by Julia Sykes
And he wasn’t Master.
“What the fuck?!” His footsteps pounding down the stairs was a foreign sound. It was fundamentally wrong.
Strange, sausage-like fingers touched my arms, tugging at the cuffs around my wrists.
“Where’s the key, missy?” His breath was hot and putrid on my face. It smelled like dirt and rubbing alcohol.
I tried to jerk away from him, but I was secured as thoroughly as ever.
“Don’t touch me!” I managed a strangled shriek. It had been so long since I had demanded anything, so long since I had done anything but submitted.
But this vile man wasn’t Master.
“Stop squirmin’. I’m tryin’ to help you, stupid bitch.”
His grubby hands pushed back my blindfold, and his lumpy potato face materialized just above me.
He was touching me. No one but Master should touch me. No one else should exist.
Adrenaline rocketed through me, piggybacking on my terror. I threw my body as far forward as I could manage in my restraints, and my teeth sank into his fat cheek.
He reeled back from me with a snarl, and a second later, his wasn’t the only coppery blood filling my mouth.
My cheek tore against my teeth when he backhanded me. Black fireworks burst across my vision, and my ears rang.
“You like to play rough, cunt? That why you’re down here?”
He fumbled at his belt. I knew what was coming; I recognized the cruelly delighted gleam in his small black eyes.
“Master!” I cried out for Him. He had to come. He had to.
Cold hit my stomach like a block of ice. Surely Master didn’t send this man to me?
No. He couldn’t have. He cared. He cherished me. He loved me.
“Yeah, call me ‘Master.’ I like that.” The disgusting man removed himself from his dirty jeans with a leer. He was short and stubby, but there was no mistaking his hardness. His eagerness to violate me.
“MASTER!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
He would come for me. He wouldn’t let this man-
His feral roar was the sweetest sound I had ever heard. My molester’s eyes widened, but he didn’t even have time to fully turn his head to face the threat before Master was on him.
His hands closed around the man’s shoulders, pulling him from me and throwing him down on the concrete. Master was atop him in an instant. His beautiful muscles rippled and flexed as His fists came down on the man’s face again and again.
The crunching sounds and agonized groans should have made my stomach turn, but I thrilled at them. I was drunk on adrenaline and Master’s residual bloodlust. I was a part of Him, so everything that He was bled into me. I gloried at the sight of my attacker’s blood pooling on the floor.
When the man’s heels finally stopped drumming against the concrete, Master pushed himself up. He was at my side, tender concern threading through the vengeful lines of His gorgeous face.
“It’s okay pet,” he cooed. “He’s gone.”
He lovingly rubbed His bloody knuckles over my cheekbone. I couldn’t help flinching as they rubbed against the bruise where the man had backhanded me.
Master’s low growl was one of barely-controlled rage, and He glanced back at the unmoving body. He glared at it for a moment, then closed His eyes and took a deep breath.
“He’s gone,” He repeated. “Did he… touch you?” Master’s voice was strained on the word.
“No,” I assured Him softly, wanting so badly to ease the anger that twisted His gorgeous features into something fearsome to behold.
Angry. Possessive. He cares.
“I love you, Master.”
He stared down at me.
A furrow formed between His brows.
He blinked.
His eyes shone gold, and He reached for me. His fingertips brushed over my lips, as though He could better understand the words that had come from them through tactile exploration.
He blinked again.
His eyes turned to lifeless brass, and He removed His hand slowly.
“I’ll be right back, pet.”
He didn’t replace my blindfold when He walked away from me. I wanted to protest, but it wasn’t my place to question my Master.
Moments later, I was alone in the light. And I was terrified. The world was around me, but He wasn’t in it.
Wrong wrong wrong.
All of my muscles tensed, and my chains rattled against the headboard as my body began to shake. My teeth were practically chattering with my panic by the time He returned.
He immediately noticed my state of distress. “Breathe, pet,” He ordered with a small frown of concern.
I obeyed, drawing air into my lungs in one long drag. The sudden rush of oxygen sent me flying high, and I smiled up at Him as bliss flooded over fear.
He was with me. Master was here. Everything was all right.
The mattress dipped with His familiar weight, and He bent over me, smoothing my hair back from my face.
His eyes were enigmatic. The gold and red played through one another, making His irises flash and go dull and then flash again.
He lifted something to His lips, gripping it between His teeth.
With a little jerk of His arm, He pulled the cap off the syringe and spat it out. Fear quivered through me at the sight of the needle.
“What’s that, Master?” I asked the question without a thought. I no longer feared any consequence. I would pay any price He demanded of me. I longed for His consequences. They meant that He would touch me. And then He would take care of me.
His expression was almost… sad. My heart squeezed for Him.
He eased the needle into my upper arm and pressed the plunger down slowly.
“This is your last consequence,” He told me softly.
What?
What did He mean by that?
“Master…” His name was thick on my tongue, but I managed to force it to slur out of my lips.
