“He’s . . .” My shoulders slumped. “He’s into bondage.”

“I knew it! I knew there was more to you than just a germ fetish! So this was what, a fantasy setup? Wow, that’s really wild. I’ll give you Mistress Dominica’s number later, if you like, although if you have your own connection, you probably won’t care too much. Are you a bottom or a top?”

I blinked at her. “Eh . . .”

“Bottom. I knew it. I’m a top, myself, but as I told you when I moved in, you don’t have to worry that I’m going to try to seduce you.” She smiled at the cabdriver’s startled glance in the mirror. “I have to give it to you guys—that was a hell of a kidnapping fantasy. I guess I won’t be siccing Daddy’s lawyers on the guys if they were your friends, although I have to say I thought they were a bit rough, especially when that one guy slammed you up against the wall. Unless, of course, you like that.” She gave me a considering look.

I smiled feebly, and spent the remainder of the ride wondering why the vengeful Norse god Loki would pick now to pop back up in my life.

Chapter 2

“Any luck?”

“No. It’s gone. Everything but my wallet, which I took with me to pay the cab.” I slumped down on my bed and thought seriously about crying, except I wasn’t a crying sort of person. It just made me stuffy and hot. “My cell phone, my books, my keys, all gone. The worst part is, it’s my own fault—I should have taken the backpack with me, not left it lying next to the door. It all happened so quickly that I just grabbed my money and went after you.”

“Sorry that your fantasy went so bad, Fran,” Geoff said as she patted me on the shoulder. “I think you ought to tell your bondage dude to reimburse you for your stuff, though, since he botched the whole thing.”

I stifled a smile at the idea of demanding money from Loki. “Um . . . yeah.”

“Well, once you tell him that you cut and colored your hair, I’m sure it won’t happen again. And who knows? Maybe next year I’ll go back to being blond, although I have to say I like the ebony look. It’s so dramatic and Vampira and all.”

My gaze shot to her, but she was bustling around the tiny kitchen in the apartment we shared.

“About next year . . .” I bit my lip, watching as she plugged in an electric teakettle. “I know I said I’d be here at least a couple of years, but I’ve decided it’s time to move on. I accepted an IT job at my dad’s office. I’ll be starting there just as soon as I wrap up the Web site launch project for the vet hospital.”

“You’re moving?” Geoff looked surprised, but not in the least bit distressed, which relieved my mind considerably. I figured it wouldn’t be hard for her to find a roomie in a university town.

“To California, yes.” I rubbed my fingers over the material of my jeans, my hands a bit hot under the two layers of gloves. Ever since that last fight with Ben almost a year ago, I had been growing steadily more unhappy and restless. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think change is what I need right now. A change in employment, a change of life, a change in . . .”

My gaze fell to the tiny chest of drawers that butted up against the foot of my bed. I knew well that Geoff had noticed when I removed the picture of Ben that used to sit on top of it. It resided hidden in my underwear drawer, the sight of it bringing me too much pain. It lashed me now as the memory of an angry voice echoed in my head.

“I don’t know what more you want from me, Fran! You asked for time apart, and I gave you time apart. You wanted to go to school, and I’ve followed every rule you set down, only seeing you once a year. Now you don’t even want that?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to see you,” I had tried to explain, but it had been difficult doing it over the phone. Part of me ached with the need to see him, but I knew I had to make a stand. I had to take back my own life. “I just want some time, Ben.”

“You’ve had time! It’s been four years since you left GothFaire. Fran, you’re my Beloved, the other half to my being. I need you. I can’t exist without you. You are the only one who can redeem me. Why can’t you understand that?”

And that was the point where I exploded on him. “I do understand it. I just reject the whole idea of Beloveds! I don’t want to be your soul mate because I have to, Ben! I don’t want to be bound to you just because of some quirk of fate. I want to make my own choices, make my own life, pick my own man! I want to know that the man I choose to spend my life with is right for me not because it was written into some grand plan, but because our hearts say we should be together. Is that so wrong?”

“How do you know that our hearts aren’t saying that?” he argued.

“Do you love me, Ben? Can you tell me, right here, right now, that you love me beyond all reason?”

“You are my Beloved,” he said in a low, angry voice. “I cannot help but honor and cherish you.”

