“Nah. Just getting ready for my morning run.”

We spoke for a few minutes about nothing in particular and made some plans to get together once I returned. It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to his recent wedding and Felicia. He loved talking about his new wife.

“Question for you,” I said after hearing a long tirade on their plans concerning his retirement. “Was there a lot of gossip surrounding your engagement?” I honestly couldn’t remember; it had been a difficult time for me with Abby leaving and all.

“There was some talk Felicia might have been pregnant,” he said with a laugh. “But that wasn’t true, of course.”

I knew they both wanted children, but I also knew they wanted to wait a few years.

“Why?” he asked. “Are you and Abby—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Nothing like that.” Not yet. “I just know you hadn’t known each other for very long when you proposed. It made me wonder.”

“Number one,” he said. “I don’t give a f**k what people think, and I know you sure as hell don’t.”

I laughed. He was right, for the most part.

“Number two,” he continued. “If I found the woman I knew I wanted to marry and she wanted to marry me, why should what other people think have anything to do with it?”

“I don’t want people to gossip about Abby,” I said without thinking. “I don’t want anyone to think less of her.”

“Aha!” he said. “I knew it.”

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see it over the phone. “I didn’t say I hadn’t thought about marrying Abby.”

“You implied it,” he said, and then continued without waiting for my response. “Listen, man, Abby’s a strong woman.”

“I know that.”

“And she’s secure enough in who she is to not give a f**k if people gossip about her,” he said. “Besides, anyone who would think less of her for agreeing to marry you is either an ass or jealous.”

I laughed. “Thanks, Jackson. Sometimes I just need to talk things out.”

“No problem.”

“You’ll keep this conversation just between us, right?” I asked. “You won’t tell—”

“My wife that her best friend’s boyfriend is thinking about popping the question?” he asked. I knew he was smiling.

“Right.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

I thought about my conversation with Jackson for much of the remainder of the evening. Before I went to bed that night, I sent Abby a text with three simple lines.

Want you.

Miss you.

Love you.

I called her Friday night, China time, with bad news.

“There’ve been some problems,” I told her, while watching my pilot talk on his headset. He was waving his hands in the air. “We’re not going to be able to leave on time.”

“How long will you be delayed?”

“We think a few more hours,” I said. “I should make it to New York around three in the morning. I’ll just get a taxi home.”

“I can come pick you up. It won’t be a problem.”

“I know, but I’d rather you sleep. I’ll be there when you wake up.”

I didn’t stay on the phone long; I was more than a bit pissed I wouldn’t be leaving on time, and I didn’t want her to think I was angry at her.

Nearly twenty hours later, I tiptoed into our bedroom. She slept, arms wrapped around my pillow, with Apollo curled up by her side. He lifted his head at my entrance, and I pointed to the floor.

After he hopped down with a heavy sigh, I slowly undressed, dropping my clothes in a pile on the floor. I pulled the sheet back slightly, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw that she wore one of my white dress shirts.

Making sure not to wake her, I climbed into bed and gently gathered her in my arms. She snuggled against me with a soft sigh of contentment. I closed my eyes.

Home.

Finally.

Chapter Twenty-four

—ABBY—

There was something important I needed to remember. In my dream, I struggled to remember what it was. Something was going to happen. Something I knew I shouldn’t forget.

Something. Something. Something.

As I drifted awake, I became aware of warm arms surrounding me, warm arms and the feeling of someone watching me. I slowly opened one eye.

Nathaniel!

“Hey,” he said, smiling the heart-stopping grin that always and without fail melted me. There was nothing better than waking up in Nathaniel’s arms. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

“Hey,” I said, returning his smile with one of my own. “When did you get home?”

“Around four.” He peeked over my shoulder to the clock on my nightstand. “About three hours ago.”

“You’re not sleeping?”

“No,” he said. “I slept on the plane. I’ve been lying here, holding you. Watching you sleep.” His finger traced my ear. “Did you know you have a little freckle right here, too?”

I felt my face heat. “No.”

He squinted and looked at it. “I’ve never noticed it before.” Then his lips closed in and he gently kissed the spot just behind my earlobe. “I wanted to do that, but I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“Like I’d have complained,” I said, stretching my body against his. Well, well, well. “You’re naked.”

He laughed, but then his eyes grew serious. “Yes, and you’re not.”

“Hope you don’t mind,” I said. “I borrowed your shirt.”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind a bit. Looks better on you anyway. I was just thinking how it’s really not fair, me n**ed and you not naked.”

“No need to fret. Your housekeeper brought your shirts back from the dry cleaner’s a few days ago.” I ran a hand down his chest. “You could go get one and be not n**ed yourself.”

