For the first time in so long, I don’t dream.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had action movie dreams, filled with so much drama and suspense that I often wake up exhausted, feeling like I’ve hardly slept at all. A hard workout during the day usually helps to quiet my night brain, but even that doesn’t always get the job done, and sex almost always has the opposite effect. Instead of calming me down, it shifts my dreams into overdrive.

After an especially steamy evening, I can usually count on waking up at least twice, soaked in sweat after barely escaping motorcycle-riding velociraptors or fire-breathing flying monkeys or whatever else my overstimulated brain has brewed up with the influx of pleasure hormones.

But this morning when I slit my eyes, taking in the pale light prickling through my yellow curtains, for a moment I can’t believe it’s morning. Without dreams to mark the passage of time, or even a midnight trip to the bathroom, I feel disoriented.

What happened between the moment I passed out on Will’s chest and this moment? Where was I if not in dreamland?

I have no clue, but after a moment I decide this is the kind of weirdness I could get used to.

Who cares where I was or what my brain was up to? If I could wake up feeling this relaxed and refreshed every morning, I would consider myself a lucky girl.

You should arrange for Will to tie you up and make you scream every night.

The thought makes me blush then grin so wide my cheeks start to cramp. I roll over, burying my burning face in my pillow as memories of all the wicked things Will did to me last night come rushing back.

In the light of day, it’s a little embarrassing, but I wouldn’t take back a second of what we shared. At least, not the experimenting part…

I do wish I’d been able to keep the truth from Will a little longer—for his own protection—but by the time I started making those confessions, I wasn’t thinking with my rational mind. Letting Will take the lead wasn’t just sexy as hell, it also did a number on my self-defense system. All those walls I’ve worked so hard to keep in place since we separated came tumbling down so fast it made my head spin.

And I’m sure the nipple clamps didn’t help things any.

Nipple clamps. I let my lover put clamps on my nipples and other, even more intimate places last night. Who is this wild, experimental person, and where has level-headed Hailey gone?

“Good morning, Curious,” Will says from the door to my bedroom. “You ready for breakfast?”

I roll over, the goofy grin rushing back to my face as I meet his dancing eyes. He looks as giddy as I feel, which for some reason makes me giggle.

“What’s so funny?” he asks with a smile.

“Nothing. Everything.” I lift my hand to cover my mouth and add in a stage whisper, “We did naughty things in this bed last night, William Major Saunders.”

He chuckles. “We did, Hailey Rae Marks. So how are you feeling about that now that morning has broken?”

I prop up against the pillows as I thread my fingers together in my lap. “I’m feeling good,” I say, my toes squirming beneath the covers as I meet Will’s searching gaze and start blushing all over again. “Great, actually. I slept like a rock. Best sleep I’ve had in forever.”

“Glad to hear it.” He steps into the room, carrying a tray mounded with a plate of pastries, a bowl of fresh fruit and yogurt, and a French press filled with coffee. “Hopefully you woke up hungry, too.”

I press my lips together, shaking my head as Will settles the tray across my lap. “You didn’t have to do this. We could have eaten together at the table.”

“I know I didn’t have to.” He leans down, bringing his face level with mine. “I wanted to. I wanted to do something to show you how grateful I am for last night. And for you. And for your honesty.”

I bring a hand to his face, cupping his stubbly cheek. “You don’t have to thank me. It was wonderful. And it probably could have been wonderful a lot sooner if I’d been honest with you instead of running away.”

“I understand why you ran,” he says, leaning into my touch. “It’s a big thing to keep secret, and I never should have discussed the intimate details of our relationship with someone else. I should have told Sterling that I appreciated his concern, but that our sex life was between you and me and no one else.”

“We both could have handled things better,” I agree, anxiety spiking again as I brush his hair from his forehead. “But I want you to promise me that you’ll be honest with me from now on, even if it’s hard. And I’ll do the same.”

He turns his head, pressing a kiss to my palm. “Done. Honesty, even if it hurts.”

“And no holding back,” I add in a softer voice. “I need to know if this will really work, and that can’t happen if you’re giving me the PG-13 version of what you want. You get what I’m saying?”

His lips curve. “I get it, but we’re only three days in, woman. It’s okay to take things slow. You need to learn how to walk before I ask you to run.” He presses a kiss to my forehead that makes me warm all over. “No one ever made it from the couch to a 5k by sprinting the entire distance the first day of training, right?”

