Pressing her up against the car’s frame, he delved into her mouth with his own, his hands wandering down to fondle her ass, squeeze, press her hard against his cock in a way that made her knees tremble, loosen.

“No…” Marguerite murmured, a smile on her lips. She wiggled, squirmed, managed to drop and fold herself into the driver’s seat, quickly slamming the door before Tyler could push his suit further. Bracing his palms on the frame of the open window, he grinned at her, though his eyes were hot, demanding she get out of the car, stay.

She couldn’t get this much off track. The past thirty-six hours had been fantastic, in the literal sense of the word. She needed some time to think about the changes he’d brought forth in her in such a short time.

“Don’t do that.” He cupped her face, brought her startled eyes up to him. “Don’t retreat from me again.”

She swallowed, reached up and closed her hand over his wrist, the strength of it.

“I’m not. Not that way, I promise. I know the type of man you are. You’re impatient, sure of your feelings. I’ve been alone a long time. I just need a few days of normalcy. To get my balance.”

“Every time you get your balance, I get shut out.” He squatted, going eye to eye with her. “Just remember, angel, there’s not a drawbridge you can raise that I won’t scale. But it would be a hell of a lot nicer for both of us to conserve my energy for better things.”

“Don’t you think of anything else?” But her own body was vibrating with need just at the sweep of his possessive glance over it. “I’m trying. Just trust me. Please. I don’t…” She sighed, closed her eyes. “How does last night change things? Do I tell you where I’m going, who I’m with, my schedule? Do you tell me yours? Is that how this works?”

“Is that how you want it to work?”

She studied him a long moment. “All I know is every moment I’ve been without you, it feels…wrong. Does that get better or worse with proximity? Will your insufferable arrogance make me want to slap you around?” He flashed a grin. “As much as your haughty tone will make me want to turn you over my knee.”

Her smile faded at the corners, her expression becoming even more thoughtful.

“And that’s something else. What about The Zone? You’re a Master, I’m a Mistress. I know with you it’s different, but there are times… I want, I still feel the desire…” She flushed. “It hasn’t gone away, and I don’t know how you feel about that. Is that unfaithful? I don’t want to make you angry, or jealous.”

“Tell me how you imagine that part of your life, now.” Tyler kept his face carefully impassive, somewhat encouraging, wanting her to be honest, though his gut was clutching in a tense knot, waiting to see where she was going with this.

“I don’t know how to do this. I mean…”

“Marguerite.” He tightened his fingers on her face, an unmistakable command he intended to focus her. “Without thinking about it, tell me right now how you feel.

Everything.”

“I miss you,” she said softly. “From the moment you leave or I leave, I think about you. I wish you were sleeping beside me. I have this insane notion to call you to tell you to come over, right then. But it also feels good sitting there at my desk, holding on to the thought of you, reliving everything we’ve said and done.” She pushed her hand through her hair, tugging at her own scalp in a frustrated move he’d never seen her make.

“How do we do this?” she asked. “I know I’m like a silly teenager, but I never had a boyfriend in school. There was no possible way I could have anything, with my home situation, with the way…he made me feel… Boys seemed to know. Like animals know when another animal is sick, to keep their distance.” She lifted a shoulder. “And those boys who didn’t… I knew what the look in their eye was about. So I don’t know the right way to do this. I feel like I’m standing in the doorway of a room and everyone’s staring at me, waiting for me to say and do the right thing and I don’t know…” He felt the fist around his gut ease at the stream of words. Relief that her struggle was not in how to pull away, but how to become closer.

Despite the amazing breakthrough of the past day and a half, he knew that Marguerite’s past would not let go of her without further struggle. Perhaps full-pitched battle.

“Angel.” He pressed a kiss on the lid of each of those confused blue eyes. “Since the time I’ve met you, you’ve set your own style, your own way of doing things. You can call me anytime you want. Anytime. Every second, every hour. And every time, I’ll answer the phone with the same eagerness to hear your voice as I did a second before.

I’m here. I told you that last night. I’m not going anywhere.

