“No, it does. I get it. Go on.”

“It’s more than that. It’s a sense of connection with the bottom, an extension of my hands, myself. There’s control in the patterns. In the elegance of the knots.”

“Yes, that’s one of the things I love about it, too,” she agreed.

“But it’s the way the rope requires control. It’s mathematical, even. It’s discipline in itself to bind someone properly. And it’s that sense of absolute discipline that keeps me on track. That’s not something I discovered until a few years after I last saw you, and it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve come to understand it more completely. I’m sure I still have more to learn.”

“Don’t we all? But tell me how this relates to us. To what happened.”

He did not want to go there. His gut was in knots. But he was going to do it. She deserved that much from him.

“Back in high school I told you all the time that you were too good for me.”

“Which was crap, Mick. Pardon me for saying so, but it was.”

“I felt that darkness, though, Allie. I didn’t want to sully you with it. You were so innocent.”

“Mick, even in high school we were doing things that weren’t entirely innocent, even though you wouldn’t help me lose my virginity.”

“Help you? You say that like it would have been a good thing.”

“Only with you,” she said quietly.

He couldn’t believe she still thought so. That adulthood hadn’t brought her more hindsight, especially knowing what she did about him.

“It would have been a disaster.”

“I don’t agree. I loved you.”

Hearing her say it made his heart twist painfully.

“We were teenagers, Allie. What did we know about love?”

“Maybe not very much. I only knew what I felt.”

“So did I. Fuck it—you’re right.” He stopped, ran a hand over his hair. “And I felt it was wrong to have you follow me down that road. That’s why when I left for college, I knew leaving you to find another kind of life—a better life without me in it to screw things up for you—was the only right thing to do.”

“That is so . . . all kinds of messed up. Did you never think of me after that, Mick?” she asked, her brown eyes burning with gold fire.

“I thought about you all the damn time.”

They were both quiet for several moments.

“But you never came back for me.”

“I knew I couldn’t do that to you. And then there was the accident.”

The fucking motorcycle accident that had ruined his life, ruined his future, ruined his sense of self and his place in his family.

He had a flash of that sick, skidding sensation, the world blurring, no control—no fucking control! Intolerable pain, then blackness. Waking up knowing he had fucked up, but not how badly. No, that had come later, when the doctors told him his leg would never be the same again.

“I’m sorry, Mick. I knew it must have been so awful for you, but you refused to see me when you were in the hospital, and after you got home.”

“Because I was ashamed,” he admitted. “It was damn stupid of me. I threw away everything that was important to my family. My opportunity to serve my city in the way my father and grandfather had. In the way my brothers do now. I couldn’t stand for you to see me like that. Defeated by my own fucking foolishness. It was bad enough things had had to end between us the way they did. I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t face anyone. I’m still ashamed, if you want to know the truth. It fucking haunts me. And that’s not something I say to anyone.”

*   *   *

IT HURT HER to hear him say it. To hear the old pain in his voice. To feel his body tense up.

“I’m sure they don’t hold it against you,” she said.

“I do.”

“Oh, Mick.”

She stroked the back of her hand down his cheek just to feel it, to let him know how she felt.

“Don’t pity me, Allie,” he said gruffly.

She pulled her hand back. But she knew him well enough not to feel wounded by his tone. “It’s not pity. I feel for you, that’s all. Does your leg still hurt you?”

“Yeah, it gives me some trouble, but I deal with it.”

She knew that was what the bare-knuckle fighting was about, that he felt he had to prove himself. She’d caught a glimpse or two of his limp, but he was still the strongest man she knew. He had nothing to prove to anyone. If only he could see that.

“Change of subject,” he suggested.

“Okay. I want to hear about what happened in college, when I came home. When we were together.”

“Fuck. Really?”

“That’s what this conversation was coming to.”

He scrubbed at his closely cut goatee. “That night never should have happened. It was all wrong.”

“It never felt that way to me. Other than the part where you left and never turned back.”

“Allie, you were twenty years old,” he protested. His arm was around her waist, holding her in his lap, and his fingers flexed hard.

“Yes, Mick, I was twenty. I wasn’t a child anymore, and I wasn’t a virgin by then. I’m even less a child now. And that night was everything I’d ever wanted. Not just the sex, but all of it. Being tied up with your belt. The smell of the leather. The biting. The spanking. The roughness of it all.”

“That can’t be true. You couldn’t have known back then.”

“You did. From what you’ve said, you knew in high school. Wasn’t that what you were trying to protect me from? But can’t you see, Mick? Once you gave me a taste for it, that was my fantasy, too. You gave me that tempting little bit, then you took it away. You took yourself away from me, too.”

“You cried that night after we had sex,” he insisted, his tone going harsh. “I saw the tears.”

“I was crying because that night with you was the fulfillment of every fantasy I’d ever had!” She almost wanted to cry now. “Fantasies I’d had when I was practically a child, things I didn’t understand until much later. But I loved it. I loved the passion of it, the intensity. The pain.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s not right. It can’t be.”

She took his face in her hands and gazed into his eyes. His were dark, shadowed, his brows drawn. He was so damn beautiful it made her ache.

“Mick, I wanted it. I wanted you, and I wanted all those things you did with me that night. You say you feel those desires were some kind of demon. If that’s true, then I have demons, too.”

He tried to shake his head again, and she tried to hold it firmly, but he took her hands and pulled them down.

“Don’t say that, Allie.”

“How can I explain this to you? It’s as if my being here with you, you knowing my kink history, counts for nothing, even though you said it did, that it’s made you think, but here we are again with you protesting my desires, Mick! That’s what it comes down to—with you still doubting that you can be with me.”

“Look, Allie . . . it isn’t only the stuff around the breakup in high school. A lot of it was—and maybe still is—the accident. That was something I couldn’t come back from. It only proved what I’d always known about myself. You deserve more than that. And what happened between us later, when we slept together . . . that was a mistake. I know I didn’t handle it well. I know I was an asshole. A lot of it was because I had demonized myself for wanting the kink, and it was only later that I learned to accept that about myself. But us not being together then was the right thing, Allie. You weren’t ready for full-on kink at twenty.”

She watched him in frustration. His face was shutting down again, a veil of stubbornness over his handsome features. But she wasn’t done with this conversation. “Mick, this is something I’ve been turning over in my mind for years. I’m going to tell you how I see it. You know that for those who are born to New Orleans, it’s in your blood. It lingers there no matter where you go. BDSM is the same sort of thing. If you’re born to it—the way you were, the way I was, whether or not you want to accept that—you can never shake it. It shapes the way you think, the way you respond to . . . everything. And those who were a part of unleashing those desires . . . you never forget them, either. That’s what you did for me, Mick. For me, not to me.”