Slowly she became aware of her chafed wrists, her aching muscles, the rawness of her throat from her cries, and the tenderness of her pussy where he’d taken her hard. There’d been no gentleness. When she came, he’d wrenched it from her.

It felt good to be forced, her climax guiltless.

His chin was scratchy against her forehead, his chest hair soft against her cheek. He smelled of clean male sweat.

Then she smelled herself. She needed a shower. After what he’d done, after she’d accepted her punishment, and with a shower, she would be clean again for a little while.

She moved, but Luke slept on.

She crawled off the bed, and he simply shifted on the comforter without waking. His breaths were deep and even. In the big tiled shower, she turned the controls to scalding. Then she stepped beneath the spray. She stood it as long as she could, but she was weak and had to add a little cold water to mute the burn.

She startled as she felt his body, suddenly there, hard and cool against her blazing flesh. She hadn’t heard the door. He soaped between her legs, her armpits, reached for shampoo for her hair. His touch was so sweet and gentle, she wanted to cry.

When they were done, he put on his robe, then wrapped her in a huge bath towel, and carried her to the screened-in sun porch at the back of the house, settling onto a chaise lounge with her in his arms.

Her head pillowed on his chest, she was almost asleep again. Until his voice rumbled against her ear.

“Tell me now. I order you to,” he added as if he thought she wouldn’t say anything at all if he didn’t make it a demand.

She knew what he wanted. “He’s dead,” she murmured, feeling almost as if she were in a trance. “I watched him die. They said he floated away, and I think I saw it, but I’m not really sure.”

He was silent a long time, her head rising and falling on his breastbone with every deep breath. “When?” he asked, offering no sympathy words.

She didn’t want them. “This morning.”

“Why didn’t you stay with your mother?”

“She told me to get out. She didn’t need me anymore. She didn’t care. So I left.”

Luke heard the pain lacing her words, felt the vibration of it through her body. She didn’t cry. She’d moved beyond crying. All he could do was take her pain into himself, absorb it for her like the portrait of Dorian Gray absorbed his evil.

He didn’t offer meager condolences. He didn’t question why she’d needed hard sex rather than comfort. He didn’t even ask why, rather than tell him about her father, she’d lied about the two doms at the club. He had the sense to realize that she knew she’d get a harder fuck out of him with that story, that he’d never have been able to give it to her the way she wanted it if she’d told him about her dad first. She knew him so well, knew that giving two doms climax after climax would make him totally crazy. He couldn’t even be angry about it. How she’d handled him defined her. He either had to accept or walk. He accepted. He wanted her any way he could have her. Now, he gave her his lap to lay in, his arms around her, and his permission to talk if she wanted to.

He went on with the gentle questioning. “Do you need help with the funeral arrangements?”

“My parents already did that together,” she murmured softly, as if she were under hypnosis. “Before. When the doctors said he should think about hospice, they went out and made all the arrangements.”

When they’d told the patient there wasn’t any hope left. “So the service is planned. That’s good.” At least there was less to worry about, he supposed.

“My mom’s cremating him. No urn.” She sighed, then softly added, “Just dust and ash.”

She had no inflection as she said it; he couldn’t tell how she felt. A hole grew inside him. Isn’t that what they were all destined for, dust and ash? It made it that much more important to take what you could now.

“I assume he has a will.”

“Everything tied in a neat little bow, all carefully controlled,” she whispered.

She had to be suppressing her grief and pain, her sense of loss. First with the sex, now with this almost childlike tone.

“If you need anything—”

“I don’t,” she cut him off. “I’m fine. We’re all fine now. Everything’s fine.” Her words lingered, then ended on a puff of breath. She tipped her head back to look at him. Her eyes were clear and all-knowing. She knew he heard the lies; she knew he couldn’t say anything about it, that he had to accept, that this was the one thing he couldn’t push.

“I’m glad it’s all fine.” He knew it wasn’t. He understood the ache of loss that death brought, the complete and total end of everything, no chance to correct mistakes, or to say I love you one last time. Inside, he died a little to be so incapable of easing her pain. The most he could do was sit here, his arms around her. And listen when she needed to say something.

“With him gone,” she whispered, “maybe I can finally be normal.”

He stroked her cheek. Even as true as it was, people didn’t want to hear that time healed the loss. Instead he said, “Remember we said we didn’t need normal.”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth a moment, but “Right” was all she said when she spoke.

In the ensuing silence, he put his lips to her temple, kissed her.

“It’s time for me to go,” she said after long minutes.

There was one last thing he needed before he could let her go. Cupping her cheek, he forced her to meet his gaze. “What we did was fucking hot. Tell me it was good for you.”

