From Sir, With Love

by Rachell Nichole

  She checked her phone and had no messages. What the hell? She knew she was late. She’d taken longer at the shop than she’d anticipated, so it was already 7:30. But, where the hell was he? She’d expected him to be waiting in the kitchen, glaring at her for being late, and ruining dinner.

  She made her way into the kitchen and looked around for dinner. He hadn’t left it in the fridge for her. That, more than anything made her worry. For him to not be here was unusual, for him to have not left her dinner, ready and waiting, was just too weird. She finally thought to check the oven, and realized that dinner sat, half-cooked, but inedible, in the cold oven. Something was very wrong.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed his number. It went to voicemail after several rings. “Leo, it’s me. I just got home. Where are you? Call me.” She tried to keep the edge of desperation out of her voice, but she couldn’t. She hung up and threw out the pork roast he’d been cooking when he left the house.

  Her belly flipped. Something had pulled him away in the middle of cooking dinner and he hadn’t even taken the food and put it back in the fridge or bothered to call or text her. Had he gone home? Just up and left her? Decided she was too much work?

  She shook her head, telling that doubtful voice inside her head to shut the fuck up. No. Only an emergency could have done that. He hadn’t left her. Worry gnawed at her gut and she found herself biting her lip. Don’t panic. Don’t jump to conclusions until you have more information. But all she could think of was that he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere. That she’d blinked, and suddenly he was gone. Just like Benson.

  She pressed a hand hard to her breastbone, trying to make her sudden shuddering breaths slow. The bag with her new toy sat, discarded, on the kitchen counter. She forced herself to think of any way she could get in touch with him. First things first, she would search the house and see if there was any indication of where he’d gone. She started up the stairs toward the room he was using, just down the hall from hers. She turned lights on as she went, until the whole house was lit up. She had gotten very used to not being alone, and now that the house was utterly silent, it was eerie. Every shadow was menacing, lurking around the corner, waiting to strike.

  “Stop it, you’re freaking yourself out for nothing.” Even to her own ears, it sounded like a lie. She’d had this feeling the day Benson had died. Something deep in the pit of her stomach lurched with every stabbing breath she choked out. She forced herself to focus on going through the bedroom.

  It smelled like Leo in here. Musky, warm. His clothes were still here, no packed bags, or missing suitcases. So, he hadn’t left her. “He can’t leave you, moron. You’re roommates. You’re Mister and minx. Not lovers. Not in a relationship.” At least the sound of her own voice chased away the silence as she pawed through his things. Would he be angry at the invasion of privacy? Right now, she couldn’t care less. She needed to know what happened to him. This instant.

  She opened the drawer of his bedside table. The one that had never had anything in it. But this time, there was a stack of papers in there, held together with a large binder clip. The top page said, Care Instructions. Care instructions? For what? Did Leo have a python he was hiding in the bedroom? If she weren’t so worried, that thought would have made her snicker. Yeah, he had a python all right. She pushed the thought aside and picked up the instruction booklet. It was hefty. She flipped open the first page. “What!”

  Evangeline needs a firm hand, but in a gentle way. She has to know who’s in charge, because it makes her feel secure, but you can’t be rough with her. Push too far and it’ll backfire, she’ll shut down, she’ll keep you out. You can’t let that happen, Leo. You have to control your temper, or this will never work.

  It was an instruction manual. For her!

  Her backside landed hard on the bed with a thump, her brain whirring at a zillion miles an hour. Benson had written Leo an instruction manual. Her Sir, Master Benson Hastings, had sent his brother to her from beyond the grave, with a set of care instructions an inch thick, because he’d known she wasn’t going to survive his death alone. She’d known that Leo had come to help her. She had had no fucking clue he had done so specifically at Benson’s directions, nor that Benson had felt she had to come with instructions.

  Her head was swimming, her body felt funny, as she read on, momentarily forgetting her panic over Leo’s absence.

  Be patient, more patient than you’ve ever been before. Like I taught you. You’ll need every ounce to deal with her antics. She’s special, brother, and I don’t want you to screw up. She could be good for you, too. Help you focus some of that rage. I’m not worried you’ll hurt her, or I wouldn’t be asking you to do this. I need you to take care of her while I’m gone. She needs a routine. She needs to be reminded, constantly, to eat. Especially at first. I’m sure that once I’m gone, she’ll backslide. You have to help her.

  Benson had left her to Leo. The same way he’d left his brother Kempert Manor. Like she was nothing more but his responsibility. She had been his, truly his in a way only a submissive could be, so maybe she shouldn’t be shocked, but the pain lancing through her as she read page after page of her every flaw and deepest needs made her cringe.

  As she read, Evangeline wondered how many years Benson had worked on this instruction booklet. And it struck her how much in those first weeks Leo had tried to follow it to the letter. She’d certainly reacted the way Benson had said she would to Leo’s temper. Purposely pushing his buttons as soon as she figured out what they were. Benson had clearly known of her bratty tendencies but controlled them in a much different way. Her even-tempered Sir. Damn him.

  When her phone rang, she jumped. It was Leo. For a minute, she seriously debated not answering. Make him sweat. But her logical mind overrode her brattiness. “Hello?” she answered.

