Marcie gave him her shy smile, strained at the edges. “That part was put in by the patriarchal guys who wrote the Bible and didn’t want women telling them what was good for them.”

“No doubt. They were wise to fear a determined woman. What was the most important thing?”

Marcie knew it might sound childish, such a small thing, but it was like the day he’d forgotten to give her those shoes, turning her out barefoot. He didn’t miss details unless they were his blind spot. And Ben O’Callahan’s heart was his blind spot.

“Did you look at the back of the forget-me-not pendant you took from me?”

His brow creased. Then, as her heart caught in her throat, he shifted to reach into his slacks’ pocket. He was carrying it with him. Not the collar, just the small pendant, but he was carrying a part of her on his person.

He tilted his head, looking down at it, and she couldn’t resist. She stroked his hair away from his forehead, a gesture of tenderness, of love. He had to understand when he saw it.

His eyes darkened, his mouth tightened, and his fingers clenched over the disk. Nodding, she wrapped both her hands around his and lifted his knuckles to her lips, closing her eyes. “Will you say it out loud? Please?”

“Always yours.” His voice was husky.

“You started signing your letters that way on my twenty-first birthday, Ben. On the very day, in the card you sent me. Though we didn’t correspond much during those two years, whenever I got any kind of card, email, letter or gift from you, that’s how you signed it. Every time. Always yours. That kind of timing couldn’t have been coincidental.”

Ben stared down at their closed hands. She was right. It couldn’t. He’d missed it entirely, yet there it had been, all the time. The way her submission had been there. Lucas and all of them had noticed it early, but he, the man who didn’t miss details, had blocked it.

“Your card,” she spoke softly now. “You said you were sorry. Is that your way of saying goodbye?”

How could she even ask? But it made sense. She knew her side of things—she was still trying to figure out where he was on all of it. As he paused, she bit her lip, looked back out toward the marsh.

Touching her chin, he brought her gaze back to him. Passing his thumb over that luscious lower lip, he curved his hand on her nape. Her brown eyes widened, then fluttered closed as he brought her to his mouth and kissed her. Deep and long. It wasn’t an erotic, take-her-to-her-hands-and-knees-and-fuck-her kind of kiss. But in its own way, he thought it was the most all-absorbing, overwhelming kiss he’d ever experienced, because everything she’d just described happened in that kiss. He became everything and nothing at once.

Sliding his arm around her back, he turned her so she was cradled in his lap, her legs over the chair arm. Bracing his other hand on her hip and buttock, he took the kiss even deeper. She made a helpless little noise in her throat. Her hand slipped down, fingers tangling in his tie. His arms constricted around her, mashing her breasts pleasantly against his chest, and his grip on her hip shifted, so he was cupping her buttock to hold her even closer.

When at last he eased her back, her gaze was satisfyingly glazed, but he was knocked off his axis as well. Pretty amazing.

“No. It wasn’t goodbye.”

“I got that,” she said breathlessly. There was a little curve to her lips, but uncertainty as well.

She sighed. “I’m out of courage, Ben. I know I went about it the wrong way, but I didn’t know how else to do it. Now I’m thinking all I did was open myself up for the worst rejection of my life, something that will be hard to survive. But I can survive it.”

Lifting her chin, she gave him a direct look. Though she was still in his lap, her body had tensed, ready to move away, to put distance between them. “Maybe you think you made the message clear enough at the club, but we were both pretty emotional that night. So here and now, when everything’s quiet and clear, I need your final answer, no matter how scared I am of it. I don’t want you as my mentor, unless it’s part of you being my permanent Master. Am I wasting my time? Is there any chance you’ll ever be in love with me, the way I am with you?”

She’d said she was out of courage, but he knew of no one, man or woman, who would risk an emotional blow as baldly as that. She kept her gaze locked on him, didn’t flinch, even though he could tell how fragile she was, how vulnerable. A kitten and a lioness together. A shapeshifting sorceress.

“I’ll answer you, but I want an answer from you first. I know you’ve thought a lot about what happened at Surreal. What was your conclusion?” He’d remind her to be honest, but at this point he realized she didn’t know how to be anything else.

That chin lifted higher, tightened. “You wanted me. You didn’t want anyone else touching me. And the way you acted at the car…” When a shadow passed through her eyes, he couldn’t stop himself. He put his hands on her face.

“Was unforgivable. Unconscionable. I’d go through any level of hell if it could take me back to that moment. I never want you to be afraid of me, Marcie. I never want you to connect me in any way to what happened to you as a teenager.”

