She considered the cross. “In almost every country I’ve visited, there are pictures of a Goddess specific to that culture. Mother, lover, friend. Many different faces. The first time I looked out over a tea plantation, it was an overcast day, but it was so incredibly awesome, beautiful. It filled my heart. At that very moment, the sun came out.” Her gaze shifted to him. “It felt like She saw it through my eyes, felt how amazed I was by it and that made Her smile.

“I feel sometimes the same way when I’m being a Mistress, like I understand it all without words. The way you do when you’re in a church like this and it all gets quiet.

Everything gets so clear in my head, so peaceful. I’m part of Her at that moment, as it was always intended and everything makes sense. I can see and feel inside my submissive’s soul, know what he best needs, give him that.

“You can think all sorts of nonsense when you’re crazy.” Her lips curved a little. “I guess what I’m saying is that God or Goddess, They have a plan. I believe that. There’s too much wonder for there not to be. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I have to believe my mother and brother are somewhere, happy.” She added the last, softly. “And so that keeps me from hating. So you finished it after she died?”

Here in this place, he couldn’t evade a question from her. Not with the spell she had just woven, the sacred presence she’d invited to fill the air between them. “Yes. It took a little longer, because I took over doing a lot of the work myself. When I…there was a time things didn’t make sense to me.”

“When you came back from Panama.”

He shook his head. “I’d fire that woman if I knew how to operate a vacuum.”

“Maybe she thinks you should be as honest with me as you’re demanding that I be with you. Or do you think I can’t take it?” She arched a brow.

He lifted a shoulder, moved down the aisle toward the wooden cross hung there.

Marguerite followed, trailing her fingers over the silken wood of the pews, watching him. When they got to the cross, Tyler lifted his fingers, pressed them into a gouge in the wood. “I did that, when I came back.”

She stepped up next to him, pressing her shoulder to his, and put her fingers in the same spot. It looked to have been caused by a tool, perhaps a chisel. “While you were working in here?”

“Yes. I’m not a great craftsman, but I wanted to… I needed to do something. And the more I hammered and sanded in here, the more the silence… It’s as you said, God is in the silence. And sometimes it’s hard to be in the same room with Him.

“After I did it, I brought the local minister here, showed it to him and asked him if there was a way he could bless it, purify it. I felt like I’d somehow desecrated it. He told me, ‘The cross is supposed to bear pain and sorrow, betrayal and anger, so that it may help you forgive yourself.’”

Marguerite felt the emotions emanating from him. The strain of keeping the rest under careful control was evident from the tension in his face, his shoulders. He was trying to give her more of himself, just as she’d asked, but now she didn’t know if that had been a wise request. She was already too absorbed in him already.

“I was raised Baptist,” he said, his fingers remaining just below the gouge, his attention on it. “I was taught that you’re always a child and God is the father. That we’re weak, unable to help ourselves if we’re bad. That there are so many things out of our control we just have to do good where we can and leave the rest up to Him. When I did this, I was reacting as a child would, angry because the parent had let me down.

And then as I sat here, quietly spent, the teachings went away and there was only Presence.” His gaze flicked to her. “Somewhat like you described. And I knew that I was an adult, responsible for my actions, as responsible for protecting the weak and innocent and for fighting evil as He is. And while there’s so much wisdom that I don’t know, I know that evil doesn’t happen for a cosmic reason, a ‘balance of good’ bullshit.

Evil happens because it can, because circumstances allow it to take place. And you build your own sanctuary against it to keep yourself sane, to keep yourself fighting it.” He turned to face her fully then, his amber eyes bathed in the colored light of the stained glass. When he reached out, threaded fingers through her hair and watched it ripple across his knuckles like pale wheat, she couldn’t move. She was held still by all the memories she felt pulsing from him, intertwining with her own. “Sometimes, I think it’s like a fable,” he said. “One powerful god released all the evil things on the world.

Another god, a god of light, could not undo what the other god had done, but he could give us something to make life worth living. So he gave us love.

“I’m working on it.” He met her gaze. “Working on sharing with you. But I’ve been places where there are too many dead and I helped increase the body count. Each of those lives meant something to someone. And to the person themselves. But whatever lies beyond… You’ve helped me remember why it’s worth fighting. Living. Even when the lines get so confusing you think you’re losing your mind.” She reached up, touched him at last. “I need you, Tyler. More than I’ve ever let myself need anything. I’m so messed up at times, but I look at you and everything eases.”

