by Ann Jacobs
Of course Ciel would have to stay here. She had killed a man. Never mind that Amber couldn’t think of one human being who’d deserved more richly than Dax Petrone to die. “Wha—what will happen to her?”
Sadness filled her heart as she watched the two guards pick Ciel up and drag her away. Thoughts of how the woman had befriended her at a terrible time in her life slammed back into Amber’s mind and made her sick that she hadn’t been able to help to prevent… She didn’t want to imagine how Ciel’s life would be, but she had to know.
Cole drew Amber close, obviously feeling her distress. “I imagine they’ll order that she be institutionalized. There’s no way anyone could say she’s sane. I’ll send word to my father about what’s happened and ask him to get a lawyer up here to defend her. In the meantime, she’ll be safe in jail, where she can’t harm herself or anybody else.”
They stepped outside, into the eerie light of Obsidion’s multicolored moons, and Amber took Cole’s hand. Guilt overcame her and she started to tremble. “This wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for us.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. I forbid it.” Cole stopped, drew Amber into his arms again and stroked her the way a father might to reassure a child.
“My sister has always had a tenuous hold on reality. We—everyone in the family—have always done our best to see that she didn’t lose that hold. If what happened back there is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I knew this afternoon when she finally woke that the news about us would set her off. I didn’t realize how badly she’d react. At the time she seemed to take it extremely well, for Ciel.
“Sweetheart, don’t cry. I know Ciel’s your friend. We’ll get her the treatment she should have had years ago and she’ll be all right.”
Amber looked up and saw the caring in Cole’s dark eyes, eyes so much like Ciel’s except that, instead of hate, they held all the love she’d ever wanted—love she’d found in his arms, his bed. “Won’t she go to prison for killing Dax?”
“Not if there’s a God. In her madness, that was the one sane thing my sister did—she got rid of the sadistic bastard who hurt you. Because of her madness, she’ll be one of the few who gets away with murder.”
Chapter Six
Cole quietly arranged for Petrone’s remains to be disposed of once Obsidion’s police detectives had collected the physical evidence they needed. He fought the guilt that surrounded him over the fact that Ciel had felt she had to kill Petrone. Those feelings wouldn’t go away though.
I should have killed the fucker myself. The memory of his sister confined in an eight-by-eight cell behind sturdy iron bars ate at him, just as thinking of Ciel’s tortured eyes, her madness, had made Amber unnaturally quiet, reflective. For the first time since he’d made Amber his slave, Cole had slept alone the night before, unwilling to subject her to his nightmares, his own tenuous grip on sanity.
He stood in the main dungeon at No Bounds, looking at the shiny new equipment and wondering if his father had been right. Had this lifestyle that he loved contributed to Ciel’s final downfall?
No. He wouldn’t allow himself to go there. For whatever reasons, he got off on wielding sexual power, using it to bring his lover pleasure. Ciel had chosen that way too, though Cole now believed Amber was right that she’d cast herself into a Dominant role that didn’t fit her and had lived her submissive fantasies vicariously, through Amber.
He’d talked with his father and promised he’d help the lawyer and the shrink Alan was sending to get settled in to what he imagined would become lucrative practices on Obsidion. He had arranged with Ciel’s jailers to treat her well. He’d so far never ceased to be amazed by how loudly money talked, particularly on a planet whose permanent inhabitants had almost all been transported because of some brush with Federation laws back home.
Now he had a business to run and a slave to honor and protect. He’d done all he could for Ciel. Now she had to do the rest on her own. Cole believed, now that he thought about it, that he and their father had only delayed her breakdown. He knew now that they’d been wrong, bailing her out of every scrape, every situation where she had placed herself and others in danger.
He’d never again believe he could save someone who didn’t want to be saved. Not even the older sister he’d followed like a faithful puppy when they’d been children back on Earth.
* * * * *
All of them had been children, when all was said and done. They’d been teenagers trying their wings in a fast-changing world on Earth.
Amber couldn’t help remembering those first days after she’d come to live with her grandparents, and how Ciel had welcomed her when all Amber had wanted to do was die and join her family in that great beyond, wherever that might be. If not for Ciel, Amber might not have made it this far. She might never have felt the loving sting of her master’s domination.
Cole had arranged all he could for Ciel’s care and comfort, Amber knew. He’d told her what he’d done, but he hadn’t needed to, for she knew her master. She trusted his wisdom, his kindness and most of all his deep affection for the woman they both loved.
Last night, Amber had dreamed. Jumbled, tumbled snippets, past and present scrambled. Horrific mind-photos of Ciel’s hands dripping blood, her eyes wild with a madness that had lurked just below the surface. Master Dax’s eyes, glazed over in death, fed the nightmare image of him standing over her with that red-hot branding tool, of him beating her with a cane…of Master Cole rushing in and turning the cane onto Dax.
