by Kailin Gow
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Freeing You Freeing Me is a mash up of contemporary fiction and romantic fantasy (not fantasy as in fantasy romance and the other kinds of fantasy books I write, but fantasy in that some situations…um…some of the situations are not meant to be realistic. This is a work of fiction.
Due to some of the mature themes contained in this novel, this novel is suggested for college age young adults, new adults, age 18 and older. If you are easily offended by some language, steamy scenes, and adult social situations, then this book is not for you.
I sincerely hope you will enjoy Sam’s story. I am honored that you chose to read it. Happy Daggers Dreams…
Sincerely,
Kailin
Freeing You
Freeing Me
A You & Me Trilogy Book
A New Adult Romance Thriller for age 18 and up
kailin gow
Finding You Finding Me
Published by THE EDGE
THE EDGE is an imprint of Sparklesoup Inc.
Copyright © 2013 Kailin Gow
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, please contact:
THE EDGE at Sparklesoup
14252 Culver Dr., A732
Irvine, CA 92604
www.theEDGEbooks.com
First Edition.
ISBN: 978-1597480543
DEDICATION
To All the Women Who Took Back the Night.
And the men who love them.
To all the women who supported this book series and told me to trust my artistic voice so Sam’s story of being found could be told uncensored and uncut, right from the start.
Prologue
“What would you do for love?”
The silky smooth voice of authority, across from me in the dark luxurious bedroom, commanded me to answer.
“If you are at all the girl whom I imagined Collins finally giving his heart to, then I suspect, my pretty little kitty, that you are willing to do anything.” The owner of the voice got up from the plush armchair covered in crush red velvet which she sat in and walked over to me in her five-inch heeled boots which reached above her knees. With her long straight dark hair, big hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and pouty lips, she was too beautiful to be terrifying. Her movements were smooth, elegant, and very deliberate…enough to mesmerize me as she seemed to glide towards me like a jaguar about to approach its prey. With an iron grip, her hand shot out to grab my jaw and twist it up so I had to look into her eyes. “You’re a smart girl, Sam,” she said in a sweet but icy voice. “I know you would choose to come to me.” She stared down into my hazel eyes. I almost gasped at what I saw.
My reflection staring at me from her eyes.
We could be sisters, with the same coloring and build. Feminine curves, but athletic and trimmed. Yet, she moved with deliberate seductiveness, owning the power of her feminity.
And of course she was older and sophisticated. She was a woman of the world, a judge, and someone who held so much power in her hands…power she used to turn people’s lives around with just one phone call.
She was also Collins’ ex-lover. The woman who seduced him when he was just a teen, a troubled youth nicknamed “Daggers” because of the jagged dagger he carried with him for protection living on the streets when she acquitted him of his crimes.
She taught him everything, yet also made him deeply troubled.
The resemblance between Judge Seevers and me was too much of a coincidence, and my heart jumped thinking that Collins may had been attracted to me, had fallen in love with me, because I looked like his old flame and tormentor, Judge Seevers.
She saw my expression and pulled back slowly, walking around me, circling me while slapping her hand with a leather riding crop. I was still reeling from my first initial shock at seeing the Judge out of her frock and into some kind of tight black leather dominatrix outfit when she surprised me at Club Casablanca, thwarting my plans to surprise her. “Yes,” she said, “it appears Collins have found himself a doppelganger of mine in you.” She laughed. “And he was telling me how he had moved on…found someone new. Bullshit. All he’s done was found a younger, more naïve version of me.”
She pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me, using one finger to caress my cheek. “Such a pretty sweet thing. So young and pliable. You haven’t had sex yet, have you?”
I pulled my face away from her finger and got up. “How dare you,” I said. “I don’t care what you are or who you are, but you don’t deserve to know anything about what goes on between Collins and me.” I turned to grab my purse to head out the door of the private bedroom we were in at the club. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing with me, but I’m here only because of Collins.”
“That’s why you’re in this room with me, Sam, my private VIP room at Club Casablanca. To talk about Collins,” Judge Seevers said. She aimed the tip of her riding crop at my breast and traced it up to my chin, lifting my face to meet her gaze.
“I know you haven’t had sex yet with Collins…technical sex, because you’re here. And, Kitty, I could see very clearly how innocent you are…Collins couldn’t possibly completely claim you if he had to go vanilla to have you. That’s impossible.”
My head was reeling. I had a vague idea of what she was saying, but I hated how much she knew about Collins and what he liked and didn’t like in bed. A year ago, I wouldn’t even think of walking into a place like Club Casablanca. “Maybe he’s changed,” I said firmly but projecting my voice loud and clear. I refused to be intimidated, although I was out of my element at this place.
“Obviously not. Your first time here? You don’t know how lucky you are to get invited into this room. My room. I believe I’m the only woman at Club Casablanca with a dedicated room.” She reached out a finger to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Such flawless skin, no lines, no wrinkles. Exquisite. You are a find. If I was not accompanying you in Club Casablanca, you would be gobbled up by any of the men and some women around. Count yourself lucky, I found you first.”
