“Thank you for meeting me,” Tina said as she sat down behind the shiny conference table.

Outside, the western sky dimmed into a burning rust color. Dots of headlights crawled along Fifth Avenue, and the green of the park turned gray.

When we shook hands, my sleeve hiked up. Caden had tied me up three days before, and the bruises had just faded down to yellow.

Like a teacher who called on you for the one answer you didn’t know, Tina’s eyes fell on the discoloration inside my arm, safely an inch below the wrist. She couldn’t know the pains he’d taken to make sure he didn’t pinch the nerve. Nor could she know the most pleasurable pain didn’t come from the ties.

“I had a cancellation, so it worked out,” I said, ignoring the question in her eyes.

“The board’s pretty interested in this.”

“It’s hot in here.” She took off her jacket. “Do you want some water?”

“I’m good.” I opened the folder and handed her a copy of the proposal with my inner wrist facing the table. “I put in your revisions. I think it’s ready for the board.”

She nodded and scanned the pages. “I think so too.”

“Hey.” I had my phone pressed to my ear as I walked down an empty stairway. The walls were bright white with black scuffs. I’d waited at the elevator, but I had too much energy. I didn’t wait for Caden to greet me. “I just met Tina. She loved it. And I mean loved with a capital L and a heart for an O. She wants me to present it to the board and tell her what kind of position I want!”

Full time? Advisory? Did I want to stay in private practice? Any kind of hybrid? The options were overwhelming and thrilling. So many doors had opened, I couldn’t count them.

“That’s wonderful,” he replied.

I slowed my run. He had been his one true self when he’d kissed me good-bye in the morning. But he wasn’t now. It was creeping back. No one would notice but me. He sounded so close to normal, maybe a little tired, but he was in the beginning of Damon’s cycle.

I stopped on a landing. There was going to be a course correction. “Where are you?”

“In my office. I just got out of the OR.”

“What floor is that on?”

“Where are you, Major?”

“Between seven and eight. On the stairs.”

“Meet me on six.”

I hung up. My heels clattered and echoed off the metal steps and stark walls.

The door to the sixth floor slapped open, and he was there. Clean-shaven for cutting day. Collar open to the edges of the hair on his chest. Thick watch setting the boundary for the precision of his hands. Eyes of cold, dark sapphire that would get darker and colder very soon.

He reached out as I came to the last step and kissed me. Possessed me. Devoured me. I had so much to say, but I was consumed in that kiss.

“It’s working,” I said when I could breathe. “You’re holding.”

“I know. I know. We were down to eighteen hours. Now it’s three days.”

“Three whole days.”

He squeezed me so hard I left the floor and only let go enough to kiss me again. “I just want a minute to kiss you like this. Taste you before I get taken over.”

I forgot about the sleeves and the bruises. About the meeting with Tina and what she’d offered at the end.

He was in there with me, kissing my mouth and my neck like a starving man. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.

He put hands on both sides of my face and yanked himself away.

“I love you,” he said through his teeth as if carving it in his mind.

“Three days.”

“Then five. Then a week.” I hooked my hands at his elbows and touched his forehead with mine. “I never thought I’d be grateful to Ronin for anything in my life.”

“It’s changing fast though.”

“Tonight then.” I couldn’t help but smile.

“When this is all over—” He kissed my lips, flicking his tongue inside them. “When I’m normal again, I’m not going to stop.”

“Stop what?”

He kissed my face between every act. “Tying you down. Spanking you. Hurting you. Pushing you. Owning you. Marking you.”

“Deal.” I pushed him away, and his face darkened as if the change was coming in with a tide.

“Be naked when I get home.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said over the phone as I paced the living room. “Are you naked?”

“Yes. I’m ready.”

“I’m going to destroy you whether you’re ready or not.”

He hung up.

My plan was to get destroyed, then before he went cold again, we would talk about my options with the hospital and my practice. I couldn’t figure out how to manage the time. Many doctors melded the two; I didn’t know how. The normal Caden would know what to do. The man who was coming home was a trusted keeper of my body and my orgasms, but my career was off-limits.

Passing the mirror by the front door, I stopped. My hair draped over my shoulders like a veil. I pulled it into a twist and over one shoulder.