She’d had sweet dreams too. Of Ciel taking her in hand, showing her the teenage haunts, introducing her to Cole, who’d been in her grade at school. Of her first sub experience, when she’d realized that her pleasure came from believing a master cared enough to discipline her…and that sexual pleasure could arise from pain. Of Cole stopping her branding, making her his own…
Where was her master now? She never wanted to pass another night without him near her, providing her the security she needed, the sensual banquet she wanted. She needed the reassurance of his gentle touch, the sound of his voice in her ears, the smells of their mutual arousal…the slightly bitter, salty taste of him when he allowed her to suck his beautiful cock.
Hours ago, Amber had readied herself for him. Her hair lay in riotous curls around her shoulders, the way he liked it. She’d shaved her pussy again, felt it to be sure it would feel as smooth as silk beneath his fingers, his mouth. The chain that joined the rings in her nipples and clit swung back and forth when she moved, setting up a delicious tingling. Her cunt grew wetter and more swollen with every move she made, and when she heard his footsteps in the hall, she fairly gushed.
She longed for him to come, take her, show her once again that she could find the ultimate in pleasure from pain.
* * * * *
Fuck. What was a man to do? Cole tore off his clothes, his gaze never leaving his slave’s plump, pale buttocks or the still-pink lily brand that adorned the one on the left. He had told her to wait in his room for him, but he hadn’t fucking told her to bend herself nearly double over the pommel horse he used as part of his exercise routine, her position perfect for spanking…
His cock was about to burst. “Amber.”
“Yes, Master?”
“Do you want me to spank you?”
“Oh yes, Master.”
He laid a hand over the brand, tracing its outline with one finger. “This is still too tender, sweetheart, for me to flog you the way I’d love to.”
“I welcome the pain.”
Amber deserved no punishment, though Cole imagined she was mentally flogging herself over her unintentional part in causing the scene last night at the jail. “No. You deserve nothing but pleasure.”
If it took him a lifetime with her, he’d show her that she could experience sexual pleasure without pain—without being restrained. He came up behind her, rubbed his cock along her wet, swollen pussy, pushing lightly at her asshole, her cunt, then backing away and groping in a draw
er for his stash of toys.
“Relax, my sweet slave. And grasp your ankles with your hands.” Gently he worked lubricant up her ass, then smeared some on the butt plug and inserted it one bump at a time, watching her squirm at the invasion. “Easy. Does that feel good?”
“Oh yes. Please, Master, give me your cock.”
He slapped her smartly on her unmarked ass cheek. “In good time. I want you to be quiet for me. If you can’t, I’ll have to gag you.”
“Yes, Master. Oh that feels so good,” she said when he slapped her again.
He moved away again and rifled through the drawer. “Here, sweetheart, you asked for it.” Kneeling beside her, he inserted a ball gag in her mouth and buckled it at the back of her head before slipping a folded silk scarf over her eyes and knotting it securely.
“I want you to feel my every touch. Anticipate the next. You need neither to see nor to speak. Concentrate on my hands, my mouth, my cock. Let me bring you pleasure.”
She whimpered, a slight sound that escaped the ball gag. Cole skimmed his fingers through her hair, then stood, taking the time to nuzzle the sensitive skin at the base of her skull, bare now below the hairline while she lay upside down. Another moan, this one barely audible, told him that she was enjoying his attention.
The skin on her shoulders and back felt incredibly soft beneath his fingers, tasted slightly salty when he tongued her there. He kissed the indentation at the base of her spine, tracing each bony vertebra with searching fingers. When she let out a muffled cry, he gave in, found her breasts and explored them as thoroughly as he just had her back, adding a gentle tug on the chain that led from her nipples to her clit.
“I want you to come for me now,” he ordered, sliding his hands up her body and giving her nipples a hard, quick tug. “I want your cunt hot and wet when I fuck you there.”
A shudder tore through her as though he’d wrenched the climax from her. Someday…someday soon, he hoped. Someday she’d come without the stimulus of pain. Cole freed her while she still was in the throes of orgasm and carried her to the bed. “Now, my darling slave, I’m going to make love to you.”
Amber had never felt such gentleness, such caring as he’d shown in every touch. He showed her again now with the sweep of his hands over her body, as though exploring her for the first time. His kisses, as soft as a butterfly on her eyelids, her cheeks, her swollen lips, aroused her once more, as much as sharp slaps and cruel tugs on the rings he’d placed in her most tender flesh. “Yes Master,” she whispered against his lips, “please love me.”
“I do.” Very gently, as though she were a fragile flower, he spread her legs and knelt between them. He teased her unmercifully, not entering her immediately but rubbing his hard cock along her wet, swollen slit. “This is how I’d have taken you your first time.”
Her first time. Perhaps this was her first time making love without shame, without the feeling that she must be punished for wanting to be cared for by the person punishing her. Amber raised her arms and wrapped them around Cole’s broad shoulders. She held him close as she’d never dared to before. God, but she felt free, wanted. “I love you too,” she told him as he plunged inside her, joining their bodies as he’d joined their hearts when he had fastened his collar around her neck.
