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  “No. Abso-fucking-lutely not.” Another whip-crack. So sharp I nearly felt my skin split. And he kissed away the pain, lips stroking my jaw in the barest of unchaste caresses. “We just have one thing to do first,” he reminded me. The reason for my arrival. The reason for our reunion. The reason there was no reason we had to stay apart. “First we must bury the dead.”

  * * *

  Lachlan wanted nothing more than to claim her. And claim her he would. What was once forbidden was now a foregone conclusion. But he couldn’t just clear off a table and take her on the surface. He couldn’t send her to her knees on the hardwood and make her beg. This was his place, but not their place, not their time.

  He cupped Naya’s lovely face, uncaring if anyone hiding in the eaves and spying from the back thought the gesture odd. They were family. They were demonstrative. Sod off. “The funeral,” he reminded her once more. “After we put that bastard in the ground, you’re mine.”

  That bastard. His father. The architect of his public success and his private destruction. Everything that had led to this day, this hour, could be laid at Ranulf Christie’s upturned feet. He’d married Naya’s mother. He’d joined their families. He’d torn them apart. He’d finally had the decency to set them free by dying.

  Lachlan couldn’t summon up a single ounce of grief. He was too full of gratitude, of happiness, of lust. Naya was here. Naya was his. Her skin was as smooth as the silk she wore and begging for welts, for bruises and the barest of cuts. For kisses, too. Caresses and strokes. And he would give them all to her. Once they’d banished a ghost and exorcised the Devil.

  “The funeral. I’d almost forgotten. Ugh.” She leaned into him for a moment, her fingers curling into the fabric of his jacket. And then she stepped back, adopted the damn-you attitude she’d been wearing when he emerged from the kitchen. “Okay, you’re right,” she said, the European lilt in her voice as enchanting as her ample curves. “Tonight and tomorrow. And then you belong to me, Chef.”

  Defiance and deference tied up in one simple sentence. It went straight to his cock. Fried his nerve-endings. Made his normally steady hands tremble. Fuck. Shite. He was on the clock. He couldn’t tan her arse no matter how his palm itched. And tomorrow morning they had to be at Green-Wood, the bereaved family pretending they gave a fuck.

  They had to bury the dead and so much more. Every condemnation. Every ugly intimation. Every slur. Every shame.

  “What kind of man turns his underage stepsister into his whore? This is not who I raised, Lachlan.”

  “I am exactly who you raised, Father. And don’t you dare call Naya a whore. She’s innocent. Sweet. Kind. Something you’d know nothing about.”

  “This could ruin us. This could ruin you.”

  “That’s absurd. There hasn’t been a whisper of impropriety. And there shouldn’t be. She’s my best friend. How could that possibly ruin anyone?”

  “Because I would make certain of it.”

  And, yes, Ranulf had made certain of it. He’d loaded each terrible weapon and kept them pointed at his son’s head. It was time to throw dirt on those weapons, too.

  Lachlan choked back bile. He tried to hold onto what was right in front of him. Hope, pure and clean and beautiful. A woman no one could tarnish. A promise that merely needed to be kept.

  “Will you go home?” he asked as Naya looked up at him with all of her manufactured cool. Watching. Waiting. Wanting. He knew she had to be fracturing on the inside...because he was. Because he was shattering from the effort of not tearing off her clothes and coming into her, of not marking her, collaring her and chaining her to his bed. “Go home. Rest. Consider this a pause, not a stop.”

  She shook her head, eyes fluttering closed for an instant before opening again and drowning him in two pools of ink. “Home is you, Lock.” The words rushed out on a breathy sigh, laced with agony and anguish. She couldn’t help but be honest with him. The one thing they’d never had between them was lies. “It doesn’t matter where I go. My home has always been you.”

  Fuck. Fucking fuck. His blood roared in his ears. His cock could double as a rolling pin. Lachlan took a deep breath, recalled all the lessons he’d received from Mistresses and subs far more indoctrinated in the life than Naya. Be calm. Stay in control. Set boundaries. Her safety is in your hands. Her trust is in your hands. Her submission is your gift.