He smiled. “For me, too. Maybe that’s the simplest definition of love there is, angel.”

Cupping her face in his large palm, he kissed her deep, slow until she was leaning into him, holding on to his wet polo shirt. Laying her palms on either pectoral, she thought about how much bigger, broader he was than herself. Though she’d dominated subs, the experience of touching a man and feeling the gift of his strength and protectiveness, his masculine self, was something Tyler had specifically given her. She traced the outline of him, the way the cloth fit over his body and felt her breath catch in her throat at the wonder of it.

He could feel her knees weakening, just as she felt his heart increase its pounding beneath her hand. Tightening his hands around her waist, he lifted her, carried her to the space of floor between the altar area and front pews where a deep blue rug had been laid, a tapestry of birds and angels.

“Tyler.” She looked up at him. “This is blasphemous.” He couldn’t resist the heat of his desire, not with her mouth wet with rain and his kiss. Her neck and breasts were beaded with drops while the soft pinkness of her flesh showed through the cotton dress. Lovely, natural.

“This isn’t sin.” He managed the words in a voice thick with want. “It’s sacred.

Everything I do with you, every touch, every kiss, every word murmured in reverence against your flesh, is sacred. And you’re cold. I want to warm you.” Standing above her, he toed off his loafers and removed his clothes. He came down to her naked, kneeling between her legs. Sliding the wet fabric of the dress up her body, over her stomach, he bent to kiss her navel, took a sloping track to one hipbone, then the other. He pulled the dress off her, laying it aside to look at her, pale, wet and naked under his gaze.

Marguerite was helpless not to do the same. His tanned shoulders gleamed with the light of the stained glass window and the dampness of the storm outside. His chest expanded as he breathed deep and long, breathing her in, his eyes locking with hers. At length, she lifted her arms and he lowered his body to her, guiding himself. She tilted up, aching to find him, letting out a soft moan as he eased into her, bringing her his heat and life. When she wound her arms around his neck, her legs twined around his hard, muscular body. She realized then there were ways to cleanse her soul she’d never known existed. Like immersing it in the loving embrace of another. The candles flickered on the altar and she counted. One…David. Two…her mother. Three…

Perhaps even the long-dead spirit of what had been her father. There was a fourth, making her wonder if Nina’s spirit danced here still, touching Tyler, being a part of him forever.

The clouds shifted and the shadows of the dove’s wings covered her face, broken by pieces of sunlight now coming through the clear planes of glass. The jeweled blue of the design joined the mix, coloring his skin, making his eyes glow in the church’s dim light.

He stroked her inside with his cock, the length of him deep in her channel and against her quivering clit. Because she wanted to do it, she released his shoulders, let her hands fall above her and offered her throat.

“Ah, angel.” He covered her jugular with his mouth. Bit. Her body tightened, surrendering with a soft sigh of relief, wanting to give him anything he asked, wanting him to ask for it all.

Her cries came easily, echoing off the vaulted ceiling, cries of fulfillment, of desire and peace at once. Of triumph, when he let go and poured himself into her, reinforcing the promise that had begun less than a handful of weeks before. He’d said she was his.

Now she couldn’t imagine having ever wanted anything different for herself in her whole life.

“Tyler…” She reached up and touched his face, closed her eyes as he turned into her palm and kissed it, bit gently.

“Yes, sweet Mistress?”

It made her chest hurt, how much she felt in this moment. She knew she should not say anything impetuously. But under the light of the stained glass window, the flickering candlelight of their shared memories, it felt like simple, unexamined honesty.

No matter what the darkness brought back to her tomorrow.

“I’m in love with you.”

Framing her face with his hands, he brought his lips down on hers in answer. His body moved upon her again, renewing their passion. As he took her up, she was flying again, higher and higher. Wanting nothing more than to keep this soaring peace with him inside her forever.

Chapter Ten

“So, you’re going to go home and forget all about me.”

“Pretty much.” She watched him put her bag in her BMW and rested her arm on the top of the car door as he closed the trunk. When he came around the car, approaching her with an intent look in his eye, anticipation flooded her. As if they hadn’t made love less than two hours ago when he woke her for a Sunday morning breakfast. And several times during the night.