“Pull your dress up before I shred it.”

  Scaring her wasn’t my plan, but there was fear in the air. I had no choice but to breathe it in.

  The fear didn’t come from her. As she pulled her dress over her waist to show me her thong and the lace edges of her stockings, she bit her lower lip. The fear I detected was in the shadows.

  I stepped behind her.

  The Thing was going to watch me.

  I pushed my hand up between the fabric and her skin, taking that taunting nipple. I twisted it. Pulled. She gasped.

  “Say stop if you need to.” I drove my other hand under her thong and ran four fingers over her soaking cunt.

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” I pushed my cock against her ass, speaking into her ear.

  “Stop. Don’t stop.”

  “Does it hurt?” I abused her nipple again.

  “Yes.”

  “I should stop?”

  “No.”

  I looked over her shoulder, into the shadows, and asked, “You like it?”

  I pinched her clit, and she released an nnn sound through her teeth.

  “Yes.”

  Yanking my hands away, I pushed her into a table, bending her sharply. When she tried to get up on her hands, I shoved her down by the base of her neck. Her earring fell over her jaw and clicked against the table.

  Her ass was round and smooth in the dim light. Too perfect. Too well-formed. I slapped it. She gasped, trying to look back at me. I pushed her down harder and slapped again.

  A little voice made me want to check on her again, but I slapped her one more time and she smiled.

  That was all the answer I needed. I forgot about the Thing. Forgot about how much it wanted her. There was only Greyson and me in a dark room with our suddenly elastic boundaries. I ripped her thong at the crotch.

  Unleashing my cock, I slapped her ass one more time before I set myself at her entrance. She braced, and I jammed into her. She grunted, because beneath the dress and the sparkling earrings, she was an animal too.

  I took her, pressing her down at the jaw so I could hook my thumb in her mouth. “Who owns you?”

  “Oh, God,” she said around my thumb, eyelashes fluttering.

  “Wrong answer.” I thrust deep and hard. “Who owns your body?”

  “You.”

  “Don’t forget it. Do you hear me? You’re mine. Your cunt is mine. Your tits are mine. You’re going to come and that’s mine.”

  We didn’t talk like that, hadn’t until that moment, and it was satisfying, as if I’d been waiting to say it for too long.

  “Say it.” I fucked her like a punishment, grinding deep. My thumb slid out of her mouth.

  “My body is yours.”

  “That’s right.” I reached around and found her clit, flicking it. “Who owns this?”

  “You.”

  “Say it.” I rubbed it with all four fingers.

  “My cunt is yours. Only you, Caden. Only you.” She’d gone a step further than I asked, and my blood raced. Still, she went on. “I’m yours.” She stifled a cry.

  “You’re going to come.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Yours.”

  She was so close. I leaned down and bit her trapezius as it tightened. Right at the base of her neck, clamping down until she jerked, and I growled in my throat, holding her still.

  The whirlwind gathered and the Thing wept.

  When I let go, she had a wet arc of marks where I could see them. Perfect. Driving deep into her, I took her clit until her legs went stiff and her mouth opened in a silent scream.

  Yes. That was mine. Her mindless pleasure. Her hooked fingers. Her red ass. My bite mark. The cyclone of desires surrounding us flipped me over again. I was her lover and her tormenter. Her husband and attacker. Her pain and my pleasure spinning in a centrifuge.

  “I’m coming inside you,” I spit out. She had to know or I’d keep spinning. “Because you’re mine.”

  Filling her, I claimed her inside and out, and the whirlwind stopped.

  Chapter Seven

  GREYSON

  I ached when I woke. From the bottom up: My feet from the shoes. My pussy from the sex. My trapezius muscle from the bite.

  I bent over the bathroom vanity and ran my fingers over the bite bruise. It wasn’t too bad. The skin was a shade redder. It looked like a mild hickey. My eyes were ringed in black. I hadn’t bothered to take off my makeup. We’d had sex twice again at home, if you could call it sex. More like he took my body and made it his own, giving orgasms and taking them as if they were a marital right. I’d collapsed into unconsciousness.