  “Tomorrow,” he repeated, hoarsely. “I will put you in a car, and we will pick this up tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  Put me in a car? Like a package delivery? A thing? Of all the nerve. Maybe it was because I’d spent the entire day traveling. Maybe I was just on edge because of everything—distance, death, desire—mixed together. But his words rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, I’d shown him weakness. Yes, I’d shown him need. But just because Lachlan Christie could turn me to liquid with one word, just because he could demand my compliance with two words, didn’t mean I wanted to be managed all of the time. “I can get my own car,” I asserted. “I can even put myself in it.”

  His eyes, dark now with lust, flashed with an angry heat. “You can also listen when I speak.” One of those volcanic directives he was so famous for, though his voice didn’t rise in volume.

  I bristled, crossing my arms over my chest. “Just because I called you ‘chef,’ doesn’t mean you’re my boss,” I reminded him. We hadn’t yet set our boundaries, we hadn’t discussed just how much control I was going to give him. All the things I’d happily done at his say-so at sixteen...there was no guarantee I was going to do them for him now. Hell, we hadn’t exchanged much more than basic pleasantries before I was being packed off to Brooklyn—so any kind of power exchange was out of the question.

  Lachlan scrubbed at his face with the heels of his palms, making a growling sound low in his throat. “Naya...you are trying me.”

  I was exhausted. Emotional. Thirsty for him. And I hadn’t tried him. That was the whole point. All I wanted to do was touch him. Kiss him. Be held in his arms.

  “Are you ever going to kiss me, Lock?”

  “When we’re both old and gray and you come to visit me in the nursing home.”

  “That’s not funny. You know I want you to be my first kiss. My first everything.”

  “And I want more for you than that. There’s a whole world out there, love. Go out into it. See it all. I’ll still be here.”

  “Always?”

  “Forever.”

  Always and forever. He’d kept that vow and welcomed me back like no time had passed and nothing had changed between us. If this was torture for me, it had to be the same for him...and he still had a long night of work ahead.

  “Okay,” I relented, looking around for where I’d dropped my shoulder bag almost twenty minutes ago. Twenty minutes? My God, it felt like we’d already spent hours together...hours and yet not nearly long enough. “Call me a car. I’m in Cobble Hill. At Mom’s.”

  Relief stripped some of the lines from his face and made him look younger. Almost like we could be classmates. Only the kind of schooling we needed was on no syllabus.

  He pulled a cell phone from an inner pocket and tapped open an app. Within seconds, a black car was pre-paid and given my destination address. “Ring me when you get in,” Lachlan said, clearly still grumpy from my teasing and whinging.

  “How would I do that? I’ve never had your number.” It had been one of the tenets of our forced separation: We’d had no way to easily reach one another. No phone numbers. Blocked email addresses. Constant monitoring. His smartphone was still in his hand, so I plucked it from his grasp and swiftly navigated to his contacts. I input my international number—if he didn’t have a global calling plan, that was his mistake—and then dialed it. A tinny rendition of Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” immediately sounded from the depths of my bag, over by the host stand. “Now I can ring you when I get in,” I said with no small amount of satisfaction.

  “Brat.” He shook his head, but couldn’t hide a smal
l smile. And maybe he would’ve said something, snapped out more authoritarian edicts—don’t wear panties, don’t you dare come—but his lackey Davis reappeared, ready to greet their adoring and hungry public. Our intensely charged alone time was at an end. For now. Tomorrow was a whole new day. A whole new start.

  We said genial, family appropriate goodbyes—traded air kisses and shoulder squeezes—as I retrieved my things and Davis started ushering customers in. Then I stepped out onto the sidewalk, peering out onto 9th Avenue for my car amidst a sea of yellow cabs going south. New York in the early evenings was a cacophony of sound and sight and possibility. I couldn’t deny I’d missed everything about this city, not just a particular person who lived in it. Manhattan breathed, Brooklyn teemed with life. Queens was the diverse, beating heart of it all. For all the time I’d spent studying and working overseas, I was still an American at heart, still a New Yorker...still a Christie.

