“Tell me you love me.”
“No.”
“Why.”
“You’ve been a brat.” She giggles and holds tighter, the sound of her ebbing into me at the same speed as my heart beats for the one she’s got against me. “Brats don’t deserve love.” She snorts and wiggles against me, lowering herself slightly to arch against my jeans.
“This brat deserves everything you’ve got, Blaine. She’s giving you her life.”
That she is.
My feet slip into the cool water, and I lower her immediately, enjoying the yelp that comes from her as she hits the temperature.
“Fuck, that’s cold.”
There’s nothing but cold and dark, just the way I fucking like it, the water swelling around us as the moon dances above. It’s as we are, a dark and dangerous endeavour, still warning of things to come and trials to be endured. But the stars are coming out as she turns in my hold, her body clambering onto me as I wade deeper and let the current take her weight. They’re coming and lighting up our sky again, giving me my path back to her. I still don’t deserve it, but I’m taking it. We’ll cling onto her until there’s nothing left to cling onto.
“You’ll remember your vow, won’t you?”
I don’t answer, I just push deeper again, my hand reaching for her neck to tilt her over onto her back. She floats there, her body undulating within our waves, hair cascading out behind her as I twist myself between her legs and wrench at her skirt. And the house just lingers there in the background, the deck lit up as I stare passed her towards it. A home. Our home. Beaches and fucking dreams. Promises of insanity, smoothed with some fucking emotion called love. But I do know it now. Because of her we feel it in our souls, somehow making it a part of the confused three, linking it there to defend the adored and cherished. Preserve it.
“You give me your hope and I’ll protect it, little dove.”
She sighs at that, her arms splaying out at her sides. I hear it even over these waves coming, the tone of it rooting into my heart like a morning chorus of starlings. It makes me pull her to my mouth, feasting on salty waves between her thighs. She groans and bucks in my hold, her legs scrambling for purchase around my neck, hands still outstretched as I devour the sense of missing I’ve felt without her. I’m licking my own wounds. Reaffirming my love for her and gauging out our future. Life is here. It’s in this sea I’ve known so long. Our life. It will ravage holes and roughen itself, finding it’s equilibrium as time passes for us. She will bear me and I will love her for it, shielding her from reality’s grasp until we’re ready for the real world again. She’ll pull me back to that. I know she will, but for now we’ll stay here and endure ourselves. Her weathering me. Me allowing her to guide me back together piece by piece, or rip me further apart. Find my three and give them credence. Perhaps that’s the truth of it all. Perhaps we need to evolve further before we merge, becoming a new man as we do. Who the fuck knows. I don’t.
Either way, she’ll be the one that finds me eventually. She’ll be the one that settles me into coherency, tolerating my three and opening their paths. I’m bound to protect whatever she chooses now, ready to lay my life down should she see that as the only route forward for sadists like me. I’m taking my chance whatever the consequence, because I’m nothing without her to guide us onwards. My life is owned by her.
THE END
Acknowledgments
The journey of these two books has been a revelation to me, showing me a world outside my first 6 books. It’s been soul quenching to dive into new characters and enjoy their torment, hopefully producing another new life for you to read your way through. Stories are now my world, giving me a chance to channel thoughts and images into yours.
As always, my only intention is to provoke thought and help you see something you’ve not seen before. If I’ve done that, I’ve succeeded in my goal.
I’d like to send out love and thanks to:
My PA - Leanne Cook, without whom I wouldn’t survive this booky world. She’s the calm in my storm. Mostly.
My beta Readers – Jodie Scott and Katie Matthews. You helped no end. Even if you did make me swear and spit. Yes, Slavey, you also helped with the swearing and will continue to do so, I’m sure.
My Editor – Heather at Heathers Red Pen Editing.
As usual, love you. Thanks for everything. You’re still a star.
My other half – Who is my world and gives me this chance. You don’t know how much you mean to me or my words. I love you.
Bloggers – You’re stunning. All of you. To offer the support you do for no other reason than the love of books, well, I’ve no words for how awesome that makes you.
And, of course, all of my readers.
You all amaze me with your kind words and encouragement. There will always be a story in me ready to come out, but it’s you lovely readers that help me believe the words are worth reading.
I can only hope that I continue to provoke thought with every novel and encourage your minds to search horizons new.
Social Media Links
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Also Available by the Author at Amazon
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The White Trilogy – Nominated for best BDSM Series of the Year
Seeing White (Book 1) - This book is Free on all platforms. Start the journey at your leisure.
Https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PPZZGCW
Https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00PPZZGCW
“OMG. Amazing writer, amazing books. Deliciously dark and …”
********
Alexander White, the wealthy business man with looks to die for. Just like the other colours you’d think.......but no.
He came from a very different place and made some of his money a very different way.
And he keeps it well hidden because the truth would destroy everything he has. All that he’s worked for would be gone in an instant if they ever found out what he’s capable of, or what he really did and who he did it for. So he keeps people far away with metaphorical games and walls to deceive and confuse.
