After they ate, he curled up behind her on the bed in his room, stroking her hair until she fell asleep watching the moon rise over the marsh out the window. When she woke, its light was streaming in. She held her hand up to it, watched the play of silver on her pale skin.

I'm alive.

A large hand lifted into her vision, entwined its fingers with her own, and she felt Mac's broad chest pressed into her shoulder blades.

And I'm not alone.

In that quiet moment she saw what she was and could be to him  -  Mistress, lover, woman. What she already might be to him. Everything. A humbling, terrifying and exhilarating thought all at once.

"Okay?" he murmured, his voice like a soothing stroke over every raw nerve, drawing a curtain over the things she could not bear to face right now, that her consciousness would have to accept a small piece at a time. A bullet firing, a man's face turning into meat, the stop of a heartbeat.

"Let it go for tonight, sugar." His hand whispered down over her back, the curve of her waist, her hip, his fingertips smoothing over her skin like raindrops sliding down, the touch of something natural, expected, known. Something that sustained life. Hope.

"Do you know what I thought when he lifted the gun, and I knew it was going to fire?" She kept her eyes on the movement of the waters through the marsh grass, stirred from the movement of some creature who dwelled there, she expected.

She could have chosen not to tell him, knew it probably was not wise to tell him, but in the loneliest hour of the night, there was only truth, and a trust that she could tell him anything.

"What, baby?"

Her lips curved at the endearment, one a Mistress didn't often get to hear. Her alpha male.

"I thought, 'What if I never see Mac again?'"

She looked up at him then and found him leaning over her, those silver eyes so close and alive, silver filled with moonlight. "That was the last thought I had before that gun fired."

His arms closed around her and he lifted her up against his chest, enclosing her in his heat and strength. Warmth. Life. He was pure, pulsing life. She kept her arms tucked into her body, letting him hold her completely, surround her, her forehead and lips pressed to his chest.

"Make love to me, Mackenzie," she whispered. "Please. Nothing but you and me." He eased her back, looked into her face. He didn't ask if she was sure, but he gave her that moment. She reached up, touched his jaw.

The kiss took her under, into a warm, languid world of pleasant dreams and slow thoughts that drifted into waters that turned her, spun her in a dizzying eddy of light and sensation. She opened her mouth and tasted him, the moist heat of responsive flesh, and his arms increased their hold upon her, so she felt the beat of his heart and the arousing stir of his cock against her hip and stomach.

He eased her to her back, his silhouette over her, and the moonlight gave her another glimpse of his expression, intent, devoted to her, worshipping her, cozening her, desiring her. He could have held back, let her only see the gentleness, but as if he knew instinctively what she needed, he revealed that flare of male desire, the impatient lust to take, and her blood stirred, suddenly eager for his passion, the brutal strength of a taking.

She brought his head down to her breast and then took her hands beneath the covers to find the hem of the T-shirt she wore, get it out of the way. Before she could, he had bracketed her breasts in his larger hands, stretching the soft fabric tight over the taut points, and brought his mouth down on one to torture her through the cloth.

Dampen it with his mouth, lick and suckle her through the rub and caress of the cotton.

"Mac." Her voice was a breath of sound in the quiet bedroom. His knee pressed between her thighs, and she spread open for him, cradling him, gasping as he seated his cock against her sensitive clit and pubic bone. She was naked beneath the shirt. And he had come to bed naked, making himself available to her in any way she needed him.

He didn't crush her, but he used his weight to advantage, keeping her helplessly pinned as he nursed her breasts, one then the other, then back to the first. She didn't know how he'd act as an equal partner in the bedroom, had wondered if he'd rush it like most men to get the pussy he craved, but he was paying ardent homage to her breasts. The fluid arousal in her lower body began to emanate through her like a cyclone of energy, through her belly, widening to encompass her breasts so her body from the anchor point between her legs to the flare of her arched upper torso became a tornado, undulating, twisting the small amount allowed by his grip. He stopped suckling and started flicking her nipples with his tongue, a firm flick, several rapid flicks, one slow, then over to the other for the same treatment and back again, the quick tweak of friction making her jerk and her heels dig down into the mattress helplessly, her pubic bone grinding insistently against him, her cunt slick against his hard abdomen as she mewled in ecstatic distress.

"Mackenzie," she gasped.

"No orders, sugar. Just take it. Let me make you crazy." He pressed his hips firmly against hers and she screamed at the rocket of sensation that spun through her cunt and up to each nipple tip that he continued to torment with that firmly flicking tongue. Left.

Right, back again. Flick.

She felt the shudder start in her thighs. At the exact moment he raised his head, shifted his grip to her upper arms and shoved hard into her, her climaxing pussy clamped down on him, making him ram through the tight clutch of her muscles. He lifted his hips, slammed into her again, and kept to it, bucking her light frame like a doll on the bed. He was giving her full strength, holding nothing back, and it was frightening, bruising her. Yet she wanted it, his loss of control, this savage hunger in his eyes that could consume the image of gunfire and hatred, sweep that away and leave nothing but a helpless surrender to this.

