“Thank you so much for your time,” I say, nudging Scarlett to get her to stand up. We’re both carrying armfuls of samples that neither investor bothered to look at.

The stern woman in a pantsuit and her partner, a balding man with a perpetual bored look on his face nod politely.

“You have my card, so you know where to reach me!” I say a little too cheerily.

The woman forces a smile that doesn’t touch her eyes. “I do have your card.”

“Right. Thanks again,” I say.

Scarlett follows me outside the Kolcom building. I expected the investors to meet us in some airy office upstairs, but they just came down to speak with us in the lobby, like they didn’t want to even let us upstairs. I turn around on the sidewalk and look back to the huge building, sighing.

“They didn’t seem impressed, did they?” I ask.

Scarlett squeezes my shoulder. “There will be more investors. This was just the start. Screw ‘em.”

“You think they’d invest in us if I did?” I ask, grinning.

Scarlett chokes out a laugh, looking at me with such a surprised bulge of her eyes that I laugh too. “Damn, girl. Working at that club has really upped your dirty joke game. I’m impressed.”

I notice a black car with silver trim move slowly from a parking space on the side of the road and roll to a stop in front of us. The door opens and Logan Steel steps out. He looks so sexy as he pulls off his sunglasses and buttons his suit that it’s almost laughable. A woman bumps into a man’s back because she was staring so hard at him. He walks toward me, every movement a seduction. A promise.

Scarlett tenses beside me. She tries to sound casual, but her voice comes out a little strangled. “Mr. Fucking Steel. Wow.”

“Emmaline,” he says. “I need you to come with me.”

I step toward him, letting him slide his strong arm around my back and lead me toward his car. I give a quick apologetic wince to Scarlett over my shoulder. We had plans for coffee and I’m totally blowing her off, but she reassures me with a wink and a smile and then an incredibly crude thrust of her hips. I love that woman.

I’m acutely aware of the way every woman within a hundred yards is watching me enviously as Logan guides me around the front of his car and opens the passenger door for me, helping me inside. He doesn’t notice a single one of them. His eyes are on me, protectively guiding me, as if every crack in the pavement could catch me off guard and send me toppling, but the only thing in danger of making me lose my footing is him.

I wait while he walks back around the front of the car and slips into the driver seat. He opens the center console and pulls out a black piece of silk. “Do you trust me?” he asks.

I look at the silk and back to his dark gaze. Something lingers in those eyes. A promise. Whether it’s a promise of pain, pleasure, or something in between, I have no way of knowing. Do I trust him? He’s asked me before in different ways and I’ve always spat out the answer I knew he wanted to hear. I’ve fantasized about trusting him and let myself believe I did, for as long as I needed to get off. But trust? Do I really trust him? Can I trust him?

“I don’t know,” I say.

To my surprise, he smirks. “We’re going to fix that. Put this on.”

I take the silk from him and cover my eyes, tying it behind my head. I swallow as the blackness takes over. It’s only when the car starts moving and a few moments have passed that I realize how distracting it is to look at him. I’ve never really just been around Logan without being nearly blinded by how sexy he is. It’s nice. I start to hear sounds I wouldn’t have noticed before. The deep, smooth sound of his breaths. The creak of the leather steering wheel beneath his strong hands. The rubbery clicks and thuds of the gearshift. Even the slight rustle of his slacks against the seat as he moves his leg to use the brakes.

Trust.

Even though I didn’t fully realize it at first, that’s what this has always been about. I pushed him away at times because I felt like letting him any closer would force me to trust him, and I knew he would see that I couldn’t do it yet, not completely. I still don’t know if I can bring myself to do it in a real way. The BDSM was a way for me to try trusting him in a safe environment, almost like a game. I was able to fantasize about it and the reason I kept having to push things farther was because I had to keep pushing the boundaries of the game. When my trust didn’t feel real, I couldn’t get off. It was that simple.

Logan doesn’t speak again until I hear gravel grinding under the wheels of the car and he comes to a stop. “Stay there,” he says, shifting the car into what I assume is park. His door opens and his feet crunch across the gravel, getting closer.

My door opens and strong hands grip me under the arm, guiding me up and out of the car. We couldn’t have gone too far, because it felt like we only drove thirty minutes, but depending on the direction he took us, that could have led us to quite the variety of places. The air feels open and wide, and even though I can’t see, I can feel we are somewhere remote and natural.

“Where are we?”

“You’ll see soon. Take one step to your right and then four steps forward.”

I pause, feeling a lurch in my stomach. He expects me to just walk where he tells me to when I can’t see anything? What if I’m standing on the edge of a cliff or something? I could fall to my death and I’d never see it coming. Literally.

“You have to trust me,” he says.

“One to my… right?” I ask, taking my foot and extending it, careful to keep my balance. I test the ground before shifting my weight and taking the first step. I do the same for the next step. “This way?” I ask.

“A little more to the right. Four steps. Yes. Good.”

