“What do you want?” His hands are on my face, caressing me until I am lulled into a half-sleep. “Your last night. You can have anything you want. Just name it.”

Even though I know what he means, I can’t help but answer with, “I want to be with you.”

Somehow, he knows exactly what I’m saying. Ian drops me from my binds, removes the clamps, pushes me onto the bed, and takes me.

No, I take him.

We take each other.

My limbs wrap around him. Our tongues dance. His body overcomes mine, but I’m giving to him as much as he’s giving to me. Even though I give him this, the collar is still on, and my brain is still in the space of a sub’s.

I’m giving myself to him. I’m letting him take from me. Everything he gives to me is because I’m being so good, so obedient, so exactly what he wants in a woman. My heart overflows with a joy I never thought I’d experience – not as a sub, anyway. Yet my brain keeps ticking away all the reasons I am unhappy.

I think of those people in the main area of the club. I want to. I want to walk out there and tell this insular world that Ian is my Dom and I am his sub whenever I put on this collar. I want him to leash me. I want him to parade me around like a good girl he’s enamored with.

I want this. I can’t have it, though, because Kathryn won’t let me.

He’s inside me. I’m crying. Tears of happiness, I tell him, encouraging him to continue. He does so, gently, but I’m famished, thrusting back against him, taking him into me, refusing to let him go.

Could you tell him this for me? That I want to belong to him, now, forever? That I want moments like these for as long as I live? But you’ve gotta also tell him that it would never work out. Oh, God, it’s not going to work out!

No. No, don’t tell him. I don’t want this moment ruined. I’m reveling in too much love to go back.

Ian promised to take me away from reality, and he did that. What do I do when I have to go back to reality?

He stills within me, his grunts warning me that he’s about to climax. I wait, lips searching for his.

The moment we kiss, he comes.

Why am I crying out? It doesn’t feel any better than usual. It’s not scaring me. Yes, it feels good. Not as good as him kissing me, but good. And yet I’m crying out, my breathy moans claiming me in the same way he claims me.

“Katie,” he murmurs mid-orgasm, keeping me trapped in this fantasy world we’ve constructed. “Kathryn…”

Kathryn. The person I really am.

The person I want to remain.

Congratulations, Ian, you’ve split me into two different people. Both of them love you, but only one of them could ever be happy in the long-term with you.

It’s not Kathryn, the woman I quickly return to being.

Ian, we can’t be happy until you’ve made Kathryn happy. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t even know what the problem really is.

No, I do.

I’m a Domme, Ian. As good as this feels, it can’t sustain me forever.

I see Mistress Dawn in my mind, caressing her sub, a total stranger, but a man so in love with what she is doing to him. The power she casts upon him. I want to be her. I want him to be you.

Tell me, Ian…

Are there two of you as well?

Chapter 13

IAN

“Over here. No, look over here. Oh, come on…”

Cats. I swear to God.

I got a brand new phone today, and all I want to do is change the background to a picture of Saoirse, who is rolling around on the floor in a patch of sunlight. I’m kneeling on the carpet, aiming my phone camera this way and that in the hopes of catching her in the perfect pose.

It’s not happening.

“Mrrrrow.” Saoirse keeps rolling away, her tail swishing back and forth. She only looks back when I’m adjusting the settings on my camera.

Good job, Ian. Great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

It can’t be helped. I’m still coming down from a high involving Kathryn Alison that lasted for three whole days. When she left me this morning, collar off and back in my nightstand, I felt like I was floating on the haughtiest cloud imaginable. Her number was the first one I imported to my new phone. Before my mother’s.

She said she loved me, okay. Kathryn. Not my mother. Wait, no, my mother loves me. I mean…

Never mind. You know what I meant.

So let’s get back to Kathryn. Sorry, Saoirse, you’re a cute cat, and I’m sure people would love giving this Dom a hard time for having a picture of his cat as his phone background, but let’s not forget that Kathryn said she loved me last night. Even though she was acting weird sometimes. I’m not sure she actually felt those nipple clamps, as pretty as they looked hanging down her torso.

I’ve had women tell me that they love me before. I rarely loved them back. Nothing personal. It’s… until Kathryn, I never found someone I felt worthy of my undying love.

She’s everything I want. Beautiful, smart, mouthy with a great sense of humor, good tastes, nice family (who possibly like me,) is liked by my family, a real go-getter with her own independence and ability to function without me, and… well, she’s turned into a greater sub than I could have ever hoped for.

I know there’s a catch somewhere. Until it’s sprung on me, however, I’m going to sit here and fantasize about her until I’m not allowed to anymore.

Like my doorbell ringing.

“Next time, cat.” I get up, setting my phone on my desk as the cat finally rolls toward me and purrs. I ignore her, like she ignored me for ten minutes.

There’s a skip in my step as I go to the door. A man in love is dangerous. He doesn’t see the bits of debris strewn across the floor and has a tendency to trip over them if he’s not careful. And he’s not.

Hence I only see a glimpse of blond out my peephole, and automatically assume it’s my darling little buttercup.

Yes, go ahead and kill me.

Oh, God, oh God please kill me.

Before Eva Warren does.

“What a lucky day for me! Finding the man cozy at home with his…” Eva glances from me to somewhere behind me. “His pussy, apparently.”

Saoirse meows emphatically before stalking off to her bed in the library.

“What do you want?”

I know she’s not here for business. And she sure as fuck isn’t here to shoot the breeze, because we are far from friends. Nevertheless, I have no choice but to invite her into my home, where she saunters around like she owns the damned place.

Naturally, she steps toward the kitchen, perching on one of the stools by the island counter.

“Consider me here on a fact-finding mission, Mr. Mathers.” She sounds like a reporter. A reporter that nobody takes seriously, which isn’t difficult to imagine, since her spiky blond hair clashes with her dark gray pantsuit. “Because there are a lot of facts I would like from you.”

I stand before her, hands in my pockets. I can hear my mother admonishing me for my bad manners in the back of mind… because what I need is my mother showing up and making this situation even worse.

“And what is it that you want to know, Ms. Warren?” I’m nowhere near as playful.

“Oh, well, I’m sure you can guess that this has to do with my good friend Kathryn, whom you are not only fucking, but apparently dominating as well!”

My hands pull from my pockets so my arms can cross. “She’s been talking to you, huh?”

“She only told me about the fucking a few weeks ago. I’ve deduced the latter, although she won’t confirm it. In fact, she won’t return most of my messages, so I can only assume that things are ugly. Am I right? Do let me know how angry I should be with you.”