by Maren Smith
He could have fucked her then, if he wanted to, and she didn’t care that she’d only known him for a day. He could have done anything he wanted, she’d have licked, she’d have sucked—hell, she’d have swallowed.
“I’m hungry,” he said instead, his voice thick, low, husky, full of an unrequited hunger all his own. Taking his hand off her back, he stepped away from her. His dark eyes were positively black when she twisted back, so wanton in her need that she couldn’t even rise. She stayed in position, ass offered up, pleading without words for him not to go.
He rolled his shoulders, adjusted his coat, took another retreating step, but that look on his face was the darkest hunger she’d ever seen a man wear while looking back at her. His hand drifted to the watch tucked into the pocket of his vest. He didn’t pull it, but just touching it seemed to center him.
“We can’t be late for morning inspection.” He stared at her a moment more, as if the mental debate were still raging. With a steadying shake of his head, he retreated that final step. “Breakfast,” he said, and turned away.
On rubbery legs, Eden pushed up off the sink. She watched him walk back through the kitchen and away from her, the wrapped handle of his switch still clutched in one hand. It was broken, snapped right in half, little more than a stub with a braided leather handle. Reaching back, she slipped her hands under the hem of her maid’s uniform, feeling with wonder the swollen ridges of all four welts.
He pushed through the swinging kitchen door and was gone. A quick search of the floor and she found the frayed end of the switch. It had snapped off in two pieces. She had the most absurd urge to pick them up, slip them into her bodice and keep them. For what? She had no idea, but it felt… special to have broken his chief instrument of discipline in a four-stroke spanking.
“Back to work, bitches, or it’ll be all of you feeling that next!”
Eden jumped, completely unaware the cook had come to within steps of her until the command was bellowed. The frozen silence that had befallen the kitchen erupted back into busy work, occasionally punctuated with covert looks shot back at Eden.
“You steady, girl?” the gruff cook asked, reaching out to catch Eden’s arm as she sagged back against the sink.
The moment the edge touched her bottom, Eden jerked back off it again. She tottered a step, grateful for the cook’s quick reflexes. What was wrong with her? She felt so… floaty. “Yeah,” she sighed, wobbling in those pinching too-high heels.
Snorting, shaking her head, the cook ordered, “Take ‘em off.”
Slipping her feet out of first one shoe and then the other, Eden watched as the cook picked them up. She looked at the pinched marks on Eden’s toes and promptly threw both in the trash. Clapping her hands to brush off imaginary dirt, the gruff woman leveled the sternest look on Eden, almost squelching the fluttery-floaty feeling inside her.
“That man,” she said pointedly, “happens to be a very good friend of mine. Don’t make me have to hunt your skinny ass down.”
The kitchen door snapped back open and Eden jumped when she heard the snap of her name being called. Grimsley was back. So was his irritation. The instant their eyes met, he pointed to the floor directly at his shiny, black heel. “Focus!”
“Off with you,” the cook said, landing a meaty swat right to the worst spot that all her tender welts had to offer.
Barefoot and blushing, Eden hurried to catch up.
Chapter 8
Instead of an hour for breakfast, Grimsley had twenty minutes. Twenty of the longest, most thought-jumbled, pulse-pounding, libido-charged minutes of his life, all of which were spent sitting in the Masters’ private dining room just off the guest dining hall, with Eden eating her toast, sipping her coffee, and squirming on her seat in a way that constantly reminded him of why she was sitting so tenderly. And why he was, too.
She had the perfect ass for spanking. It was soft and round, with just the right amount of bounce and wobble to each stroke. She’d marked beautifully, the redness popping out against the paleness of her skin, followed by the swelling of each ridged welt. He could cheerfully have whipped her ass for far longer than he had. He’d probably still be whipping it, if only his switch hadn’t broken. Heaven help him, but his first instinct when it had snapped hadn’t been to stop. It had been to seize her by her hips, prize her buttocks open with his thumbs and enjoy the erotic show of continuing to watch the greedy, sucking motions of her pussy as he sank his cock into her from behind and started pumping.
