This is as much your body to look at as yours is mine. I’m all yours, sweetheart.”

The heavy sac of his testicles rested against his thighs, the long, stiff cock jutting from a nest of soft, dark curls, midnight like those on his head. The outline of his hip suggested he had as fine an ass as she’d always suspected from surreptitious study of it when he was clothed.

“Did you know that I looked, sometimes?” She couldn’t take her gaze away, and in a spontaneous gesture, she wet her lips.

He groaned, gave her a half laugh.

“Yeah, I did. A lot of times I caught you eyeing my ass. Once I caught you studying my crotch.” Her gaze shot up, sparking, and he laughed outright.

“Well, you did. It was the airline contract.”

“Well, those were very tedious negotiations,” she defended herself.

She was getting cold. She wanted him here, on her again, to feel that comfortable, solid weight pressing her into the couch. “You don’t have to remove the watch.”

“Yes, I do. It can catch a nipple or a hair unexpectedly, and I don’t want to cause you a moment more of discomfort than I have to. Savannah, have you ever used anything inside of yourself? A vibrator?”

At her confused look, he explained, in a husky voice. “I need to know how tight you’ll be, honey. So I don’t hurt you.”

She shook her head, flushing. “Of course not. Good grief, Matt, I have a houseful of domestic staff.

What would they think if they heard it or…found it?”

He smiled, propped an arm on the couch and came back down on her with an animal-like deftness that took her breath. He used his knee to nudge her a little further apart, and then put the other hand between them, stroking through her labia, finding her slick and warm. Savannah gasped on a moan, and his eyes darkened.

“What will they think the first time I take you to bed there, make you scream and tear the wallpaper because I have your wrists cuffed between the slats of the headboard? Ah, sweet Christ, your pussy just rippled against my touch. Feel me, baby.” And he slid his fingers into her, slow, pressing upward so she felt the flesh of his palm against her clit as he explored her pussy.

“Matt.” She gripped his biceps, holding on, her neck straining, her head against his shoulder as her body struggled beneath him.

“Beg your Master to take you, Savannah. Tell me you belong to me again.”

A lifetime of distrust somehow had no ability to withstand the flood of emotion that his words evoked, the overwhelming lust gripping her body, a different intensity than even what she had experienced with his men.

That had been physical, she realized.

This was more, a longing for fulfillment on all levels.

Now she understood what Jon had meant, the pleasure that would be ten times greater than anything else that had occurred tonight, if she recognized and accepted it.

Surrender. Love. Full submission to the man she loved, an intense emotional and physical pleasure like she’d never known swamping her at the simple verbal declaration.

But she had one last holdout, one last need to be met, and she would ask it, because she knew now she

could trust his answer.

She managed to get her hands from his arms up to his neck, caressing his jaw, so their eyes were locked in a moment that was simple, mutual absorption.

“If I tell you that, will you keep me, forever and ever? Never leave me? Never leave me in any way, never stop loving me?”

Please don’t be my father. Don’t live in the same house and let your heart not be there.

He took his fingers from her, making her shudder, and closed his hand on one of hers, laying it to his heart. “I will never leave you, not in any way, Savannah,” he said, his voice laden with emotion. “From today forward, for all eternity. You’re marrying me this weekend. I’m never going to let you know loneliness again. There’s a diamond ring in the pocket of my slacks, and it’s going on your finger before you leave this office tonight.

That was my gift.”

The tears welled up then and as he bent to kiss one off her cheek, he shifted, his eyes still locked on hers, and his cock seated itself in her channel, just the head. Her muscles closed around him in a fist of reaction, tightening his features.

“Don’t tense up, honey.”

“Who’s tense?” she gasped. “Please Matt, just do it. I need you inside me now.”

He slid his arm under her waist, tilting her up to him, and nodded.

“Hold onto my shoulders, then.”

She did, spurred by the hoarseness of his tone, the obvious desire for her expressed by every part of him, even parts she could not see, but could feel, surrounding her, empowering her.

Her passageway was ready for him, but he eased in, using small strokes.

She felt in wonder the sensations of his flesh brushing her inner thighs, the hard flesh of his abdomen, his soft hair rubbing against her belly and chest. She slid one hand down, following the plane of his back, and curved her fingers over his buttock, digging her nails into him in reaction as he stroked her again.