This time they came together—great, shuddering bursts of ecstasy that caught her up, carried her over the top to a place only he could take her. A safe place, where she needed to feel no fear, only the end of an erotic journey that wasn’t really an end but a beginning.
More than she had in ten long years, Amber felt secure as she lay afterward in Cole’s arms, feeling the soft cadence of his breath against her hair. She had found a home where love could flourish with trust and caring. With no bounds to the ways they could express it for one another.
Epilogue
The following summer
When Cole looked back on events of the past year, he couldn’t help but feel complacent. Yesterday he and Amber had reenacted the scene they’d done a year ago, when No Bounds had first opened its doors. This time, thankfully, it had reached its intended conclusion, a mutual orgasm followed by Cole’s speech of welcome to the ever-growing number of upper-income members coming for the first time to No Bounds to sample the forbidden world of BDSM.
Today Amber had joined him for a visit to Ciel at the institution where she’d been treated ever since the trial. Each time he saw her, he noticed new improvements, beginning with a smile instead of the blank stare that had lasted from the day after she’d killed Dax until after she’d been found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
She’d spoken a few words for the first time since she’d been locked away, not only to Cole but to Amber. Those words had made Cole believe for the first time that someday Ciel would recover and be able to join the kinder, gentler BDSM world she had forced him to create on this planet so far from home.
Each week a transporter brought supplies, along with a few new colonists from the Federation. Most still came not of their own volition but as exiles who had run afoul of Federation law, and some of them brought serious problems for Obsidion—the same sorts of problems that had precipitated their exile from Earth. But Cole saw hope in each brave soul who had made a voluntary decision to come and make this a place law-abiding citizens could call home.
Cole fastened Amber’s seat belt and gunned the engine of their hovercraft. It was time to go home. To No Bounds, where men and women could explore the furthest fantasies of BDSM within a framework of rules that ensured everyone’s safety…where Doms sought to bring pleasure and subs sought to serve their masters.
Amber leaned over, touched his lips with her fingers, caressing him. “You’re smiling, Master. What are you thinking?”
Cole kissed her hand. “That I’ve thought of a new safe word for you.”
“I can never imagine needing a safe word when I’m with you.”
He’d believed for a while now that she had gained more confidence when it came to her own sexual hold on him, but from the pensive look on her face now, he knew he’d chosen the right word.
“It will be No Bounds.” He tipped up her chin, held her gaze. “When you use it, you’ll be reminded that I will never stop loving you, that you will never be less than perfect to me—and that there is nothing I won’t do to keep you safe and ensure your pleasure. Do you understand?”
Joy filled her gaze and she nodded. “It also describes the way I feel about you, Master.” A smile came into her eyes. “I wish we could get home faster so I could prove it to you.”
He gave her a wicked grin, put the craft on autopilot and pulled her over to straddle his lap. “Why wait?”
Why, indeed? Their love indeed had no bounds. No bounds at all.
About Ann Jacobs
Ann Jacobs is a sucker for lusty Alpha heroes and happy endings, which makes Ellora’s Cave an ideal publisher for her work. Romantica®, to her, is the perfect combination of sex, sensuality, deep emotional involvement and lifelong commitment—the elusive fantasy women often dream about but seldom achieve.
First published in 1996, Jacobs has sold over forty books and novellas, some of which have earned awards including the Passionate Plume (best novella, 2006), the Desert Rose (best hot and spicy romance, 2004) and More Than Magic (best erotic romance, 2004). She has been a double finalist in separate categories of the EPPIES and From the Heart RWA Chapter’s contest. Three of her books have been translated and sold in several European countries.
A CPA and former hospital financial manager, Jacobs now writes full-time, with the help of Mr. Blue, the family cat who sometimes likes to perch on the back of her desk chair and lend his sage advice. He sometimes even contributes a few random letters when he decides he wants to try out the keyboard. She loves to hear from readers, and to put faces with names at signings and conventions.
Ann welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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A Mutual Favor
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Black Gold: Another Love
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Caden Kink 1: Lovers’ Feud
Caden Kink 2: Shotgun Relations
Caden Kink 3: Wild One
Club Rio Brava 1: Loving Control
Club Rio Brava 2: Switching Control
Club Rio Brava 3: Unexpected Control
Club Rio Brava 4: Learning Control
Colors of Love
Colors of Magic
Commitment
d’Argent Honor: Eternal Triangle
d’Argent Honor 1: Vampire Justice
d’Argent Honor 2: Eternally His
d’Argent Honor 3: Eternal Surrender
d’Argent Honor 4: Eternal Victory
Dark Side of the Moon
Gates of Hell
Gridiron Lovers: Hot for the Reunion
Gridiron Lovers 1: Naked Bootleg
Gridiron Lovers 2: Forward Pass
Gridiron Lovers 3: Hot in the Clutch
Gridiron Lovers 4: Coach Me
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He Calls Her Jasmine
Heart of the West 1: Roped
Heart of the West 2: Hitched
Heart of the West 3: Lassoed
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