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“So feeling like this is normal?” Kate sniffled and burrowed into his chest.
“Yes, it’s normal. It’ll pass, Trouble.” He buried his face in her hair. The scent of her warmth and shampoo made his chest hurt. Feelings he didn’t want kept crowding in. Watching the other men covet her last night had been torture, even though he’d arranged it.
If I was your Master I would worship you. As my slave you would be my queen.
The tumult of feelings that cascaded through him was raw and rough and far from sane. Crazy, creepy thoughts crept in, urging him to steal her away somewhere remote, where he’d keep her until she understood.
Understood what? That he was more evil than he let on?
God, he was losing it.
He stroked the silent tears from her cheeks and held her until he thought he’d die. This was the kind of obsession that landed men in jail.
Ambrose would fix this.
Ambrose had to take her away from him, before it was too late.
***
Banner paced the immaculate and extensive patio again. Ambrose must have given up on trying to stop h
im. He was glad they were in the shade of the house, considering his head felt as if he’d drank five pots of coffee. Someone was taking a file to his nerves, and his jaw hurt from clenching it.
“Fuck, man. You need to blow off some steam before you snap.” Ambrose set a beer down on a table near him and backed away, as though he was a bomb in danger of going off.
Banner had been waiting for Ambrose in his driveway when he’d come home from his trip, but he hadn’t known what else to do. Now he got the feeling he was making Ambrose worry more the longer he was there.
“There’s no other way. You have to take her, Ambrose. No one else is good enough, except Konstantin, and by the time he comes back it’ll be too late.” He ran a hand through his hair, not caring if it was sticking up at odd angles.
He let his gaze wander to the newest addition to the grounds, the manmade waterfall that poured into a lagoonlike pool. It was completely ostentatious and made Ambrose’s backyard look as though he were expecting a school of mermaids to come hang out. He was case in point that money couldn’t buy taste. The setup was pretty enough, but if Ambrose ever settled down with a woman, she’d probably have a hell of a time trying to make the place look classy.
That woman might be Kate, soon enough.
“Quit ranting. I said okay. I’ll meet her and try to date her, then the two of us can just pretend you don’t want to kill me every time I hold her hand. But think . . . What if I fall in love with her and we get married and have kids? Are you going to stand in the wedding and smile at the baptism and promise to be the godfather while you not so secretly want to kill me? This will seriously fuck up our friendship.”
Visions of Kate in white, marrying one of his two best friends had to be pushed aside before he lost his shit. “If the two of you fall in love, maybe this mess in my head will mellow out. Maybe I’ll get over her if I see your collar on her neck.”
“But I don’t get it! Why is my collar on her neck okay and yours isn’t? ‘Slave’ is just a word. Why don’t you call it something else and keep her?”
He’d been awake all night trying to make himself okay with that very idea. “Sneaking in the side door isn’t how I’m made. You’re willing to bend on what you want from a submissive, but I’m not. I can’t trick her into being my slave by using pretty words to disguise it, or our whole relationship will be based on lies. She doesn’t want my cage.” He rubbed at his forehead. “The feelings I have for her won’t fix differences this big. Eventually, it would end our relationship. Better to cut our losses now, before the real suffering starts.”
“Fuuuuuuck.” Ambrose leaned back on the patio chair and sipped at his iced tea. “You really do love her, don’t you?”
He thought of her face, the expressiveness of her eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t draw breath. The things they talked about in the dark, in the wee hours, had nothing to do with the way their bodies fit together or the way she responded to his touch or his dominance.
Kate was a deep, complicated woman whose soul was filled with reverence for the other souls of the world. Cruelty and nastiness weren’t part of her makeup. Her spirit was lively and kind, and her humor and strength of character shone from her, even when she was silent. His attic workspace was slowly filling with canvases of her—asleep, awake, smiling, serious, radiant. She’d become his muse and his obsession, and she’d done it all by accident.
Banner cut off his thoughts with an impatient gesture. It drew his attention to the clean scent of her that still clung to his clothes. “I’ll bring her by tomorrow. There’s no way you won’t want her. She’s fucking perfect. She’ll fall in love with you right way.” He picked up the beer and swallowed half of it. “It’ll be over before I know it.”
Ambrose sighed. “You need to figure out how to bend, jackass. You’re going to give her away and regret it, but by then it’ll be too late.”
“It’s what’s best for her. She needs someone that appreciates her the way she is, without wanting to change her.”
He shook his head then looked out across the green expanse of his parklike lawn. “I’ll do this for you for now, to keep you sane. I’ll hang on to her until you pull your idiot head out of your ass.” He leveled a frustrated glare on Banner. “Just don’t kill me when she goes back to you still screaming my name, beyotch.”
***
The late-afternoon air was still but cool enough to keep them from feeling as if they were baking among the trees at the end of his mother’s property. Rook squinted despite the shade.