He wasn’t asking for affirmation of his prowess. He just needed to know that he’d read her correctly, that she’d wanted it hard and angry and had instigated what happened with her story about the slave room. If he knew exactly how to read her, he could duplicate the experience every time.

Her eyes were a murky blue, like a cloudy sky. “You made me stop thinking,” she said, and at least that was said with complete honesty.

“Is that what you need from me?” Was that enough for him, to give her the most powerful orgasm he could so that she could stop thinking?

“Yes,” she said.

He felt the rightness of it. Yes, it was enough for now, for this moment. The more he wanted from her would come later, when she’d dealt with her loss, her grief, her mother, her life after death.

She climbed off his lap, stood, the towel wrapped tightly around her torso. “It’s more than anyone else has ever given me. It’s more than I’ve ever taken.”

He actually reveled in that bit of knowledge and the fact that she offered it to him freely.

“I have to go now,” she repeated. She had to return to her mother.

“Will you be okay?”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t expected her to say anything less. Rising, he put a hand to her throat, stroked her smooth skin with his thumb. “I’m here. Call.”

“I always do.”

It was his one constant, that she would always call again. She needed him.

It was not until he stood in the front window watching her car disappear around the corner that he heard her words again in his mind. With him gone, maybe I can finally be normal. Not I can be normal again, or even things can return to normal. She’d never said there was a time when she’d felt normal.

He didn’t want to think it. Yet he’d always sensed the shadows in her past. His gut had told him she’d been in some bad relationships, not just Derek, but before. Bad relationships that had skewed her thinking. But did it go deeper? Her need for punishment, that she deserved it, the derisive names she had to have. Then that little snippet she told him about the driving lesson. And finally, her response to her father’s death, running here for punishment, needing it. The reaction was extreme; it wasn’t normal. She wasn’t normal.

Jesus, no. His gut was screaming at him. No, he had to be wrong. Her father couldn’t have done anything to her. Luke couldn’t conceive of a father doing bad things to his own child.

Yet fathers did, all the time.

The guilt unsettled her stomach. She’d left her mom alone too long. But she couldn’t have survived another moment in that house without seeing Luke.

A curious warmth had spread through her as he held her. She’d gone a little crazy, goading him with the most hateful story she could think of, begging him to heap on the abuse. He’d given his all, yet in the moments afterward, it was like a different man touching her, comforting her. In most ways, he was so normal and centered. Even the sex thing wasn’t that kinky. He called it abnormal, but an unattached male going to a sex club once in a while or playing with a bit of bondage wasn’t that far out of the norm. She was the one far out on the edge of the spectrum. But he didn’t mind. He gave her what she needed.

Pulling into her parents’ driveway, Bree held tight to the steering wheel. There was Luke’s house. And then there was this place with its dark walls and its dark halls. Climbing from her car, she realized she’d lost the delicious content Luke had given her in those moments on his bed, in his shower, in his arms. Now, there was only ennui.

All she had to do was get through the scattering of her father’s ashes. Then she could go back home. Couldn’t she? Suddenly she had visions of her mother needing her for weeks, even months. Her mom had no friends; she was completely alone. Bree’s father had never allowed her any friends. He’d claimed he didn’t like being alone when she went out, but it was just a way of controlling her and keeping her dependent.

She opened the door and called. “Mom.” Her voice seemed to echo in all the silence.

She prayed her father was gone. Not just his spirit, but his body, too.

“I’m back here, Bree.” Her mother’s voice, oddly cheery, drifted down the hall to her.

She followed the sound. In the bedroom, her mom had pushed the hospital bed flush up against the window frame, giving herself more room. Thank God it was empty. Bree didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she let it out with a whoosh of relief. Then she saw the dollhouse through the window, sweet and harmless in the afternoon light. She moved until it was out of sight.

Her mom now sat on a low stool beside the bureau. A big black garbage bag at her feet, she was stuffing it with T-shirts, underwear, and socks.

“What are you doing, Mom?”

“I thought I’d make a Goodwill run with these clothes.”

“They don’t take underwear.”

A frown creasing her mouth, her mom stared at the bag a moment. Then suddenly she smiled. “You’re right. Get me a kitchen trash bag for all that stuff, would you?”

Her father wasn’t even burned and scattered. Bree wasn’t sure his body was completely cold and stiff yet.

Her mother had been waiting.

Suddenly, her mom cocked her head. “How do you dispose of medications. Aren’t they a hazardous waste?”

“Probably. I can look it up on the Internet.”

“Oh, I’m sure hospice can tell us. I called them to come get the bed.”

“You don’t have to do this now, Mom.” It was frightening.

“What else are we going to do? Sit here and mope?” Her mother flapped a hand at her. “Now go on and get the trash bag so we can dump it all.”

Oh yeah, this was scary.