MASTER

by Eden Bradleyeden Bradley

  “But fascinating.”

  “Yes.”

  “This does not surprise me, coming from a kinky girl. We pervs love the frightening and fascinating.”

  “It’s complicated, isn’t it? But the complication feels like a sort of punishment in itself, so I can’t help but glory in even that.” She laughs, making my heart expand in my chest. “Am I making any sense?”

  I stroke her hair, give her cheek a little pinch. “More than you know, darling girl.”

  “Damon?” Her tone is more serious now. “Do you think…do you know if we can go through together—through this crazy looking glass that will be our lives with Christopher? Because I…” a small sob catches in her throat “…I don’t want to do it without you.”

  “I want to. But can I?” I shake my head. “The question is too enormous to be answered in one night. My life would change forever, and even I can’t say exactly how. It’s been tearing me apart. Not that I don’t want to be with you, with him—of course I do—but…I could lose everything.”

  “Except us,” she says, her voice so quiet I can barely hear her.

  “Which is why I am so fucked,” I mutter quietly.

  So fucked, no matter what I do. If I leave them behind, my life is certain: I’ll still have the Training House. Slaves to punish. My life as I knew it before. And my heart will be shattered beyond repair. If I stay with them—if he will have me, in the end—what can I expect? There’s no way to know without making that leap. It’s a common phrase, but it feels like a leap, jumping from a high cliff into the unknown, those endless moments hanging suspended in the air. Which way is up? Which way is down?

  I had so much less responsibility earlier in my life, so much less to lose.

  But no. The truth is, I was braver once. I was willing to give up anything, to let anything go, in the name of experience. Although now, in light of everything that’s happened recently, in the aftermath of having finally spoken of Daniel—who is inexplicably linked to everything I do and think and feel—I see the bravery as nothing more than a form of escape. Which means I’m not really very brave after all, doesn’t it? Am I, instead, simply used to being this way? Shut down. Surviving. Suffering in fucking silence and pretending to be brave.

  Am I so set in my ways, at only thirty-eight, that I haven’t been able—or willing—to see myself?

  Or, is it possible there’s more to it than stubbornness? Perhaps all of the things I’ve done, in all their kinky glory, have taken a toll on me. Not that I believe, even for one moment, there’s anything wrong with what we do. But everything in my life has brought me to this moment of crisis, and I can’t discount my experiences, as slave or Master. But, I realize in a blinding flash, it is my time as Master that has aged me. I have taken on too much. Or, at least, more than I ever truly wanted to. Does admitting these things make me inexcusably selfish? I am a sadist through and through, but I am also a submissive, a slave, a physical and emotional masochist, and those desires have gone unmet for far too long. I want this. Need it. Christopher has made me see. And yet, there remains my responsibilities.

  Aimée reaches up and smooths her hand over my brow, as if she knows my head has begun to ache.

  “What is it, Damon?”

  “Nothing.” I pause, covering her hand with mine. “No. That’s a lie. It’s everything. Everything.”

  “What can I do?”

  Pulling her hand to my lips, I kiss it, then kiss it again. “There is nothing to be done, sweet girl. No one can do anything about this but me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, the edge of another sob creeping into her voice.

  “I lied again,” I tell her. “There is one thing you can do for me.”

  Rolling on top of her, I kick her legs apart with mine, my cock hard and ready and needing her. Staring into her green, green eyes, I surge into her sweet cunt, losing myself in her eager body in order to keep from losing my mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It’s after four in the morning—that was the time the last time I looked at the small glowing numbers on the clock on the nightstand, and I’m not certain how long I’ve been lying here since. I haven’t slept at all.