Master Butler, his ass. Right now he wasn’t the master of anything except the world’s longest-lasting and highest-standing erection. People didn’t get prizes for that. They got laughed at.
He didn’t know how much more he could stand just having Eden around before he broke down and bent her over something. Except that he had managed to walk away from her today, and that had been just as intolerable. Worse, in fact. With every step he’d taken out of the kitchen and across the public dining hall, his tightening gut had screamed for him to go get her.
So, he had. Having her jog back into step beside him was like a cooling balm. All his inner tightening had instantly relaxed.
Now, here he was, struggling to choke down the last of his frittata with Eden sitting beside him, her elbow occasionally bumping into his and her leg sometimes brushing his under the table. The very nearness of her continued to rob him of any chance he might otherwise have had to get his shit together, find his calm, and get the day back on track. She was killing him. One tiny—did she really think she was being covert about it?—squirm at a time, she was absolutely killing him.
If only he had another switch nearby, he’d happily return the favor. But no, he’d have to swing by his office and pick up a new one on his way to morning inspections, where Eden would get to watch him play his Master Butler role for guests and secret-staff alike, handing out demerits to some and lashes to others, while in the back of his mind he already knew it wouldn’t matter whose bottom he was thrashing. It was Eden’s in his mind. Then he would get hard again, right there in front of everybody, and he couldn’t even hide it because his uniform coat only came down as far as his waist in the front. The back tails were longer, but fat lot of good that did him with a three o’clock stiffy pushing at his zipper.
“That’s enough,” he snapped when she squirmed and bumped his elbow again. He even went so far as to smack the table, rattling everyone’s dishes in his aggravation. It worked. Eden stopped moving… for all of three seconds.
Leaning into him, she whispered, “It doesn’t burn as much anymore. Can I please take it out now? I’m getting… sore… down there.”
His need to yank her up out of that chair and bend her over this table became immediately that much stronger. That she should even dare to offer such information only showed how naïve she was.
“Please?” she whispered.
“Remove that yourself only if you want me to hate-fuck you with it,” he growled back.
Across the table from them, Little-girl Selena, blonde hair tied up in pigtails and wearing her Daddy’s favorite blue dress, looked up from the bowl of oatmeal she was unenthusiastically prodding with a spoon. “What are we removing?”
“Never mind.” Grimsley frowned at her, hoping to quell any further pursuit of a subject he hadn’t meant to introduce to the rest of the room. Her face turning bright pink, Eden buried her attention in her fruit bowl.
“That’s enough, young lady,” her Daddy-Dom, Master Emerson said beside her, but it was too late.
Noticing Eden’s blush, Selena perked and proclaimed in loud delight, “Oh my gosh, you’re wearing a butt plug, aren’t you? Grimsley, you old dog, you!”
“Selena!” Emerson censured, frowning.
The perky blonde immediately slumped chastened in her seat, but the damage was already done. Jackson, sitting two chairs to Grimsley’s right, choked on his coffee. His submissive, Sara, thumped his back with her scarred hand.
“I’m okay,” he wheezed,
above Eric and Reeve’s snickering laughter across the table. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”
“I am not old,” Grimsley informed them all, although his parting frown was for Selena. “I’m forty-six.”
She flashed him a beaming smile. “Right.” That smile became an exaggerated wince, which she directed into her bowl of oatmeal.
“Selena,” Emerson warned, no longer amused.
“I didn’t say anything!” she protested.
“And yet you’re saying it quite loudly, and rudely.” He arched both eyebrows at her, an expressive ‘that’s enough’ that spoke volumes all its own. “Last warning. I won’t have it.”
