Free Star of Wonder by Angel Payne

with things on Friday night?”
    “Cleaned her up. Gave her a massage.” He stopped just short of saying the usual , though that would’ve been the truth. As for after that? All right, those parts weren’t so usual. “All right, so I spent the night. Then I kind of made her breakfast.”
    Mark nodded and gave a big grin. “Breakfast. Not bad.”
    He shrugged. “Just a frittata.”
    His friend’s eyebrows jumped. “A frittata ?” He tossed his head back, laughing. “Inferno, just check this one off. You’ll have no trouble picking up on aftercare.”
    The remark, meant as encouragement, wreaked an opposite effect. As the water flushed everything from Dante’s skull except a headache, another aftereffect of sobriety barged in.
    Rationality.
    What the hell made him think he’d be “checking” anything off Mark’s magical checklist anytime soon? Okay, he was a Dominant. It was a missing link for him. A huge one. It also explained why he couldn’t let go of the woman who’d helped him discover it—and brought him no closer to doing so than before.
    Which made him wish he’d stayed shit faced.
    “No,” he muttered. “I don’t think I’ll be ‘aftercaring’ anything or anyone soon, man.”
    He expected the line to be the stumper for his friend. Instead, Mark nodded knowingly again. “Aha. Now we’re at the meat of things.” He tilted his head back. “Let me see if I can get this right. Your Celina got up and didn’t even look at your frittata. She looked at you like you suddenly had a pumpkin for a head, got you out the door as fast as possible, then hasn’t returned the hundred phone calls and three hundred texts you’ve left her since. And you think if you keep pounding at that door hard enough, it’ll cave, and she’ll be standing behind it, ready to change her mind. Am I close?”
    Dante didn’t answer. He hailed the bartender and ordered another drink. A double this time.
    “I’m that right on the money, huh?”
    “It doesn’t change a thing, you fucker.”
    Mark didn’t volley back to that. Dante assumed the bastard would finally let him return to a drunken stupor in peace, until the man turned on his bar stool and fully faced him.
    “You want to know why I’ve got this so right? Because I went through the same thing with Rose. Okay, I didn’t cook her a goddamn frittata; you superachievers really piss me off sometimes. But the reaction? The terror in her eyes? The whole look that says ‘what the hell did I just let this man do to me, and why did I love it so much?’ Been there, man. Done that.”
    He inhaled hard against the lead weight in his chest and returned his friend’s direct stare. “So what did you do to change her mind?”
    “Kidnapped her.”
    He waited for the I’m-just-shitting-you grin. It didn’t come.
    “What do you mean?”
    Mark shrugged and gave a lopsided grin. “All right, so I did let her walk onto the yacht under her own choice. But after that, she was mine.” He blinked only once. “I tied her up. Made her listen. Forced her to feel and experience the beauty of her submission, to accept that surrendering to me unlocked something in herself she couldn’t ignore.”
    “The yacht,” Dante repeated. “So this was when you two were still at the training in the Bahamas?” When Mark nodded, he whistled low. “You don’t waste time, Marker Man.”
    “Remarkable women don’t come along every day.” He leaned over and clapped Dante’s shoulder. “Let me guarantee you one thing. If you two really blew the roof off her place, then she’s still confused too. She still can’t stop thinking about it either—and you’ll never have a better opportunity to fight for her.” His brows kicked up a little. “ If you want to fight for her?”
    He returned his friend’s scrutiny so hard, his jaw ached from clenching. “What the fuck do you suggest I do? Kidnap a US Navy JAG officer, carry her off on a goddamn yacht, and tie her up until she