He leaned back in his chair, exhaling. “Damn. You’ve been around me too long.”

“Impossible, but somehow true at the same time.”

“You can’t come either,” he said. “No playing with yourself.”

I nodded.

“And speaking of playing, what do we do about weekends?”

I’d thought about that, of course. Ideally, I would still wear his collar. Submitting to him wasn’t entirely sexual, though sex did play a major role in our weekends.

“There’s plenty we do on the weekends that doesn’t involve sex,” I said. “I think I should still wear your collar.”

“True, but there’s a sexual undercurrent in just about everything we do,” he countered. “You don’t have a submissive personality outside the playroom; it’s part of your sexual nature. Serving me during the weekend turns you on. We need to think about whether having you serve me the month before the wedding, even in a nonsexual manner, will be a source of irritation. For us both.”

He had a point. I tried imagining serving him all day on a Saturday, but without sex. If we stayed out of the playroom, I could easily see us both becoming increasingly sexually frustrated. With our emotions probably already running high as the wedding approached, collaring me might not be the wisest idea.

“No sex and no collar the month before the wedding,” I said. “We’ll probably both implode.”

“As long as we don’t take it out on each other.”

“But on the upside, think about how awesome the honeymoon will be now.”

“Abby,” he said softly. “The honeymoon will be awesome regardless. But you know, we haven’t talked about whether you’d like to wear your collar at all during our honeymoon.”

“Yes, I think so. Not all the time. Probably not even most of the time. But for a day or two?” I thought about how it would feel the first time he collared me as his wife. When I would be Abigail West. My belly tightened just thinking about it. “Maybe more than a day or two.”

Nathaniel nodded. “We’ll keep it flexible.”

“Another thing, I know I won’t be wearing your collar on our wedding day, but I’ve decided I’m not going to wear any type of necklace.”

“Oh?”

“This part of me.” I brushed my neck. “Is for your collar. If I’m not wearing it when I become your wife, I’m not wearing anything.”

His eyes grew dark and he gave me a sultry smile. “I’d thought about buying you a necklace for our wedding, but it would have been just that. A necklace. Your idea means so much more.”

I was glad I was sitting down. His look would have made my knees weak had I been standing.

“I’m looking forward to collaring you for the first time after the wedding. When you’re Abigail West.”

I squirmed in my seat, thinking about our honeymoon plans.

We were going to Zermatt, Switzerland for two weeks following the wedding. Nathaniel had reserved a stunning chalet. We could step right outside and ski, or stay inside and do . . . other things. At first we discussed going somewhere tropical, but the more we thought about it, getting away to a snowy location sounded perfect.

Snow, after all, had been one of the driving forces in our relationship. I believed we would have still wound up together had it not been for the week we spent snowbound in his house, but there’s no telling how long it would have taken to get to that point. Somehow it seemed fitting that we honeymoon with snow. Besides, damn near nothing beat Nathaniel naked in front of a roaring fire.

“Abby?” the man in question asked. “Did I lose you?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Just daydreaming about the honeymoon.”

“Well,” he said, pushing back from the table. “The way I see it, we don’t have much time before our self-imposed month of celibacy.” He walked over to me and held out a hand. “Let’s not waste it.”

***

“I have to say, Abby,” Felicia said the next day, spinning slowly and looking over the old chapel, “this place is perfect.”

Because Nathaniel and I wanted to get married before the end of the year, we only had three months to plan the wedding. With that timeline, every possible venue in New York City and the surrounding area was booked. It wasn’t a big deal to us; we simply wanted to get married and had tentatively planned for the ceremony and reception to be held at Nathaniel’s estate.

He had friends and business associates everywhere, though, and earlier in the day he’d received a call that the wedding booked at the small chapel had been canceled. Since Felicia hadn’t returned to her teaching job following her marriage to Jackson, I asked her to come look at it with me. Felicia and I had been friends since our childhood days in small-town Indiana. We went to college together and even roomed together for a short period of time.