by Anthology
Dominant Persuasions
12 Scintillating Tales of Dominance and Submission
Contents
Copyright
The Sub That Got Away
Book Description
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About Amy J. Hawthorn
Other Works by Amy J. Hawthorn
Out of Order
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
About Bella Juarez
Also By Bella Juarez
Make-Believe Submissive
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
About Daisy Philips
Other Books by Daisy Philips
Under His Protection
Book Description
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
About Doris O’Connor
Submitting to Temptation
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About Jan Graham
Other books by Jan Graham
Broken
Book Description
Broken
About Julia Sykes
Also by Julia Sykes
Fire and Ice: An Excerpt From Knotted
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Also by Juliet Braddock
Submission Dance
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Fetish & Fantasy Series
About Lori King
Yes, Justin (Expanded Edition)
Book Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About Michele Zurlo
Other Titles by Michele Zurlo
Surrender Her Inhibitions
Book Description
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About Nicole Morgan
Also by Nicole Morgan
In His Hands
Book Description
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About Raven McAllan
Indulge
Book Description
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About Sherri Hayes
Other Titles by Sherri Hayes
Text Copyright © March 2016 Romance Rebels Publishing
Art and Logo © March 2016 Romance Rebels Publishing
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13:978-0-9968732-7-7
Collection Creator: Romance Rebel Publishing
Cover by: Sara Eirew
Formatting by: Stacey Price
EBooks are not transferrable.
This book is intended for the purchaser’s sole use. Sharing, or downloading to other individuals or devices is illegal.
This work is fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is purely coincidental. All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The Sub That Got Away
A Passion-Match Story
Amy J. Hawthorn
Book Description
Dr. Ember Ross dedicated her life to caring for her patients, always putting her needs last—including her need for submission.
Royce Damron has everything he could want in life. The only thing he lacks? The perfect sub.
When mutual friends use a new BDSM dating site to set them up, a clueless Royce takes things one step further, intending to keep their encounter an anonymous one-night stand. Unaware the woman he’s spent years pining for waits beneath the hood he insisted she wear, will he miss the sub that got away?
To my fellow authors everywhere for creating an absolutely, amazing, network of support.
1
Ember opened the door and squealed like a teenager. Instantly, she felt as though she’d been transported back in time. Her old roommate, Tori waited with a bright smile, a large tote and a grocery bag. She squashed the little green monster that always envied her friend’s ridiculous beauty and opened the door all the way. Tall and graceful with willowy limbs and a fabulous natural tan, Tori could have been a runway model. In fact, she had been mistaken for one, time and time again.
Sadly, no one ever believed that Tori was a brilliant biochemist with a doctorate and a held master’s degree in math.
Ember took the bag from her friend, grabbed her hand, and pulled her inside. As if they’d seen each other yesterday instead of a decade ago, they started chattering at the same time as they walked through Ember’s large home.
“How are you?”
“How is work?”
They laughed at each other. Ember set the bag on her kitchen counter and pulled her old friend into a hug. Ten years. The lost time felt like a century, yet the hug felt the same as always.
Tori looked Ember up and down. “God, look at you! You were always pretty, but you’ve only grown more so. I was always so jealous.”
Tori could have knocked her over with a feather. “Me? No matter what I eat—or, more accurately, don’t eat—I still carry an extra twenty pounds. You’ve always been the prettier one.”
“Ha! Does the name beanpole ring a bell? How about shorty, stretch, big foot or metal mouth?” Tori shook her head with a wry smile, making her ruler-straight, dark chocolate hair brush against her jawline.
Ember lifted two bottles of wine from the bag and set them on her counter. “You only had braces our freshman year, and you’ve always had the best hair.”
Tori fingered a lock
of Ember’s hair. “As if! All those long, springy, curls, combined with all that tits and ass? I mean hello, Dr. Bodacious? You’ve let it grow longer and it’s a little lighter. I love it, but I guess we all want what we don’t have. Grass is greener and all that.” The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it, hon.” Tori waved at her to continue setting up in the kitchen as she walked to the door.
Ember took a bag of chocolates from the bag and stopped with her hand in midair, dumbfounded. “Dr. Bodacious? No one called me that.”
