Breathe

by Lauren Jameson

“E and I are done with her. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to take on the responsibility of punishing this one.”

  Cathryn’s eyes lit up. Her submissive, clearly still feeling the aftereffects of subspace, just smiled dreamily.

  “You know, Danny seems to be done for the night, but I think I have another round left in me.” Cathryn’s eyes raked over Charlotte, who wore a bustier, a G-string, and nothing else. “How do you fancy some time on the fucking machine, girl?”

  Charlotte’s skin drained of color, and Elijah felt a twinge of sympathy that he quickly quashed.

  The fucking machine was one of the most popular pieces of equipment at Veritas. Many submissives begged for it as a reward. Others, like Charlotte, dreaded it, knowing that it would attract quite a crowd, and that any pleasure she found on it would be undignified and very impersonal. The fact that it would be a female Domme and not a male Dom at the controls would only embarrass Charlotte more, since the sub had eyes only for handsome, wealthy Masters.

  Given that she had tried to take away Samantha’s dignity as Elijah’s sub, he felt that it was only fitting.

  He didn’t say anything as Cathryn led the woman from them. His mind was still on Samantha—what the hell was going on?

  Nodding a quick good-bye to Luca, Elijah exited the playroom, his emotions far darker than he cared for them to be.

  He had thought they were making progress tonight. Damn it—he knew they had. She’d wanted to share everything with him, to submit completely, and he’d had no doubt that she was on the right path.

  Charlotte had said that Samantha had taken a call from her family—her sister, surely—and then had climbed out the bathroom window. He was not happy that she hadn’t come to him.

  It was with sickness in his gut that he realized that this relationship between them was never going to work. No matter what he felt for her. And as he saw their relationship going up in flames, he realized exactly how much it was that he felt.

  The little redhead had caught him off guard when she’d entered his life. She’d worked her way into his heart, even when he’d been sure that his ex had destroyed the parts of him that were capable of a relationship.

  In short, he loved her. And she’d run from him.

  When the great wooden doors at the front of Veritas loomed before him, Elijah gave in to his frustration and slammed his fists into them. From the corner of his eye he saw a small group of Doms and Dommes eyeing him with alarm, but he pushed through the doorway before any of them could approach him.

  “You’re going to have bruises on your fists.”

  The voice was quiet, barely discernible, and Elijah thought he was imagining it. But as he turned his head in the direction from which it had come, he saw that his ears weren’t playing tricks on him after all.

  Samantha stood just outside the doors to Veritas, her arms wrapped around her torso as if she were cold.

  She was such a welcome sight, he had to physically restrain himself from striding to her and wrapping her in his arms. After her betrayal, he couldn’t just show her such affection.

  “Why are you still here?” His voice was flat, at odds with the storm of emotion taking place inside him. She shivered. Silently he unbuttoned his shirt, peeled it off, and handed it to her.

  “Thank you.” Samantha shrugged into the pale blue button-down, which covered her slip entirely and made her look very young.

  “Well?” Elijah hoped she had a damn good explanation.

  “I left out of habit. I’ve spent years hiding this, you see. It’s a hard habit to break.” She looked at him, those green eyes wide, and Elijah felt his breath catch.

  “I told you that you don’t have to hide anything from me.”

  “I know.” She said it softly but firmly, and when she raised her chin he saw the pride and stubbornness that were as bone deep in her as dominance was in him. “But I’m not going to lie to you. I’m trying to open up. I knew that if I came straight to you you would insist on coming with me. I need to go back home. And I don’t want you to see all of that. I don’t even want to visit it myself.”

  Elijah couldn’t have felt more shocked if Samantha had hauled off and slapped him across the face.

  “I see.” And he did, with clarity.

  He should have trusted his first instincts, that she wasn’t capable of full submission.

  He could have saved them both a lot of heartache.

  “Are you going, then?” His voice was cold even to his own ears, and when he saw the hurt pass over Samantha’s face he wished he could stop. But self-preservation had kicked in, and he felt himself withdrawing even as he stood there.

