“You are afraid,” he observes.

“No.” I swallow, and then admit the truth. “Yes.”

“Yet you still submit?”

I stare up at him. Here is the man I saw in the painting: windswept black hair, face like rough-hewn granite. But now I see more than a mere painting could reveal. There is a hungry glitter in his eyes that warns of dangerous appetites. I can still retreat. I can flee from this room, from this house.

But I don’t. I want to know what happens next.

“I submit,” I answer.

His smile sends a shiver through me. He is in control now, and I feel as na?ve as sixteen-year-old Ionia, a virgin in the hands of a man whose cravings will now be revealed. With the back of his hand he strokes my face, and his touch is so gentle I close my eyes and sigh. Nothing to fear. Everything to look forward to.

He leads me to the alcove and draws aside the curtain, revealing what lies beyond: a bed, draped in black silk. But the bed is not what rivets my attention; no, it’s what dangles from each of the bed’s four oaken posts.

    Leather cuffs.

He grasps my shoulders and suddenly I am falling backward, onto the bed. My dress splays out across the sheets, silk against silk, blue on shimmering black. Without a word he wraps a leather cuff around my right wrist, drawing it so tight that I have no hope of slipping free. He circles the bed to secure my left wrist, moving with inexorable purpose. For the first time I am afraid, because when I look in to his eyes, I see a man who is in complete control. There is nothing I can do now to stop what is about to happen.

He moves to the foot of the bed, sweeps up the hem of my gown, and takes hold of my right foot so suddenly that I gasp. In seconds the leather cuff is looped around my ankle and pulled tight. Three of my limbs are now restrained. Even if I want to, I cannot free myself. I am pinned and helpless as he wraps the final strap around my left ankle and secures it to the bedpost. I lie spread-eagled, my heart battering my chest, waiting for whatever comes next.

For a moment he merely stands at the foot of the bed and admires the view. His arousal is obvious, yet he makes no move and simply savors my helplessness as his gaze devours my pinned body, my rumpled dress. Not a word passes his lips, and the silence alone is exquisite torment.

He reaches into his boot and pulls out a knife.

In fear I watch him hold up the blade to the candlelight and stare at the gleam reflected in the metal. Without warning he grasps the neckline of my dress and slashes the fabric, keeps slashing all the way down the skirt. He yanks open the ruined dress, exposing my flesh, and tosses aside the knife. He needs no blade to threaten me; he does so with his gaze alone, his eyes promising both pleasure and punishment. I flinch as he leans over to stroke my face, his fingers sliding down my neck, my breastbone, my belly. He smiles as he reaches between my legs. “Would you have me stop?”

    “No. I don’t want you to stop.” I close my eyes and sigh. “I want more. I want you.”

“Even if it makes you scream?”

I stare up at him. “Scream?”

“Is it not what you want? To be taken, to be punished?” In the flickering candlelight his smile suddenly looks cruel. Satanic. “I know what you crave, Ava. I know your darkest, most shameful desires. I know what you deserve.”

Oh god, is this really happening? Is this real?

The man who now strips off his shirt and breeches is very real indeed, and all too imposing. It is the weight of a real man I feel on top of me, a real man who pins me to the bed. My hips automatically rise to welcome him, because as fearful as I am of his power, hunger has swept me past the point of no return. He gives me no chance to brace myself; with one savage thrust he’s inside me, driving deep.

“Fight me,” he commands.

I cry out, but there is no one to hear me. No one within miles of this windswept, lonely house.

“Fight me!” I stare up into eyes lit with a raging fire. This is the game he plays. A game of conquest and submission. He does not want me to surrender; he wants me to resist. To be conquered.

I twist beneath him, bucking left and right. My struggles only arouse him and he thrusts even more deeply.

“This is what you want, is it not?”

“Yes,” I groan.

“To be taken. To be mastered.”

“Yes…”

“To be blameless.”