  That wasn’t to say that I hadn’t enjoyed boarding school. Despite the forced separation from Lachlan, I’d adored my time in Switzerland. For one thing, it was where I’d met one of my best friends, Paulie. The daughter of a French diplomat and a German TV actress, she’d facilitated my eventual entree into the world of foreign-language soaps. And there was nothing like being stuck at a tiny private school in the Swiss alps with a bunch of obscenely wealthy teenage girls to give you a risqué education and unparalleled access to adventure. Though I’d gone on to film school, it was the lessons in drama from my classmates that had really taken root.

  Stealing a teacher’s car and joyriding around Montreux. Smoking dope in secret stairwells. Learning that I liked pain no matter who it came from but preferred men—well, one man—in my bed. I’d made so many discoveries with Paulie and Margrethe and Hannah and Aparna in those two years, along with reading all the Simone de Bouvier and Proust.

  I wasn’t one of those girls—those women, I should say—who withered away without their man or turned into a blank page. My pages were all full, with scribbles in the margins. And now that I was back in Lachlan’s world, I knew we had entire books to fill together.

  Suddenly the chorus of a cheerful pop song burst forth from the side pocket of my carry-on—the sound of my phone registering a text message. Before too long, I would need to assign Lachlan a special ringtone of his own. Maybe something by Coldplay or Maroon 5. Or Prince’s “Sexy Motherfucker.” I dug the mobile out with one hand, stepping closer to the curb and out of the path of tourist foot traffic. The text was still on the lock screen. Simple and to the point.

  Don’t you fucking dare touch yourself tonight, darling.

  By the time the car to Brooklyn came, so did I.

  I didn’t have to touch myself at all.

  Chapter Four

  Industrialist, philanthropist and billionaire Ranulf Christie had considered himself the second coming of Andrew fucking Carnegie. Whether he’d actually achieved that status was anybody’s guess. All Lachlan knew was that the sorry buzzard occupied his thoughts for most of the evening and the ensuing night. He had a million other things to think about—one lovely person in particular that kept him hard as a butcher’s block—but memories of the man who’d spawned him, groomed him for greatness and then cast him aside couldn’t be dismissed and discarded.

  Ran Christie had changed all of their lives when he married a world-renowned chef with a teenage daughter after what appeared to be a whirlwind courtship. Lachlan had just begun his second year at Kendall College in Chicago, one of the nation’s top culinary arts schools, and was already making waves in the culinary community for his brash, take-no-bullshit attitude and his skill. He’d skipped the wedding, on orders from dear old Dad to focus on his training. “If you’re determined to cook for a living, then you’d damn well better be the best at it.” Sometimes he wondered if his stepmother had just been another iteration of Ran’s ruthless directive. After all, marrying a famous chef would serve to give his son a pedigree and a leg up in the industry. What he’d managed to do instead was give Lachlan a safe haven, a real mentor, and...and Naya.

  Naya, who’d dutifully texted his mobile when she arrived at her mother’s brownstone. Home safe, Chef. And lonely without you. Complete with a yellow happy face icon blowing a kiss.

  He’d been on the floor at the time, called out to meet some prat who thought himself important enough to shake hands with the Lachlan Christie. “I’m sorry, I have to take this,” he’d said right into the man’s sputtering face, before spinning away and taking the phone to the back.

  What about my other order? You haven’t touched yourself, have you?

  I didn’t have to. You did all the prep work.

  He’d nearly staggered and hit a wall, suddenly blinded by the image of her pressing her thighs together in the back of the hired car, breathing harsh and ragged as she came just from the tension of seeing him again combined with one simple text message.

  Brat.

  You didn’t tell me not to come. Next time, don’t make me do it alone.

  Was there a more perfect woman on this earth for him? No. He’d searched and searched and never found her equal. He suspected he never would.