  She nodded, looking stricken. “Elijah, I have to. I—”

  He held up a hand, cutting her off. Anger was a black force descending on him. He wanted to haul her upstairs and lock her in chains in his bedroom until she came to her senses.

  Maybe even if she didn’t. Damn it, he needed her.

  But as in all Dominant/submissive relationships, the bottom was the one who held all the cards. And she was telling him no.

  “I’ll let you upstairs to pack a bag and will call a car for you,” he said.

  And then he would open one of his ludicrously expensive bottles of wine and welcome the oblivion that would come with booze. He had a feeling he was going to need it for some time to come.

  • • •

  Elijah had gone back to the bar at Veritas, an untouched glass of wine in front of him. He had selected a bottle from the owners’ private rack himself, snarled at Luca to leave him alone, and retreated to a corner of the bar.

  He wanted to be left alone. But he didn’t want to be alone, which was why he couldn’t handle the idea of drinking by himself at home right now.

  Alcohol consumption was closely monitored in Veritas, because drunkenness and BDSM play were a dangerous combination. But with Samantha gone he wasn’t planning on doing another scene again tonight.

  Forcing himself to lift his wineglass, he sipped at the ruby liquid inside the expensive glass. It tasted sour on his tongue, a reflection of his mood, he knew, and not the wine.

  “Two fingers of Jameson’s, water back,” a rough and familiar voice said to the bartender, and Elijah felt a thread of anger slide through him as Robert, an older Dom who had been one of the first members of Veritas, took the barstool beside him.

  Elijah forcibly swallowed his irritation. As one of the owners, it was his job to be polite, even when he didn’t necessarily want to be. And Robert was a good friend—he didn’t deserve to get pissed on just because Elijah was in a shitty mood.

  “Saw you with your sub earlier,” Robert said. Elijah tamped back a glower as he turned to look at him. The other Dom was in his seventies, but age hadn’t diminished his stature. He was large, though not as big as Luca, and had a way of filling the space around him.

  He just wanted to drink in peace and wallow in his anger at Samantha. Couldn’t he do that in his own damn bar?

  Humming out a noncommittal noise, Elijah stared into the depths of his glass as Luca delivered a glass of whiskey to the newcomer. Elijah watched from the corner of his eye as Robert sniffed the potent fumes, took a long swallow, and sighed with apparent satisfaction.

  “Yep, saw you with your sub. Was a mite jealous, truth be told.”

  “Bit young for you, isn’t she?” White-hot possession flooded Elijah, and his fingers tightened on the stem of his wineglass as he turned to glare at the other man.

  “You wound me, Master E. I’ve still got some swagger.” The man held up his arms, signaling that he came in peace, though Elijah saw the spark at being challenged by another Dom.

  “I’m not trying to move in on your lady. She reminded me of Gladys.”

  Even at his age, Robert was a powerful enough Dom that he drew the attention of subs twenty years his junior. He hadn’t touched any of them since his wife and longtime submissive, Gladys, had passed away the year before.

  Though he no longer
participated, he still came to the club. It felt like home, he said.

  Elijah was inclined to agree—even with the emptiness he was feeling at Samantha’s departure.

  “The way your sub responded to you was what put me in mind of Gladys. A connection like that is rare.”

  This time the older Dom caught Elijah’s full attention. He turned, his eyes homing in on his target. “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to tamp down the terrible hope. He had no business thinking the way he was. Samantha had made her choice, and any Dom worth his salt abided by those hard limits set by their other halves.

  “She was so entirely focused on you. It was gorgeous to see. So submissive to you, even when Big Guy here was in the scene.” Robert gestured to Luca, then rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Made me miss Gladys right hard, it did.”

  It took an extreme effort for Elijah to keep his emotions from running riot over his face. There were hundreds of Doms and Dommes who carried memberships to Veritas. Out of that number, only a handful were experienced enough, comfortable enough in the lifestyle to turn dominance into an art form.