“I see your point.” I scoot over, moving the tray with me, and pat the mattress. “Sit down and stay a while? There’s more than enough to share.”

He straightens, taking a step away from the bed. “I would love to, but I was doing some thinking this morning while I was out getting pastries.”

“That sounds ominous…”

Will smiles. “Not ominous at all. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for us to fall back into old habits. At least, not some of them.”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean sex and intimacy outside the game,” he says, sending heat rushing to my cheeks again. “Right now, all I want to do is crawl into bed with you, feed you breakfast, lick honey off your nipples, and make love to you slow and sweet until lunch time.”

My lashes flutter. “Sounds like a solid plan to me. I’ve missed that part of us.”

“I have, too,” he says softly. “But if we start down that road, I’m going to lose all objectivity and the distance I need to be a good teacher. And I’d probably lose what’s left of my self-preservation instinct, too.” He runs a hand through his hair with a sad smile. “Until we know for sure that this second chance is a go, I can’t get too attached to the idea of you and me together again, Hailey. Losing you was…so hard. Crazy fucking hard, and I don’t want to go through that kind of grief again unless I absolutely have to.”

Chest aching, I hold his gaze, hoping he can see how truly sorry I am to have brought him pain. “I know it was hard. It was hard for me, too. That’s why I tried to keep the lie about the other man going. I didn’t want to get your hopes up and let you down if I can’t be the person you need me to be. I didn’t want to risk hurting you again like that. I—” I’m about to say ‘I love you,’ but I bite back the words at the last minute, replacing them with, “I care about you.”

He’s right; we have to take this slow and do our best not to fall thoughtlessly back into old habits. I do love Will—I will always love him—but saying the words aloud infers a level of commitment I’m not prepared to make just yet. For me, love is a promise that’s backed up with actions. So, until I’m prepared to walk the walk, I should avoid talking the talk.

“You’re not going to let me down,” Will says. “And I don’t want you to worry about hurting me, okay? I’m a big boy, and I can take care of myself. The only thing you should be concerned about is being honest and open and enjoying yourself as we experiment. And as soon as these lessons stop being fun, you let me know.”

I nod seriously. “I will. I promise.”

“Perfect. We’ll worry about the other stuff after your graduation ceremony,” he says with a wiggle of his eyebrows. “Which I should probably start shopping for. At this rate, you’re going to be graduating early, and I want to make sure you’re dressed appropriately for the occasion.”

Forcing a lighter tone, I quip, “Something leather with spiky studs, I’m hoping?”

“Something like that,” he says, winking as he backs toward the door. “Enjoy your breakfast, beautiful. I’ll see you Monday night.”

My lips turn down, and disappointment rushes through my chest. “What about tonight? You don’t have a game, right?”

“Tonight is a night off to rest, relax, and process.” He pauses in the doorway, looking so delicious in the morning light it’s almost physically painful to look at him. “Like I said, we’re walking before we run. You need time off in between scenes or you risk losing perspective.”

“All right,” I say, though I’m pretty sure I’m already losing perspective, since seeing Will about to walk out of my bedroom makes me feel like it’s raining frogs on my wedding day. “Then I’ll see you Monday.”

“Monday,” he repeats. “I’ll text you with the details later. Goodbye, Curious.” He turns to go, but at the last second leans back into the room to add, “So far you’re getting an A-plus in this course, by the way.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m grinning as I say, “Good to know. I would like extra sparkle stickers on my report card, please.”

“Done,” he says with a laugh. “Have a great day.”

“You, too. And thank you for breakfast,” I say, pouring a cup of coffee as he vanishes from my doorway.

But I’m not focusing on the rich, steamy brown liquid flowing into my cup. I’m counting Will’s steps as he crosses the apartment, my heart sinking deeper and deeper into a sad pit as I hear the front door open and close.

He’s gone. And I won’t see him again until Monday.

The knowledge is truly crushing.

Since we ended things last year, I’ve gone far longer than a day without seeing Will—as long as a couple weeks once we smoothed out our communication system for gym business and he stopped frequenting my favorite coffee shop. And though I never stopped missing him, I learned how to get by and stay positive.

I’m an independent woman who understands that I’m ultimately responsible for my own happiness, no matter how hurt I might be by the secrets my boyfriend kept from me or anything else the people in my life might do to let me down.

But I’ve clearly underestimated how deeply jumping back into bed with Will would affect me. Especially this kind of jumping, the kind that involves shutting down my own self-defense system and trusting in Will to keep me safe.