  “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” the first words of apology and concern chased away some of the confused anger and she could breathe deeply again. The relief was quickly pushed aside by the returning anger.

  “Where are you?”

  “My sister had an emergency. Is still having an emergency actually. I’ll explain when we get there.”

  “We?”

  “She’s coming back with me. Just for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll figure something out.”

  Didn’t sound like she was going to get a choice in the matter. Fuck. That.

  She and Leo had things to discuss, damn it. And she wasn’t going to do that without an audience.

  “I’m ordering pizza. It’ll be there soon. I should have texted you earlier. You sure you’re okay?” he prompted. He sounded out of breath, but the concern in his voice was clear. He didn’t want to discuss whatever prompted him to rush out of the house or why Charlotte was apparently coming to live with them, however temporarily.

  “Yeah. Fine,” she snapped.

  He sighed. “I can’t right now, minx. I just... can’t. I’ll be home soon. For the love of God, please behave. I...”

  “What, Leo?” she demanded, her voice still harsh. “You what?”

  “Nothing. I’ll see you soon.”

  He hung up without another word, and she fought the urge to start tearing apart the pages she was clutching in her hands. He wanted her to behave?

  Fuck. Him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Leo’s fists tightened on the wheel until his fingers burned. Charlotte was silent beside him. If she’d heard his half-whispered conversation with Evangeline when he’d stepped around the corner at the police station, she hadn’t made any mention of his warning to Evangeline.

  Charlotte had met him at the grocery store near her home. Alone. Pete had been nowhere near her, but his marks were on her skin. It had taken everything Leo had to not beat his fists into the side of his car at the sight of the fresh bruise on his sister’s face. He’d asked her to get in the car in the most even voice he could muster, and counted to forty, when his phone rang.

  Much as he’d longed to hear Evangeline’s voi
ce in that moment, he was not going to be able to control himself. He could only deal with one crisis at a time. Listening to her voicemail had calmed some of the storm inside him, allowed him to get in the car with his sister, and calmly ask her where her husband was. She’d refused to tell him.

  They sat in the car for almost an hour, secluded from the rest of the world, as people came and went through the lot around them, getting groceries, going about their lives. It had taken her several minutes to start telling him what was going on, but once she’d started, she hadn’t been able to stop. Pete had been hitting her, punishing her, and not in a consensual way, for some time. Leo had forced himself not to demand why she hadn’t come to him or Benson sooner. Their sister wasn’t to blame. Her husband was. And if Leo ever laid eyes on the man again, he’d kill the son of a bitch.

  Which was exactly why Charlotte refused to tell him where Pete was.

  She’d filed a police report against him. And for now, that would be enough.

  “I’m sorry I took you guys to court over the house,” Charlotte said for the hundredth time.

  “Stop apologizing. I would have handled things differently from the start if I’d known.” She must have thought that the house was a way out. A safe place for her to get away from Pete. She hadn’t worked in years. He was shocked she’d managed to either get Pete to agree to fighting them for the house, or had hid it from him, all these weeks. “We will find a solution. For now, you’ll hang out with Evangeline and me. The Manor is obviously big enough for the three of us to cohabitate.” He hoped. Charlotte did not like Evangeline. And hiding what kind of weird relationship he and his minx had was going to be damned difficult with his sister under the same roof. But he would find a way to make it work. No way in hell was he turning Charlotte out.

  “Yeah, I’m sure Evangeline will be thrilled at your plan.”

  “You let me worry about that. But... you have to promise not to jump down her throat every time you’re in the same room together, okay?”

  She scoffed. “She’s gotten under your skin too, I see.”

  Since that was exactly what Evangeline had done, Leo couldn’t argue that point. “What she has or hasn’t done isn’t for you to worry about, okay?”

  Charlotte’s hand touched the back of his with a soft pat. “I just... she had Benson all tied up in knots for years. She’s...”

  “What, Charlotte? Evangeline is what?” He tried, and failed, to keep from snapping at her.

  “She’s a manipulative bitch.” Charlotte’s voice held none of the strength and conviction that a statement like that should have behind it. None of the cold burn that he’d come to expect from his sister.

  How had he not seen just how different she’d been when she came to the house? Or at Benson’s funeral? He wanted to kick himself for it.

  “And I don’t want to see you get hurt, little brother,” she finally said, her voice quiet.

  He loosened his grip on the wheel from sheer force, and bit the inside of his cheek hard, until his vision was no longer a haze of red. “She’s not manipulative, Charlotte. She and Benson had a unique relationship. He indulged her every whim because he wanted to, he chose to, because he loved her. He knew damned well what he was getting into.”

  “You can’t know that. You barely spoke to him since they got together. He used to call me, you know, to tell me all about how worried he was for her, how afraid he was, every second of the day, that he would lose her. But he’d never tell me what it was that made him feel like that. Why he was so convinced he could lose her any minute. She’d made herself indispensable to him, basically turned him into a... slave. That’s not love, Leo, that’s obsession. Trust me, I know.”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. The thought of Benson being anyone’s slave, let alone Evangeline’s, was just too amusing not to laugh.