“Yes, but here you are touching me and trying to get into my mind…” I said drily. I may look innocent around here, but I sure as hell was not going to let anyone mess with me. I was feeling bolder and more confident since facing my childhood tormenter Billy and finally putting him back behind bars. “Tell me, Judge,” I pulled away from her, got up and went to the other side of the room. I crossed my arms. “Why Collins? You can have anyone. Any man would want you. You’re beautiful, you’re smart and so accomplished. Why Collins McGregor? He’s moved on from you, has a new life, is doing great, but here you are…still trying to mess with his life.”
“You want to know all about Collins?” the Judge asked. “Once there is this bond, there is no turning back. He and I…we’ve done so much together. I’m a little sentimental sometimes, and I prefer some of my lovers to others. Collins? There was no one like him. He has a way of making you believe you are the center of his universe. He has a way of pulling you in so you can’t let him go.”
She was watching me and as soon as I acknowledged what she meant, silently agreed, with a flicker of my eye or a slight opening of my mouth, she said, “You do know what I mean, Kitty, or you wouldn’t be here for him. You’re the kind, altruistic girl who drives me up the wall, so I know you’re here not for yourself. You are here for Collins. So this is what I’m doing. I’m letting you find out for yourself w
hat Collins is like…the hidden dark desires he seek, the part of him he’s kept hidden from you all this time because he’s afraid that if he reveals himself to you, you’d run away.”
I nodded, trembling at how accurate the Judge was at hitting my thoughts on the head for me.
“You’ve seen his tapes?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Then you know that part,” she nodded. “You’ve been to his private room?”
“You mean his production room and bed?”
“I see that you have,” the judge said. “That hasn’t gotten to you?” She smiled. “It seems the Pastor’s child really does have a dark side to her.”
“There’s nothing really dark about that,” I said. “So what if he likes to film himself with someone. Maybe he’s doing it to preserve the memory.”
Judge Seevers laughed. “Preserve the memory!”
“What’s so funny about that?” I asked, getting annoyed at this game the judge was playing. “What do I don’t already know about Collins that you’re not telling me?”
Judge Seevers got up and walked over to the closet in the room. “Funny you should ask right about now,” she said. “I was about to introduce you to Lesson number 1.”
Lesson number 1? Both my id and ego Lola and Susan asked, their faces looking skeptical.
She opened the closet and turned on the lights in there, revealing an arsenal of strange objects…some pointy, some flat, and some sharp and painful-looking. She took one of them out, and I realized it was some kind of paddle. She ran her fingers up and down the paddle lovingly and sensuously. “See this? It’s one of his favorites. Stick out your hand.”
I hesitated, but she fixed me with a piercing look. “Do you want to know what he’s so afraid to tell you? What he’s into?”
I nodded.
“Then stick out your hand.”
I stuck out my right hand.
The judge raised the paddle and slapped it down hard on my hand, causing my eyes to tear up in pain. She raised the paddle again and struck harder, causing me to cry out.
The judge smiled. “Good. Now you know the intensity of pain he’d like to be hit with…correction, he’d like for you to hit him with. Shall I try it one more time for you to get the feel of what Collins want?”
“No, no, please,” I said, still feeling the sharp pain from where the paddle came down hard on my hand. “I can’t believe he’d want this.”
The judge’s eyes glinted as she said, “Believe it. He wants this, with his wrists handcuffed and chained to a bedpost, and especially to the point where he collapses.”
My poor Collins – my entire being cried out silently.
I couldn’t understand how he’d want this kind of pain, especially since all I wanted to do was run away…far away from it.
The judge saw the shock on my face and laughed. “Don’t tell me it never occurred to you why Collins chose you to become his ‘intern’…to find you at your school and offer you a scholarship opportunity?”
“He did, but he changed his mind,” I said.
“Well, that is only part of it, my sweet innocent. You really don’t know how messed up our boy really is, don’t you?”
I braced myself for what the judge was going to say. I did know Collins had dark desires that I was worried about fulfilling in our relationship, which I wanted to help him overcome. We were moving well along, too, except for the hiccup right in front of me. Judge Colleen Seevers.
“Whatever it is, Judge Seevers,” I said, “We’ll get through it.”
“I love your optimism, Sam,” she said. “But when I found him on the streets, he’d already had those tendencies, that self-destructive nature.”
“What are you trying to say?” I asked. “What is it?”
Judge Seevers grew solemn then. “Collins chose you because you look like me, a judge, a cruel one, too. One who can dole out punishments. He wants to be punished severely because that’s the only way he can feel clean again. The harder you beat him, the more he feels redeemed…the more alive he feels.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling Collins’ pain and internal anguish wash through me like a tidal wave. What could make Collins feel such a need to be punished?