He growled, his body tensing under her touch, and he came all the way into her in one inexorable deep stroke, a claiming she gladly welcomed, binding her to him.

She could hear her father’s voice in her head. It’s what all men want, Savannah. A woman’s capitulation to their desires. It’s a hunt, a game to us, a deadly game. Once they win, they may indulge you or even themselves that their emotions are involved, but that passes.

He’d never allowed for the reality of love, and so, being a good daughter, she’d never allowed herself to believe in it. But she knew now her woman’s heart must have protected some tiny spark of belief, like a fairy captured inside her hard ironclad soul, and kept alive all these years by the things she’d noted subconsciously. The old couple walking hand in hand in the park, not part of a slick diamond commercial, but real. The always painful sight of a young father in the office, holding his wife protectively and proudly in the circle of his arm as he introduced the new baby daughter to his co- workers. Or in the hospital, when her father was dying, she remembered a room where two men sat, one dying of AIDS, the other holding his hand, rubbing ice on his dry lips.

She’d only touched her father when he was in the final coma, beyond consciousness. She’d briefly held his hand, wondering if she’d feel a tightening of his grip. If she had, she knew it would have been a physical reflex only, but she could have pretended it was a response to her.

The flowers, the times Matt had called, the time at the funeral, those had been gentle insinuations into her life. A taming more than a hunt, teaching her patiently to trust him, so when he chose to claim her, she walked willingly into his arms, into his thrall.

“Say it again,” she said softly. “Say it so my heart will hear it.”

He had stilled within her to give her time to adjust, and he pressed his cheek to hers, his breath in her ear.

“You’re mine, Savannah. Now and always.”

He withdrew slightly, then moved back in, and pleasure rippled through her abdomen. She raised her legs higher, tightening them over his hips, drawing him deeper. He filled her everywhere with this act of joining, and it was so easy, so clean. She wrapped her arms more tightly around his shoulders, feeling all his power, now all hers, as much as she was his, as he raised his hips, lowered, raised, lowered.

Controlling her, sliding along her passage, building up a fire that had the power of a detonation. He was deliberately teasing it to the surface, making her cling tighter, her breath growing harsher against his neck.

Her nails dug in again and her teeth as well, tasting his heated flesh, the cord of muscle along the line of his broad shoulder.

“That’s it,” he muttered. “Let it go.”

What had occurred earlier was earth- shattering, on the field of matter. This was a feeling beyond anything she had ever known or imagined, this incredible emotional and physical coupling. She had no experience to know if casual sex felt like this, but if so, she was sure sex done in love would kill the participant. This had to be love. Had to be. In their entire relationship, she’d never known Matt to lie to her about anything.

If he said he loved her, he did.

“Let go, honey,” he urged again.

“Trust me. Let go. You’re mine, all mine, and I’ll never let you go.”

Her arms held him tighter.

“You’re so strong and fragile both,”

he said. “So delicate. Such soft curves, your hair against my face, your perfume. I’ve never been so aware of a woman.”

“Never?” She thought of the many she’d seen him with, though she knew she’d been out with a similar number of men and they’d meant nothing to her.

He raised his head. “Never, Savannah. This is the way it is for a man in love. You’re in control of my destiny now. You’re a goddess to me, but you’re also terrifyingly mortal. I couldn’t stand losing you.”

“But what if…” She bit her lip as he moved, and his eyes gleamed with amusement and lust, as she struggled to get the words out, to meet his playful challenge. “What about in five years? When you know everything about me?”

He groaned, half chuckled as she tightened muscles on him, testing her own power. “How could any woman think that revealing herself to a man would destroy her mystery, her allure?” He bent, caught her lips, touched them with his tongue, spoke against her mouth. “Love has a million rooms to discover, sweetheart, and I’ll spend the next ten lifetimes and not know everything about you. I’ll only crave more.”

Her body trembled on the precipice.

In her mind, she saw the old couple again, the young parents, the gay couple soon to be parted by death.

People bound together willingly, to share all the moments good and bad.

Because that was what life was about. Not strategies and concessions, deals and coups. She saw her father’s face, saw its coldness and lack of understanding.

Saw it at the end, crumpled in pain, the shields that had kept him from the knowledge of love the only thing left intact.