MASTER

by Eden Bradleyeden Bradley

  I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Master Christopher reaches out and wraps his hand around the back of my head, pulling me in to press his lips to mine, I am almost too dazed to respond to the sheer force of his power, his beauty, the primal animal that is him. But the response is there behind the daze, along with the sensation of my heart breaking, opening up. My body is numb all over—everywhere but the keen, lancing pain in my chest and where he is touching me. Warm spots, thrumming with heat. Physical sensation that is somehow emotion. I am really falling apart, bursting open in some terrible and glorious fashion. Completely overcome.

  I sink into his hard kiss, glorying in the sincerity of it. But a moment later he releases me and steps back to stand in front of me with his arms crossed. He watches me, and I see emotions ranging over his features: empathy, sadness, a resolve I don’t quite understand. His jaw clenches, and I wish I knew what was going through his mind. This suddenly seems to be about so much more than the Master/slave dynamic.

  No, in truth, it has always been more with us. But the real honesty has begun only now, and I know I’ve missed out on some key element in the four years prior to this.

  Finally, he says, “I’m sorry, Damon.”

  I nod. What else can I do? There is nothing to say, and I am still too choked with emotion to speak.

  “But,” he continues, “—and someone else would probably ask you to forgive them for saying this, but you know that’s not my style—if you allow this to prevent you from living your life as you need to, then doesn’t that make his death all for nothing?”

  Painful twisting sensation in my chest, and suddenly I can barely breathe. “I…what?”

  “You know I’ve lost people. A lot of people. My mother, to begin with. Most of the friends I lived with and worked the streets with, back in the day. Overdose, AIDS, violence.” He shrugs, but there is nothing casual about it. “I’m not saying my story is any more tragic than yours, because it is and it isn’t. But now you have to ask yourself, what the fuck are you gonna do about it? Because if this is what’s holding you back, then this is the shit you need to deal with. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me all the years I’ve known you?”

  The world has narrowed down to a pinpoint of light, with Christopher at the very center, the only thing that exists at this moment.

  “But you’re a hell of a lot smarter than I am, Damon. I’ve only been able to do so much. You can move further ahead, and you need to, because you’re in pain now. Don’t think I don’t see it. I see everything.”

  “I know you do.” The words come out in a small, strangled whisper. “No one has ever been so honest with me, so brutally frank. I know I need it.”

  “Glad to hear you know it, because you damn well do need that. I never said this would be easy—just the opposite. So I’m gonna say some hard shit to you right now.”

  He watches me for a long moment, golden lion eyes narrowed, searing my skin, searching my soul. I feel utterly naked before him. And fucking scared. But needing this—to be so naked and afraid—as much as I’ve needed anything else with him.

  “This is the goddamn truth, Damon,” he tells me. “You can’t fucking martyr yourself here. Don’t do it with me—I have no use for that shit. Either be here authentically and fully immersed, or this isn’t going to work. You’re the one who’s depriving yourself of the experience because you’re carrying all this baggage around. You deprive yourself of the joy because you’re afraid of losing it again, and because you feel so indebted—but is that a good reason for us to do this crazy shit we do?”

  If I didn’t know he meant it as a rhetorical question, I’d be tempted to answer, probably incorrectly because it’s always worked as a justification for me in the past. And I was happy, or at least content, to go along with that idea. Until he turned my world upside down.

  “You need to clean up your motives,” he insists, his eyes boring into me. “If you’re only doing this because I’m making you, then what the fuck are we doing here? It started out that way, but if you can’t eventually flow through it, then…fuck it.” He makes a vague fluttering motion with his hand, his frustration manifesting in the set of his shoulders. “Yeah, if that’s how it’s gonna be, then this—us—cannot happen. It’ll turn to shit for all of us.”

  My insides turn to ice at the stark reality he’s laying out for me. This—us—absolutely must happen.