I don’t regret last night for a second—it was insanely fun and sexy and oh-so-satisfying in every way—but Will is probably right. A day off to process might keep me from getting in too deep too fast.

I pour cream into my coffee and swirl the spoon, mentally scrolling through my stay-on-track strategies, the habits I turn to when I’m feeling down and out. Since Will and I split, when loneliness threatened to suck me down into the misery hole, I’ve found solace in work, exercise, friends, and family.

But the gym is closed on Sundays, my parents are on a European tour, and I already had my fun Saturday with Sabrina yesterday. She’ll be at work all day, pulling a double in an effort to make rent. I could go by her bar and visit, but she would inevitably ask me how Lesson One went, and what can I really say about that except “good”?

The private details are too private for sister dish-time, and I don’t really want to share them, anyway. I want to keep them just between Will and me.

Which leaves exercise as my sole recourse for mood elevation. So even though I’m not at all in the mood for a run, I finish my breakfast, change into my gear, and hit the pavement. I run my usual three and a half miles—the perfect training for the 5k races I’ve got lined up this fall—and then decide to keep going. I’m not tired, and my thoughts are still a ball of knotted yarn rolling around in my head. I haven’t gotten close to untangling them or sorting out what I’m feeling aside from “missing Will and wishing he had never left.”

I push through my usual mile-seven energy dip and loop around for another trip through downtown, taking my total distance to eight or nine miles before I slow to a walk for my cooldown. I’m still restless, but if I run any farther, I’ll regret it tomorrow when I have to spend the entire day teaching my advanced students how to take assailants twice their size to the mat.

And so I slip into Cathedral Juicery for a post-run lemonade and move on to stage two of my Get Grounded plan. Borrowing a pen from the juice barista, I snag a couple of napkins and sit down at a sunny sidewalk table to make a Pro and Con list. It’s a little cool, and most of the people around me are wearing jackets, but my skin is still giving off heat from my run, making me grateful for the breeze blowing off the Willamette River.

There won’t be many more perfect Sunday mornings like this. Soon, autumn will truly take hold and we won’t see temperatures in the seventies until next June. The thought makes me melancholy—I love Portland, but the rainy winters can be a bummer—and the first item on my list ends up being a Con.

Con one: Staying away from Will until Monday means no hugs for at least forty-eight hours. Or at least no Will hugs, which are the best hugs.

How could I have let him leave this morning without getting a goodbye hug? I’ve been suffering from Will hug withdrawal for months and not rushing in shouldn’t mean that a friendly embrace is off-limits.

I make a mental note to ask Will if hugs are approved teacher-student interactions and add a pro to my list:

Pro one: By staying away from Will until Monday I will be following directions like a good student, proving to both Will and myself that I’ve got submissive potential.

Almost immediately, however, I add four more cons.

Con two: If I pretend I’m fine with waiting until Monday, I will be lying to both Will and myself. I don’t want to wait until Monday. I want to see him now.

Con three: If I go home and spend the afternoon alone, I’ll be too distracted to focus on anything productive and end up wasting an entire afternoon binge watching Gilmore Girls for the tenth time and eating an entire pizza by myself.

Con four: And if I eat an entire pizza by myself, I won’t sleep well tonight, and I’ll be wasted for work tomorrow.

Con five: And if I’m wasted for work tomorrow, someone could get hurt, and even if no one gets hurt, I’ll be too tired to follow directions like a good submissive on Monday, and we’ll have to reschedule Lesson Two anyway, so we should just go ahead and reschedule it now—for tonight.

Scrunching up my nose, I valiantly fight to whip up another item for the Pro list, but I come up empty. Looking at the list, it’s a no-brainer. The safety of innocent students practically depends on me going over to Will’s.

Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch, but surely Will can find it in his heart to forgive me for disobeying an order, once I make it clear to him that his delay of Lesson Two was short-sighted.

Especially if I provide a suitable distraction to keep him from getting too worked up about my teeny-tiny violation of the power exchange class terms of service…

And I have the perfect distraction in mind.

With a grin, I stuff my list into the side pocket of my leggings, leave my empty juice glass in the dirty dish bin, and hit the pavement at a jog. I’ve already run over twice my usual distance today, but I’m suddenly filled with energy and in too much of a hurry for a leisurely stroll.

The sooner I get home, the sooner I can shower and head for the condo Will and I shared for years, the space that still pops up in my head when I think of home.