She was strong enough to match him emotionally on any field, but she knew he was making it clear he had the strength to shelter her whenever she needed it. Protect her not only from whatever life threw her way, but from herself. Like now. Under that was his anger, irrational as they both knew it was, for risking her life, for making him worry, and so she opened wider, let him give it all to her, all of himself, the anger with the desire.

She had no choice, regardless. All she could do was hold on, cry his name and let the pounding waves of the orgasm take her once...twice...three times. Each time she thought she was done, he changed his angle in that skillful way he had, and she was shot into the storm again, until she was sure she could bear no more, that his hard, relentless cock would be the instrument of blissful destruction for her.

She came off the third wave like a surfer who had been tossed into the embrace of the ocean and rolled over and over, landing on the sun-kissed beach in a state of limp, exhilarated exhaustion. Her pussy was like a small fist, opening and closing in spasmodic vibrations on his cock, and it took more than a few moments to realize he was still hard within her, his body held still and waiting against her.

Though she had not commanded it, he had offered it as a gift to her, which made the gesture all the more potent. Her body quivered in renewed response as she touched his face without opening her eyes, traced the firm lips, the tense jaw, the trembling body.

"Come for me, Mackenzie," she whispered. "You have my permission. Come for me now. But do it while stroking inside me very....very...slowly." His hands went to her thighs, raised them so her ankles rested on his shoulders. He levered her up higher, his face close to hers, and then he began to stroke her, slow and even.

"All the way to the tip of your head," she whispered. "Then back in, so slow, so gradual, feel every kiss of my pussy upon you. Ah, God." He was hung like a horse in truth, filling her completely. "Out...slow now...slow."

"Mistress..." His hips jerked, his shoulders shuddered.

"Stop," she said abruptly, sharply, and he froze, his expression conveying how close he was.

"Mistress - "

"Obey me, Mackenzie."

He stopped, fully deep inside her, and her muscles contracted, squeezing him, stroking him. He had a sky light to let in the sun across the bed during the day, and here in the night it cast a reflection, so she could see the outline of her legs as she lowered them, curled over his hips and taut buttocks. She could see the powerful ridges of muscle standing out on his back. She ran her palms over them, caressing the breadth of those massive shoulders, sliding down, down, cupping her hands over him, feeling the heat gather, no matter where she touched him. She reached his ass and traced her fingers in the crease, dug her nails into the muscular crescents.

"God, I'd want you for your ass alone," she muttered.

"And here I was, thinking it was my mind." He gave a weak chuckle. "Mistress, you're destroying me."

Her lashes rose, so she looked into the passionate silver eyes, registered the tremendous struggle for control and his overwhelming need. For her.

"That's the point, Mackenzie," she whispered. Then she closed her eyes, took him in through her other senses, skin touching skin, her fingertips whispering slowly down the smooth, firm body, the muscles earned, the occasional change of texture from a scar.

"It's like going into a temple and seeing the sacred relic there," she said, her voice still no louder than his held breath. "Wanting to touch it. Not because someone told you not to, though there is that." Her lips curved slightly. "But because you can sense a living presence in it, just beneath the surface of the elements. And you know, if you can just touch it, really feel it, feel what it means, what its soul is made of, then you can be part of it. Forever connected, never alone."

She lifted her gaze, and in his she saw the truth of her words reflected back to her.

She saw that gateway open and beckoning, her words having opened it within him.

Break the body, and the soul must defend itself. Her body had been broken today, and her soul had turned to him to be her champion. Now his hands touched her face, as she was touching his body, with a hesitant reverence, trying to absorb the meaning of every inch, take it into him, the way she was taking him into her.

"I'm all yours, sugar," he said. "My soul is yours."

"Now," she breathed. "Without moving, without any friction, start to come for me, Mackenzie. Just from my command. Feel my voice on you like my warm, wet pussy, every syllable caressing you..."

He groaned, shuddered, and the climax burst from him, took him in the imposed paralytic state. Violet's words clogged in her throat, overcome by watching him battle his nature to obey her, allowing the climax to crash through his body, his cock pulsing but not moving within her as it shot hot seed. He quivered, staring at her, his face rigid with restraint, his hips moving just a little, quick jerks that could not be helped because of the force of the sensation.

It was the sexiest thing she'd ever seen, a man fighting to climax almost motionlessly, his entire being centered on the woman beneath him. Which made the energy from him even more powerful.

She lifted her hips, unable to resist the temptation herself anymore. He surged forward, knowing he'd been released, and they came together like the explosive collision of two planets, shattering into a million pieces to form a whole new universe.