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  And in that moment, I knew that he had the power to break me.

  Twenty-Two

  Alix

  We’d gone our own separate ways after the earth-shattering orgasm and the things we’d said. The things I had said. She hadn’t seemed upset that we hadn’t talked about it, but I’d been worried enough that when Erik had called, wanting to meet me, I immediately agreed even though I rarely went out in the middle of the week.

  Café Carlyle was a favorite for my friends and me when we weren’t in the mood for the BDSM scene. For a lot of people, it was the perfect setting for romance, but for us, the combination of music and art suited our temperaments. Tonight, however, I barely glanced at the Marcel Vertes murals or heard the band.

  Erik was already there when I arrived.

  “I ordered you a Jameson,” he said as I sat down across from him.

  “Everything’s going well with Tanya, I presume.”

  A smile instantly bloomed on his face, lighting up his bright blue eyes. “Better than good.”

  “Still in the honeymoon phase then?” I nodded to the waiter who placed my drink in front of me.

  “That’s just it,” Erik said. “It’s not like we’re pretending with each other, or trying to only show our best selves. We’re still learning about each other, of course, but even when there’s something that annoys us, we’re always coming at it from a perspective of how to adapt and compromise.”

  I raised an eyebrow as I took a long drink. It burned going down, settling in my empty stomach. I needed to eat something before I had much more alcohol or I wouldn’t be in condition to have a decent conversation.

  “I’m serious,” he continued. “Before, I’d never wanted to have to work at it, but she’s worth it. Worth putting in the time and the effort.” He drained his glass. “I’d rather bust my ass to make things work between us than take the easy way and lose her.”

  I let the silence between us sit as I finished my drink. When the waiter came back, both Erik and I ordered another drink, as well as food, then waited until he walked away to continue our conversation.

  “How did you know?” I blurted out the question I’d been obsessing over since the day Jean had called to tell me that Sine had quit.

  “That she was worth it?” Erik asked.

  I nodded. I’d been telling the truth to Sine when I said that I wasn’t always so good at communicating with words. Pictures were my medium. But Erik always had a gift for saying what I couldn’t and understanding things I wasn’t able to say.

  “The physical attraction was there right away,” he said. “But even then, it wasn’t the same as it was with other women. When I saw her, it was like a punch to the gut, like she was the only other person in the world.”

  I thought about how I’d wanted to photograph Sine from the first time I met her even though she wasn’t the sort of woman who turned heads wherever she went. How when I was with her, everyone else faded away.

  “And the sex...well...” He grinned at me. “I won’t kiss and tell, but it wasn’t the same with her either. It was like a piece of me that I’d ignored for years was suddenly there, and it made everything more real, more important...just more. And her subbing for me...” He shook his head as if words were actually failing him.

  My stomach clenched painfully at the memory of how it felt to be in Sine’s mouth, her pussy, her ass. What it was like to see her underneath me. Kneeling in front of me. On all fours. How responsive she’d been to my touch. How much she’d enjoyed the different BDSM aspects we’d explored.

  “Those were the things that made me start to think that she was different, and I still didn’t get it completely,” he kept going. “It was when I realized I wanted to spend time with her outside of the bedroom that scared the shit out of me. I found myself thinking about her in ways that weren’t just sexual. I thought about waking up next to her. Eating meals with her. Just going places and doing things. Not only date-like things but the mundane shit. Grocery shopping. Washing dishes. All that domestic stuff that I could see stretching out in front of me.”

  My chest constricted, and I suddenly found it hard to breathe.

  Erik’s eyes grew serious as they locked on to mine. “I knew she was it for me when I couldn’t see a future without her. When the idea of moving forward without her killed me.”

  I threw back what was left of my second drink like it was a shot rather than the expensive aged whiskey that deserved to be savored. A bright edge of panic was creeping up on me, and I fought the urge to run.

  “It’s that Irish girl, isn’t it?” he asked. “Sine. The one you brought to the club a couple weeks back.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Not that it mattered. Erik could read everything.

  “Have you told her?”

  I shrugged as I thought of my words this afternoon. “Sort of.”

  “Take it from me,” he said. “Make it more than sort of. If she really is it for you, don’t be an ass like I was and try to talk yourself out of it. If she doesn’t feel the same way, at least you’ll know you did all you could.”

  If she doesn’t feel the same way.

  The words were like a bucket of ice water. I hadn’t even thought of that. I’d been so wrapped up into what I was feeling that I never stopped to consider that she might not feel the same thing. That for her, this might just be a hot fling. Something to enjoy while it lasted.

  “The worst thing you can do,” Erik added, “is to hide things from her. It won’t end well.”

  The grim tone of his words made me frown. “That sounds like you’re not only talking about me and Sine.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “Reb and Mitzi broke up.”

  He was giving me an out, I saw. If I didn’t want to dig any deeper into what I was feeling, I could take the change in conversation, and he wouldn’t say a word about it. I had too many things I needed to think about, analyze, weigh, and I wasn’t ready to do that here and now.