Three days.

The time between episodes was getting longer. The crescent of light that glowed when the dark eclipsed the light had gotten slimmer and slimmer. Totality never came. The moon was already moving away from the sun.

There was a knock at the front door, and I froze. Why didn’t he come in?

Did he want me to open the door naked onto 87th Street?

The satin lining of my coat was cool on my back. I checked myself in the mirror and let the collar loose so it fell over my shoulders as I clutched the placket together at my breast. I opened the door. Colin stood under the front light.

“Jesus, Colin!”

“You invited me for dinner. Where are you g—?” He stopped himself when he saw my bare feet, then he raised an eyebrow at me, a smile curling one side of his mouth.

“Not tonight.”

I tried to close the door in his face, but he held it open. “Are you all right?”

I got the coat up around me. “I double-booked. Sorry. We have to get dinner another time.”

“Sis. What’s going on?”

“My husband’s getting home for the first time after days of back-to-back surgery. I’d like to spend my evening doing what married people do, not letting my brother continually ask what’s wrong, okay?”

The gears in his head turned. Behind him, people walked the street below. I was a woman in a coat talking to a man on my stoop.

What I wouldn’t have done for a porch and a driveway.

“Fine, I get it. You two. Jesus.” He shook his head.

“Tomorrow,” I called when he was halfway down the steps.

“Sure, sure.”

He opened the front gate just as Caden approached with a stride and a face stiffened with jealousy. It turned into a charming smile when Colin turned and Caden could see him. They shook hands. I went inside and closed the door but didn’t lock it. When Caden came in, I was on the couch in my coat.

He locked the door. Looking at me, he tossed his keys onto the table. His beeper. His wallet. The bulge in his pants was distracting me, but not him. He was slow and deliberate, as if nothing could rush a man without feelings.

“I said naked,” he said.

“Colin came to the door.”

“Put your heels on the edge of the couch and spread your knees.” He put his jacket on a hook and came to me, rolling up his sleeves.

I got my knees up, spreading them to show myself. His businesslike gaze had physical presence. He didn’t just look between my legs; he stroked without even touching me.

“Naked is naked.”

I shook off the coat. He undid his buckle, metal clicking on metal. Every cell in my body was drawn to him. Every inch of skin trembled for his touch.

I’d never seen him like this. He was as stone cold and far away as he’d ever been. I didn’t know he could be this far inside himself.

And yet, he was still the guy in the stairway. The man who was afraid he would hurt me. The husband who risked everything for our marriage.

He looped the belt, holding the ends in his fist. “Don’t flinch.”

He tapped the loop of the belt in his palm, looking between my legs. My breath picked up, getting shallower and faster.

“What’s naked?” he asked.

“Naked.”

He slapped the inside of my thigh with the leather, and I flinched before it struck, then gritted my teeth from the raw sting, twisting with my knees together.

“Open your legs.” He pulled them apart. “What are you afraid of?”

“You’re going to hit my pussy with the belt.”

He acted as if the thought had never occurred to him, raised the belt, and let it fall gently between my legs, sending sensation from my clit to my knees. The second tap was a little harder, and the third made me jump.

“You’re afraid,” he said, “and you’re turned on.”

“Yes.”

“You think those two things might be related?”

A hard swipe fell inside my other thigh, leaving a burn behind.

I kept my legs open this time, daring him to do it again.

He smiled and bit his lower lip. “We do this thing every time. I hurt you or I control you, then I lose it for a second, and boom, I’m back to normal until I’m not anymore. Right?”

“Yes.”

He reached his arm back, looking right at my cunt for aim, and I flinched. I flinched a lot. He put his arm down and smiled before he dropped the belt. He kneeled between my legs.

“What I thought today on the way here was, why do I rush to that middle part?” Then he pressed four fingers flat against his mouth and licked them. “Why? When you like getting hurt so much?”

He slapped his wet hand hard against my clit. It hurt so badly I lifted my bottom from the couch and screamed, but every sting, every jangling nerve blossomed into pleasure, and I gasped.

“You like it.” He slapped again, and the pleasure bloomed bigger.

“I love it.”

“What are you going to do when I feel too guilty to do this?”