“The man he stabbed with his dagger,” the judge said, “died in the hospital. It was self-defense, and I ruled it as such, but Collins was a wreck afterwards.”
My mind immediately imagined seeing Collins as his 14 year-old self, traumatized over the guilt and horror of what happened. “No wonder,” I said to myself.
“You see me as the evil seducer, Sam,” the judge said, “but I’m not. Collins’ need for pain can be so self-destructive, he can really hurt himself. I was just channeling that negativity into something a lot more pleasurable for him.” She smiled a large wide smile. “And for me.”
At that moment, no matter how out of my league I was with her, no matter how she just shared a story about Collins to me as though we were bonding like besties, I remembered why I was here.
To get Collins fully out of the clutches of Judge Seevers. No matter what it takes…no matter how many lessons this sick, twisted judge would have me learn in order for her to think I was “worthy” of Collins…”worthy” to take her place.
In some strange way, she saw herself saving him from himself, but in a stranger way, I was drawn to her charisma and her lessons…believing if I learned them, I would be saving him, too.
Chapter 1
I sped back to my luxurious apartment Collins had set up for me in Newport Beach, and parked my car in the garage before heading up the elevator to the top floor. I was late. It was late, and I was sure Collins would be worried. The Judge didn’t keep me long after the first lesson, but she did make sure I wouldn’t miss the next couple ones following.
“If you don’t continue with the lessons next week, same time, same day, I would give Collins a call, and we will be back to square one, and your time today with me will be in vain. But if you come back, as I told you, I will provide you with another interesting bit of information for you about Collins, and you would be sure it is something he would never admit to you or let you know. It is something he craves all the time, and if you can’t provide that for him, he will walk.”
I gulped, feeling extremely underequipped for providing whatever Collins craved so much of, and feeling as though it was a matter of time when Collins would get tired of my sexual inexperience, the waiting, and find someone like Judge Seevers to provide him with what he wanted.
I looked at my phone’s clock and saw it was past midnight now. There were several texts from Collins, asking to call him. He was worried about me and was going to come get me himself from Sawyer House now.
I stepped on the pedal, and in a few minutes, the elegant glass and steel high-rise which I recently moved into came into view. Collins had insisted I live in this penthouse apartment instead of getting a dorm room at the University of California at Irvine where I was starting to take classes. He bought the whole damn building so I couldn’t refuse the suite. It was incredibly sweet, but borderline too possessive, and I would have been happy starting my college life staying in the dorms.
Yes, I was such a nerd that I was already taking classes this semester along with Derek, my friend, and a freshman psychology major. Derek was also my trainer at Sawyer House where I was a peer counselor who worked the hotline at the center to help teens and young adult with issues.
The high-speed elevator stopped at the penthouse floor, where Collins had set up my apartment, and the doors opened. I stepped out, and immediately felt a rush of air swept by me, and myself lifted into the air by strong hands and arms which encircled my waist.
“Sam,” Collins’ deep velvety voice whispered into my ear as he kissed me. “I was so worried, I was about to send Vincent over to Sawyer House to see if you were alright.”
I cringed at hearing Collins mentioned Sawyer House and his trusty driver and bodyguard Vincent. Not wanting Collins to know I was going
to Club Casablanca to confront Judge Seevers, I had told him I had a very late night shift at Sawyer House tonight, and I won’t be back until late. I hated having to lie to Collins about that, but he could not know about my meeting with Judge Seevers.
“You’re shivering,” Collins said. “Are you cold?” He took off his t-shirt and slipped it over my head. Much too big, the t-shirt fell to the middle of my thigh over my own t-shirt and jeans, but smelled wonderful…sexy and masculine like Collins. His icy blue eyes assessed me from my head to my feet.
“Are you alright?” Collins asked. “You looked a little shaken up. Did something happen at Sawyer House?”
“I just had a very rough day,” I said. Surprised. Shocked. Whatever you can call it, I was not expecting to be so badly shaken by my meeting with Judge Seevers.
“Oh baby,” Collins said, crushing me to him in a tight hug. “Let me make it better.” He was shirtless, and I can feel the instant warmth of his smooth bare skin on me. He smelled so good in person, like spicy musk and cinnamon. My face was crushed up against his hard chest, and my mouth and lips were lined up against his right nipple.
He looked and smelled so good, I was instantly filled with the desire to devour him. I stuck out my tongue and began licking his skin. Playfully at first, then more enthusiastically. I wanted to get Judge Seevers out of my head. Get the image of the seductress and Collins together, out and crushed. Whatever history Collins had with her, I wanted to erase all of it, especially with what I know Collins liked…even if I have to find out from his ex-lover herself.
Collins groaned as soon as my tongue hit his salty skin. I licked his nipple and circled it, causing him to groan again. “Sam, careful or I’ll keep you up all night. It’s already late as it is, but…oh, that feels good,” he stopped talking.