Part 1 (1/2)

Struck by Lightning.

Slow Satisfaction.

Cecilia Tan.

For everyone who had to wait for satisfaction while I finished writing this novel. All of you.

Acknowledgments.

Many people helped bring me to this point in my career and it is impossible to name them all, even if it were not tricky to name people in a work of erotic fiction. But corwin, my corwin, deserves first mention. My dreams would have been so much harder-if not impossible-to achieve without that last twenty-three years of love and support from him.

This book wouldn't have happened without my indefatigable agent, Lori Perkins. Thanks, Lori, for never telling me I was too kinky.

Huge thanks go to my colleagues over the years at the New England Leather Alliance, whose mission of outreach and support for the leather, BDSM, and fetish communities has made a real difference in people's lives: Vivienne, Danny, Scott, Rae, Percy, Jack, Bendy, and everyone else who has busted their hump to volunteer for the community and fight for BDSM acceptance and education.

To my parents for always telling me yes when it came to expressing my creativity, whether it was music or writing or acting or what, and never judging me for my choice of partners or my s.e.xuality.

And to my fandom friends, who truly understand that love is what binds us all together and makes being human worthwhile.

Love is the music that makes the soul sing.

One.

Your Mother in a Whirl.

Dearest Karina, I have no idea if you'll read this. I hope you will. I decided to sit down and write because whenever I try to explain myself to you in person, either my pa.s.sions get the best of me or my fears do. Perhaps sitting down in a quiet place to compose this, without the distraction of your presence, I can put my feelings into words.

First, an apology. I regret many things, but none more than how much I hurt you. I have no excuse. My past is my past. My baggage is heavy, and perhaps now you can see why I wanted a fresh start with you, as if I had no past, no attachments, no burdens. And you gave me the freedom to be myself and to love you without reservations. I wish I had been able to keep my past and my demons at bay for one more day back in April, and I wish it again now. I'm sorry. I let my fears get the better of me that night at the ball, my suspicions and my paranoias blinding me to what I had right in front of me.

The love of my life.

I'm a fool. Maybe that means I don't deserve you. Stefan, who has never said a word out of line in all the time he has worked for me, even told me I had made a mistake.

I hope you will let me apologize in person. I have so much more to tell you, so much that I dare not put in a letter. I want to tell you everything. Everything you want to know, anyway. It might take years. But I want to spend years with you. I want to share my life with you. Whatever life I will have going forward from this moment, I can't imagine it without you.

But I cannot lie: that life is about to get very complicated again.

I thought I had put a whole chapter behind me when we met. I thought my contractual obligations had been fulfilled and I thought the false obligations had been dissipated, but it was not so. I cannot say more in a letter, but please let me tell you in person.

I do not know what will happen from this point. I would disappear completely, into anonymity in some distant country, perhaps, except for you. There is no other woman like you in the world and I was a fool not to love you as you deserve.

Please let me try.

Yours, heart, body, and soul, James Byron LeStrange My hands trembled a little as I read the e-mail from James on my phone, while the taxi picked up speed on the highway, hurrying me toward the hospital. Why did I read it then? Why? I should have at least waited until I was alone, but there had been three texts from him on my phone when I had landed, all saying some variation of ”I'm sorry” and promising to explain more. And if there was one thing I wanted most from James it was an explanation. When I'd looked into my e-mail to pull up the name of the hospital my sister had sent me, I saw the message from James there, and I'd been unable to resist.

Unable to resist. That was my second beef with James. He seemed to be able to manipulate me too easily. How else could you explain how much I missed him, how much I wanted him, even though I was trembling with rage at him?

He probably thought his message was as apologetic and conciliatory as possible, but it only made me angrier. Any apology was meaningless without an explanation after all the secrets he had kept from me, so an apology that still kept all his secrets intact was as fake as the aliases he used. Did he truly not understand that? After failing to tell me who he was during our affair in New York until I forced it out of him, failing to tell me about the secret BDSM society in England he was a member of, failing to tell me he pushed Damon, a member of that society, to ”test” me, and then failing to tell me that he might be married? Failing to tell me anything about what the h.e.l.l was going on while throwing out phrases like ”love of my life” and ”love you as you deserve” was insulting.