My heart is pounding. I don’t know how far he wants to take this, but I feel emotionally exhausted already. It’s a constant battle not to rip the blindfold off. It feels like being confined, like I’m in a tight space without any room to stretch out and every second is intensifying the panic settling in the back of my mind.

“Now just walk forward. There will be a slight incline, but it’s not too steep.”

I suck in a breath, praying for some mystical injection of bravery to get me through this. For all I know I’m on completely level ground with no danger at all, but I don’t know, and the uncertainty has me imagining the worst. I do as he says, still slowly, treating every step like it could be a step over an endless chasm.

Each time I reach the end of one of his orders, I think it must surely be the last. And if it’s not, I keep wondering how I can handle any more of this without losing my mind. But I do, step after step, order after order, and I don’t complain. Soon, I’m stepping more surely, putting my feet forward without testing first, trusting his guidance to take me on the safe path. I don’t charge ahead blindly though. I hang on to his every word, learning to use his voice as my sight. Learning to trust it.

“Now take off your blouse,” he says.

This command gives me pause. After close to ten minutes of learning to follow his every order without hesitation, I can’t do it right away.

“You’re hesitating,” he says, “because you have no idea where you are right now. For all you know, I just walked you in full view of a public place. Dozens of people could be staring at you right now. But you’re going to take off your blouse anyway, because you trust me.”

My hands inch toward the bottom of my blouse, which I slowly pull over my head, feeling the truth of his words echo through me. I would be mortified if I really was somewhere public, but the uncertainty is turning me on. The need to trust him.

“Bra. Off,” he says.

I do as he says, feeling my nipples tighten and grow hard against the slight chilly breeze.

“Pants and panties.”

I slide both down obediently.

“Shoes.”

I kick my shoes off, conscious of the fact that I could be mooning people as I bend down to pull off my socks too.

“Good. That’s my good little Kitten.”

He moves behind me, hands pressing hard into my hips and sliding down to my thighs. His thumbs splay open, tracing the edges of my mound and spreading the electric sensation of his touch all over my body. He moves his hand over my already wet slit and begins to work me, making my knees instantly weak. To my surprise, it’s working. I’m not in the slightest bit of pain, but my body is responding to every single movement of his skillful fingers. It’s not long before I’m shaking, having to squeeze his wrist to keep from falling to my knees with pleasure.

“Not yet,” he says. “You’re cumming on my cock this time.”

His words send a fresh pulse of excitement through me. I wait, completely deprived of my sight, feeling as though all my remaining senses are on full alert. I hear the rattle of his belt buckle and his zipper dragging down. I hear him dropping clothes to the ground.

“On your hands and knees, now,” he commands.

I obey, getting in position and waiting, still conscious that I have no idea where I am or who could be watching. I’ve put so much trust into him. This time it feels real. It isn’t about pain or submission. He is showing me that I can trust him completely and totally with my life. He’s still showing me that I can trust him. When the head of his cock finds my entrance though, all thoughts of why and how fade into background noise.

There’s only the perfect fullness of him inside me and the slap of his hips against me. My knees dig into the dirt and I squeeze handfuls of grass tightly, letting my head fall so my cheek presses into the chilly ground.

I’m getting closer and closer to climax. It builds with every slap of his skin against mine, every plunge of his length into my wetness. And then without warning, he rips the blindfold from my head. I’m overcome by the sudden brightness of it all. The sun, the mountains stretched ahead of me, the sheer emptiness. I see the thin trail we must have come up and realize I really could have been hurt if I veered too far off the path, but he led me here without incident.

I also see that absolutely nobody is watching. It all comes as such a shock that I feel the building pressure of my orgasm falter. It wavers, suspended, ready to burst, but just out of reach. As if he knows exactly what I need, Logan leans in close until the stubble of his face brushes against my cheek. “You can trust me, Emmaline.”

It’s the first time he has used my name while we’re having sex, and the sound of it threads into me, doing something strange to my emotions, something warm and full and lovely.

“You can trust me,” he repeats, moving himself inside me still, slowly now. Tenderly. “There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for you, Kitten. I would sacrifice everything. I would do anything. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” I say, letting the note of surprise I feel at my answer slip out. I believe him. “I believe you,” I gasp.

“Then trust me. Give me what you’ve been holding back and I promise you I will never abuse it.”

I stare into the blindingly beautiful sight ahead of me, wrapped in this moment, in these emotions, and still painfully aware of the orgasm threatening to explode within me or slip away, once and for all.

“I trust you,” I say. As if the words were a hidden key, my climax tears through me, breaking free with the force of a tsunami, turning my muscles to jelly.

Logan groans with me, his cock pulsing inside me and filling me to the brim with his hot cum.

“I love you,” he says, voice raspy and heavy.

For once, I don’t think. I don’t hesitate. I don’t second guess myself. I just speak, and the words come straight from my heart. Straight from the place of trust I can already feel swelling inside me. “I love you, too.”