I can fight him no longer because I’m lost in his game. Lost in the fantasy of complete surrender. My head rolls back and his lips press against my neck, his beard scraping across my throat. I cry out, a half-sob, half-scream as delicious waves surge through me. He lets out a roar of victory and collapses on top of me, his body so heavy that I cannot move, can scarcely breathe.

    At last he stirs and lifts his head. I look up into his eyes, which only a moment before had burned with lust, a look that had both frightened and aroused me. What I see now is a different man. A man who quietly releases the straps around my wrists and ankles. As I rub my bruised flesh, I cannot believe this is the same raging animal who attacked me. Now I see a different man. Calm, subdued. Even tender.

He grasps my hand and pulls me to my feet. We stand face-to-face, naked and exposed to each other’s eyes, but when I look in to his, I can read nothing. I might as well be staring at a portrait on the wall.

“Now you know my secret,” he says. “As I know yours.”

“Your secret?”

“My needs. My cravings.” I shudder as he traces a finger along my collarbone. “Did I frighten you?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“You need not be afraid. I never damage my possessions.”

“Is that what I am to you?”

“And it excites you, does it not? To be taken the way I took you tonight? Ridden hard and given no choice about what I choose to do to you?”

I swallow and take an unsteady breath. “Yes.”

“Then you will welcome my next visit. It will be different.”

“How?”

He lifts my chin and stares into my eyes with a look that makes me shiver. “Tonight, dear Ava, was about pleasure. But when I return?” He smiles. “It will be about pain.”

Fourteen

Dr. Ben Gordon’s receptionist looks old enough to be his grandmother. When I glance up at the row of pictures hanging in the waiting room, I spot her much-younger face, wearing the identical cat’s-eye glasses, smiling from a photo that was taken forty-two years ago, when this same building was the office of Dr. Edward Gordon. And there she is again in another photo two decades later, her hair now half silver, posing with Dr. Paul Gordon. Dr. Ben Gordon is third in a line of Dr. Gordons who’ve practiced in Tucker Cove, and Miss Viletta Hutchins has been the receptionist for them all.

“You’re lucky he could squeeze you in today,” she tells me as she hands me a clipboard with a blank patient information sheet. “Normally he doesn’t see patients on his lunch hour, but he said you were an urgent follow-up. With all these summer folks in town, his schedule’s been booked solid for weeks.”

“And I’m very lucky he makes house calls,” I say, handing her my insurance card. “I didn’t think any doctors still did.”

    Miss Hutchins looks up at me with a frown. “He made a house call?”

“Last week. After I fainted.”

“Did he, now?” is all she says before she discreetly looks down again at the appointment book. In this age of electronic medical charts, it’s quaint to see patients’ names handwritten in ink. “Please have a seat, Ms. Collette.”

I settle into a chair to fill out the patient information sheet. Name, address, health history. When I come to the blank for Emergency Contact, I hesitate. For a moment I stare at the blank where I have always before written Lucy’s name. Instead I write Simon’s name and phone number. He’s not a blood relation, but at least he’s still my friend. That’s one bridge I haven’t burned. Yet.

“Ava?” Ben Gordon stands in the doorway, smiling at me. “Let’s go back and take a look at that arm, shall we?”

I leave the clipboard with the receptionist and follow him down the hallway to the exam room, where all the equipment looks reassuringly modern, unlike the ancient Miss Hutchins. As I climb up onto the exam table, he goes to the sink and washes his hands, like any good medical professional.

“How’s the fever?” he asks.

“It’s gone.”

“Finished the antibiotics?”

“Every pill. Just as you instructed.”

“Appetite? Energy?”

“I’m feeling pretty good, actually.”

“Ah, a medical miracle! Every so often, I do get it right.”

“And I really want to thank you.”

“For doing what I’m trained to do?”

“For going out of your way to help me. I got the feeling, talking to your receptionist, that house calls aren’t something you usually do.”