  I came three times, made Aimée come many more times than that. But that wasn’t the goal tonight, was it? There was no goal tonight. Or rather, the goal was me trying to figure my shit out, as Christopher would say. I am no closer than I was when I arrived—perhaps farther away than ever. I’ve used Aimée for comfort, to lose myself, and it always works. For a while. Nothing ever works for more than “a while”. I realize I’ve spent much of my life trying to fool myself into thinking sex and kink and grand events and luxurious living mean the rest goes away, but it doesn’t, does it? It’s all simply a cover-up. And my life has been the most spectacular cover-up. Has anyone done a grander job of it? Only a handful, perhaps. I wonder if they’re any happier than I am. I wonder if any of them actually know what will make them happy.

  I glance at the clock. Nearly five o’clock, and I am not happy. I’ve lain awake struggling with the inarguable fact that I have no idea how to be.

  Peering through the darkness at Aimée’s sleeping figure beside me, I reach out, gently pressing my palm to her chest to feel her heartbeat. She sighs quietly, and I think for the thousandth time how very precious she is to me. And yet…

  I shake my head, trying to shake away the trembling restlessness in my body, in my fucking soul, God help me. I can’t figure it all out—can’t figure anything out. I can’t think. Can’t hold still any longer.

  Sighing, I rise and get dressed as silently as possible. I can’t bear to even glance at her again, my sweet girl, before I creep from the room, making my way downstairs and out the front door.

  Outside, it’s eerily quiet, gray fog wrapping the city like a blanket of damp air and mystery. This is something I’ve always loved about San Francisco, and it fits my mood now. It is as if the air itself protects me from my own whirling thoughts, from the pressure building inside my head that makes me feel as if the top of my skull will blow right off at any moment.

  How can I leave her?

  How can I stay?

  I am fucked, fucked, fucked.

  Walking up Fell Street, I wander aimlessly for a while, but it’s colder than I anticipated, and so I decide to head toward a small Victorian inn I know of where I might be able to get a room for what’s left of the night. I have no idea what my next move should be. I am truly lost, but not in the ways I’ve sought. No, I am simply lost, in every damn sense of the word.

  My legs ache by the time I reach the end of the Panhandle—the long, narrow offshoot of Golden Gate Park that runs part of the length of Fell Street—and turn onto Stanyan Street. A few blocks later, at the corner of Stanyan and Haight, groups of homeless kids huddle under tattered sleeping bags with their dogs and their drugs and their empty bottles. They make me think of Christopher, of his time living on these very streets, and my heart hurts so badly I have to suck in a harsh, scraping lungful of cold air to try to clear him from my head. It doesn’t work terribly well. Nothing does right now. I am afraid nothing will.

  I am afraid.

  Another two short blocks and I reach the old Stanyan Park Hotel. There is no doorman this early in the morning, but I ring the bell, and I must be well-dressed enough for the sleepy front desk clerk to assume I’m not there to rob anyone. He buzzes me in.

  “Good morning,” I say, doing my best to sound normal—whatever that is at this point.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  I try not to cringe at the irony in anyone calling me that right now. “Do you have a room available?”

  “We do. One of the nice suites on the top floor. Will that do?”

  “Yes. Yes, that will be fine.”

  But as I reach for my wallet, I realize I have none. No wallet. No cell phone. I am, at this point, a runaway slave, if nothing else, and I am not as well prepared as Christopher has always been. And so, I do what I least want to do
.

  “My apologies, but I seem to have lost my wallet. May I use your phone to call my assistant?”

  “Of course.”

  He sets the phone on the desk and politely turns away as I dial my House.

  Three rings.

  “Hallo?”

  “Gilby. I need you to pick me up.”

  The ride back to my House is strange. I can’t bear to look at anything but the back of Gilby’s stubbled head and massive shoulders as he drives me through the quiet city streets in the black Audi sedan I keep on hand for my staff to use. He is quiet, asking no questions, which is something I know I can depend on, and which is, perhaps, the only way I could have called him—or anyone. But the truth is, Christopher was right—my money and position in our strange world means no one would think to question me. No one but Christopher. But I can’t bear to think of him right now. I can’t bear to think of anything at the moment.

