He replied with a frowning emoticon. He was disappointed that he wouldn’t be seeing her—five days already felt like an eternity—but it was all right. Given the several articles Jack had sent him, he had plenty to keep him busy.

Her next message came in quickly.

“I’m taking a personal day tomorrow to get some stuff done. Call you when I’m finished?”

Yeah, he was way too happy to read that text.

“Sure. I take a long lunch on Thursdays. Maybe I won’t go back to work afterward.”

“Tough life.”

He sent her an emoticon with its tongue stuck out. “Don’t work too hard.”

He pocketed his phone and looked up to find Jack staring at him expectantly.

“What?” Patrick asked.

“You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said, have you?”

Patrick mirrored Jack’s shit-eating grin from before. “Nope.” He was pretty sure that was the way his face always got now, whenever he was talking to Cassie.

Jack chuckled and knocked back a sip. “It’s okay to let yourself be happy, you know.”

Patrick didn’t know how to respond to that. The truth was, Cassie made him happier than he’d been in…ever? But telling Jack that would mean explaining the rule the two of them had made up when they started this thing. The escape clause he should’ve invoked when he and Cassie were in bed the other night.

Mentioning it then, or now, was like pointing to the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. And Patrick wanted to put that shit off as long as possible.

He smiled and reached for his beer instead.

---

Once Patrick was home, he sat down at his computer and opened Jack’s email. There were dozens of other ones he should’ve given his attention to—ones from Strauss, his team, and he needed to get in touch with Hudson as soon as possible, but right now he had other things on his mind.

He clicked open the links and read through the posts on breath play first. Jack’s warning that there was no safe way to do this was no joke. Depriving her brain of oxygen would put her in hypoxia, which would enhance her orgasm, but he was literally going to have her life in his hands. He’d do anything to fulfill Cassie’s fantasies, but he wasn’t confident he could pull off this one without leaving a corpse behind.

He needed to dial things back. She didn’t want to have her breathing cut off—just to feel the possibility of it, so that was as far as they were going to go.

The pieces on consensual non-consent drew his attention in a different way. It calmed him in a way he never expected, reading through women’s accounts of what they liked about it, even defending it. And the more he read, the more he understood there was nothing wrong with either of them wanting this. They were simply two consenting adults engaging in role play. Doing this was totally fine, if you were with the right person.

Patrick wanted to be the right person for Cassie.

He hated that she’d been so ashamed. And he suddenly felt fiercely protective of her, wanting to shield her from the frustrations of her life, how she struggled with being biracial and the strain she felt from her job and family.

Her mother was pressuring her to have a baby. The image bothered him, because Cassie being pregnant meant he’d no longer be in the picture. Sure he might’ve wanted kids, in some alternate universe where he had a clue on how to be a parent. And what shit could he pass on to them? Addiction? She didn’t seem to want kids, though. At least, not right now. And he certainly shared her feelings of ambivalence on the subject.

He pulled out his phone and read over their texts, smiling at her quippy little lines. There was a lot on her shoulders, but it was more than that. Cassie didn’t give herself permission to be who she was. She was hard-hitting, but also surprisingly vulnerable. And he wanted to give her what she needed. To ruin her for every other man by acting out her last two fantasies and making them incredible.

Wait, were they the last?

Patrick searched his memory. She’d only said they were the two fantasies she was the most ashamed of, but they did have an air of finality to them.

He didn’t want this to be over. The very thought of it nearly had him bolting out of his chair, his legs itching with the need to move. But the desires gnawing at him were hypocritical at best. This claim she had on him was short term—that was always the deal, and he’d been all for it. He never wanted commitment, just a break from luring new women into his bed.

The thing was, he didn’t want a new woman.

He wanted Cassie.

Somehow, he’d gone beyond liking her. He liked the certainty of knowing he was going to see her, craved the intimacy they shared. It wasn’t only her pleasure he longed for, but her laughter, her fearless attitude, her flirty text messages and the familiarity of her body next to his.

And that was a bad sign.

It was time to put some distance between them. Maybe it was a good thing that these two fantasies might be her last, because that gave him a reason to cash in his chips.

He could do that, right? Say things were getting too deep and walk away unscarred?

Goddamn it, he didn’t think he could. Not without feeling a very palpable loss.

He’d been determined to never fall in love again, because Sofía had broken his heart into so many pieces it never managed to work right afterward. But the ache in his chest right now made him aware that his heart was working again, and it didn’t want to let Cassie go.