  I followed the change of subject. “Since when?”

  “Beginning of June.”

  “No shit.” I let myself relax as I started in on my meal. “Why didn’t he say anything?”

  Erik scowled. “He knows we never liked her, and with what went down...”

  “What went down?”

  He stabbed a carrot with his fork. “He caught her cheating, and it was bad enough he didn’t want to tell me any more than that.”

  “Shit,” I breathed. “I can’t say it surprises me, but still.”

  Erik nodded. “He finally told me the other day. Said he didn’t want to make a big deal about it, but I don’t think he’s doing well.”

  As our conversation turned to our friend, I pushed back the little voice in the back of my head that wondered if something like that would happen to me, if Sine wasn’t the woman I thought her to be. The voice quieted, but those seeds of doubt were there, and I knew they’d take root if I gave them even the slightest bit of attention.

  Twenty-Three

  Sine

  The Big Apple in late June was sunny and hot, nothing like Balbriggan was right now. I dabbed at my forehead with a tissue and wished for one of Ireland’s brisk winds off the sea. It was only eight thirty in the morning, and I was already sweating as I walked from the corner to the bodega. The traffic was awful, so it made more sense to walk the short distance to get the coffee for Alix and myself, and then go on to the studio a couple blocks down.

  Alix.

  As it had for the last week, the thought of him made me smile.

  We hadn’t talked about what any of this between us was, but we’d talked about other things. Many things, actually. I had been pleasantly surprised at the conversations we’d had. He wanted to know about Ireland, having never been there. About my family and our business. Whiskey was something of which he had some knowledge, but more of the drinking kind than the making. I told him that he and my family would get along famously, but both of us had shied away from any conversation that
talked about them actually meeting.

  He told me about his family too. How he was an only child whose closest relative was a cousin, Erik. How his parents were older and had retired to Philadelphia, and another cousin of his, Izett, ran the family business.

  The two of us came from such different worlds, and every new thing we discovered seemed to only enforce that. How we’d been raised. How we interacted with our families. Even though I was an ocean away from my family, we were still closer than he was with his. He loved them, I could see that in the way he spoke about them, but he’d always been such a solitary person. He didn’t have to tell me that. I saw it in him, the way he tended to turn into himself when he worked.

  Except I saw him turning more and more to me this week. A new side of him. And I’d discovered a new side of myself through him too.

  Tough. Strong. Independent. Self-reliant. These were all words that I believed described me.

  Submissive.

  Absolutely no one who had ever met me would have called me submissive, but when I was with Alix, that word didn’t frighten me. He made me feel safe, even when he was taking away my control. Or what I perceived as control, anyway. I hadn’t needed him to explain that in a D/s relationship, the sub had most of the power.

  I was in the middle of the line at the bodega, lost in my thoughts when my phone went off. I cursed under my breath as I scrambled through my bag. Sometimes Alix would call to ask me to pick something up on my way in.

  Except it wasn’t Alix.

  I frowned as my brother’s name flashed across the screen. It was early afternoon in Ireland, which meant Donald should have been at work, and he was always careful to not make personal calls on company time.

  “Donald?”

  “Sine, Mam’s in the hospital.”

  I stepped out of line as an icy hand grabbed my heart. “What happened?” My voice was barely a whisper as I struggled for air.

  “She and Da were touring the factory, and she collapsed. Patrick was there and called an ambulance. She’s still unconscious.”

  He didn’t sound panicked, but there was an edge to his voice that I didn’t like. Of all my brothers, he was the one the family went to for tricky PR situations or to soothe hurt feelings. The fact that he was the one to call made me think that things were bad enough that my siblings didn’t want me to freak out.

  “I’m coming home.”

  He was in the middle of patiently explaining to me why I didn’t need to do that when I hung up on him. I didn’t need to be handled. I needed to get back to my family. Immediately.

  I flagged down a taxi and gave my address before pulling up a travel website on my phone. When I’d moved, I hadn’t thought about what I would do if something happened to my family and I wasn’t there. I’d only been thinking of myself. What I wanted. What would make me happy.

  Now my mother was in the hospital, and I was thousands of miles away.

  I did my best to ignore the snail’s pace at which we were moving and focused on finding a flight. I needed to leave today. The flight alone would be around seven hours, and I would need at least an hour to go through all the security steps. The absolute best I could hope for was to see my parents in nine to ten hours. And that would be if everything I needed fell into place.

  Even though I knew I wasn’t to blame for what happened, I couldn’t completely stop the guilt. I should have been there. Showing up right alongside the others. Helping care for my mother. Being there for my father. Taking care of my family. That was where my responsibilities were. In Ireland.

  I never should have forgotten that.

  I blinked back the tears as the cab pulled up in front of my building. I couldn’t afford the luxury of giving in to my emotions. I had managed to put myself on standby for a flight leaving in a little over an hour, so I needed to pack. I hadn’t left much behind when I moved here, and I didn’t want to have to make a stop between the airport and the hospital, which meant packing was a necessity. Especially since I had no idea how long I would be there.