  We pull up in front of the Training House, and Gilby opens my door. I get out without looking at him and my valet, Robert, opens the front door, nodding as I pass into the foyer. They’re being very careful with me, their respectful silence going beyond the usual deference with which I am treated by my staff, and I realize they have some sense of my current fragility. I have no idea what they must think is going on with me, but they don’t dare ask, which is just as well. I can barely ask that question myself.

  I climb the stairs slowly at first, then take them two at a time, my heart hammering with an odd combination of dread, anxiety and relief, until I get to my own quarters. I lock the door, which is a silly move considering no one would dare enter without my permission, and I don’t even know why I am doing it. I’m not entirely clear as to why I am doing anything this morning.

  After several moments of helpless pacing, I throw myself down on the big bed and close my eyes, trying desperately not to remember the times I had my two loves in this room, in this bed. It’s exhausting, all this trying not to think—harder than one might expect—and soon I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  By the time I open my eyes, it’s dark outside, and I roll onto my side, reaching into the nightstand for the Rolex I keep there—the one that belonged to Master Stephan. It’s after eleven o’clock at night. How many hours have I slept? Escapism in its purist form. But no matter how many hours I’ve lain here, fully dressed and unconscious, nothing has changed. I’m still hurting, fucking aching and undecided.

  God damn it.

  Getting up, I force myself to turn on the shower, then unlock the door to my suite and call down for a tray before I step under the hot water. But even showering makes me feel too isolated, too alone in my head, and I hurry through it, dry myself off, and slip into a heavy black brocade dressing gown that isn’t really me at all. It belonged to my dear Master Stephan, and I’ve kept it all these years. I can’t even remember the last time I wore it, but I need the comfort now.

  Back in my room, it seems far too small to contain my frantic energy, but I have no desire to go downstairs. I have no real desire to do anything, including eating the beautifully prepared light meal Robert has delivered for me. Instead, I lift the glass of wine from the tray, then set it back down without taking a sip. My stomach is too much in knots, and I know wine won’t help me now unless I drink an entire bottle, which isn’t like me. But then, I am not like me. My head is a mad rush of thought and emotion, a tangled mess I can’t possibly sort out. Not on my own.

  I go to the small console table that holds the house phone, pick it up and fidget a moment before putting it back down. Who did I think I was going to call? There are very few people who are truly my friends, people I can confide in. Truthfully, are there any at all? Is this what my life has come to? What I have made of it? Who would even understand, without my having to start at the beginning of this story, something that seems too tiring and painful to contemplate?

  Perhaps one person.

  I murmur to the empty room, “Fuck”.

  In less than an hour Robert taps at my door and announces Alexa’s arrival. When I open the door, she moves into the room, all red leather, exotic perfume and uncertainty, which is something I’ve never sensed in her. Of course, she’s never seen me in this condition, either, not even as a slave in Christopher’s Palm Springs house.

  She sits on the small damask sofa, her back straight, elegant as always. But there’s a softness in her face I’ve never seen before.

  I sit next to her, and she turns to stare at me, exploring my face. No, investigating. I can’t blame her.

  I rub my jaw. “Christ, Alexa, do I look that awful?”

  “Yes,” she says simply.

  “I thought I might.”

  She sits quietly, waiting for me to begin, but I don’t know how. Finally, she reaches out and lays a hand on my arm—a move that’s completely unlike her. God, I really must be in bad shape.

  “Damon, tell me what’s going on with you.”

  “All right. Yes, okay.” But I need to take several more moments to draw in a breath then exhale, trying to stop the wild tumble going on in my head. “So…I sent them away, you know, to the Primal Ranch. I thought that would be the answer. Or…no, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was fooling myself, and I didn’t even do a very good job of that. But it didn’t help. It changed nothing. The pain was still there. Still is there.”

  I have to get to my feet and pace off some of the burn the words flare up in my veins, threatening to make me combust, like some urban myth you read about on the Internet.

