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  His father had been handsome, yes. Smart, too. From sturdy Scottish stock. But he’d been unkind, impatient, needlessly cruel and unable to suffer fools. Everything had been a calculation or a game. Lock barely remembered his mother, but his impressions were of a soft, sweet woman who’d loved him very much but been deeply unhappy. She’d died young. Just twenty-three. Leaving behind a four-year-old who was shifted from nanny to nanny. Jyoti had been the first loving influence he’d known in years.

  And then he’d met her daughter.

  And now here they were.

  Lachlan still didn’t know what he’d done to deserve them in his life. Or how he’d managed to turn out remotely human. Boarding school, he supposed. He’d been sent away at nine, like he was off to Hogwarts. He’d met loads of lovely people there, had wonderful teachers who’d nurtured his culinary inclinations...and his kinky ones. It was funny how domination gave him the sense of family that Ranulf never had. His friends at The Gift. His ex. Even now, he had people he could go to.

  People who would help him when he called upon them. No questions asked.

  By the time he was five hours out from Mumbai, Lachlan was no closer to answers, but his resolve was crystallized. As soon as he had every copy of Kyle Attwood’s manipulated footage, the sleazy piece of work would join his father in the grave.

  Death would be the most exquisite dish he ever cooked. Dinner for one. No dessert.

  * * *

  I was going to pass out from exhaustion at some point—and not the fun kind. After all, the human body could take only so much abuse. International travel was proving to be far more taxing than kink. In fact, I was pretty sure I would rather spend an hour shackled to a St. Andrew’s Cross in a Dusseldorf thrash metal club than another five minutes on an airplane.

  Fortunately, the flight attendants in First Class kept the champagne flowing, and I toasted to Lachlan’s imminent downfall until I was sufficiently buoyed by bubbles. With any luck, his trajectory would be hard and fast and land in right back in my arms. And right back into my bed.

  For someone who’d beaten me to bliss, Lock had turned out to be surprisingly puritanical. During our cluelessly happy interlude in Mumbai, I’d pleaded with him a dozen times to fuck me—really, literally, stick-it-in, fuck me—and he’d resisted. He gave me his mouth and his hands, but withheld his cock. I would’ve thought it an act of dominance if it weren’t so obvious that he didn’t get off on denying us that completion. And now, with everything that had happened between us since, it made a twisted kind of sense. How could he claim me like that and then let me go? He’d held back on purpose.

  “Please,” I whisper as he braces himself on his elbows above me and teases my opening with the tip of his cock. “Please do it.”

  I am so close. So needy. I cant my hips upward, close my thighs, try to pull him in.

  “No,” he says, brushing against my folds once, twice, three times, before pulling away.

  He finishes me with his fingers-brutal, beautiful thrusts that satisfy me but don’t complete me. And then I finish him with mine, pulling on his hard length, stroking quick and cruel, until he comes on my belly, my breasts, and my thighs. In the past day, I’ve worn his seed more than I’ve worn clothes.

  He’ll mark me, but he won’t take me. It’s that thought, not the post-orgasm crash, that makes my eyes well with tears.

  Never again. No matter what the future held, he was never going to deny me like that again. It was that thought that fueled the bulk of my trip, as I slept in fits and starts and dreamed in pieces of vividly raunchy penetrative sex. Each time I woke, it was to the disappointment that I was on a plane full of strangers and the realization that there were still hours to go in my journey.

  Exhausted, dehydrated, frazzled and frustrated, by the time I caught a cab to Brooklyn I hated everyone except my cab driver and Pat Kiernan—the local cable newscaster whose face greeted me from the taxi’s TV. I muted his cheerful patter and fixed my gaze out the window, watching the storefronts whiz by. The comfort and familiarity of the boroughs couldn’t be denied. I’d grown up all over the world, but this was my base, my foundation.

  Subspace, heaven, hell and heartbreak...Lachlan had taken me so many places, but in the end it was home I returned to. New York, where it had all begun.

