“Was he angry at you for coming to his house?”

Nora shook her head. “I can count on one hand the number of times Søren’s been actually angry at me. And then it’s usually because I’ve done something dangerously stupid or stupidly dangerous. No, that day he was … Well, he wasn’t angry. By March it had been four months since he told me to back off, go away, grow up. Everything that had happened the year before already felt like a dream, like I couldn’t be sure it had happened.”

She remembered standing outside the fence and Søren on the inside. They talked for a few minutes, and from the way he spoke, the way he looked at her, she knew she wasn’t the only one who remembered the dream.

“After that day, however …” Nora’s chest heaved slightly. “Nothing. Nothing for months and months and months. No talking, no touching, no nothing. Søren and I became strangers to each other again. It wasn’t awful. I didn’t sit in my room and stare out the window for a year or anything. I went to school, got good grades, worked my ass off to finish my community service. I wasn’t allowed to get a driver’s license until I turned eighteen, but Søren’s secretary, Diane, gave me rides places. I did okay. It wasn’t fun, but I survived it.”

Nico rolled up and moved closer to her. He took her knees in his hands and pulled her legs around his waist to bring them face-to-face. She relaxed into the circle of his strong arms and rested her chin on his shoulder.

“I’m glad you survived it,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, I survived it. And what’s funny is that later on, after I became a novelist, I understood what Søren had done and why.”

“And what was that?”

“It’s a trick of the fiction writer,” she explained. “You figure out what your main character is most afraid of, and then you make her face that fear.”

“Is that what he made you do?”

“Losing him, losing his love, was my greatest fear. And he made me face it. I faced it, I survived it. And ultimately …”

Nora paused to kiss Nico’s neck for no other reason than it wanted kissing.

“Ultimately, that time on my own turned me into what Søren said I was all along.”

“What was that?”

Nora pulled back and gave Nico her wickedest grin. She raised one finger to indicate he should wait. Nico arched an eyebrow. She slipped out of his arms, out of bed and took something from her suitcase.

Her red riding crop.

She held it in front of her, the tip pointed at the center of Nico’s chest.

“Dangerous,” she said.

Nico smiled, his lips slightly parted, his breath quickening.

“You see,” she said, letting the tip of the crop rest at the hollow of his throat, “when you face your greatest fear and you survive, what’s left to be afraid of?”

Nico licked his lips. His chest rose and fell.

“Answer me.” Nora slid the crop under his chin and forced him to raise his head an inch.

“Nothing,” Nico said.

“My greatest fear was to live without Søren and I did. I wasn’t afraid of that anymore, and I didn’t need anyone anymore. I wanted him, but I didn’t need him. But he needed me.”

“I believe it,” he said.

Nora looked down at him.

“Now, Nicholas Delacroix, tell me your fear.”

“My fear is that this will be our only night together, and I will live the rest of my life never meeting another woman like you.”

“I can’t promise we’ll have another night together, but I can guarantee this—you’ll never meet another woman like me.”

She didn’t add that never meeting another woman like her was most likely a good thing.

He didn’t seem to think so, however. A smile, sexy and suggestive, crossed his lips.

“Prove it.”

Prove it?

Well, if he insisted …

Nora grabbed the back of Nico’s neck and turned his face up to hers.

“Are you going to hurt me?” he asked, his voice equal parts fear and anticipation.

“Not tonight,” she said, remembering the night she’d asked almost the same question of Søren and he’d given her that exact answer. “Tonight is only for pleasure.”

She kissed Nico then with all the fierce passion only someone wounded and desperate to heal possessed. She kissed him like the meaning of life lay in his mouth and if she kissed him hard enough, sweet enough and long enough, it would brush her lips and she could catch it in her teeth and swallow it whole.

Nora pressed Nico onto his back, not once breaking the kiss. He moved to put his arms around her, but she grabbed his wrists and pushed them into the bed over his head.

“Lie there,” she ordered. “Don’t move. I want to make you come.”

“I’m all yours, Nora.”

She loved the way he said her name.

“I should make you call me mistress.”

“Do you want to be my mistress?”

“Would you like that?”

“It would be a dream come true to belong to you, to be your property. But since I don’t belong to you, Nora it is.”

It embarrassed her how much Nico’s words affected her.

“Nora it is, then,” she repeated. “Now be good and don’t come until I tell you that you can.”