He doesn’t do relationships, he doesn’t do emotions and he certainly doesn’t do love.
He does money. Making it, manipulating it and spending it whist he plays with women who know what they’re signing up for.
Three people shaped who he is today. One damaged him beyond repair, another taught him to control the rage, and a decent one helps him to consider his options more appropriately.
But be under no illusions ladies, Mr White has not been a nice man, and he will probably never be a decent man, but as long as he keeps up his image, and nothing gets through his barriers, no one will ever see the truth.
Life’s good for Elizabeth Scott, successful business, happy kitchen and a great sister who deals with all the expensive people so she doesn’t have to. She just cooks, bakes and smiles her way through each day......well most of the time, anyway, that is when her great sister isn’t pushing her to, “get out there a bit more,” or “sort her shit out.”
Then the biggest contract of their lives comes up..... And the ever useless London tube, with her sister in it, catastrophically breaks down. Unfortunately, that means only one thing. She’ll have to deal with some of that wealth herself, and that means the devastating Mr Alexander White in all his glory.
Life suddenly couldn’t get worse, regardless of his unfairly gorgeous backside.
She has no idea what the hell she’s doing.
******
This book is followed by:
Feeling White (Book 2)
Absorbing White (Book 3)
The VDB Trilogy
(Best read after The White Trilogy)
The VDB Trilogy begins a week after the end of The White Trilogy and is told from new POV’s. It is, in some ways, a continuation.
*******
The Parlour (Book 1)
Https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EFRN1JU
Https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01EFRN1JU
Above all else Pascal Van Der Braak is a gentleman. Devastatingly debonair and seductively charming. Always styled and perfected.
He is also a cad, scoundrel, rouge and kink empire founder.
Tutored in the highest of society, having been born of royalty only to deny it, he found his solace in a world where rules need not apply. Where he chooses to ensure rules and duty do not apply.
Some call him Sir, others call him master, and no one would dare risk his wrath unless they required the punishment he favourably delivers. Except one, who has just strapped a collar around his throat, one he asked for. So, now he needs to appropriate his businesses correctly for peace to ensue. He needs to find the correct path forward for everyone concerned, so he can relax, enjoy, and finally hand over the responsibility to someone else.
Simple.
But where comfort and a safety of sorts once dwelled, there is now uncertainty, and a feeling of longing he no longer understands. A need unfulfilled. And as problems arise, and allies scheme, he finds himself searching for answers in the most unlikely of places.
Lilah
It’s the same every day. I’d found it odd at first, but I’m used to it now. I was so tired and weak when I got here that it was helpful really. That small woman comes in to help me wash and get dressed. I don’t know where the clothes come from, but they’re nice enough, and at least they’re clean and dry. Not like the rags I arrived in. They were taken from me the moment I took them off to get into the shower, the first shower I’d had in god knows how long. Nearly a year I’d been running the streets, a year without a real bed or a home of any sort. There isn’t a long and awful story to tell about an abusive family member, or a broken home. I suppose I just slipped through the cracks and got lost at some point. I lost my job first, and then I couldn’t afford the bills on my apartment, so the landlord threw me out. I don’t blame him, he did the right thing by himself. And then it was just a long and never-ending road to nothingness.
So now I’m here, wherever here is.
And I don’t know why.
*********
This book is followed by:
Eden’s Gate (VDB 2)
Serenity’s Key (VDB 3)
Chapter 24
Blaine
T he dark clouds loom over my sea. They remind me of the shadows in that room, their endless roll as constant as the pain that was inflicted on my bones. I stare into them, watching the way they keep coming, warning me of the potential should I choose not to look after those in my care. Fucking obligations have caught me. Love has.
I snatch in a wheezed breath, watching the moon’s hover, its dissidence high in the sky lighting the waves below. It keeps me from seeing my stars, infuriating me with its glare across them. I want my fucking stars back, the ones that show my path to her. I’ve sat here for hours looking for them, barely moving in case I miss their show, but it’s just moon and clouds, has been since she left, nothing more to tell me she’s coming back at all.
She did. She came back and supported me, drove me here. Looked after me for a few days and tended to my wounds, all the time giving me hardly any conversation to engage in. She made coffee, cooked food, applied creams and ointments, ones I normally used on her, and then she left. She left me as I slept, leaving a note saying she had to do something. I don’t know what, but it’s been three days now. No calls. No texts. No fucking anything to tell me she’s coming home, coming back.
She took my car and she fucking left me. Ran like a thief in the night, taking my fucking heart with her. Perhaps she’s not. I wouldn’t blame her, not now she knows everything. Who’d want a monster like me? Who’d be prepared to endure a lifetime of three minds, all of them working against each other, trying to kill my own sense of judgement on how best to handle skin? She may have watched my offer of love. She may even have seen the determination in my eyes as I presented the only sense of loyalty I have to give, took the brunt of them for her, but that doesn’t mean she will bow down and give me her everything.