Part of me wanted to believe him. Part of me wanted to forgive him immediately and kneel at his feet and wait for him to tell me all about it. Surely he would... If he really loved me... But d.a.m.n it, he didn't deserve my devotion or my submission the way things were right now. He was going to have to earn it back.

If I let him.

I considered deleting the e-mail.

But I didn't. I had other troubles coming at me at the moment. I didn't know what I was going to find when I got to the hospital. I barely saw the office parks and housing developments roll past as I stared out the window. My mother had fallen down a flight of stairs. The last time Jill and I had talked, they hadn't yet known the full extent of her injuries, especially the blow to her head. All I knew from Jill's e-mail was that she had come out of surgery okay and that Jill was worried Mom's boyfriend might have had something to do with it.

I hoped she was wrong. I hoped that was merely Jill being freaked out over the accident and needing someone to blame. But I couldn't do anything from thousands of miles away in England, which was why I was here now.

I read James's e-mail again. If there was one thing James was good at, it was holding back: emotion, information, even his o.r.g.a.s.m. Here, he wasn't holding back the emotion. I could tell he was trying to be sincere. Love of my life. James wouldn't say, or type, those words if he didn't absolutely mean them. James had never lied to me directly; he insisted on honesty in everything we said.

But that didn't cover what was not said. I saw the words ”I would disappear completely, into anonymity in some distant country” and felt a spike of anxiety and rage. I know you would, James, because you've done it to me once already. How did I know he wouldn't do it again?

He did say he would explain. In person. But in person he had a way of making me forget myself, of drawing me into his aura of power and desire. Even in public.

I turned off my phone as the taxi exited the highway, the blue signs pointing to the hospital showing it was near.

Pulling my fully stuffed suitcases up to the hospital reception desk was awkward. Thankfully, the nurses on my mother's ward were very sympathetic that I had come directly from the airport. They took the bags behind the duty desk where they'd be out of the way, and a nurse with a cardigan sweater over her scrubs led me to my mother's room.

Jill was sitting in a chair outside the room, reading the newspaper. She stood up when she saw me, giving me a bear hug.

”Can we go in? How is she?” I asked.

”She was asleep last I looked.” Jill folded the paper as if trying to keep it from making crinkling noises and then tucked it into the tote bag on the floor next to her chair.

The nurse motioned for us to wait and slipped into the room. When she came out she said, ”Yeah, she's asleep. It's probably best to let her try to rest as much as possible. It'll be time for her next meds in an hour. I'll be back then.”

Jill pulled another chair over from farther down the hall and we sat down together. I finally let out the breath I had been holding. ”Well, I made it.”

”I'm glad. It's been rough here by myself.”

”Have you seen her boyfriend? You said something on the phone about him and in your e-mail.”

She scrubbed her face with her hands. ”I haven't seen him. But I'm suspicious as h.e.l.l.”

”So you said! You also mentioned some of Mom's stuff going missing?”

”It's hard to be sure. It's nothing so obvious as the place looking ransacked, you know? But I couldn't find that velvet case with the good silver in it.”

”The silverware she never let us use, you mean?” Some holidays my mother would take the silver out and polish it, but I never once saw her put it out on the dining room table for a holiday meal. I couldn't understand the point of having a special set of fancy silverware if you never used it, until one day Jill read me a book about dragons and then it started to make sense. The silver wasn't for using: It was guarded treasure. It was part of Mom's dragon h.o.a.rd. ”Her h.o.a.rd?” I asked to see if Jill remembered.

She smiled. ”Yeah. Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure some of her jewelry is gone, too. That's the thing though. It's only a few items, not all of it. Just most of what I remember us playing with as kids.”

”Could she have p.a.w.ned it herself?”