“Shhh, pet. It’s okay.” He reassured me as He had done so many times before, even during the time when I had hated Him. My other lifetime.
His fingers worked through my hair in a steady rhythm as blackness seeped into me. It was different from my usual blackness. Heavier. More final.
“I love you, Master.”
I couldn’t form the words, but I willed them to shine out through my eyes and into His. They flashed gold.
I sank into darkness.
“Kathleen! Oh, my god! Kathleen!”
A familiar voice shrieked in my ear. Familiar hands grasped my shoulders, shaking me.
Familiar. Familiar and wrong.
My eyelids were heavy, but I forced them to open.
Master. I had to find Master.
I blinked hard, and the world came swirling in to existence. But it wasn’t existence, because He wasn’t here.
Most people would consider it to be dark, but the indigo shades of the night were far brighter than my comfortable blackness. Something cool and damp and springy was beneath my naked body.
Grass.
A woman was leaning over me, her hot tears falling on my cheeks.
Bea. My sister.
“John!” She screamed over her shoulder. “John, call an ambulance!”
The silhouette of a man filled the doorway to the house. My heart leapt.
Master.
But then the man stepped out into the night to join his wife on their front lawn, and I realized I was wrong.
Understanding coalesced slowly, starting as a sick feeling in my gut and oozing outward. When it finally hit my brain, terror and anguish slammed into me.
“MASTER!”
I fought against the drugs lingering in my system, fought to get up, to find Him. My sister held me down, whispering panicked reassurances.
“MASTER!” I wailed his name over and over, screaming it out into the world.
He’ll come for me. He has to come for me. He cares. He cares…
He didn’t come. He
didn’t care.
Chapter 11
The Mentor
June 4, 1978
I touched the flame to the tip of the cigarette, trying to catch it alight. They were my father’s cigarettes. I had never smoked before, but I had heard they calmed the nerves.
My shaking hands were proof that I could use that. They also made me fail in the attempt. With a curse, I flung the unlit cigarette away. I didn’t need anything that used to belong to my father, anyway. Not his cigarettes, not this house, not the farm.
I didn’t want any of it. Not anymore. Not without Her.
My fist lashed out, and I punched the wall. The pain of my knuckles splitting helped to calm me.
I didn’t need Her, either. She was the reason I was like this. Out of control. Confused. Hurting.
I punched the wall again.
She hadn’t hurt me. I hurt Her. That was our arrangement. And now I had hurt Her in the deepest way possible: I freed Her.
She said she loved me. I had no use for Her after that. She wasn’t broken, but She was ruined for me.
She ruined me.
Snarling, I grabbed up the pack of cigarettes and pulled out a new one.
No. She had ruined our game. I couldn’t win if She loved me. I had demanded Her obedience, had been amused by Her devotion. But Her love…
I dropped the cigarette and reached out for the lock of hair that lay on the mattress before me. My fingers bushed over the silky auburn strands. I had secured it with baling twine, but that wouldn’t do. It was rough against my fingers. Too rough to bind such soft beauty.
I stroked Her hair idly, for a moment imagining that She lay beneath me.
I jerked my hand away. I didn’t need Her beneath me. I would find another woman, another pet.
No. Not a pet. That had been my mistake. I had tamed Her, but I hadn’t broken Her. Even a tamed animal has some sense of free will. I needed a toy that I could break and reassemble and break again, until she was finally too shattered to satisfy my needs. Then there would be another.
Yes. That was what I would do. I would control them completely, and I would keep the darkness at bay. I would be able to breathe again, and I wouldn’t be so goddamn alive that my emotions overran me.
I would learn to control them as well.
I couldn’t stay on the farm. Especially not now that I had killed Dick.
My fists clenched at my sides. I wanted to murder the motherfucker all over again. If he hadn’t come barging in looking for my father, She might not have told me She loved me. If my father hadn’t been a piss-poor drunk who owed the moonshiner money, he never would have come.
My father. It always came back to that bastard. He was another one I would relish killing again. And again and again and again.
But the women would have to suffice. I had to be careful. I didn’t intend to end up in jail. I needed a job in a big city. Maybe a job in law enforcement. I could be sure to cover my tracks more easily that way.
But most of all, I needed to forget about Her.
“Fuck!”
I was fondling Her hair again.
Why hadn’t I just killed Her? I should have killed Her. It was stupid, risky, sending Her back to Her sister.
Killing Her would have been a mercy. I let Her go because I wanted to hurt Her.
She loved me, and now She would have to live without me. What worse pain could I inflict on Her than that?
I slipped the cigarette between my lips and flicked the lighter.
My eyes fell on the lock of hair again. It glinted red in the soft light of the tiny dancing flame.
I growled my frustration, and the cigarette fell from my lips. I touched the fire to the lustrous strands. They crackled softly, flaring orange before curling to grey ash.
There. She was gone. Eradicated from my life in every way.
I rubbed my hand over my sternum. There was the strangest ache in the center of my chest. Where my heart was supposed to be.
Epilogue
Kathleen
April 2, 2014
“Kathleen. Baby. Wake up.”
