He tweaked one earlobe. “You never did get them pierced.”

She shook her head. “I got the tattoo instead. It was exactly what I wanted. I designed it myself. Cole insisted that I not go to some fly-by-night, back-alley tattoo parlor, so he took me into the city to a very expensive artist who did the ink. It was the best birthday gift I ever received. In a lot of ways it wasn’t just a tattoo. It was a mark of my independence. A new milestone in my life.”

So far Lucas wasn’t seeing the problem in her relationship with Cole. He seemed like a pretty decent guy, which annoyed him, truth be told. He wanted—needed—a reason to back out of the decision he’d already made.

“Only after the tattoo was completely healed did we make love for the first time. It was so perfect. He was my first and he made it so very special for me.”

She went silent a moment and though she still looked up at him, she was no longer seeing him. She was somewhere else. Lost in her memories. Sadness entered her eyes and he suddenly wanted nothing more than to hold her and shield her from hurt.

“After that first time, we became inseparable. Cole took over. Not in a negative way. I welcomed it. I loved that he took care of me. He anticipated my needs. He provided for me. It was like a fairy tale. It was precisely what I wanted in a relationship.

“We began to talk about it. We didn’t just slip into it. We knew what we were was …different. And exciting. We were young and we weren’t even sure exactly how to define this type of relationship. We began to experiment. Sexually. We quickly discovered what we did and didn’t enjoy. We embraced what turned us on and satisfied us emotionally and quickly discarded what didn’t meet a need.”

Again she broke off and went silent.

“What happened?” Lucas asked.

“One night things went too far. It was an accident. He was using a whip and he didn’t have much experience.”

Lucas winced. A whip wasn’t for an inexperienced hand. Not at all. It took long hours of practice to be able to wield it without injuring your partner. He didn’t use whips. He didn’t like them. He liked leather. Crops. Belts. Or the flat of his own hand. He also liked wood. Smooth, treated wood so there was no chance of Ren being injured by splinters or rough surfaces.

Then he frowned as a thought occurred to him. He turned her so the scar on her shoulder was visible. It was about four inches long, curving over her shoulder blade.

He traced the scar with his fingertip and then leaned down to kiss it. “Did he do this?”

She swallowed visibly and nodded.

Lucas gripped her shoulder, kissed her again and softly nuzzled the barely raised area of flesh. Had she been badly frightened? Had it broken her trust?

“It must have scared you.”

Ren rose up on her elbow so they were eye level. “That’s just the thing, Lucas. It didn’t frighten me. It hurt, yes. No doubt about that. Cole was devastated. I mean, truly devastated. He was so horrified that he’d hurt me. But I loved him. I trusted him. I knew he hadn’t meant to. I knew he’d cut off his right arm before ever willingly hurting me. I knew all of this. But he was the one who couldn’t get past it.”

Lucas’s forehead wrinkled in confusion.

“He was the one who walked away,” Ren said softly, pain evident in her voice. “I begged him. God, I begged him. He hated himself. I think it made it worse for me to tell him it didn’t matter, that I loved him and knew he hadn’t meant to. He made this comment about how often women forgave their abusers over and over and how they were willing to say it was an accident when they were hurt. In his mind, he crossed an unforgivable line and nothing I said could change his mind.

“He began to question every aspect of our relationship. How he had complete control and dominance. How I complied with his wishes. He worried I’d lost my individuality, that somehow he’d swallowed me up. He was horrified that he’d become this monster who held me on such a tight leash that I had no life outside of him.”

“Did he?”

Her denial was immediate and he believed her. She was honest in all things. About herself. Her mistakes. Her shortcomings. If she truly believed that she’d been abused, she would tell him so now.

“He made a mistake,” Ren said painfully. “One mistake. We were young. We were inexperienced. We were testing the waters of a relationship we knew defied societal norms. We decided together what did and didn’t work for us. He and I were both drawn to the idea of pain as pleasure and how much pain was too much before it overrode all else and simply became …pain. He was always so careful and he simply made a mistake.”

“Was that the only mark?” Lucas asked. Cole’s reaction seemed extreme, but then he’d been a much younger man and it appeared as though he’d had a deep sense of responsibility toward Ren even at that young age. It was hard to know if Lucas would have felt the same if he’d made such a mistake in his youth with a woman he hadn’t cared for as deeply as Cole had cared for Ren.

Ren frowned and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. “No. But it was the only mark that left a scar. My back was striped. The skin was broken in three places but the place on my shoulder was the worst. The whip sliced open the skin and I bled a lot. Cole took me in to be stitched.”

Lucas pulled her in closer, offering his warmth and the strength of his body. He knew it was something that comforted her, and her sadness was unsettling to him. He didn’t like the look in her eyes or the sound of her voice.

He felt …helpless and it was an odd sensation. Not at all one he was accustomed to.

She was getting to him. Worming her way deeper and he found it perplexing. Why her? What was it about her?

“So he left?” Lucas finally asked.

Ren sighed against him and again, her unhappiness struck a chord deep inside his chest. “Not at first. He took care of me. Dressed the wound every single day. Went with me to have the stitches removed. But he didn’t touch me sexually. Not even once. He drifted further and further away. It was like he felt he wasn’t worthy of me anymore. It was so frustrating. I tried to talk to him but I just couldn’t get through. The harder I tried, the more convinced he was that he wielded too much power over me and that he wasn’t responsible enough to shoulder it and wield it properly. He blamed himself for ‘pushing’ me into the lifestyle. He seemed to forget that it had held as much interest to me as it had to him from the very beginning. It was a need I had, one I recognized, even before we ever embarked on the sexual side of our relationship. But he didn’t see it that way. He thought he’d forced me into something I didn’t want. That I’d done it all just to please him. And I know I’m making him sound like a martyr and that now, years later, it may sound ridiculous, but you have to understand, this affected him profoundly.”

“Yes, I see it did,” Lucas murmured.

“He truly felt like the best thing he could do for me was to walk away when in fact it was the one thing that hurt me far worse than any whip to my back. Cole changed me. He awakened something within me that has never died. He is a large part of who I am today.”

“I think you don’t give yourself enough credit,” Lucas said.

She shook her head. “I know what you’re saying. I do. But the thing is, he was my introduction to dominance and submission. Would I have gotten there eventually without him? Oh yes, definitely I would have. It was a need inside me before he awakened it. But through him, I tasted what it was like to have a man utterly cherish me. Protect me. Love me with everything he had. Would my experience have been the same with another man? Absolutely not. What if I had chosen the wrong man? What if I had experimented with someone who didn’t care for me as much as Cole did? Or someone who wasn’t as patient as he was. Or even someone who wasn’t willing to listen to what I liked and didn’t like, and what I needed and didn’t need? Because of him, I knew exactly what I wanted and needed from a relationship and I refused to settle for less. I’m honest in my needs and wants because of him. Because he showed me that there are men who will give me exactly what I want sexually and emotionally.”