Pleasure's Edge by Eve Berlin Page A

body was responding exactly as it had last night: heat and a melting desire that made her want to do anything he asked of her.
    Anything.
    Fear throbbed as harshly as the need piercing her body.
    She had to get out of there. Had to leave before he woke up.
    Before . . . what?
    Before she gave any more of herself to this man.
    She slid from the bed, found her clothes draped over the arm of a dark suede chair by the window and stepped as quietly as she could into the hal . She crept down the stairs and got dressed quickly in the entryway. It felt odd to put on her sexy outfit from her night at the Pleasure Dome in the early-morning cold, in the silent, dark house. It felt total y out of step with how she was feeling.
    Just go.
    She slipped her shoes on. Her heart was hammering as she opened the front door and slipped outside.
    It was foggy, too cold and damp to be without a coat, but she hadn’t worn one the night before. She’d been too anxious to get to the club. Alec had lent her his for the cab ride last night, she remembered. She shivered, as much from the memory of the scent of leather and Alec surrounding her as from the early morning chil .
    She started to walk down the hil , stopping several blocks away in front of a smal neighborhood grocery store that had a narrow wooden bench in front. Sitting down, she pul ed her cel phone from her purse and cal ed a cab.
    The street was quiet, and she final y thought to check the time on her cel phone. It was nearly six in the morning.
    It occurred to her that Alec might be mad that she’d left the way she had. Would be. But she’d had to get out of there. She didn’t know how to face him after what they’d done together. After the way she’d given herself over to him, to his command. It had felt right at the time, somehow. Natural, the way her body, her mind, had responded. But now . . . she was embarrassed. Not by the fact that he’d had his hands on her, that he’d known her body so intimately. It was the way she’d gone so easily into submitting to him.
    She got up and began to pace, back and forth in front of the bench, too keyed up to sit stil .
    God, her head was spinning! She wasn’t even making sense anymore.
    Think.
    But maybe, for once, thinking wasn’t going to get her through this situation.
    She’d always relied on her mind, on her problem-solving abilities, to get her through life. She’d had to, ever since she was a child. Ever since her mother had begun to real y lose it, to sink into her il ness. Dylan had been the one to take over, to handle the life of their smal family. But this time, logic and organizational skil s just weren’t going to cut it.
    It had been years since she’d felt helpless about anything. She didn’t like it.
    But when it came to Alec Walker, she had very little sense of control. And when it came to Alec speaking to her as a dominant, her body, her mind, automatical y responded as a submissive.
    He’d been right about that.
    How had she not seen it? How had she been so blind to this side of herself?
    Maybe because you didn’t want to see it.
    She didn’t want to see it now.
    The cab pul ed up and she got in, gave her address, sat back against the cool vinyl seat.
    Seattle was stil asleep as they drove across town, as it often was early on a Sunday morning. Stores and restaurants were closed, windows shuttered or gated. The sidewalks were empty.
    Even the inevitable coffeehouses were closed. Everything was too damn quiet. It was too easy to get lost inside her own head.
    When she got home she turned up the heat in her apartment, changed immediately out of her club clothes and into her white cotton nightgown. She turned the television on to some morning news talk show as she made herself a cup of tea, then got into bed.
    She just needed to tune the world out. The news would help. It had been her shutoff valve since she was ten years old. Whenever things got too rough at home—which they did al too often—she’d turned to