  I wiped the bluish-gray mascara stains from my face.

  My body wasn’t a marital right, of course. My body was my own, and I could refuse him at any time. Caden knew that. He must have, because even after we got home, he checked on me.

  Twice, the mask of determination snapped off, leaving a man who looked disconcerted.

  Twice, he asked me if I wanted to slow down or stop.

  Once, I said I was fine. Once, I begged him not to stop.

  Both times, his brutality returned like a Halloween mask on an elastic string.

  I should have made him stop, but I couldn’t.

  Why?

  Was I threatened? Did I believe he’d hurt me worse if I did? Would he?

  No.

  “No,” I said into the mirror. “He wouldn’t.”

  How did I know? Was it the orgasms he gave me? He’d acted as if my pleasure gave him power. Every orgasm drove him to greater intensity, and each increase in passion drove me deeper into a sexual fugue.

  I trusted him. One, he was a doctor, and a great one. It didn’t get any safer than that. Two, he wanted me to want what he did. The checking in told me that much. He wanted consent. Needed it as much as I did, but I didn’t think… no, I was sure he hadn’t planned the last two rough encounters, so he couldn’t have asked ahead of time. He was getting the idea to hurt me in the moment.

  The pain.

  Next time, I should stop him when it hurt. When he bit me. When it was uncomfortable.

  I should, but I wouldn’t. Morning Greyson, with her mascara running down her face and a bite mark on her neck, knew it wasn’t okay to cause your partner pain or discomfort during sex. Dr. Greyson Frazier knew it was okay as long as it was coupled with consent and clear boundaries.

  She knew it had a name.

  I tossed the mascara-streaked wipe into the trash and went downstairs before I could say the name to myself.

  Caden was at the stove, making breakfast. My favorite.

  “Pancakes!” I fist pumped quietly. “Pow.”

  I kissed him and he looked down at me, mask gone. Just my husband. He moved the spatula to the other hand and squeezed my shoulders while he flipped the cakes.

  “I have nothing today,” he said. “What about you?”

  “Session in the morning and that’s it. I was going to go work out. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s still kind of weird, all this time to myself.”

  He laced his fingers in mine, nudging the disks around pensively. “You said a big rock didn’t go with army green. What you wore last night would have been stunning with a ring.”

  Pulling his arm off my shoulder I put my left hand next to his. “We match. That works for me.”

  He shut off the stove and jerked the pan until the cakes slid. “Do you miss the service?”

  He deserved my honesty, but there was more to the question than a simple lament for a job I didn’t have anymore. He was the reason I’d left five weeks before instead of forty years from now.

  But I couldn’t lie to him or myself. “Sometimes.”

  He shifted the pan back and forth on the burner so the pancakes would skate around. “There’s a thing at Chelsea Piers. Like a festival normal cities have with booths, et cetera.”

  “Normal cities?”

  “Like where you grew up.” He tipped the pan to slide the pancakes onto a plate. If I’d tried that, their skin would have stuck to the surface and been an entire disaster. Everything he did was so easy for him, as if the laws of physics were his to command.

  “I grew up in six different cities.”

  “In any of them, did you have festivals and block parties and normal events where people spend money on garbage?”

  “A couple.”

  “How normal.”

  He picked up the plate and looked right at me for the first time that morning. His gaze landed on the bite mark. Reflexively, I covered it. He put the plate down and moved my hand away.

  “Broken blood vessels,” he said. “You have some abrading to the skin.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Only when you touch it, so don’t.” I picked up the plate. “I’m starving.”

  I kissed him and went to the table. He’d set it with silverware and glasses, and as I draped the cloth napkin on my lap, I took a second to acknowledge that he didn’t usually set up an elaborate breakfast. He cooked for me as often as I cooked for him, but this was a step beyond.