  Never to the Christie house in Westchester, of course. Fuck no, and forget that. I hoped it would be auctioned off in the wake of Ranulf’s death, scrubbed from top to bottom and exorcised of evil. After hearing all of my stories while we lived together, Paulie liked to call it the Flowers in the Attic House. I let her get away with it only because my stepfather really had been like someone out of a modern gothic novel. Lachlan and I had never crossed the line, even if teenage me would’ve willingly done so, but Ran...he infused that gorgeous old mansion with sickness and hate. He made hallways lead nowhere and random rooms ice-cold. Aside from the warm, hallowed ground of the kitchen, it was never a home. Just a place to sleep and have nightmares. I didn’t know how my mother put up with it for as long as she did. Then again, she’d always been tenacious.

  And so had I.

  In less than seven days I’d traveled lifetimes. I knew I would never be the same. Sure, the Christies had money and power and lawyers, but I was a TV writer who’d lived abroad. I had no shortage of connections, no shortage of resources. Maybe they were a little more offbeat than the tie-and-tonic crowd, but they had their uses. And if I had to tap all of them to figure out what hold Kyle Attwood, Esq., had on my guy, I would do it.

  Lachlan was mine. I’d waited too long for him already. No one could take him away from me. Not this time.

  When I let myself back into Mom’s brownstone—hadn’t I only just left it?—I had the arc almost entirely plotted and the script half-written. I knew how the scenes had to play out, where the players had to stand. I could even see a place for an “Exit, pursued by a bear.” The grizzly in question? Me. I would use my teeth and claws if necessary. I’d rip Attwood apart and tear through Lachlan’s ridiculous defenses.

  After the world’s longest bath and a nap. Casting oneself as the heroine and avenging angel was an exhausting business. I needed to be in peak condition, rested and rejuvenated, to win Lachlan’s heart and secure our freedom. Failure wasn’t an option.

  Chapter Sixteen

  After an exhausting day of travel, sane people went to sleep. Or relaxed with a bath and a good book. Or checked in on their wildly successful restaurant. Lachlan, finding sanity in short supply, went straight from the airport to his favorite, terribly exclusive, BDSM club.

  It seemed to be a prerequisite these days if you were obscenely rich and kinky. God forbid you play in your own basement. But he wasn’t about to complain. Far from the splashy, trendy Midtown and Meatpacking nightspots, The Gift was tucked away in Gramercy, in a beautiful 19th century brownstone. Named for the O. Henry story written just a stone’s throw away at Pete’s Tavern, it took up four floors, each one more elegant and depraved than the previous. Only a select few knew who held the club’s purse strings and approved its elite membership. Lachlan couldn’t yet be counted amongst that number, but as a respected dominant and fairly regular patron, he was well on his way up the ladder.

  At the moment, his only goal was regaining and maintaining control. That rush and that peace that came from taking on someone’s complete trust and holding that precious prize. He’d wrecked Naya’s. Crushed it. Might never get it back. So his hand had to be steady when he took a submissive back to his usual third-floor dungeon. His head had to be in the game.

  It wasn’t often that he flogged someone he wasn’t also fucking; he didn’t generally just get off on power and pain. But this was a special case. An emergency. Besides, he wouldn’t, couldn’t, be with someone else so soon after leaving Naya’s bed. The very idea was disgusting. Against everything he knew as right. His mouth and hands were hers. His cock was hers. It was too soon to allow anyone else the privilege, to share those parts of himself. Maybe, fro
m here on out, it would always be too soon.

  Lock navigated the dimly lit hallways of The Gift as a man on a mission, peeking into public rooms and salons and searching for a familiar face. Luck was, however briefly, on his side. It took only ten minutes to unearth Chloe, an ex-girlfriend of a few years back. She was tucked away in a second-floor salon with one of the club’s most powerful patrons, Mistress Jewel.

  They made a perfect tableau—petite, blond Chloe curled at the dark-haired domme’s feet; things for tea set out on the coffee table; Jewel’s fingers idly trailing across the back of Chloe’s neck as they spoke in low murmurs. He shattered the picture and broke the comfortable rapport the moment he strode over the threshold of the cozy little room.