“Damn it, Lucas,” she muttered, but he increased his grip, bringing her eyes back up to him.

“He was right to tell me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said, and she had no idea how it relieved him, down deep in his gut, to see the irritated truth of it in her eyes. “You were purposefully trying to hurt my feelings that night, and you succeeded. Yes, you’re pretty scary when you’re riled like that, but…” She shook her head, put her hands on his wrists, squeezing. “I know you, Ben. I was freaked out, I admit it, but after I thought it through, I knew the only reason you did it was because you were scared.”

He blinked. Her fingers were cold and nervous on his, but she’d delivered the truth as steady as if she was the Head Mother in The Sound of Music.

Jesus Christ. Jon was right. She was more emotionally mature than him.

It made him smile, he couldn’t help it. Her brow raised, her expression puzzled, but he just pushed her head back down next to his, stroked her hair as she lay in his arms, quiet, waiting on him. The water birds made their strange calls, the reeds rustling with the wind. He wasn’t even really thinking. He was feeling. She liked being a bad girl, would always push the limits. It was a symptom of the feelings she had inside her that she wanted to get out, that she trusted him to handle, to use to pleasure them both. She knew he liked challenges, and she was the challenge of a lifetime.

Closing his arms around her, he rose, bringing them both to their feet. She looked up at him, that uncertain, waiting look, but she still had that tightness to her chin. She was ready for whatever he decided. He stepped back, releasing her.

“On your knees,” he ordered.

They were on a rough wooden dock, but it didn’t matter. Everything inside him tied into a hundred different knots as she responded immediately, began to sink to her knees. He caught her elbow. Slipping his coat off her shoulders, he put it down to protect her knees. “Now.”

“That’s an expensive coat.”

“Your legs rank up there with the Seven Wonders of the World.”

She gave a tiny smile, though she was still too serious. Too sad. That wouldn’t change today, because today was about far more than what was happening between them, but he could change this part, maybe make it better.

When she sank down to her knees, he touched her chin, making her look up at him. “A slave is braver than her Master, Marcie. That’s the way it works. So you say it first, lay it all on the line for me. Take the risk.”

By commanding her to her knees, he’d given her hope, and he loved seeing it spark in her brown gaze. She closed her hand over his wrist, a breach he allowed because her fingers felt too good to resist. He wanted the connection. “I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen years old,” she said. “Every guy I met, I compared him to you. I counted the days until break, when I might get a glimpse of you on the holidays. As soon as I realized what I was, I started calling you Master in my heart. I have a diary I wrote to you throughout college. I love you, Master. I love you with every part of me, and I love every part of you. I’m here, and I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”

He blinked, looked over the slow moving water, though her fingers squeezed his. “Please let me love you, Ben.” Her whisper was a caress. “I won’t let you down. I can survive your darkness.”

To survive it himself, he’d rebuilt who he was from the ground up, locking away the person he’d once been. The other night had proven that wasn’t the best strategy. In fact, Marcie’s words felt like that cell was being unlocked, that she was standing there in its doorway, impossibly vulnerable yet completely unafraid of the monster within. Sunlight was streaming in behind her, inviting the beast out into the light.

It was Beauty and the Beast, when all was said and done. Because in the end, the Beast was willing to do anything to deserve her love.

“First off, you have never, will never, let me down. All you have to be is yourself.” As her eyes filled with more tears, he squatted down, closed his arms around her, buried his face in her hair. “You asked if there’s a chance I’ll ever be in love with you. I already am.” His throat closed up as a sob broke from hers, so strong it shook her narrow shoulders. “I’m crazy fucking in love with you, Marcella Moira. God help you. And I’m so, so sorry for every awful, cruel thing I’ve done to you.”

Her arms wormed out from beneath his, locked around his shoulders, hands gripping his shirt as tight as they could. She made an incoherent sound of joy and sorrow at once, and he pressed his face harder into her hair. A chuckle strangled out of him as she spoke against his shoulder.

“You don’t have to be sorry for every awful cruel thing.”

“Sweet brat. Brave girl.”

Her fingers convulsed on him with every word, and he held her, let her cry, murmuring to her as she got it all out. He wished he could have held her when she first learned about Jeremy. He wished he could have been with her when she had that nightmare, soothed it away. But he’d make sure he was there to drive away any others she had. And he damn sure wouldn’t cause any more of them. When she started to slow down a bit, he fished out another handkerchief, glad he’d brought a spare for today’s emotional event. After she dried her eyes, he let her keep it.