“Now.” He wrapped a hand in her hair, played in the strands as she tilted toward him, moving her head in that way that she’d started to do, telling him she liked to be stroked. “I’ve always loved watching you be a Mistress. Come stay with me at my Tampa house next weekend and we’ll talk about it some more. We’ll figure it out. Mac and Violet are staying with me that weekend and I want you to come.” He traced the shell of her ear. “Maybe she’ll let you play with Mac some. Or maybe we’ll cover that Zone requirement we missed. The one where you submit to a Master’s desire to share you with another Dominant.”

She jerked back from his touch, her eyes narrowing. “Do snowballs and hell mean anything to you?”

He burst out laughing. It caught her breath, the rich, sexy sound of it. Marguerite realized suddenly how rarely Tyler laughed like that. Almost as rarely as she smiled.

And it made her realize that perhaps she was changing his life as he was changing hers.

It was a startling thought, one that made her reflect ruefully that love could cloud your perspective so you could be surprised with the obvious. “You were teasing me.”

“While the idea of you and Violet together would be every man’s fantasy, I do recognize it’s a safer bet as one of my and Mac’s prurient dreams.” His eyes sobered and he twined her hair back around one of his fingers.

“They’re good friends of mine. I’d like you to see the side of them I’ve seen. Will you come?”

She nodded, started the car, gave him her look of practiced diffidence. “Now leave me alone this week. I have a business to run.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “I was just thinking I’ll be in Tampa most of the week. Since they’re doing some work on the house, I may just have to come and do some paperwork in a corner of Tea Leaves. It’s a wonderful venue for working. The service is topnotch, the waitstaff very solicitous and the owner… Well, one glimpse of her is enough to get me through the day.”

“Ass,” she said, shaking her head, hitting the up button to her window, forcing him to back out of it. He did with easy elegance and a grin, sliding his hands into the pockets of his slacks and keeping his gaze on her while she backed the car, put it in drive. Marguerite kept both hands firmly on the wheel, knowing that otherwise she’d be tempted to leap out and snatch one more taste of his lips.

Unfortunately, the renovations at the Tampa home and the lackadaisical attitude of the overpaid coastal contractors who preferred to fish during the warmer days required him to stay on the premises Monday and part of Tuesday. Then a problem came up with the actress he’d wanted for a production Michael Atlas was handling. Persuading her to change her schedule required a quick flight out of town to her home in Cape Cod.

Tyler had to be satisfied with daily calls to the woman whose very existence now burned in him like a fever. He made a habit of calling the main number of Tea Leaves to talk to Gen and Chloe first, before they transferred him into Marguerite’s office. While he didn’t pry or ask any questions about Marguerite he did not ask her when she came on the line, he knew Gen and Chloe would convey any problems just by the tones of their voices. And it was that which caused him concern on when he called Wednesday late afternoon, for there was definitely a hesitation in Chloe’s voice when she picked up.

“Are things going okay, Chloe?”

“Oh, sure, fine. Um…let me get Marguerite.”

“Chloe.”

“Well…”

There was a sharp comment in the background and Tyler was put on hold.

Marguerite picked up in her office a moment later, and he heard the snick of the office door as she closed it.

“Good morning from New England,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“You know, babysitters get at least five dollars an hour now,” she said caustically.

“And Gen and Chloe are putting in overtime for you.”

“I’m not…” He closed his eyes, massaged the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I check with them about you. I care about you. And I know you get down sometimes. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?” Marguerite stared down at her day calendar. At the date marked with a red X. Somehow the past few weeks had allowed her to push to the back of her mind the last thing that ever should have been relegated there.

Everything had been about Tyler lately. Each day since she’d seen him, without his touch or his smile, things inside her had gotten progressively darker. Knowing the danger of opening her heart, now she faced the reality of an addict deprived of her daily fix. Each day the doubts crowded in that much more. Such that when she woke this morning, the first thing she’d done was remember that date. And she’d moved the tea samples and stack of invoices off of the calendar with deliberate care, as if removing the casing of a bomb, and stared at it. A reminder that she shouldn’t be letting down her guard, shouldn’t be allowing herself to be swept away so incautiously on a wave of infatuation. She had to stay centered, focused. She could enjoy Tyler, but she couldn’t lose herself in him. She couldn’t depend on anyone but herself.