  Jewel didn’t even have to speak to set him down for the interruption. As the ranking dominant, she knew an icy glare would suffice. He’d never known brown eyes to be so chilly. They almost made him drop his gaze.

  “I’m in need of Chloe,” he said to her without flinching. “Unless she is otherwise engaged.”

  A born sub, Chloe knew better than to weigh in. She kept her head bowed and her breathing even as they battled for her time. From what he’d heard, she was almost fully entrenched in kink now and looking for someone to partner her and dominate every aspect of her life Perhaps that was Jewel. He certainly hadn’t been who she needed.

  It was possible he wasn’t what any woman needed.

  Was that his father’s real lesson? That some men weren’t cut out for relationships, or families and children? Had he been trying to teach Lachlan all along that ambition and success were his only true loves? If so, the classes were finally taking effect.

  “You’re weak, Boy. You’ll have to grow a spine and a pair if you’re to make something of yourself.”

  “No. You mean I’ll have to be like you. Cold and alone. And I’ll be that when hell freezes over.”

  “Alone? Who brought you a stepmother? My kitchen and my bed are filled. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what’s important.”

  “Jyoti’s important. So’s her daughter.”

  “Just like I said. Weak. Pathetic.”

  Minutes ticked by, and he realized both Mistress Jewel and Chloe were watching him, their gazes incredulous—like he was a particularly bizarre museum exhibit. He was brooding again, wasn’t he? Good God, this was turning into a recurring illness.

  “What?” Jewel prompted, her husky but cool contralto sending ice chips down his spine. “Are you going to stand there all day? Come into my parlor.”

  The words pulled on him like a puppeteer working marionette strings, tugging him further into the salon, the hapless fly to her stunning spider. Very few people held that kind of power over him. In fact, right now, he knew of only one other. Fuck. Fucking fuck.

  Somehow, twenty minutes after he’d stormed into The Gift looking to beat out his frustration, Lachlan instead found himself settling onto a brocade sofa and having a still-steaming china cup pressed into his hands. And there were biscuits, too. Chloe picked out two delectable items and placed them on his saucer before going back to her place at Jewel’s feet.

  The domme was still freezing him with her gaze, though her eyes seemed marginally warmer than before. “Tell me everything,” she said, her tender grip returning to Chloe’s neck. “What have you done? Leave nothing out.”

  Lachlan began with two words he never thought he would ever hear himself say: “Yes, Mistress.”

  He gave them the abbreviated version, of course. Despite Jewel’s imperious order. As much as he valued his relationships with everyone at the Gift, he dared not compromise those relationships by involving them in the particulars of what his father and that smug attorney had entangled him in. Instead, he stuck to the important parts. The Naya parts. The “tell me what to do so I can fix this” parts.

  They interjected responses here and there, appropriate murmurs and exclamations full of disapproval, but held on to comments until the end. Like he’d presented a scientific paper at a university conference.

  Chloe looked to her mistress for permission before she spoke. The exchange was so subtle, so intimate, that Lock felt a pang of something like longing. Would he ever have that? Had he already ruined his once chance? “It boils down to trust, Lachlan,” she said, the strength in her voice at odds with how ethereal and fragile she looked. “It’s why you weren’t the right fit for me.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Because you didn’t trust me?” He’d been kind of a shit during their relationship, he could admit now. Not nearly attentive enough. Too focused on work and fame and unwilling to give any of it up for her. “I wasn’t there for you when I should’ve been.”

  But Chloe shook her head, dismissing his interjection. “Because you didn’t want me to trust you. You kept me at a distance, when what we had should have been a tight tether.” She gazed at Jewel with such naked adoration then that he felt like double the bastard for letting her down. Her. Naya. Every woman in his life, it seemed. “You have to be ready to move heaven and earth for her—even if those giant obstacles are inside you. You get over it. You let her in.” Jewel stroked her hair, the back of her neck. Good girl, she said without speaking.