Selena stuffed her mouth with oatmeal and sullenly chewed, which didn’t exactly make Grimsley feel better, because now he was catching thoughtful looks, not just from the other submissives around the table, but from Eden. She was looking at him critically, he could feel it. That annoyed him. He might well be one of the older of the Castle Masters, but he was also among the most experienced. That ought to count for more than physical age.
On the other side of Jackson, Sara spoke up. “I actually called him elderly the first time I saw him.”
Eden forgot all about giving him the covert side-eye. Her jaw dropped and she peeked, first at him and then she leaned over her plate to give Sara an incredulous look around him. “How could you possibly think that?”
“Drop it,” Grimsley told them both in the same tone Jackson used when he said, “Sara…”
“It was back before the torches, when we had the old wall sconces,” Sara protested. “Unless there was a window and it was broad daylight, the lighting here was horrible. You remember,” she prodded the chief of security, “he came at me with a stick. I’ve never run so fast in my life.”
“You either drop this right now or I’m going to start letting him catch you.”
And this right here was why Grimsley preferred to eat his meal first thing in the morning before anyone else was up. There was something to be said for peace and solitude, and the absence of the younger crowd, particularly when they—like now—seemed determined to make him feel like a damn dinosaur.
Grimsley stood up and, without excusing himself or clearing his plate, he left the dining room.
“Congratulations,” Eric said as the door swung shut behind him. “I think you guys hurt his feelings.”
Grimsley was a professional. He didn’t get hurt feelings.
Hands behind his back, he stalked across the public dining hall, heading for the main hallway and stairs toward his second-floor office, a fresh switch, and the start of his tightly regulated day. Halfway there, he heard the bang of the private Masters’ dining hall door slamming, followed by the running slap of bare feet trying to catch up.
Falling into step beside and little bit behind him, Eden said nothing. She was probably lamenting the fact that she didn’t have a Dom with Jason Momoa muscles, like Jackson, or dashing good looks like ex-military soldiers Reeve and Eric. He wasn’t the roleplaying Daddy-Dom that Emerson was, nor did he have Master Alan’s exotic foreign appeal. He was simply the Master Butler. He rode herd on the mischievous Little Maids and was, easily, the most overlooked Master in the whole of the entire place.
Eden huffed a soft puff of air, all but grumbling as she said, “I don’t think you’re old.”
Stopping not ten feet from the main hall doorway, Grimsley turned to face her. “How old are you?”
“I’m not a kid,” she countered.
“How old?” he asked again.
When she clenched her teeth, the cutest tick of stubbornness leapt up the side of her neck into her jaw. “Old enough to know what I’m getting into.”
“If you think for one second I won’t put you across my knee right here in the middle of the breakfast crowd, I would caution you to think again. It won’t bother me at all to give everyone in this room a brisk, albeit thorough, floorshow.”
There went that stubborn tick again, but Eden wisely backed down first. “I’m thirty-three. You’ve got thirteen years on me, so what?”
She actually hiked her chin at him. That would have been cute if it didn’t smack just a bit of attitude.
“Eighteen,” he corrected.
“No, I really am thirty-three.”
She was cute.
“I’ll be fifty-one in October,” he confided. “I’ve been holding steady at forty-six for the last five years now. I’m the oldest Master employed here.”
She only blinked at him, as if she didn’t understand the issue. Eventually, she shrugged. “Okay. Eighteen, then.”
Just like that. As if she didn’t care that the age difference between them was old enough to be graduating from high school.
Annoyed, he started walking again.
She hurried after him. “You’re not old,” she called, catching the door he’d just gone through before it could come swinging shut on her face. “I don’t underst—”
Suddenly spotting a familiar couple and their K9 in the midst of their own argument coming toward them, Grimsley stopped. The last thing he wanted was to be caught airing personal grievances in front of guests, even if they were undercover police officers. In retrospect, he should have side-stepped; it was too much to hope Eden noticed them too, she didn’t even notice him until she crashed into his back.