  Or if I would return to America at all.

  Twenty-Four

  Alix

  Sine was late.

  She was never late.

  I kept looking at my phone, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. It was nearly eleven o’clock, and I didn’t have a call or a text from her. I’d been so wrapped up in designing the next series of photos I wanted to take that I hadn’t realized I was still alone until Erik had texted me about our normal Friday night thing and I’d seen the time.

  I’d gone to the office to see why she hadn’t stopped to say hi, but she wasn’t there. For the last fifteen minutes, I’d been telling myself to keep waiting, to not make assumptions. That she must’ve had a good reason for not calling and telling me she was going to be late.

  She was a responsible person. A hard worker. Reliable.

  She wouldn’t have simply blown off work.

  After trying to convince myself that everything was okay for a quarter of an hour, I decided that it was better to risk her being annoyed with me for calling to see where she was, than it would be to stay in the dark.

  The call went to voicemail immediately, which meant her phone was off, but I sent a text anyway. In the short time I’d known her, I’d never seen her turn the phone off, and the fact that it appeared to be powered down was starting to turn worry into something else.

  I rubbed my jaw and told myself to think. If her phone was off, then she’d either turned it off, forgotten to charge it, had a phone problem...or she was in trouble. I had no way to check the first three directly, but I could do it indirectly.

  She no longer had a roommate, but her apartment had a landline. I’d never seen her use it, but I knew a lot of apartments had kept landlines around, so I assumed hers still worked. I just had to find the number.

  Now that I had something specific to do, I was able to focus. And multi-task. I called information while pulling up a search engine on my laptop. The search engine provided what I needed, and I made the call as I restlessly tapped my fingers on the table. If her phone had broken, that could explain why she was late since most people used their phones as alarm clocks.

  I let the phone ring for nearly two solid minutes before finally giving up. She wasn’t there. Even if she was in the shower, she would have heard the phone and gotten out surely.

  But if she was there, why wouldn’t she have used the landline to call me? Unless she didn’t have my number memorized. Or she’d simply forgotten about that phone. Either one made sense.

  But, as much as I hated to admit it, the more likely scenario meant that something was really wrong.

  My stomach churned as I pulled up a list of hospitals in New York. I had two more calls to make before I started on these, but whatever optimism I’d had was starting to fade.

  “Bean Bodega, how can I help you?”

  “Hello.” I used my business voice, figuring it’d probably be more likely to get answers than if I was abrupt. “I sent my assistant to pick up some coffee early this morning. Short redhead. Irish.”

  “Yes, sir, she was here.” The young woman on the other end sounded way too chipper for someone who worked in a service industry.

  “Can you tell me when?”

  “I’d just started my shift, so about eight thirty or so.”

  Shit. That sounded like the time she must’ve usually stopped there.

  “But she didn’t buy anything, sir, so there shouldn’t be a problem with an order.” A note of concern crept into the girl’s voice.

  “What do you mean she didn’t buy anything?” I demanded.

  “She came in just as I punched in, and I recognized her because I’ve served her before, but this time, she left before she could order.” The words rushed out of her, as if she was afraid I’d lash out at her for something she had no control over.

  “She left?”

  “Yes, sir. I was filling a customer’s order for a double expresso latte when I saw her
walk out.”

  I knew better than to ask if she knew why. Bean Bodega was always packed in the morning. It was remarkable she’d noticed anything at all.

  “Thank you,” I said, ending the call before she could respond.

  The fact that she’d been at the bodega for coffee told me she’d planned on coming into work. Something had changed though. It could have been anything from her feeling sick to deciding to get coffee somewhere else, or something outside might have gotten her attention, though what that could have been, I couldn’t imagine.

  Between the bodega and the studio, something had happened to keep her from coming into work.

  Which meant I had other calls I needed to make.

  I started with the hospitals, each call stretching my nerves and patience until they were both at a breaking point. Two hospitals told me that they had no one there by her name, but the others had refused to say anything without confirmation that I was a relative or spouse. Fortunately, I had people in influential places who owed me favors, including a private investigator.

  “Max, it’s Alix Wexler.”

  “Mr. Wexler, it’s good to hear from you.” As always, Max’s voice was smooth, professional.

  “Are you in New York right now?”

  There was a slight pause that told me my question had come out a little more blunt than I’d intended.

  “I am.”

  “Sorry,” I apologized quickly. “I just have a case for you that needs top priority. If you’re busy, I’ll take a recommendation.”

  Another pause. I’d only met Max once or twice over the years, but my parents had sworn by his PI skills more than once when company employees or businesses had needed investigating. He was the best.

  “I’ll pay you double your usual rate,” I offered.

  “No need,” he said. “I don’t base case priority on who has the most money to throw around.”

  I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” I said evenly. “My girlfriend is missing, and I need you to find her.”