  “I want more than that,” he says gently, as if he can actually see my rising panic. “I thought you did, too. You said you did. And I’m not saying you’re lying, but you need to fucking get it together and decide which way it’s gonna go. You work through this—now—or it has to be over. Now that I know what the big issue is, I understand that’s how it has to work. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  I turn away from him, shoving my hands through my hair. “Yes, I understand—I just don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know. It feels like too much. It feels like everything.”

  And in this moment, I feel too powerless to be responsible for anything, let alone everything.

  “Damon,” Aimée says softly, “he’s right. And I’m here to help you. Tell me what you need.”

  Dear God, I am overwhelmed—at being faced with the hard truth. At my sweet girl’s loving support. At the way Christopher is driving me, pushing me in the way I need to be pushed, which is his way of loving me right now. And I know now I could never have reached this depth with anyone without this blunt honesty between us—all of us. I really have been missing out all these years, which is another painful truth.

  “I don’t know what I need,” I admit. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “You already have,” she says.

  Turning, I smile at her, and her face lights up with warmth. She is so, so lovely. And her encouragement fills my heart with the kind of hope I haven’t felt for a very long time.

  “I’m giving her to you for the night,” our Master announces. “But with this boundary: no kink. Just be together. It’ll help you. And if it helps you, it’ll help all of us.”

  For some reason I’m not as surprised as perhaps I should be—maybe because I know, in his own rough way, that he does love me. Loves us. He knows what we need on some instinctual level that is even sharper and more accurate than even my own as a Master.

  “Thank you,” Aimée says.

  I am about to echo her sentiment, but he brushes us off with another wave of his hand.

  “Go up to the top floor. You’ll find a tray set out in the suite there—I called ahead and left orders for my housekeeper. Be sure you eat something, both of you. I’m leaving the house for the night. I’ll be back by noon tomorrow.” His features soften as he reaches out to stroke the high curve of Aimée’s cheek. “I know you’ll comfort him, prettiness.” Then he turns to me, his tone hardening once more, he says, “And you—figure it the fuck out, Damon.”

  I nod. “I will do my best.”

  Our Master leans down to kiss Aimée’s pretty mouth, then brushes my lips too, pausing to nip me gently. Then he takes our hands and folds them together in his, holding on for several long moments as he stares into my eyes. I swear I see a whole world in that steady gaze, all golden light and silver shadow, pain and love and more pain. He’s worried, even though he’d never admit it out loud. My heart surges, but I can’t say anything about it. He’s right—I simply have to figure it out. But is one night enough?

  He turns to go, and I can sense Aimée holding her breath, as I am, until the front door closes. I grasp her hand and stand, pulling her up with me. I have to remind myself there is to be no kink, but she is who she is and so am I, and there is still some power dynamic between us. Without Christopher, I must be the one in charge. It automatically steadies the ground beneath my feet—there is safety in the role, even if it’s not quite the role of Master, or even Dominant.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I tell her.

  She nods, batting h
er long lashes at me. In the pale shaft of light coming through a high window, her skin is illuminated, and I can see the pale, gold freckles scattered there. Reaching out, I caress the fine bones of her jawline with my thumb.

  “Come on, Aimée. I find I need to take you to bed, to feed you with my own hands.”

  “Yes, please,” she says, her face lighting in one of her precious smiles.

  Together we ascend the narrow wooden staircase to the top floor, where the stairs open directly into a room with vaulted ceilings. The walls are painted a pale gray with white trim and the windows and slatted shutters are draped with long, sheer white curtains. The room is dominated by an enormous four-poster bed made of graceful brushed steel, with a canopy of cross-bars overhead and a cage beneath lined with white fur rugs. A bed made for kink. A bed made for royalty. Yet tonight it will simply be Aimée and me, together. How luxurious. How exotic. I feel like an outlaw.

  There is a high dresser faced in the same brushed steel to one side, where the tray is set with covered plates, a bottle of wine, and even a bud vase holding a single white rose, which I’m certain he put there simply to amuse me, since he is not the kind of man to keep flowers in his house. Flowers in this bizarre situation? Oh yes, there’s a certain irony to it.

