Page 1 of Rediscovering Rubi

PROLOGUE

“Rawhide Ranch?” Rubi mused as she looked over the pamphlet her husband had handed her. “Do you think this is really the right thing to do?”

“Babe,” Logan replied, “we need to do something. We’re in agreement about that, right?”

She bit her lip. “Well, yes, but… Logan, we haven’t practiced kink since before the kids were born.”

“We did try that one club a few times when they were little.”

“We did. And it didn’t go well at all. We were worried about leaving the kids for too many hours, and I think I still had some postpartum depression after Maddie was born. Not to mention my post-pregnancy body.”

She didn’t want to disagree with him. He was trying, and that was important. But she was scared. What if they never managed to find their way back to each other? What if the man she’d loved since she was in college was really lost to her forever, leaving them in this empty nowhere zone they’d been in for far too long?

And what if they tried, and she couldn’t reach subspace anymore? What if her body couldn’t handle the pain play she used to enjoy? What if her body wasn’t… good enough anymore? It had changed so much after she’d had her two babies, evenmore as she’d gone through her forties, and here was her gorgeous husband, as toned and muscular as ever, looking even hotter with the little bit of silver sprinkled through his brown hair and his short beard. She was forty-nine years old—was it too late for them to be delving back into kink? And worst of all, what if he saw her—all of her—and decided he didn’t like it?

What if, what if, what if?

The questions were eating her up inside, questions she didn’t dare ask out loud. And she didn’t have any of the answers.

She shook her head. “I just don’t know if I can do it.”

He took her chin in his and forced her to look into his eyes, those deep brown eyes flecked with gold that still made her melt a little.

“Tell me what you’re afraid of,” he demanded with a tone of pure authority she hadn’t heard from him in years. Too long.

“That… it won’t work,” she said, barely daring to whisper as tears pooled in her eyes.

He tilted her chin up higher, his gaze capturing hers. Intense. Powerful. The power she’d known from him since the first time he’d dominated her.

“We have to try, darlin’. Wehaveto. I won’t lose you.”

She tried to shake her head, but he held her chin tight.

“You haven’t lost me,” she protested.

“No, you’re still here in our house, in our marriage. But we’ve lost each other, haven’t we? And I can’t let that happen. Tell me you’ll come with me.”

She felt that command, that spark of hope within it. Maybe they really could find their way back to each other after all these years. After his military career that had kept him away from home far too often, and for such long stretches. The self-doubt she could see in him every day since he’d retired from the Air Force last year. The strange emptiness of their nest with bothMaddie and Gabe away at school, leaving them with too much time on their hands and not enough to fill it up with.

Maybe this hadn’t been the best time for her to take sabbatical from the university, after all.

His palm slid over her cheek, and her body felt the familiar flutter that had never completely gone away.

“Babe, I love you. That’s never changed. But this distance between us… we can’t let it become a permanent thing. It’s gone on way too long already. And I take responsibility for that.”

“It’s not all on you, Logan.”

“Maybe not. But I need to be the one to take a big step to fix it. To fix us.” He paused, stroking her cheek. “Come with me, Rubi.”

A tear slipped down her face and he rubbed it away with his thumb, a move so tender, so caring, her chest felt as if it would explode with emotion. There was so much she’d kept locked up in there for years. She’d had to as a military wife. But he was right. It was now or never.

She drew in a long breath, let it out. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

He smiled and leaned in to kiss her, pressing his lips to hers softly, then more purposefully. And behind the emotion there was a hint of the passion that had burned so brightly between them, and that they’d lost over the years.

She wanted it back. Wantedhimback.

There was so much to fight for, but so much they’d have to face—and overcome.

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