My scream was still warm on my lips when I jerked to consciousness. Tears began to stream down my face.
“It’s okay, baby. It was just another nightmare.”
Charlie gently wiped the wetness from my cheeks, but his voice was heavy with weariness. He had been dealing with my nightmares for the last thirty-five years.
But what he didn’t know was that they weren’t nightmares; they were the sweetest dreams. Dreams of pain and pleasure and the ultimate peace of complete submission. I wept for the loss of the dream, for the cruel return to reality.
“Did I wake the kids?” I asked hoarsely.
“No,” Charlie mumbled sleepily. “Jim’s at Northwestern and Paul’s in New York, remember?”
I ran a shaky hand through my hair.
“Right. Sorry, dear. You can go back to sleep. I know you have to work early.”
You have to work early, and I have to sit here, wondering what to do with myself. Like I always do.
Charlie settled back down and closed his eyes, satisfied that I had been comforted and his duty had been fulfilled. His arm hooked around my waist in sleep with the easy familiarity of long companionship.
When I looked down at my husband, something like affection stirred in my chest. For thirty-five years, Charlie’s hands had touched my body. Sometimes, his heart even brushed against mine. But my soul… Charlie had never come close.
My soul belongs to Master, always and forever.
The End
What is The Mentor up to now? What is His true identity? FBI agents Katherine Byrd and Reed Miller will be hunting Him down in Master (An Impossible Novel) (Coming Soon!)
Keep up to date on new releases in the Impossible Series! Subscribe to Julia’s Newsletter.
Up next in the Impossible Series is Rogue (An Impossible Novel):
I’ve never been a failure. I don’t allow myself to make mistakes. I’ve lived my life to painstaking perfection.
Until now.
I can’t seem to get anything right. And when you work for the FBI, mistakes can cost lives.
Busting BDSM club Decadence for drug trafficking is my chance to prove myself. And no asshole Dominant is going to throw me off my game. Not even sinfully sexy club owner Derek Carter. I have to keep him close in order to uncover his secrets, but keeping him close to my body while guarding my heart is proving more difficult than I ever imagined.
He might just be my biggest mistake yet.
Rogue will be available soon!
Want a taste of what The Mentor has been up to? Check out Knight (An Impossible Novel)!
A woman shattered…
Abducted. He took me and broke me. I was his plaything, his possession. If I did ever have a name, I don’t remember it now.
Slaves don't have names.
A savior’s obsession…
My new Master stole me away from the man who tormented me. He saved me and took me for himself. His touch keeps me sane. His control keeps me grounded in reality. He demands that I piece the shards of myself back together.
But I don’t want to be myself again. I want to be his. I’ve found my salvation in his obsession, my freedom in his captivity.
Will his brand of rescue leave me more broken than ever?
Excerpt
I used to think pain wasn’t real. At least, not in the sense of being a tangible thing. It was just the result of my primal brain’s in-built response to inform me that damage was being inflicted on my body. If I trusted the person who was giving me pain, then I knew he wasn’t going to damage me. If I understood my pain, it stopped being something to fear and became something… interesting. I could master the hurt and ride the high of the adrenaline that flooded my system. I could enter subspace, that gloriously blank place where nothing existed but the sweet endorphins released by the pain that I embraced.
But then He came along and turned that all on its head. H
e enjoyed administering pain to torture, not to pleasure. And I couldn’t trust Him not to inflict damage. He claimed He didn’t like it when I forced Him to damage me; He didn’t want to mar his property. But that didn’t mean He wasn’t willing to do so in order to get what He wanted.
I had tried to fight the pain for so long, to hold on to my conviction that it wasn’t real. It couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t let it. But He gave me so much that it overwhelmed me, claiming all of my senses until my whole world was agony. I was perpetually trapped in some twisted, inverted form of subspace where nothing existed but the pain, but it gave me no pleasure.
My only reprieve was the sweet reward that came with the merciful sting of a needle. If I was good, if I obeyed and screamed prettily enough, then He would give me my reward. I lived for it; that was the only time I was alive.
But I had become so dependent on it that now the denial of my reward was just as terrible as the agony He gave me. It had been so long since I had gotten my last fix.
Tonight, Master was testing me. He wanted to see just how obedient I was. He wanted the satisfaction of seeing just how thoroughly He had broken me.
I was broken. And I didn’t even care. All I cared about was my reward. Right now, my need for it was so acute that my insides were twisting and my skin was on fire. I was desperate to give Him whatever He wanted so I could get my fix. If He hadn’t ordered me to stand in the corner quietly and wait for Him to return, then I would have been curled up on the floor sobbing.
But I wasn’t ensconced in the stark loneliness of the pitch black dungeon that had become my home, and I didn’t have the luxury of going to pieces. His order for my silence denied me even the right to voice my agony. He had brought me out in public for the first time, and I recognized the place where He had brought me as a BDSM club. He would be able to torment me here in front of dozens of strangers, and no one would stop Him.