  She’d been sixteen when they first met at Thanksgiving, with him barely twenty-one. They’d become thick as thieves instantly. No blended family resentment or awkwardness. No jockeying for her mum’s affections. Just...joy. That sense that you’d found a kindred spirit. The restaurant-quality kitchen of the Christie house in Westchester County became their favorite room. They both liked to read and to travel. And, of course, she was amenable to submission. Eager for his command. Something his just-discovered dominant side recognized with shock and wonder. She loved to please him, and he thrived on fulfilling those simple desires. Yes, she could bring him tea. Of course she could help him with dinner prep. He couldn’t even say when it turned into something deeper, only that it did. Intense. Heady. Madness.

  The power of it had scared Lachlan a little, but not enough. He grew to need her. She grew to depend on him. Being away from her for classes felt like being ripped in half. They constantly wrote each other emails, called one another each evening to chat about their day. They talked about everything and nothing and didn’t bother trying to put on a label on their closeness. The summer holidays couldn’t come soon enough. And then he began training her, and himself, in the basics of kink play. The give and take of trust, of orders. Nothing untoward, nothing improper, just what was strictly necessary to keep them sane. To keep himself in check. To protect her.

  For the entirety of it, Ran had watched and waited. A circling bird of prey.

  Now, collapsed in bed after closing at Calanais, it was his father’s face Lachlan saw. Not Naya’s smile. Not her eyes. Just that cold, craggy, facade. That thin-lipped smile whenever the two of them returned from a picnic or the market or an outing in the city. He’d known. The cruel bastard had known how much they adored one another. First he’d made it ugly. Then he’d taken it away.

  He’d been dead four days. Lachlan hoped he was already rotting in hell. It was a fitting end, considering the perdition he’d consigned everyone around him to. There would be no church service. Just a quiet graveside gathering, mostly for the benefit of cousins and business associates. The family lawyer, Elliott Northridge, had suggested a wake at Calanais afterward. He’d got his ears blistered for his trouble. Ranulf would no longer taint the things that Lachlan loved. These wretched few hours between dusk and dawn were the last thing he would steal.

  You didn’t tell me not to come. Next time, don’t make me do it alone.

  After tonight, Naya would never do anything alone again.

  Chapter Five

  Morning came quickly, and I was more than thankful for it. I hadn’t slept well, hoping for one more text from Lachlan, one more terse missive or instruction, and tossing and turning in the guest bed my mother had long ago designated “my” room. I had no idea where she was. I’d half-expected her to pop out for a clove-and-mint scented hug when I
let myself in for the night, but knew it was just as likely that she’d planned to while away Ranulf’s burial on the Riviera or in Ibiza. I could hardly blame her. They’d never been passionate or loving. More the pinnacle of cool and sophisticated. The kind of people who looked perfect in photos but immediately put three feet between themselves after the flash went off. It was an arrangement that had worked until it didn’t.

  Now, Mom was happy in the sprawling, three-story brownstone that had cost a few million and change—when she wasn’t jet-setting all over the world. She spent most of her time abroad now. Although New York touted itself as a multicultural city and the crossroads of the world, super-gentrified and white Cobble Hill tended to eye her with suspicion. Famous face or no, Mom’s was still a brown one. Post-Brexit in London hadn’t been any easier. She’d long since left Sultana in the capable hands of her Executive Chef, Dev Spencer, so now she roved—a beautiful vagabond—and sent me pictures from Bali and Marrakesh and Shanghai.

  She had a cleaning lady come into the brownstone twice a week, and frequently invited assorted guests to spend months at a time, and was content running her kitchen and her life as she pleased. Each floor of the house was warm and welcoming. The kitchen rivaled the space at Christie house, an open plan with high ceilings, granite countertops and an industrial coffee and cappuccino machine that called my name. She’d left a canister of my favorite beans and a mug out for me. A note said “Drink me.” How very Alice in Wonderland. How very Mom.

  After a much-needed infusion of caffeine, I showered in my attached bathroom and dressed in a simple black sheath and matching pumps, digging out giant, bug-eye sunglasses, too, so no one at the gravesite would be able to tell my eyes were dry. It was a given that there would be press at the cemetery—a few of the financial trades, paparazzi, maybe ET and TMZ. All poised to capture and comment on Lachlan’s “private grief.” Ha. More like our collective relief. Not that any of us could show it.