The slap after was harder than the others, and I howled. He yanked my legs apart, and when I looked down, he had the belt again.

“No,” I whispered.

“Come on, Grey. What’s a limit if you can’t push it?”

He hit me with the belt. The pain was extraordinary, exquisite, nearly unbearable, and so was the explosion of pleasure. I cried to God when he touched my raw clit, pinching it between two fingers. I was overstimulated and sore, overwhelmed with sensation.

Tight in his fingers, hood pulled back, he exposed my bare, red clit, pinching until the blood flowed to the rawest part. I got up on my elbows and locked eyes with him as he lowered his head and flicked it with his tongue.

My body expanded, taking up the entire room in electricity and heat, but I didn’t explode. The detonator got warm but didn’t blow.

“I think I knew the minute I met you.” He gave me a tortuous lick. “I think I knew about you, but I didn’t know about me.” Still pinching, he flicked his nail on a raw membrane and thousands of nerve endings screamed in pain.

“I knew!” I cried, biting back a scream that would bring the police to the door. “About me.”

He licked the bulb between his fingers. I was so close, yet he pulled away, leaving me on the edge. “Has it occurred to you I have no significant war trauma because my desire to hurt you is trauma enough?”

“No, that’s not—”

Another flick and I writhed in pain.

“I can’t. Caden, I can’t take it.”

“Yes, you can.”

He put his lips around my clit and softly, gently, barely sucked on it. Then he let his fingers go. As the blood flowed back, expanding the capillaries and thrumming against the nerves, the pain grew explosive, but the pleasure of his mouth was just ahead of it, pulling the pain out to the brink of orgasm.

Then he stopped.

“Correlation,” I said breathlessly. “Not cause.”

He stood over me like a tower pushing up against the limits of the ceiling. “You’re saying I’m not traumatized by my own needs, but that they just happen to correlate to this disaster of a marriage?”

Disaster of a marriage?

That was an ice-cold knife in my gut. Through everything, neither of us had labeled our union as anything but a buoy in a rough sea. The one stable, invariable thing through his ever-changing mental state.

I put my legs down. “What did you just say?”

“Don’t worry about it. Really, Greyson. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up in love again. Ready to conquer the world with my woman. Et cetera, et cetera.” He put his hands on my knees and pressed them open slowly. I resisted. “But when you look at it objectively, and really, I’m the objective one here, this is a nightmare.” He jerked my knees apart with more strength than I had to keep them closed. I fell back. “And you’re feeding it.”

He wedged himself between my open legs and pulled down his zipper.

“Are you angry?” In this state, he usually didn’t feel anything. If he was angry, it was a step in the right direction.

“No.” His cock was in his fist. “Not angry.”

Seeking leverage in soft cushions, I tried to get up to a sitting position. “There’s a name for this. For you.”

“I’ve been called an asshole already.”

“Not asshole. Something clinical.”

“Really, baby?” He lined his cock along my entrance.

“Sadist.”

“No, no. That’s—”

“Your father. And you.”

He thrust his cock into me, and I was torn between rage and the edge of climax. “I wasn’t like this until you.” He pushed so deep it hurt. So deep his body rubbed my raw, sensitive clit.

“You were too weak to see it.” I looked deeply into the firmament behind his eyes. “Sadist.”

He twisted me, pinning my right arm under my own weight and my left behind my back, fucking me as though he wanted to push through me. “You made this monster. How do you like it?”

Did I create this? Did he become what I wanted?

Did it matter?

“Sadist.” I squeaked it one last time before his hands found my throat.

He bent me harder, pushing on my windpipe to growl in my ear. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Yes.” I was choking.

“You like the monster I’ve become?”

“I love it.” Barely a breath.

“I knew it.” His fingers tightened.

I was handing him my life and my sex and my orgasm with both hands. I’d fantasized about this since I was a girl and finally… I had only a single breath to use to stop him.

“I love you,” I croaked before he cut my air off completely.

In my last gasps, the orgasm detonated. Hot shrapnel pinged off the shell of my skin, stinging my armor from the inside, fighting for life, stiffening with pleasure as I looked into two holes punched through a rigid, red face, open to the blue Iraqi sky.

And black.