  As if he was trying to get back into my good graces.

  For the pain. For the roughness. For the use of my body.

  There’s a name for this.

  We took a cab to the totally normal thing that normal cities have. Chelsea Piers members had priority entry before four o’clock, so we got in before it got too crowded.

  I’d done some classes at the Piers. The sports facility was literally built on three piers that had fallen into disuse when New York was bankrupt. Now it was gorgeous. The warehouse-style buildings had an ice skating rink, a place for all kinds of sports, public spaces, and a driving range, which I’d never bothered with until that day.

  We got to the water side of the facility and exited into the bright afternoon sun. The fairway usually had nets on either side to catch golf balls, but they’d been lowered. A Ferris wheel rotated against the blue sky, a band played light rock, and the smell of buttery popcorn filled the air. Yellow-and-blue-striped tents lined each side of the fairway, with hawkers promising more prizes than they would ever deliver.

  I heard gunshots and the whee of mortar fire.

  My bloodstream flooded with the desire to run, pushing every coherent thought right out of my head. I ducked in time for the explosion, which came canned for civilian ears.

  Caden pulled me up and held still as if he wanted to shield me with his body.

  The whee resumed, but without the surprise, it sounded as canned as the explosion, coming from a single point on the left instead of moving through space. Caden’s hold on me relaxed.

  The explosion came with another whee. I followed his gaze to a pellet gun game. The mortar fire was just for effect, so the players could feel as if they were on the front lines.

  “It’s a game.” He brushed hair off my face. “Let’s get away from it.”

  He tried to guide me to the other side of the fairway, but I wouldn’t budge. “No. They need to tell people.”

  I walked right up to the booth with my fists in a bunch. The squealing of little bombs and snapping of pellets sent shockwaves through a brain stem already firing on all cylinders. When I got there, a white kid of about sixteen, with red bumps all over his cheeks, was making change out of the leather apron.

  I wasn’t going to yell at him. It wasn’t his fault I was afraid. It wasn’t mine either, but that wasn’t the point. I hated it. I hated being at the mercy of a noise. I hated that I couldn’t do something because of my own limitations. That was crap. I didn’t believe in limitations. I didn’t believe in self-imposed redlines.

  I was going to break this shit into a million pieces, right there, right then.

  I dug into my pocket and found a few dollars. I was about to slap them on the counter when Caden pushed my hand down and laid two twenties on the wood, tapping it.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  He knew what I was doing. He didn’t have to ask and I didn’t need to explain. He knew I needed to smash a boundary.

  “Are you?”

  “You’re the one with the scar.” His gaze toward my chest wasn’t sexual. The wound I’d sustained when a mortar arced over the wire had left a scar under my shirt and, unexpectedly, in my mind.

  “I’m just jumpy. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Welcome,” the kid said. “Shoot out the star and win a prize.”

  “She’s going to shoot until she says she’s done.”

  “Yes, sir.” He took a twenty and made change. “Prize is for the entire star. No red—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted, lifting the rifle in front of me. “We got it.”

  Whee.

  In the first burst, I missed the target entirely because my adrenal glands were pumping pure fire through my veins. I wiped my palm on my jeans.

  “You all right?” Caden asked.

  I put my eye in the sight. “Yeah.”

  “You can’t win once you miss. You need every pellet,” the kid said.

  “I’m not here to win a giant stuffed dog.”

  As long as my finger was on the trigger, the sound of whistling and exploding bombs continued. I squeezed off the rest of the pellets. Pop-pop-pop, then the click of an empty magazine ended the bombs. I shook out my wrist. Caden called over the kid in the leather vest, and he reloaded. I was sweating, tingling, jumping out of my skin. I didn’t have a drop of spit in my mouth.

  “You’re white as a sheet,” Caden said with true concern. “All the blood’s rushed to your extremities.”

  “Yeah.”