“Mmmm,” he hummed. “No, thank you.”

I reached for him, drew him close, and inhaled his smell. “I missed you.”

“Missed you,” he said into my hair.

“Next time, I’m going with you,” I said.

“Next time, I’ll drag you with me,” he said, pulling back to catch my eyes.

I drank in the sight of him. Finally home. In bed. With me. The sun shone brightly from the window behind him. “I don’t want to get out of this bed all day,” I said, then asked, “You don’t have any plans today, do you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, rubbing his nose back and forth across my cheekbone. “I have lots and lots and lots of plans.”

“Which would be?” I asked, hoping his plans matched up with my plans.

“For starters,” he said, his breath tickling my ear and one hand tickling my stomach. “I’m going to bring us some breakfast and I’m going to use you as my table—”

“Do I get to use you as my table?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Then I plan to spend hours making love to you in every position known to man, and when we’ve finished”—he slowly unbuttoned the dress shirt I wore and his voice dropped lower—“we’ll make up a few new positions.”

I shivered as his fingers lightly stroked the tops of my br**sts. I was far from cold, however. Just the opposite, in fact.

“We’ll probably miss lunch, making up all those new positions,” I said as matter-of-factly as possible with his hands undoing my shirt.

“Then, if it’s okay with you,” he said. “I want nothing more than a huge pizza covered in meat and vegetables. We could have it delivered and eat outside.”

“I don’t know. I was thinking lo mein. There’s a new Chinese place that delivers.”

He pulled back. “Really? You want Chinese?”

I laughed at his perplexed expression. “No. I was just teasing.”

“Don’t tease me, woman,” he said, going back to work on the shirt and finally unbuttoning the last button. “I’m a desperate man.”

I slipped beneath him and ran my hands over his bare ass. “You’re not the only one.”

Funny, I thought the next day as I knelt in my waiting position. Somehow this wasn’t what I had in mind when I answered his question yesterday.

He’d asked the question sometime on Saturday, after pizza.

We were outside on the patio. I sat in his lap and our feet dangled in the hot tub. It was too hot, really, to be inside the water.

“We should install a pool,” he said, head back as he enjoyed the sun. “But do you think it should be inside or outside?”

Outside had several advantages, but we lived in New York, so perhaps inside made more sense. I told him as much.

“The basement is relatively unfinished,” he said. “Too bad we can’t put it there.”

“We could put it outside and enclose it.”

“That might work.” He thought on that for a few seconds. “We’ll call a contractor next week. Have them look over the yard.”

I liked how he used the word “we” so often, how it just fell naturally from his lips. I tilted my head up to kiss said lips.

“Why do you have an unfinished basement?” I asked.

He gave me another kiss. Longer. “When I first started the renovations, I couldn’t decide if wanted the playroom down there or not.”

“Huh,” I said. “A downstairs playroom.”

“More like a dungeon.”

“That sounds . . .” I thought as I spoke. “Scary.”

His hands worked their way to my hair. “Dungeon. Playroom. Same thing, really.”

“I like the way ‘playroom’ sounds,” I said. “Dungeons should have chains and ropes and . . .”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” I said with a laugh. “Same thing, really.”

He smiled. “Speaking of playrooms, do you want to wear your collar at all this weekend? I thought maybe a few hours tomorrow?”

I ran a finger over his lips, and he captured them in a kiss. I’d missed him so much, I realized. All of him: the sweet, considerate lover of my weekdays and the stern, unyielding master of my weekends. I loved them both, needed them both.

“I’d like to wear it a few hours tomorrow,” I said.

Little did I know I’d be wearing my collar as he flipped through my journal, checking to make sure I’d completed all his assignments. My head was down, of course, so I couldn’t see what he was reading. I felt certain the “Interesting. Very interesting” comment came when he read the toy I picked and the scenario I detailed.

He sat in a plush chair and I was at his feet. My knees rested on the matted floor of the playroom, not on a pillow.

“Look at me, Abigail,” he finally said.

I looked up and met his eyes. Would he be pleased with what I wrote? I couldn’t tell by looking at him.

“You have a talent for writing,” he said.

Really? I thought most of it was just random stream-of-consciousness musings.

“It seems it is an easier way for you to communicate,” he continued. “And the scene you detailed is very creative.”

“Thank you, Master,” I said. “You inspire me.”

I hoped he knew I wasn’t giving gratuitous flattery, but speaking the truth. Being his submissive had released and set free a side of me I’d never known existed. The Abby of the year before would never have dreamed of thinking such things as I’d detailed in the journal, much less written them down and let someone read them.

Hell, before him, I’d had such an unfulfilled sex life, I’d almost given up on sex altogether. But now . . .