“This is your game, sweetheart. It’s your choice.”

She nodded with more certainty than she felt. “The cards, then.”

Madame Rain smiled and picked up a worn deck and began to shuffle. “Did you have a specific question? Or just a general reading?”

Summer glanced at Jamie, but he shrugged. “Just general, I think.”

“Ladies first,” the woman said, nodding toward Summer. She laid the cards out in a row and studied the beautifully intricate designs for several long moments, her brow furrowing. Then she reached out. “May I look at your palm, miss?”

Summer placed her free hand in Madame Rain’s. The fortune-teller moved her fingertips over Summer’s upturned palm, hovering there, then lightly touched it in places before looking up. “You’ve had a great deal of tragedy in your life. You have lost much, but you have also recently gained. You must learn to open yourself, my dear. You must learn to trust—that’s an ability you lost far too early in life.” She let Summer’s hand go and lifted one of the cards. “The Lovers. This card is about choices to be made, but it is also about relationships—friends as well as lovers.” She shot a quick glance at Jamie before refocusing on Summer. “You have good friends, very strong ties. But there is a new lover about whom a choice must be made. Perhaps not now, but soon.” She turned the card over and over between her fingers, her brows furrowed. “Yes, very soon.”

Summer’s heart was pounding and she didn’t dare to look at Jamie. But Madame Rain was lifting another card. “This card is The World, Key twenty-one of the Major Arcana, the card of attainment.” She gestured toward Summer with the card still in her hand. “But that attainment must be earned, and in this case it is dependent upon your choices. Ultimately, we are each responsible for our own destiny. Next we have the Ace of Wands, signifying change and growth. This card tells us that this is a crucial time for you. A wonderful time, but change can be stressful. Your life is moving in a circle, the continuous motion of Ouroboros. Do you know what that is, my dear?”

“It’s a symbol, isn’t it? A snake swallowing its own tail?”

“Yes. The serpent is a symbol of eternity, of the eternal cycles in life. You find it in nearly every ancient culture: Greece, Egypt, in South America, and the Norse have their own very powerful version. But it always speaks to the same things, always pointing to cycles, to the times when we find ourselves back at the beginning somehow. But it also means we have the gift of starting over. Starting anew.”

Summer squeezed Jamie’s hand and he squeezed back. This time she did turn to look at him, to smile at him, but his features were closed to her. She had no idea what he was thinking—probably that this Tarot reading was pure crap. But she knew the magic of New Orleans, and she felt the truth of Madame Rain’s words.

“I think . . . I think I know what you’re talking about,” she said.

They spoke for a few more minutes about the details in her reading, then the fortune-teller gathered the cards back into the deck and shuffled again, turning to Jamie. “Now for you, sir.”

Jamie shrugged as the woman laid the cards out on the table. The first one she picked up had an image of a knight on a horse, the face in the armor a grinning skull. “This card is Key thirteen of the Major Arcana. Death.”

Jamie dropped Summer’s hand and got to his feet. “That’s enough.”

“But, sir, the Death card does not necessarily signify death itself—there’s no need for alarm. Please sit down and let me explain.”

“I’m done.” He pulled some bills out of his wallet and tossed them on the table. “Summer Grace,” he said gruffly.

She knew not to argue. She apologized to Madame Rain quietly and stood, letting Jamie take her arm and lead her away. She had some idea of what had triggered him, but the severity of his reaction surprised her. He’d lost his brother, then hers—his best friend. She knew his losses perhaps better than anyone. But he didn’t even believe in the cards, did he?

She had to hurry to keep up with his long strides, trying not to think of what had happened in terms of the losses she had suffered—Brandon, then her family in a different but nearly equally tragic way.

No. Can’t think about that now.

The rain started again when they were still a good block from his car. He grasped her hand tightly and moved faster as the big drops pelted them. By the time they reached his Corvette the rain was a heavy downpour—it was as if someone were dumping enormous buckets of water down on them. Jamie unlocked the ’Vette and opened her door. She paused.

“Get in, Summer Grace.”

“But I’ll get your beautiful leather seat wet.”

“Just get in,” he growled, and she did as he demanded. The smooth leather was cool beneath her damp bottom, which was still sore as hell from the caning, but rather than luxuriating in her bruises as she had earlier, now they only made her all the more aware that something was very wrong with Jamie, and therefore between them.

He swung the driver’s side door open and slid in, starting the powerful engine without a glance or a word other than, “Seat belt.”

She buckled in and shivered as he raced across town, splashing the water already pooling in the streets up onto the windows. She normally loved the rain, but not like this—not with the atmosphere in the car so tight with tension. Not when it seemed as if it was freezing-cold water trying to drown them rather than the gentle wet of a New Orleans summer.

She glanced at his stony profile and decided this was not the time to talk to him. It wasn’t that she didn’t dare—that wasn’t her, and certainly not when she wasn’t deep in subspace, although she still felt the last tendrils of it in her body. But she felt fear like a dark shadow creeping up her spine. He was so completely closed off to her—she’d never seen him like this and she needed some time to figure out how to handle it.

When they arrived at her place he pulled up to the curb and sat there, staring straight ahead through the windshield, not even cutting the motor. She waited. And finally, she exploded.

“So what the fuck, Jamie? You’re not even going to say good night?”

He sighed, rolled his shoulders. Said quietly, “Good night, Summer Grace.”

Something in her chest—the empty place that had been filling up and warming lately—went ice cold so fast it nearly choked her. Again. He was doing this again! It was several long moments before she could say anything.

“Seriously? That’s where we’re at? You freak out over something and I . . . what? I cease to exist? Just ‘see ya later’? Actually, not even that. And after a night of play? And fuck, Jamie . . .” She had to pause, to take in a breath, to swallow the tears forming in her throat. “Goddamn it, Jamie, you played me and fucked me and talked to me, and it was one of the best nights of my life and here we are again, with you running off like I was one of your vacuous dungeon groupies! I deserve better than that. I am worth more than that. And if you don’t know it . . . Fuck.”

She shook her head so hard she felt her neck crack, heard it echo in her hollow ears. Then she fumbled with numb fingers until she’d managed to unbuckle her seat belt, then pulled the door handle. From the corner of her eye she saw Jamie starting to unbuckle his as well, but she wasn’t waiting for him. He could fucking talk to her, or he could leave. But she wasn’t going to sit in his car, shivering in her drenched clothes, waiting for him to make up his mind.

She grabbed her small purse from the seat and jumped out of the car into the pouring rain. She could barely see as she made her way to the door. Just as she stepped onto the first step leading to her porch she felt a hand on her arm and Jamie whipped her around to face him.