  I picked up the rifle and did it again. This time, Caden had the kid set up the rifle next to me so I didn’t have to wait for a reload. I shot at stars until my hand hurt and the sound of mortar fire was background noise. My husband took out more money, and I pumped a bunch of lead at nothing until my body couldn’t maintain the adrenaline dump anymore and the pain in my wrist had gone from a dull ache to a numb tingle.

  I held up my hands. “I’m done.”

  Caden took my wrist and checked my pulse. “Ninety-two.” He held me, kissing my temple. I was shaking. “You’re amazing.”

  “I am!”

  “Ah, the endorphins.” He was laughing, and I laughed with him.

  “Hey! Lady!” the kid in the leather vest called. “You can pick one of these.” He pointed at a low shelf of prizes. “A snake or a dog.”

  I leaned over the counter. I wasn’t interested in either the green foot-long stuffed snake or the furry brown dog.

  “My girlfriend has a snake. It fits under her neck when she sleeps.”

  “Sold!”

  He tossed me the prize. “Don’t join the army. You’re a lousy shot.”

  “Thanks for the advice!”

  Caden put his arm around me, snickering at the kid’s comment. “What else do you want to conquer today?”

  “The world!”

  Skipping on air, we got popcorn and beer. I forgot to worry about the bite on my neck or how much I’d liked getting it. I let go of the word that brought to mind and all the psychology behind it. I rejected things in myself I was trained to accept in other people, so I didn’t think of the word in relation to myself. I didn’t think about anything but Caden and how happy he looked when he fed me popcorn.

  A cheer went up from a crowd, and we turned to it.

  A tower crane rose from a fixed base in the water. Cranes were normal in New York, apparently. It seemed as if something was always being built, and of course everything was tall.

  But this crane had a person dangling from the end of it. Their arms and legs were splayed like a starfish as the line behind them got longer to lower them to the ground.

  “You want to bungee jump?” Caden asked. “Get fear of heights off the table?”

  “Could you watch me fall?”

  Caden’s parents had died in 9/11. When nothing was found of them but his mother’s shoe, he’d convinced himself they’d jumped over a hundred stories.

  “Negative.” He dropped the popcorn container in the trash and held out his hand. “Let’s go.”

  I took his hand and pulled him toward the jump. “Watching me fall is a great way of overcoming your own fear.”

  He yanked me toward him. “You’d do that for me?”

  I looked up at the crane as someone fell, and I shuddered. My first fall was at six years old, from the top of the monkey bars. I’d cut open my lip and broken a clavicle, but what I remembered was how powerless I felt on the way down; how long it took and how many seconds I spent waiting for impact. Then while in the ROTC program at UCLA, I was making out with Scott Verehoven on the high dive, where—being a diver no girl said no to—he was perfectly comfortable. However, I said no because in the first place, I didn’t think he was worth it and in the second, I didn’t think it was safe. Nor did I trust him to keep me from falling. He proved all three points by pushing me over.

  The fact that I could swim didn’t make it funny in the least. If I was half afraid of heights from breaking my collarbone on the monkey bars, I was fully terrified once Scott pulled me out of the pool with a sprained neck and half my body richly bruised from my collision with the water.

  I wasn’t bungee jumping off a crane. No way. My endorphins had been reabsorbed. I wasn’t all-powerful anymore.

  “Nope.” My hands slashed the air. “Changed my mind.”

  “All right. No heights today. Hey,” he interrupted himself as if that was the only way he was going to say what he needed to. “Last night.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s not going to happen again.”

  “Oh?” I almost said, “why not?” as if I wanted to get bitten again, which I did. But I didn’t want to tell him that, because there was a name for someone who got sexual pleasure from pain and I wasn’t ready to say it out loud.

  “Yeah. And I’m sorry.”

  “If you were doing something to be sorry for, I would have said stop.”

  “In any case. That wasn’t okay.” He took me by the chin and kissed me. “Thank you.”