Aggravation exploded through him, but it was a minute fuse—the feeling was gone just as fast as it burst into being. And on the heels of it came a flooding rush of lust and expectation so hard and strong that when he turned on her, he almost lost the ironclad grip he’d always—always—kept on his control. Somehow, he managed not to reach for her, because if he had, her throat would have been in his hand and he’d have had her backed into the nearest wall before either one of them knew what was happening.
Blue eyes huge, Eden took a healthy step back. The problem was, she only took one. An even bigger problem was, she was still well within his reach.
“Do you not remember what I said would happen the next time you walked into me?” he said, riding that rushing wave of dominance and anticipation all the way back to her.
Judging by the spark of excitement that instantly underscored her nervous dread, she remembered only too well. Her hands tucked behind her in a vain attempt to protect what he had no intention of allowing her to. She took another step back, and then she noticed the undercover agents.
He saw it in her eyes, that moment when her courage gave way and she allowed her nerves to overwhelm her.
“I-I have to go!” she suddenly blurted and took off down the hall. She didn’t run away from him. Not exactly, but she wasn’t walking, either.
The male agent looked miffed. The female agent’s eyes grew huge when Eden latched on to her, declaring, “We’ve got, um… important, you know… cleaning stuff to do.”
“Uh,” said the woman, flashing her partner a desperate look. One that he was too busy rolling his eyes to catch. “I-I guess now’s a good time,” she stammered, then winced as Eden pulled her down the hall.
Grimsley didn’t care if she ran. He watched her go, already knowing she couldn’t ‘clean’ forever. Eventually, she would find her way back to him with her head bowed and her apologies ready. And when she did, he’d be waiting for her. The Castle wasn’t an endless place, after all, and more importantly, he knew where she lived.
Chapter 9
What was wrong with her? For all that Eden spent hours in the company of Terri, the undercover agent and her bomb-sniffing canine, Champ, she doubted she was being very good company. She tried to keep up a cheerful conversation, but her thoughts stayed with Grimsley. He wasn’t really going to do what he’d threatened, right?
That had been nothing but an empty threat delivered in the midst of an intensely erotic moment, when their passions had pretty much swept away with them both. How could it not have? He’d had his fingers inside her. He’d been spanking her ass. All the Doms in every story she’d ever read had always whispered the most seductive threat
s in those moments, and Grimsley was nothing if not a Dom. In her book, he was the ultimate Dom. He was tall; she practically got a crick in her neck every time she looked up at him. He was strong; maybe not as strong as some and he certainly didn’t have Jackson’s physique, but he had no problem pinning her down when he wanted to and, damn, what it did to her fluttering heart and electrified nerves every time he did!
He certainly didn’t hesitate to spank either, and he definitely knew how. Although by noon, sadly, those four wonderful welts he’d given her had gone away. Sometimes, while stationed at the cleaning cart, waiting while Champ and Terri certified each guest room to be ‘all clear,’ sometimes she tried to recapture the fading tenderness. She’d touch her bottom—discreetly, of course. She didn’t want anyone to see her doing something that embarrassing, but all that was left was a small place on the under-curve of her right butt cheek that still felt a tiny bit sore. She wondered if she was bruised. The thought made her heart skip and her pussy twitch, but there was no help for it. She was going to have to wait until later, when she was well and truly alone, before hiking up her skirt and checking for marks. Just one. That was all she wanted. Just one tiny bruise to help make the experience feel just a little more real.
As if the ginger plug still embedded in her bottom wasn’t proof enough of that. The problem there was, it had stopped burning hours ago. Enough time had passed now that all she felt there was awkward and the slightest bit chafed. The lube was probably wearing off or absorbing back into her. She wanted to get the thing out, but Grimsley had told her no. Of course, he hadn’t known she was going to run off immediately upon their leaving the dining hall. For all she knew, he’d been planning to take her somewhere private, bend her over and…