  “Hungry, lovely girl?” I ask her.

  “Yes,” she answers simply, standing at the foot of the bed, her arms at her sides. Her posture is almost non-descript, except that I see the tension in every line of her body, and the sensual gleam in her eyes.

  My cock goes hard, and in three strides I’m across the room and stripping her down.

  No kink.

  But this is not kink—it is simply desire. Desire for her body. The desire to be inside her. To feel her all over. To merge.

  She gives herself into my embrace with a quiet sigh, and I kiss her even as I undress her. And God, her lips are so soft beneath mine, her mouth so utterly sweet, I don’t know how I’ve lived without this. Soon she is naked, her clothes in a puddle on the floor, and I press my fingers right into her. She is gorgeously wet and tight. Heaven. My cock jumps.

  “Hold still,” I whisper, and once more it’s not about kink, but the need of the moment as I kick my shoes off and get out of my clothes.

  Picking her up, I carry her to the side of the bed, lay her down on the crisp gray duvet. She is parting her thighs even as I lean over her to kiss her breasts, her stomach, her smooth thighs. I have to taste her—her skin, her sweet cunt, flushed and swollen already. I leave small bites over her flesh just below her navel, then lower, at the top of her pink clit.

  “Ah, God, you are the most succulent creature ever born,” I mutter before lowering my mouth and stroking her damp slit with my tongue. “I have to drink you in. To swallow you whole.”

  “Oh, yes,” she murmurs. “Please, yes.”

  I dive in, licking, sucking hard at her pussy lips, shoving my tongue inside her and fucking her with it. She squirms deliciously while my cock pulses in a hard, rhythmic beat, wanting, wanting, and yet glorying in being denied so I can please my beautiful girl. There is something of both serving and empowerment in doing this for her, to her, and I revel in it. This is the balance I crave. This is exactly what I need.

  I eat as if I were starving, and some part of me is. She begins to come, and there is nothing more than a tiny voice in the back of my head reminding me I should make her stop, control her orgasm. But that’s not the point now, and instead I savor her hot climax as she floods my mouth, her body convulsing, her cries filling the air.

  I keep licking her, and she swells once more under my tongue. Pressing a finger inside her, then another, then a third, I find her g-spot, feel it swell under my stroking fingertips before I start fucking her hard with my hand. In moments she is screaming, squirting all over the bed, my face, her thighs. When she’s done I sit up to look at her, wiping my chin with the back of one hand. Her eyes are glazed, and she’s still sighing and panting, her body squirming with the aftershocks. I’m damn pleased with myself. But now I need her.

  Picking her up, I yank back the wet duvet and set her down on the prim white sheets. She is all raw sensuality, her features loose with wanton desire, and she smells deliciously of sex. Her red hair is disheveled—and oh, what a wonderful word that is!—scattered around her face like some marker of pleasure. Her body is all smooth, pale skin, her breasts flawless curves tipped with the most luscious nipples, pink and succulent.

  I climb on top of her, my erect flesh poised at the heat of her cunt, and when I look down at her, I am overcome by my love for her, by the keen edge of desire rippling over my skin.

  “Aimée, I need to fuck you. I need to be inside your body. But I want you to touch me first.”

  “Oh! Yes, please.” She reaches for my stiff cock, her soft hand tentative at first. When I moan, she moves with more confidence, exploring the length and the shape of the head, with her fingertips, then squeezing the shaft and slipping down to caress my balls. She looks at my cock as if fascinated.

  “Damon,” she says, without taking her eyes from it, “I have to tell you, it’s been so long since I’ve been with anyone other than in service, it’s as if this is kink to me now.”

  “Yes, exactly. I understand,” I pant through the pleasure of her touch.

  “It’s so, so beautiful,” she tells me.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She looks up at me. “Damon? You are beautiful. Beautiful. As beautiful as he is.”