  Lock winced. He hadn’t let Naya in. Instead, he’d shoved her away. He hadn’t trusted her to know her own mind...or to welcome his, with all the baggage it held. And that was bloody ridiculous, because she was fearless and strong. She could cope with almost anything. She’d shown up at his doorstep after they’d been apart for a decade, confident that they could pick up where they left off. And he’d created a larger, more hateful, rift between them in a handful of minutes. For what? Because he thought to protect her from him? From what Ranulf and Attwood had entangled him in?

  “I’ve fucked it all up,” he admitted to the powerful domme and her loyal sub...to these obviously besotted lovers who’d figured out what he couldn’t. “The most important relationship I’ve ever had...and I don’t even know how to navigate it.”

  Mistress Jewel laughed then, the cool and indifferent mask slipping. “Congratulations,” she told him. “It means you’re human.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After eight hours of sleep and a reunion with the mostly unpacked luggage I’d left behind a lifetime ago I almost felt ready to face the world. My world...which was narrowed, at the moment, to Lachlan and his secrets. Fortunately, Planet Naya also included Cologne. As I puttered around Mom’s kitchen making breakfast, I caught up on days of missed texts from Paulie and Wil. Paulie and Wil, who both knew way more about tech than I did.

  The idea had been percolating since I left Mumbai: hacking into Lock’s phone. It was completely immoral and invasive—and potentially necessary. I didn’t want to resort to it. Even on Ich Liebe, Du Liebst, we’d had a hard time maintaining sympathy for a character who’d cyber-snooped on her partner. Sure, Franz was a cheating bastard who deserved what he got, but fans had flooded the studio with emails declaring Liesl was a duplicitous bitch and that she’d invaded his privacy. I wanted to exhaust all other avenues before I involved Paulie and Wil’s mad criminal skills in my love life.

  I wanted to hack Lachlan’s firewalls. His resolve. His body.

  God, I missed his body—like it was an extension of my own and he’d amputated a limb that awful morning in Mumbai. Phantom pain—wasn’t that what the medical experts called it? I felt the absence of his cock, even though he’d only ever put it in my mouth.

  I could still taste him. There wasn’t enough coffee and bacon in the world to diffuse his flavor. And after the hilarious progression of my thoughts the first time I’d blown him, I’d likely never look at any kind of breakfast sausage the same way.

  My phone chimed with the text alert I’d assigned Paulie. It was midday in Germany. She’d be pulling a shift at the coffeehouse a few blocks from her flat, where she worked when she wasn’t at the art gallery or the metal shop. I could picture her dressed in all black, lean and graceful like a ballet dancer, propped
against the brick exterior and typing with one hand while a cigarette dangled from the other. She was so very French.

  You are lucky I adore you, N.

  I’m glad someone does.

  She sent back a row of expressive emoji, ostensibly reminding me that I wasn’t some self-deprecating sad-sack submissive waiting for her master to say “jump.” I didn’t need the reminder. I knew my worth. It was why I’d come for Lachlan the night before the funeral. Because now was our time.

  To that end, I was already dressed for battle—and not in a vintage concert t-shirt. My armor this time was a high-collared white dress that skimmed the tops of my thighs. I knew exactly how how I looked in it. It was innocence and sin in one package, leaving my arms and legs bare but my throat and chest hidden. He’d have no defenses against it. Even my shoes were weaponized—bright red stilettos that screamed sex and could take out an eye. There was no way I’d make an entire New York city block in them, but that was okay. I didn’t plan to walk much. What was the point in having family money if you couldn’t hire a car to take you from Brooklyn to Central Park West? And if luck was on my side, my heels would soon be up around my ears.

  Lachlan had a 19th floor penthouse with great views of the park’s Sheep Meadow. Even before he’d opened Calanais, he’d spent most of his time in Manhattan and not the Westchester house. The Mumbai flat was the first home of his I’d ever seen; the one here being strictly off-limits. Not that the metaphorical “Caution!” tape had kept me from learning the address. I couldn’t send letters there, but surely I needed to know where it was in case of zombie apocalypse, right? “What if there’s a flood? A plague? I need to know!” I’d been nineteen at the time and Mom had clearly seen straight through that argument...but she’d coughed up the relevant details.