“Everyone called you that.” Tori opened the door “Hey you! Come on in.” Tori pulled a shyly smiling Beth in for a tight squeeze.
“What’s up?” Beth tucked a mahogany lock of hair behind her ear and stepped inside.
“I was just reminding Dr. Bodacious here how she was the envy of half the female population of our class. She doesn’t believe me.” Tori held her hand out to Beth, waiting. “Give it up.”
With a heavy sigh, Beth handed over her cell phone. “You’re a cold-hearted woman, Victoria Lynn Miller. Hey, Ember.” The petite computer whiz, with skin like blushed ivory, beamed at her. “Everyone called you that. Do you remember when we were in physics our junior year and Royce Damron fell out of his desk?”
“I do.” She could still see his deep brown eyes staring back at her when she’d leaned over to offer a hand up. “God, but that boy defined sin on a stick. I could have drowned in those eyes and never come up for air.”
Beth touched the back pocket of her jeans then seemed to remember her phone had been confiscated. She sat at the bar and put her elbows on the counter. “His eyes? I never noticed them. I couldn’t get past his killer body and that silent, brooding alpha thing he had going on. And his voice? Jeez, he made my panties smoke.”
“I don’t know that I ever heard his voice. He never said more than a word or two to me.” She remembered hoping that he would. She’d ached for something she couldn’t have but she’d been too busy with her pre-med classes to give her girlish infatuation much space in her life.
Holding her own and Beth’s phones in one hand, Tori held out the other to Ember. “Where’s yours?” With a sigh she took her cell from beneath the kitchen towel where she’d hidden it and gave it to her friend.
Beth turned her head to Tori. “Where’s our math geek and our ball-buster?”
“Lilly and Sammy should be here anytime.” Tori grabbed an olive from the tray of nibbles before Ember set it on the counter.
“Hungry much?” For a brief moment Ember hoped she hadn’t gone too far overboard as she set out two more platters of snacks. Then she immediately kicked the thought to the curb. It had been ten years since they’d gotten together as a group, and this was something they’d promised each other the night before graduation.
She couldn’t believe that night had finally come.
“I’m starving. Work has been brutal this week. We’re preparing to send a new serum to trial. Between that and arranging everything so I could take the weekend off to drive out here, I had to nearly double my time in the lab this past week. I’m beyond ready to put my feet up and hide for the weekend.” Tori plucked a cheese cube from another tray and popped it into her mouth.
All amusement at her friend’s hunger vanished. “I have enough food to feed Berry Hall. Eat up.” She softened her tone. “How’s it going?” Tori’s current project was a drug slated to combat a muscle-wasting disease.
A mix of hope and confidence so powerful she felt it herself stared back at Ember from her friend’s eyes. “This is it. I know it is. We just need to follow the steps to make sure every T is crossed and every I is dotted.”
Ember set down a bowl of dip and walked around to pull Tori into a hug. She squeezed tightly and held on. “You amaze me. You’re saving lives and giving people hope.”
Tori laughed. “And how many lives did you save in the ICU this past week alone, Dr. Bodacious?”
The doorbell rang, and Ember let Tori go.
Beth set down the wine bottle she wrestled with. “I’ll get it.”
“You just want to get out of opening the wine.” Ember picked up the bottle and opener, then set to work.
Beth called over her shoulder, “Guilty, but if you need a can of diet opened, I’m your girl.” She opened the door to find both Lilly and Sammy waiting.
“Chickie, there’s a case with your name on it siting in the fridge. Ladies, come on in. How are you two?” Ember waved them in.
“Wow! Your house is gorgeous. If I’d known how lovely the lake view was, I would have snuck away from the office ages ago. I may never leave.”
“I love it here. I just wish I had more time to enjoy it.”
“Girls, you know the rules. No work, no family, no men. Hand over your phones.” Tori laid down the law.
Sammy, the lawyer of the group, pursed her mouth and playfully slapped her phone in Tori’s hand. “Hardass. Maybe you should take my place in front of the jury next week.”
And my girls are all here.