Why should it? I’m asking everything of her. I’m asking for all she has, all she’s worked for, without her questioning anything I ever do. It’s a life that raised subs hardly accept, let alone relatively untrained ones like Alana. And I’d take it again. I would. I’d have these bones mutilated every month to know she’ll be here when I wake each day, not the once yearly they enforce on my kind of breed. I’d do that to make sure no one ever touches her again but me, that no one ever hurts her again but me. I’d take that for her. Endure it.
I sigh and gaze upwards again. This is my penitence for Eloise. I know that now. It’s my atonement. My punishment. I can feel it seeping further in with every next hour she’s not next to me. It’s the loss I should have felt for the death I produced. The grief I should have absorbed myself in as they lowered her corpse into the ground. It cuts my souls like a knife, raking agonised tears and sobs from my monster, the lacking stars only highlighting his once again deficient life. And it infuriates my magician, his mind still traversing circles in here, trying to find a way to pull her back to us. But this is as it should be, as we deserve. We’re nothing but monsters after all, ones who deserve little care to our emotions now they’ve been breached.
We should be left here to rot in our own cesspool of nightmares, alone. Our life, my life, or the lack of it now she’s left, is as it needs to be. Destroyed and shattered, woken and abandoned, a seascape of endlessly crashing tears, wracked with hopeless dreams and insidious reasoning. I am nothing again. We are nothing. We are hollow without her support. Empty. We are alone once more, nothing but our night and sea for security. Her hopes gone. Ours, obliterated.
I sit here for a while longer before giving up on my damned stars and moving from the deck back into the house. They’re not coming out tonight. Why should they for the likes of me? It’s still nothing but clouds and rolling waves, their flow as impassive as my heart feels again. I can feel it giving in, giving up. Its thunder in my chest is becoming quieter, just as I’m forcing it to do. I’m closing it down, some small part of me smiling at the thought of her safety and willing her a future that she deserves without me attached to her. She’ll fly out there now, absorbing energy differently, renewing herself in imaginative ways, grasping life by its fucking horns and throwing her dreams into the open again.
I made that come, found it in her again. If nothing else, my professor helped her with that. He did well. He set her free from her confines and showed her how to fuck with courage again, be more than she had become. He did as a good man should do, showing her the life I should have given to Eloise. He pushed her into the world again and showed her a path to manage herself with. I’m pleased with that.
It makes me look around my bedroom and then watch the bedsheet’s soft bristle in the breeze. I’m contented somehow. It gives me comfort, warming the part of me that’s so often not allowed its pleasures. She’s free, irrespective of whether I am or not. She’s out there again, writing her stories, filling the world with dreams and aspirations, hopefully doing it a little better than she was before.
I glance at the typewriter, its position in my bedroom a conundrum to me. She’s moved it here at some point over the last few days, and then left it rather than take it with her. She should have. She should have taken it with her and used it when she traps herself again, used the retention it produces. The manuscript’s still there, too. The stack of sheets lined up neatly beside it. I haven’t looked at it, nor do I care too. She’s probably left it there as a nod to her. A reminder. She shouldn’t have bothered. The story isn’t relevant to me, only that she wrote it because of me, because of us. It’s presumably a love story that should be perused by those who have hope for more, those who long and thirst for something above their average. I no longer have that hope. She’s taken the only hope I ever had with her, leaving me with nothing but memories to cling to and the smell of her ling
ering around my home.
I pull in a breath at the thought, drawing in the last of her scent and gazing at the bed, wishing she was still in it. She’s not, though. She’s gone. A fucking typewriter doesn’t remind me of her. She reminds me of her. She is inside of us. Every breath pulled. Every thought made. Every crash of my sea and every night that goes by, she will be inside of us, of me. Her skin, the way she moves, her smile and her frown, even the sounds of her tears. They all live inside us for every moment we are awake, and the image of her haunts our every next unconscious thought, too. She has become our reason for drawing in air. We’re somehow unable to stand the thought of not breathing another in case she steps through our door, offering her hope again. We are lost without her and empty of desire. Alone, just the three of us.
I move over to the damn thing, needing to touch her again in some way, and finger the keys. They clunk and clatter, irritating my eardrums with their noise. And she comes reeling back to me again, her ass on the seat, her naked body driving the next chapter down, barely a care to what’s around her. I snort, remembering the time I had to beat her to make her eat, forcing food down her throat like a child because she had more words to write and dared argue with me. I adored that fucking arguing. Relished the next one that came.
It makes me smile and look at the top of the pile of sheets, hoping to see her handwriting on it, another note or a letter, anything to bring her back to me again. There’s no handwriting, though, only the bold print of the keys, large letters covering the page. The End, it says. The End. I shake my head at her, knowing that she means us. The end of us. The end of something she passed through like a tempest, engulfing me in its path and trying to give me a love I don’t deserve.
The End Page 36