Page 228 of Deep Cover

But I enjoyed the touring. Our last night there we sat across from each other at an incredibly beautiful, five star restaurant. The night was mild and the stars out, as best we could see them over the city.

We sat outside, the wines changing as the dinner progressed. Everything came in small amounts, a taste of this, a taste of that, nothing to ruin the appetite for the next thing to come along.

There was a salad that was exquisite, even to someone who prefers her salad spelled p-i-z-z-a.

There was asparagus, so perfectly prepared, the mouth felt almost as important as the buttery lemony taste.

"You've never had this before," Cole said. He was resplendent in nothing more outrageous than a crisp button-down white shirt, open at the neck to show just a touch of that incredible chest.

When I dragged my attention away from him, I took in what the waiter had just served us and nearly gagged. "Sir, no, please, I can't."

Sir was an interesting development. As if Vincent had beaten it into me. Or as if Cole coming to my rescue had made him my literal Master. Or something else entirely. Whatever it was the word was still galling – but not as much as it had been.

Not, say, as much as the fact that there was a plate of snails in front of us.

"You can." He looked at me seriously. "You will."

There was something there in his face, something I wasn't sure I could understand. It was past his usual command, past his being my Master. It was anger, yes, I'd been expecting it, though maybe not yet. Of course who was to say how it would make itself known? It could show up in a dozen different ways and at various times and it might not all show up at once.

That I understood. That I expected.

Whatever I was sensing here, it was something else that I didn't understand. More that the game wasn't a game – he really expected me to submit to him, he really would punish me if I didn't – but really was a game. Because in his heart I think even Cole St. Martin understood he didn't own me.

This was something past that. This was a black pit of reaction he had fallen into, possibly more than losing the one-upmanship game that the billionaires in that bizarre unwholesome circle played.

This was an anger so deep it had to be predicated on something other than what had happened. This was something beyond what had been done to me, and instead of feeling my own pain was being belittled, I was glad not to be in the eye of this storm.

Except that right now, I was.

I looked at the things on the plate and felt my gorge rise repeatedly, a feeling that all the food that had come before this was going to make a quick exit.

But I was learning. I could eat them here or I could eat them stone cold and maybe worse, later. Who knew how much later. Or whether they'd all go into my mouth. Or whether this was like a mother and child thing where I'd only have to try one bite and then it was all over and I could just eat my salad.

I could eat them, or he might force them into my mouth right here at a sidewalk café and the truth was, no one would do anything about it once they knew he was Cole St. Martin.

I watched how he unshelled them or whatever it was called. I watched how he pulled out the loathsome flesh and I followed along and put some into my mouth.

It tasted of butter and garlic, which I was coming to believe the French overused quite a bit. It was – like eating butter and garlic and a flip flop. It was utterly vile if I thought about it and horribly pointless if I didn't.

Right. I'd eaten a snail. I looked at him to see if he was going to push the issue or if I'd find him laughing, pleased with his control and honestly amused at my reaction.

Neither. He was calm and in control and he nodded. I'd tried them. I was done. I felt like a small child wanting to run now, off to my room, having eaten everything the adults said I had to.

"Was that so bad?" he asked, offering me a glass of white wine.

"Yes."

I very intentionally hadn't said Sir that time. Cole just laughed.

But the darkness continued in our room. As if reverting to form, reminding himself who he was and who he thought I was, or who he wanted me to be, he ordered me to strip and to kneel when we returned to the room.

That was after an evening of viewing the city from the Eiffel Tower, and taking a carriage ride through the streets and along rivers. We didn't do all the tourist stuff. Neither of us much cared about museums, no matter how famous they were.

I knelt, waiting for what would happen after he finished his shower and was ready for bed, but the only thing that did happen was that Cole told me the bathroom was mine, and gave me a hand to climb to my feet.

As I walked away from him, naked, I thought I heard him draw in a heavy breath, but when I turned back and said, "Sir?" he said nothing, only pointed me to the bath.

And then, about the time the strangeness of going from prisoner to sightseer was beginning to overwhelm me, we flew back to the desert.

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