* * *
“I don’t know, man. A dating site? I think I’ll pass.” Royce shook his head and focused on the burn in his bicep muscles. He had no doubt that his closest friend, Max, knew his business, but he couldn’t see finding what he wanted through a match service. He lifted the dumbbell in a slow curl and lowered it.
“I’m telling you, Beth really knows what’s she’s doing, both on the computer side and the BDSM side. Pure chance brought her into my world, and it kills me to think that we could have passed each other on a sidewalk and not known how much we needed each other. She’s my other half and, as corny as it might sound, finding the right sub is worth the chance.” Max wiped the sweat from his face with a towel.
Royce bit his tongue. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Max, but the chances of finding a woman whose needs and personality meshed with his seemed astronomical. He’d met too many subs who were infatuated by the idea of BDSM but, when it came down to it, all they wanted was a fantasy, a game.
“How is your little Beth?” Royce had been skeptical Max had found The One, but the couple had been together nearly a year, and Max had only grown happier as time passed. Royce was thrilled for his friend, though. Amazingly, they’d beat the long odds against them.
“Good. She’ll be gone all weekend on some sort of retreat. I already miss her.” Max ran a hand over his sweat dampened dark blond hair.
“You let her out of your sight?” Shock colored Royce’s voice. Theirs was a healthy Dominant/submissive relationship, but that didn’t mean Max wasn’t possessive.
Surprised by the question, Max sat up straighter on the weight bench. “Yeah. I trust her.”
“I know that, but I figured your caveman instincts wouldn’t let her get too far away.” Royce lowered the dumbbell in a slow descent.
“This is some sort of an all-girl reunion thing. She said it was a pact or something they made before graduating from university together. It meant a lot for her to see her old girlfriends. She’s staying at Dr. Ross’s lake house. She’ll be safe, and I trust her.”
“Dr. Ross… Why does that sound familiar?” He stared at the weight room’s floor as he lifted the dumbbell in a slow curl.
“She attended school with us. Ember Ross.”
Royce dropped the weight, barely missing his foot. Visions of the blond bombshell who’d hidden behind glasses and baggy clothes punched him in the gut. He remembered Ember all too well. Curvy with long, curly, hair, she’d been a living wet dream.
He realized Max looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Royce? Man, you remember Dr. Bodacious.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Somehow he’d always made a fool of himself anytime she came around. He’d never been able to string more than three words together in her presence. Hell, he even stuttered around her once. For someone—even at the young age of twenty-one–who had always been in control, the awkwardness had been a hard blow. He couldn’t blame it on Ember, though. That mistake was all him.
Then there was the incident at his fraternity. He clenched his fists in anger.
Max flipped his towel over his shoulder. “You had a thing for her, didn’t you? Why didn’t you act on it?”
“I did. And I should have, I just never did. I was an idiot.” Royce shook his head in regret. During a party, two dumbass members of his frat house had taken a hazing way too far and nearly killed a freshman in the process. John had survived, thanks to Ember’s intervention, but the assholes had left a black mark on all their lives.
Even though the event had probably left the least amount of impact on Royce’s life, it didn’t lessen his regret for something that could have been.
“Have you ever thought about looking her up? I can ask Beth if she’s seeing anyone.” Max flipped the top of his water bottle and took a long swallow.
Only to make a fool of himself? “Ah, no thanks.” A dark memory of the party that had changed his life appeared. Ember’s friends had held her back as she looked ready to tear into the idiots who’d been involved. He’d been holding them waiting for the campus police to arrive, but he could only imagine what it looked like when he’d stood next to Donnie and Will. The vision only got worse when she’d looked at him with her bright, sky blue eyes flashing in anger.
Amidst the chaos, he’d been struck by their beauty. He shifted as his cock swelled, but the memory helped keep it in check.
In a well-honed habit, he forced the thoughts away and focused on the present. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed female company.
It had been even longer since he’d enjoyed a sub.
Thanks to the demands of his job, there hadn’t been enough time to find anyone compatible with his needs. Maybe if he enjoyed some female company, it would rid him of the restless edge riding him.
He knew better than to think that he’d find some sort of happily ever after on a website, but maybe he could scratch an itch. Or ease the ache in his cock.