Free Temptation’s Edge by Eve Berlin Page A

her. Love equaled loss. Life with her mother had been one loss after another. Her father…there was nothing but a sense of loss there, other than the constant yearning to be loved by a man who didn’t care that she existed. That’s what her tattoo was about. “Yes. Don’t you?”
    He smiled a little, although at the same time he no longer looked quite so happy. “Yes. I guess I do.”
    He paused, still looking at her. She stared back, watching as he rearranged his features, let the shadow there, a flicker of emotion, fade away. She wasn’t going to ask him about that. She knew the feeling well enough herself.
    “Do you have any questions for me?” he asked her finally.
    “Are the negotiations done?”
    “For now.”
    “Then yes, I have a question.”
    “Ask.”
    “When are you going to take me to that club, the Pleasure Dome?”
    He laughed again. “You like the public play, do you?”
    “That’s the biggest draw of those places for me, or it has been in the past. More than the equipment, my partners.”
    “You like to put on a show, do you? So do I. If you really want to go, then I’ll certainly take you. Not tonight. Maybe next weekend. If you’re still interested, that is. You might run from me again.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What makes you so certain of that?”
    “I just…” How could she explain to him, without saying more than she wanted to? Without admitting more than she was willing to look at herself? “I want to go. And I have a feeling this is going to work out. That we’ll be good together.”
    “You’re not a shy one, are you?”
    It was her turn to laugh. “Hardly.”
    He stood, towering over her. He looked a bit intimidating, she could admit to that. The man was a
wall
. Big and dark, his eyes glittering with mischief. But she also loved it—his size, that shadowed side of him. His wickedness.
    He held out a hand to her. “Shall we begin, then?”
    She smiled, got to her feet. And was swept into his arms so fast it made her head spin. He turned her until she was facedown on the sofa, her robe gone as if by magic. He held both her wrists behind her back in one of his hands. She was panting instantly, shocked at how quickly he’d gotten her naked and into this submissive position. She also understood, in some distant way, that he’d used that element of surprise to break right through any walls she may have put up. It didn’t scare her. Little did. She trusted him, for all the reasons he’d stated. And it was working beautifully. There was nothing but that small voice in the back of her head that was trying to tell her to slow down, to regain some balance in the power between them. But she was turned on enough to overcome it.
    He leaned over and whispered into her ear, as if he could see right into her head, “Just relax now. Give it all over to me. You don’t need to struggle. To argue with yourself about it. Just do it. It can be that easy.”
    “It’s not easy,” she gasped, realizing only then that part of her
was
holding back, hanging on to some small sense of control. God, this really was a mind fuck.
    “It’s as easy as you make it, Mischa.”
    She tried to shake her head, but he pressed down on the back of her neck with one hand. Gently, but it was enough to press her cheek right into the cushions of the sofa. And he was still using the other hand to hold both of her wrists at the small ofher back. She began to tremble all over. It was half nerves, half desire, which was shivering through her in a series of tiny sparks, like small electric shocks. How had he known she would respond like this when she hadn’t known herself?
    He leaned over her until he was whispering into her hair. “I know what you’re going through, Mischa. You’re fighting it. The fight makes it harder on you. I admit I’ll enjoy it a bit. But when you let go of the fight, that’s when it can really begin. That’s when you’ll feel it all in some new, sublime way. That’s my