  Robert was one of them. He was dominant to his core—had been, to Elijah’s understanding, for his entire adult life. A lifetime of experience had given the man unrivaled skills of observation.

  And Robert had seen complete submission from Samantha in their scene?

  What was he seeing that Elijah wasn’t?

  Sipping at the wine without tasting it, Elijah regarded the other man thoughtfully, noted that, true to form, Robert was looking around the play area, taking in everything that happened around him.

  “I think that sub and I might have parted ways.” Elijah chose his words carefully, not liking how they sounded. “I don’t think she has what it takes to be fully submissive to me.”

  Beside him the former soldier snorted inelegantly, finishing his whiskey and sliding the empty glass across the counter. He turned to look Elijah in the eye, and Elijah felt a hint of kinship, Dom recognizing Dom.

  “I’ve been in the lifestyle for fifty-two years.” Though Robert’s eyes followed the path of a pretty sub with long gray hair as she walked by, he didn’t look further, reminding Elijah that that connection between himself and Samantha, between Robert and Gladys, wasn’t something that could be found with just anyone. “And I topped a lot of subs before I met my wife. Some are a hell of a lot more work than others, but in my experience those are the ones whose submission is the sweetest. Hell, I scooped up the most ornery one I ever came across quick as I could. And I’m telling you, that pretty redhead of yours was giving in to you in a way that makes me think she would only ever submit to you. No one else.”

  Robert slid off his barstool, then nodded to Elijah. “Of course, if you own a place like this, you’ve probably never had to work too hard with a sub. They probably throw themselves at you. And I hate to offer advice when it hasn’t been asked for, but you looked like you could use some.”

  And with that the man was gone, muttering something that sounded like “stubborn young pup” as he stalked away.

  Elijah stared after the older man, turning the abrupt, unexpected conversation over in his head.

  Robert had had some hard truths for him. And despite himself, Elijah could feel himself heeding his advice. Since Tara, since he and his friends had opened Veritas, he hadn’t had to work for a sub at all. Hadn’t wanted to, preferring to keep it casual.

  Samantha . . . She’d crept up on him because she was different.

  And he liked it.

  Carelessly shoving the glass of wine aside, Elijah stood from his own barstool and walked to the exit, his stride suddenly full of purpose.

  They had problems to deal with—that was for sure. And he was still pissed as hell at her—damn it, her words had sliced right through him.

  But he was damned if he was going to let her slip away without a fight. It was time to push a bit more.

  It seemed that he was about to take a trip to Colorado.

  • • •

  Samantha looked down at the two sleeping women in the small hospital room. One was in a hospital bed that had the rails up, an IV pumping clear liquid into her hand. Her skin was so pale that Samantha could see the bluish veins running just beneath its surface.

  The other woman curled in fetal position on a small, lumpy cot. Though her pallor was better than that of the older woman, she still had amethyst smudges beneath her eyes.

  It was impossible to miss the resemblance between the two—and between them and herself, she realized. The same large eyes, the same straight nose. Though Beth’s hair was pale strawberry to Samantha’s red fire, and Gemma’s was bleached bottle blond, the three women were still clearly related.

  Resentment surged as Samantha looked down at the woman who had given her life. She tried to feel sympathy, love—something.

  Instead there was only bitterness, bitterness tainted with the bloodred hue of rage. And layered underneath was panic, the clawing need to flee back to what she’d left behind in Vegas.

  “Sam?” Beth’s voice was hoarse as she sat up slowly and looked around owlishly. “How did you get here so fast?”

  “I wasn’t in Mexico.” Samantha kept her voice deliberately light and her eyes trained on the only person in the room that she cared about.

  Beth frowned but didn’t press, seeming too sleep muddled to push further.

  “Thanks for coming.” Rubbing her eyes, Beth lay back down on the tiny cot. To Samantha, Beth seemed to shrink back into the teenager who had needed Samantha’s support.

  “How are you feeling?” Samantha whispered.

  “I’m doing better.”

