“I can’t go home.”

“Tell me why you left him or I’m calling Kingsley right now.”

Elle weighed her options. She could tell him the whole truth, which would hurt more than the pain she was currently in. She could lie and come up with a suitable story he would believe to explain why she left. Or she could tell him a half-truth, just enough truth to get him to stop asking questions.

She went with option three.

“Do you remember that thing you told me?” she asked.

“I told you a lot of things.”

“I told you I was happy, content. You said that I should enjoy my contentment because someday something would happen and it would be gone.”

He nodded. “I remember.”

“It happened.”

“What happened?”

“Søren ordered me to marry him,” she said.

Daniel looked at her and looked at her and looked at her, and finally he spoke.

“Get some sleep. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Do you need anything?”

“You have any other sheets?” she asked, her face warming.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she said, pushing the blankets. A red stain had formed underneath her. “I’m bleeding.”

It took ten minutes of begging and pleading to convince Daniel not to call an ambulance. This was just part of the process, she told him. Nothing to worry about. She was fine. A little blood never killed any woman...

Even after calming him down Daniel still seemed dubious and worried. He stayed in the bathroom with her while she took a quick hot bath. He kept his back to her to give her privacy although he’d seen her naked before. Once upon a time she’d been his lover. They’d fucked in this very bathroom. Down the hall was the library where he’d bent her over his desk and taken her from behind. In the living room by the fireplace, he’d fisted her and given her one of the better orgasms of her life. In the bed he now shared with his wife, he’d fucked her more times than she could remember. But now that felt like a lifetime ago. Had it only been two years ago she’d last been with him? So much had happened in those two years. He’d fallen in love with someone who wasn’t her, got remarried, had a son. And her? What had she done since then?

Elle got out when the water turned pink, and she drained the tub before Daniel could see it.

He ordered her to eat to some soup and then ordered her into bed. There was nothing at all erotic about any of these orders.

“You really are a dad now, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t get any ideas. I don’t do the Daddy-Dom thing,” he said, pulling the covers up to her chest.

“Could have fooled me,” she said.

“Don’t flirt. Anya’s the jealous type.” He winked at her so she would know he was kidding. Not that he needed to tell her. She’d known Anya before he did. Knowing Anya, she would worry Elle would catch the flu from Marius, not that she would sleep with her husband. For the first time in Elle’s adult life, sex was the last thing on her mind.

He kissed her on the forehead once and on the lips twice.

She smiled up at him.

“Get some rest, Elle,” he said.

“It’s not even night yet.”

“I don’t care. You’re exhausted. Sleep.”

“Is that an order?”

He smiled down at her. “If I gave you that kind of order, would you obey me?”

“No.”

“Then no, it wasn’t an order.”

He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. A fatherly touch. She didn’t remember him ever touching her like that. Becoming a parent had changed him, changed him for the better. But she knew that didn’t happen with every man. Her own father was proof. Her father, Søren’s father, her mother...

Her mother.

“Good night, Elle,” Daniel whispered, and she saw his reluctance to leave her alone.

“Good night, Daniel.” He started to leave. She stopped him with a question. “Daniel—what am I going to do?”

Daniel turned around in the doorway and looked back at her.

“If you took orders from me, which you don’t, but if you did...I’d order you to go back to Søren and marry him.”

Elle rolled onto her side and gazed at Daniel through the dark.

“Now I remember why I left you,” she said.

“Because I wanted to take care of you?”

“Because you don’t know me at all.”

The smile faded from Daniel’s face.

“Rest,” he said, and shut the door behind him.

It wasn’t an order, but Elle followed it anyway. She slept an hour or two and when she woke up, there was a terrifying moment when she couldn’t remember how she’d got here. But the moment passed, and she remembered.

What was she going to do? No Søren. No Kingsley. No town house. Jesus, she didn’t have a real job. She had a little less than five thousand dollars to her name, a college degree in English literature and almost no work experience other than a few years at a bookstore. What was she going to put on a résumé? That she gave good blow jobs and could take a beating better than any masochist in New York?

She sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. Slowly she breathed, slowly she calmed herself. She would not cry. She could not cry. If she started crying over Søren, she’d never stop. And if she cried, that would mean it was real, that she had left him and that she was never going back.