  “Because you love them too much,” she says, neatly summing it all up.

  “Yes.”

  “And the question is, what do you do now?”

  I pause, run a hand through my hair. “Yes. That’s the fucking question.”

  “Some things only you can answer, Damon. I have no idea what I would do in your position. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like. I’m not saying that to judge you, but to tell you how drastically underqualified I feel to help you with this, other than to act as a sounding board.”

  “That’s more than I can trust anyone else with, Alexa.”

  “All right, then. I’m listening.”

  I nod, but then again, there is the question of where to start, where to go with this. I decide to simply go.

  “When I came to this House, it was as a slave, which I believe you now know—I’m certain Christopher explained some of this before bringing you down to the desert.” I watch for her nod before continuing. “My relationship with Master Stephan built over time. I was nothing but another slave, at first. But we had a connection. He came to love me, and I came to love him, which is something I’ve only recently been able to recognize for what it really was. I’ve always had to deny the extent of my feelings for him, and I still don’t fully understand why.

  “Well…when he got sick, I felt as if my whole world were collapsing. How could I function without him? Without his guidance, his knowledge, his steady hand? He recognized my struggle, even as he went through chemo, even as he was actively dying. And what a selfish bastard I was for demanding that he still take care of me!”

  She shakes her head. “No, Damon. You were a young man whose life was being yanked out from under him. What else could you have done?”

  “Been braver. Stronger. Better.”

  “Maybe. But how old were you?”

  “I was twenty-eight when he became ill, thirty when he died.”

  “Well, I can tell you, I’m forty, and it was only five or six years ago that I really matured, and became certain of myself, of exactly what I wanted and needed in my life. For a man of twenty-eight, thirty… That’s the time when most young men are discovering themselves, and instead, you had this enormous responsibility. You were living with this enormous strain. And I’ll admit something to you I’ve perhaps never spoken aloud. Even though I adore the lovely, tight flesh of the young slaves, a part of me always has to wonder if we rob them of some of their youth, no matter how badly they might want o
r need to be slaves. I don’t even know that it’s a terrible thing, necessarily, but in choosing this path, we gain many insights and experiences, and lose others. But that’s true no matter the direction we choose. I don’t blame your Master Stephan, and neither do I blame you for taking charge of your own slaves. I’m simply saying that twenty-eight is so young to have to deal with something as all-encompassing as cancer, watching someone you care for dwindle and die. And then, taking on this House. No matter what he did to prepare you, you couldn’t have possibly been completely prepared. No one could.”

  “You don’t have to be soft on me because I’m such a damn wreck, Alexa,” I say, immediately regretting the bitterness in my tone.

  “Come on, Damon, you know me well enough to understand I don’t have to blow smoke up anyone’s ass, including yours.”

  That almost makes me smile. “True.”

  “So, you took on the Training House, and all that goes with it.”

  “Yes. The privilege and responsibility. The commitment and the luxury.”

  “And you were very well prepared to do so. This is not a job for just anyone, which I well know from managing my own, smaller house. Why do you judge yourself?”

  “How can I not?” I run a hand over my hair, scrubbing hard at my scalp. “And fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying all of this to you. That I’m allowing anyone to see my doubts. My guilt.”

  “How much of the guilt is because Master Stephan died and you’re still here?”

  “I…fuck.”

  I have to get up and pace again, a million fragmented images flashing through my head.

  Stephan lies frail and weak in bed, his face so very pale and ashen. His kidneys have been shutting down, and the plastic bottle that collects his urine via the catheter the home nurse put in him weeks ago is full of dark brown liquid. I want to know if it hurts, but he won’t tell me.

  “Damon, you can do this. I see it in you—the ability to direct, to care for the slaves and the staff, to create the intricate scenarios people expect here.” He pauses to take a slow, wheezing breath. “I would never ask this of you if I wasn’t certain you had it in you.”