  Charlotte glared at him. “It’s not funny!”

  He just laughed harder, pulling into the driveway of Kempert Manor. “It is funny, Char. If you knew anything about her, you’d realize just how hysterical you sound. Benson was not her love slave; he was her Sir. Her Master.” He didn’t mean to say it aloud, but the words were there now. He couldn’t have Charlotte thinking Evangeline was some demonic temptress. Yes, he was probably in too deep already. Yes, he wanted more from her than he should. But that wasn’t her fault. And he wasn’t going to let Charlotte keep blaming her. “Now, can we please stop talking about this?” he asked.

  Charlotte sighed. “How do you know all this?”

  This time, it was his turn to sigh. His sister had shared with him far more than she’d probably wanted to, about how Pete had presented himself as a Dom, but in the end, just ended up being an abuser. He should be honest with her. “Because Ben asked me to come here to take care of her. So, I have been.”

  “You’re sleeping with your brother’s widow?”

  “They never married.”

  “As if that makes a difference?” she demanded. “You know what I meant.”

  “I’m not sleeping with her.”

  “Then...” she threw up her hands. “No, never mind. I don’t want to know. We both already know far too much about each other’s sex lives for my taste.”

  “Just... promise me you’re not going to judge things too harshly, okay?” He turned off the car, and the light from the interior dome shone on the fresh bruise on his sister’s cheek, making his blood boil anew. “What’s going on between myself and Evangeline isn’t at all orthodox, I get that. Obviously, you understand some of what the lifestyle is like, or at least what it should be like, and I know it’s odd, because she and I are not really together like that, and she was Benson’s submissive. Not mine. But what we’re doing is working. For now. And I’d like to keep it that way.” He didn’t know how that was going to be possible with Charlotte under the same roof.

  “Yeah, whatever. Fine. You two do whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to like it.” She got out of the car without another word. But at least she was sounding more like herself now. They’d left her car in the store lot. He’d call tomorrow to have it towed somewhere. The car was in Pete’s name. Charlotte was going to have a mess trying to disentangle her life from her husband’s, but Leo would do whatever he had to do to help keep her safe. Even though it would undoubtedly make things far more complicated between him and Evangeline.

  With a groan, he followed his sister into the dark night, and toward the lights of Kempert Manor. When he opened the front door, the smell of pizza hit his nose instantly, making him realize he was ravenous. The second thing he realized was that the house was silent.

  “Evangeline?” he called.

  No answer. Because of fucking course not. He’d told her to behave. She was brat. That meant she was going to do the exact fucking opposite. He sighed.

  “I’ll be right back,” he called to Charlotte over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll just like, sit in the front room or something.” The sarcasm in his sister’s voice made him roll his eyes.

  “Neither of you is going to cut me a damned bit of slack, are you?”

  She shrugged, crossing her arms. Why hadn’t he realized the last time he saw her that she was different? That something was wrong? Because you’ve been too obsessed with your minx. He shoved the thought aside. He was not obsessed. He reached out to touch Charlotte’s arm, to provide some reassurance, but she flinched back from him. It was a sucker-punch. He immediately stepped back, lowering his arm.

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.” He smiled, trying to reassure her, when really he felt like punching the wall. Losing his temper would only make things worse for Charlotte. He wasn’t going to do that. He had to be better. “Can you maybe just give us a couple minutes? Make yourself at home.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Thanks.” Leo trudged through the house toward the kitchen, somehow knowing that is where he would find the little minx. And whatever she had in store for him
.

  He pushed through the swinging doors and stopped dead when he saw her. She was sitting at the counter, a cup of tea and a packet of paper in front of her. A packet he was all too familiar with. She shoved it hard across the countertop at him. He caught it before it went flying off the edge.

  “Fuck.”

  He was here. He was alive, and safe. And she was going to rip his fucking head off. Behave, he’d told her. For the love of God, behave. His sister was in the house somewhere, with an emergency. But he’d been real vague with the nature of that emergency. She’d been worried about him. For close to two hours, she hadn’t heard a peep. And when he’d called, he’d been short, and allowed for absolutely no discussion.

  “Yeah. Fuck is exactly what I was thinking. Swiftly followed by you.” She couldn’t keep the venom from her voice.

  Whatever was happening with his family, she wasn’t going to let him brush through this confrontation.

  He’d fucked up. Royally fucked up. And she was going to let him know it.

  “Is that all you have to say for yourself?” she demanded when he remained silent.

  He set the instruction manual down with a thud. “Is there any way we could not have this conversation right now?”

  “Did you seriously fucking just ask me that?” How dare he?

  “Right. What was I thinking?” His hand landed in a hard smack on the countertop. It rang through the room, not entirely unlike the sound of his hand landing on her ass. She fought the urge to relish the sound.

  She wasn’t going to let him off the hook. She crossed her arms and tipped her head.

  “The most difficult woman in the world isn’t going to just let this one go. What do you want me to say? I mean... I didn’t write it.”

  “No, you didn’t Leo, but you damned well should have told me about it.”

  “He begged me not to.”