“Have you gone mad?” Heath hissed, then glanced back over his shoulder at Axel. With legs planted wide and fists on his hips, he looked utterly unyielding. “Do you know the terrible things he wants to do to you? Tie you up.”

Imagining herself strapped to Axel’s bed, helpless as he spread her legs and did anything and everything he wanted to her . . . Her breath caught. Would he make her beg? Spank her until the rest of the world melted away? Force orgasms on her? Demand she kneel before him and suck his cock?

Desire, thick and hot, rolled through her.

Heath looked down at her breasts. Mystery followed suit and found her insistent nipples stabbing the front of her shirt.

Flustered, she crossed her arms over her chest and concealed them. “I’m an adult. I know what I want from a lover. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Your father made it my business. Do you really want a man who will paddle your butt like you’re a child? Who will discipline you? What if he’s the sort who likes needles or knives or to control your breath?”

Mystery recoiled. “Ohmigod, what are you . . . No. That’s not—”

“I’ve seen the seedy side of the underworld. Normally, I’m a gentleman and I don’t speak of such things, but I’m concerned for you. Have you fallen for him so hard that you’d allow him to whip you until you bleed? Give you to a stranger?”

She shook her head. “He would never hurt me or put me at risk. I’d insist on a safe word, but I’m sure he’d ask me for one first. I know you don’t know him. But I do. He rescued me. We survived together. I’ve had a thing for him ever since. Please don’t get in the middle of this.”

Heath sidled closer, his expression a cross between incredulity and anger. “A thing for him? You’ve known him a total of three days, and you trust him enough to give him complete control of your body?”

When he put it like that, the concept sounded ridiculous. But her gut told her Axel wasn’t the sort of Dom Heath described. She couldn’t picture him as a sadist. Besides, she’d heard that people in a D/s relationship should discuss their limits with each other and negotiate what happened in a scene before they got too busy. Axel was responsible. That’s what he would do.

“Actually, I do.”

Heath gripped her arm and loomed over her, shaking his head. “You don’t understand what you’re inviting. I did a turn undercover in a club in London, and the things I saw . . .”

“Problem, Mystery?” Axel sauntered down the hall with a practiced nonchalance. But every muscle in his body looked tense.

Heath turned and stepped forward, putting himself between her and Axel. “I object.”

“I don’t give a shit,” Axel shot back.

“Her father would not approve.” Heath crossed his arms over his chest.

Mortification rolled through Mystery. “My father still wishes I wore ribbons in my pigtails, too. He doesn’t always get his way where I’m concerned. I don’t think we have anything left to say on this subject. Good night.” She stepped around Heath and approached Axel.

He took her hand in his. “Let’s go.”

Axel led her back to her bedroom, and she tried to ignore Heath sputtering behind her. She didn’t like to upset or hurt him. He’d been nothing but protective and supportive for years. But tonight, he’d crossed a line.

Once inside the bedroom, Axel shut the door and dead-bolted it for good measure. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” But Heath’s words rang in her ears. “He’s just protective. It’s his job.”

“And he thinks I’m going to hurt you.”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t know you.”

Axel sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, you and I have some catching up to do as well. We need to get a few things straight.”

He’d dropped just enough disapproval into his tone to make her tummy tighten. Mystery tried not to notice that her palms suddenly turned damp. “I know. I explained and said I was sorry, but . . .”

“You did.” He nodded. “I understood and appreciated that. But that doesn’t make everything all right.”

Axel looked calm. He almost always wore an impenetrable veneer of calm, like nothing really got to him. Now, she saw a chink in that—and got the feeling he’d been holding this rebuke in for hours, just waiting for the chance to make his point.

She thought about backing up a step. “I didn’t think so, I just . . .”

He motioned her closer.

Mystery shuffled forward. She wasn’t afraid of him physically, but he definitely had the power to hurt her with his words.

“You really think it’s all right to deceive someone in order to have sex with them? If our roles had been reversed, and I’d pretended to be someone I wasn’t so that I could wheedle my way into your bed, how would you feel?”

Confused. Used. Wretched.

Mystery winced. “You’re right I guess . . . I figured if you were saying yes to a stranger, did it really matter if I was a woman you’d never met or one you’d known a long time ago? The point was to exchange pleasure, which we did.”

“But what if that wasn’t the only point for me?”

He’d wanted something besides sex? “What else . . . ?”

“What if I’d let you pick me up in the bar because I thought you were interesting, witty, and beautiful, and I’d hoped to use the evening to get to know you more, maybe see if we could start a relationship?”

“That never crossed my mind. I’m sorry.” Guilt lashed her. “I thought I’d spend a few hours with you and get you out of my system so I could move on because I’d never forgotten you. I’ve never, ever wanted anyone else so badly.” When he raised a sharp brow, she looked down, feeling chastened. “I didn’t think you wanted me so I tried to be someone else, thinking we’d both get what we wanted and . . . then we’d be done.”

“You made a whole lot of assumptions, little girl. I never wanted you?”

“You turned me down,” she pointed out, her voice rising as her guilt did. “What else was I supposed to think?”

“That I was trying to be responsible and respectful of you after what you’d been through. Did you think I wanted you this afternoon?”

“Yes.” Together, they’d been incendiary, insatiable, unstoppable. She’d never imagined sex being that intense, ever feeling so much pleasure.

“Damn straight,” he reiterated. “I wanted you that much in the desert years ago. It took every ounce of my restraint to walk away from you that night in the ghost town. I’m sorry if my rebuff was harsher than it needed to be. But I knew if I didn’t eliminate the tequila and ensure you didn’t tempt me again, you wouldn’t stop until I was balls deep inside you, right?”

Mystery wished she could refute him, but no. She’d been so happy to be alive another day. She’d been so grateful to him for making that happen. Her hero worship, the booze, his incredible body and spirit . . . She’d been so drawn to him. He’d done about the only thing possible in that scenario to stop the inevitable.

“Maybe if you had kissed me and said that, later—”

“When I kissed you after the chopper crash, I barely managed to stop myself from laying you down in the sand and fucking you. I knew if I kissed you again at that old hotel, I wouldn’t be able to stop. You needed comfort, not sex, and I didn’t have a single condom with me.”

Birth control hadn’t even crossed her mind that night. How stupid and irresponsible did that realization make her feel?

“And I didn’t look you up later because I knew you’d be going through some PTSD,” he continued. “You needed time to recover and readjust, to finish growing up.” He looked between his feet. “Being totally honest, I worried that your attraction to me wouldn’t hold up in the real world. Even if your father had let you date me—which I highly doubt—once you returned home, you had a glitzy world at your fingertips, and I didn’t fit in. What the fuck do I know about designer labels or country clubs?”

“I don’t care about that crap.” Why did he imagine that mattered at all?