His words pierced my heart like little shards of ice. “You can’t help but cherish me. That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Ben. Neither one of us had a choice in this relationship—you got stuck with me without any say in the matter, too. One minute we had two separate lives. The next we were tangled up together without either one of us wanting it. It just was. But that’s not good enough. Not any longer, it isn’t.”

Silence followed my tirade, a silence so filled with pain it almost made me relent. “You don’t want me.”

I took a deep, shaky breath. “I want to make my own choices. I don’t want to be handed a man and be told I have to bind my life to his simply because of a sympathetic link between us. I want to fall in love, not be told I must love. I want to make my own fate, not accept what life has dealt.”

Ben’s voice was flat and lifeless, as cold as the arctic wind. “It will be as you wish. Good-bye, Fran.”

I closed my eyes tight as I remembered the pain of hearing him speak those words, knowing they would be the last ones I’d hear from him. The year that had passed since that call had been filled with anguish over my decision. Had I been right to sever the relationship with Ben? Was he suffering because of it, or had he, too, been set free to make his own choices. At one time, when I was a naive sixteen, I had fancied myself in love with him. But even then I hadn’t wanted to be pushed into the irreversible commitment demanded as a Beloved without knowing my own mind first.

“Is it so much to ask to want to have a say in my own life?” I asked sadly, wiping at a tear that had sneaked out of the corner of my eye.

“No. But sometimes life doesn’t work that way.” Geoff held out a mug to me. “Sometimes life is messy and confusing and makes you cry, and you have to work like hell to get things straightened out. You going to see your boyfriend?” I started to protest, but she continued. “Oh, I know, you claim he’s not your boyfriend, but you don’t keep a man’s picture in your undies if he doesn’t still mean something to you.”

“He’s . . . it’s . . . no. I made my decision. I’m sure he’s happier for it.”

“I sure hope so, because you’ve been miserable as hell.” She pulled open the top drawer and extracted Ben from my panties. “I gotta admit he’s yummy,” she said, eyeing the picture. “You said he’s even better in person?”

“Yes.” My gaze was drawn to the picture, even though I’d stared at it so often it was permanently etched into my memory. Ben’s face was half in shadow in the picture, a little smile curling those delectable lips that I remembered with much fondness, but even with his face partially in shadow, I could see the warmth in his gold and brown eyes, see the stubbornness in his jaw, see the black as sin hair that he pulled back into a ponytail. Just looking at him made my body tingle and my heart thump uncomfortably.

“I’m surprised you left him,” Geoff said softly, her gaze now on me.

I made an effort to pull my mind back from the deep well of pain that surged up whenever I thought of him. “I had to. He wanted a commitment that I wasn’t ready to make. And everyone wanted me to make it, too. Well, everyone but my mother, who told me I needed to get out of the relationship because it wasn’t healthy.”

Geoff rolled her eyes. “Heard that. Have the T-shirt. My last girlfriend, she makes Carmen look like Miss Free and Easy. I finally had to get a restraining order against her because she started stalking me. It was really creepy. I don’t blame you for leaving Brad when you did, because seventeen can be such a wacky time, but are you sure you don’t want to see him? I mean, you’re all grown up now. Maybe things will be different.”

“No. Nothing will be different.” I’d still be his Beloved. We’d still be bound together because of that odd quirk of fate, and not because we wanted to be together.

“Well, good luck to you. I’d be scared stiff to move in with my dad. He’s so rigid. He still thinks I’m twelve.”

I grimaced. “My father isn’t much different, but it’ll only be for a couple of weeks until I get a place of my own. My mother isn’t going to be happy, though. She thinks my dad is the devil incarnate, and she really can’t stand her replacement.”

“Yeah, my mother hates the current Mrs. Widden, too. I just wish Dad would get past his trophy wife stage and settle down to one.”

“Well, there’s nothing my mother can do to stop me. Except maybe a spell or two,” I added under my breath.

“Except what?”

“Nothing.” I scooted back on the bed, mentally counting down the days. Two weeks and I’d be done with the big Web site launch project that I’d been working on for the last three months, and I could leave Oregon and step into a new life.

Why did that thought seem so bleak?

“Doesn’t it just figure,” Geoff said with an exaggerated sigh, pulling out her phone when it indicated she had another message. “I finally find a normal roommate, and you’re dumping me.”