  Samantha repressed the urge to throttle her mother. Without the extra stress from her mother’s incident, Beth would have been feeling just fine.

  Smoothing her messy strands of her hair away from her face, Samantha perched herself on the edge of her sister’s cot. They both stared at their mother for a long time, and Samantha wondered if there was something missing inside her, some emotional capacity that would have allowed her to care about her mother.

  Gemma had wronged her in so many ways, the biggest of which was something that had radically altered the way she saw the world. But surely she should have still felt something for the woman in whose womb she had lived for nine months.

  “I wish you’d come with me,” Samantha said, staring down at her hands. They were pale, the skin crisscrossed with thin burns from her hot glass.

  “I wish you’d come home,” Beth replied, and Samantha bit back a sigh. It wasn’t a new conversation, but it was one they still had from time to time.

  She couldn’t move back without facing the trauma of her past. And she couldn’t exorcise it without telling Beth what had happened.

  “My girls.”

  Samantha lurched as the cigarette-ravaged voice rasped over from the hospital bed.

  “Both of you here to see me. It’s about time.” Gemma gestured feebly with her left hand, found it connected to an IV, and scowled. She turned the disapproving stare onto Samantha, eyeing her up and down before saying, “You certainly don’t look like you’ve been in Mexico. You spreading lies again?”

  Samantha’s nails dug into her palms and she narrowly avoided shouting. An extreme reaction like that was what her mother wanted—she wanted to play the martyr, the saint whose elder daughter had run away for no good reason.

  The woman thrived on drama. Because of that, both of her daughters hated it.

  “I’m not here to see you, and I don’t care what you believe or not.” The latter was a lie. Samantha had once cared very much about whether her mother believed her, and at the time when she’d most needed her to, she hadn’t.

  “Let’s not argue,” Beth pleaded, wringing her own pale hands together. Samantha swallowed back the nasty retort that was on the tip of her tongue, ready to fling it in her mother’s direction, but she swallowed it down instead, knowing that Beth hated any conflict.

  Sama
ntha sat, frozen, her fingers clutching the blanket on the cot as Gemma and Beth chatted, mostly about the things that Gemma perceived as having gone wrong since she’d been admitted—the food, the attitude of the nurses, what the stay was going to cost. Samantha wanted to strangle the woman—if she hadn’t tried to drink herself to death, none of them would have been at the hospital in the first place.

  She tried to tune the words out, the strange, tense ebb and flow an angry song to her ears.

  “—still don’t understand what all that nonsense is about,” Gemma was saying, scowling at Beth, who looked pleadingly at their mother. “Surely you can just control it with diet. You must not be eating well, if your whatchamacallem levels are too high.”

  Samantha watched as Beth’s mouth fell open for a long moment. Something more potent than irritation lashed through her as she saw her sister open her mouth to respond, then close it again with a shake of her head.

  It was unbelievable. After so many years, that Gemma had no idea of anything about her own daughter’s chronic illness was unthinkable.

  Standing, her muscles stiff with tension, Samantha stalked to her mother’s bed, waving her finger in the air.

  “Beth is a diabetic, you coldhearted bitch.”

  Gemma sucked in a wounded breath. She looked hurt.

  If the shoe fits, and all that.

  “I don’t know what that means.” Raising her nose in the air, Gemma sniffed, rather like a dog that had examined its breakfast and found it lacking.

  “It means that you should have learned all of this years ago, when Beth first got sick. You should have been the one taking her to the emergency room, figuring out what the hell was wrong with her. You should have been the one up with her in the night, checking to make sure her blood sugar levels stayed steady.” Samantha fisted suddenly sweaty fingers in the loose cotton of her T-shirt. When she realized that she’d actually said the words instead of just thinking them, she began to tremble.

  But it felt good, getting it out. Better than she could ever have imagined.

  Samantha watched as something uneasy seemed to flicker through Gemma’s eyes, so similar to her own. It was quickly covered with the cool composure that Samantha had seen on the older woman throughout her whole life.