  “No…”

  “Yes,” she insists, stroking me, sending shivers of pleasure through my system. “This is beautiful—your lovely cock. Us here together. Every time you touch me. Every time you look at me. Every time you talk to me—really talk, revealing yourself.”

  I want to answer, but she sits up and takes my cock in her mouth, and I am lost in the wet heat. In her searching tongue. In the supremely hot way she swallows me down until she gags, over and over, tears coursing down her cheeks from being choked by my hard flesh.

  I fight the urge to hold back, as I normally would. But there is nothing “normal” about this moment—not for people like us. Not in this vanilla sex, which feels like the kinkiest damn thing I’ve ever done in my life. I take in a quick, gulping breath before pleasure overwhelms me, stinging in my blood coursing at a million miles an hour through my pounding cock.

  “Coming into your mouth is…fuck.” I bury my fingers in her silky hair. She’s still sucking me, licking the come off. “I need it, need to feel every part of you on me. Need to be inside you as soon as I recover. Need to hold you now, my girl.”

  We tumble onto the bed, and I wrap her up in my arms, pulling her close and kissing her.

  “I can taste my come on your lovely lips, and I can still taste yours on mine. It’s like some divine blend, some powerful intoxicant in itself,” I murmur as she presses her cheek harder against my chest. “Maybe I’m a little out of my head, but how can I possibly care? We have the night together. Nothing else really matters right now, does it?”

  “No,” she agrees. “Only this, for now. We don’t need to worry about anything else. We’re not meant to, are we? And even though this—the two of us tonight—is not about kink, we are still following his orders. It makes it easier. For me, anyway. Does it for you, as well?”

  I take a moment to think about it. “Yes, it does. Maybe that’s the only thing that makes this possible.”

  “Then it’s a true gift.”

  A hard lump forms in my throat, and I pull her in tighter.

  We drift for a while. I’m not sure I’m even quite asleep, although I dream of white sheets and her sweet, pink mouth. I dream of the window opening and the white curtains flowing out and over the city, free, yet searching for…something. I wake understanding exactly what the dream means—it’s literal enough even for my sleep and sex-fogged brain to comprehend. I am searching for the purity and freedom inherent in the sheer white floating through the sky, the sky of my city. My life. And my s
weet love is at the center of it. She is the apex, the key that turned the lock, opening this tightly bound part of myself. Even Christopher could not have done it on his own. We both needed her.

  Aimée sleeps beside me, tucked into my side, giving me time to think.

  Our Master knew to break me down, knew how necessary that was and still will be for a while—maybe forever. But he also knew when I needed filling up, and he understood exactly how to do it. Which leads me to believe he truly does want me here, truly loves me.

  Ours is a complicated situation, more than anyone else could possibly understand. Our standing in the community, our dynamic, all makes this a little insane. But I went into this knowing that part. What I didn’t know—what I lacked the foresight to see—was how profoundly letting them go, then coming after them, would impact my life, and theirs, on so many levels. None of us will ever be the same again, regardless of how this turns out.

  A small pain lances through my chest at that thought, and I can barely stand it. But the truth is, the outcome is still wildly unpredictable.

  “Damon”

  Her voice is soft with sleep. Fucking adorable.

  “What is it?”

  “What are you thinking about? Your heart just began to beat faster. I can feel it.”

  Kissing her forehead, I whisper against her skin, “Everything. And nothing.”

  “Tell me about the ‘everything’?”

  “It’s quite a lot.”

  “‘Everything’ usually is.”

  “That sounds exactly like something the Cheshire Cat would have said.”

  “Or Alice. I like to think of myself as Alice, sometimes. My life is ‘through the looking glass’, isn’t it? In some Wonderland that is surreal in a way Lewis Carrol couldn’t imagine, even in his opium dreams.”

  “Did you read Alice as a little girl?” I ask.

  “All the time. And as a big girl. It’s one of my comfort books, although sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. It can be frightening.”