by Kendra Mase
The Strings That Hold Us Together
Kendra Mase
The Strings That Hold Us Together
Copyright © 2021 by Kendra Mase
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To the stories and writers who inspired me to build a world of my own.
Trust the overthinker who tells you they love you. They have, most assuredly, thought of every reason not to.
LK Pilgrim
Chapter One
He was the most beautiful man in the universe.
For some reason, the statement felt the truest out of any Katherine had ever thought to herself.
Through heavily lined eyes, the raven-haired man smirked as he turned with simple grace on stage. Katherine noticed him for the first time during her deliveries to the converted theater now housing DuCain, an S&M club that prided itself on passion as much as pain. His body, though not tall, still managed to take up as much space as anyone else who commanded the stage.
He stood, shoulders back, proud and utterly, most definitely, in control. He took another step toward the woman across from him. She smoothly moved like melted candle wax down to her knees.
Each movement was a deliberate, smooth performance. The viewers in DuCain lapped it up like sweet cream.
Katherine couldn’t look away. That grin pulled her in like a siren, luring her out to sea, and she couldn’t swim. As he stalked over to the woman, it was all Katherine could do to imagine the calluses of his hands as they ran down the back of her arms, just like he did to his pliant victim. She felt the light sting of knots being tied tight against her skin as she was pushed up against the wide cross.
Jack leaned closer, breath sending fire over her bare shoulder. A sigh of delight crossed her skin, amusement as he noticed the nervous thrill of shivers down Katherine’s spine.
“Stunning,” he whispered.
A hand cupped her thigh, skimming where the garters she’d taken to wearing since she started working for her aunt’s shop peeked out just underneath her skirt.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe. I got you.”
She believed him.
Her body believed him. She loosened her weight into the hold of his single palm. She melted into the taut comfort of the binds that held her up on the stage for everyone to see.
Everyone would see her.
“Little Em!”
Tearing her gaze away from the stage as the crowd cheered, Katherine swung toward the bar. On the other side, she met the amused expression of the club’s owner, Nik. A few others must’ve also noticed her pause, or rather, her longing.
It wasn’t the first time either.
Clearing her throat, she prepared the same phrase she practiced every time she entered the club a little too late on her delivery rounds, a little too leisurely.
Nik didn’t make her stutter it out. They shook their blond ruffled head with a grin as they poured another tall glass of moody liquid behind the bar. “If you are here to drop off, you know where to go.”
Katherine clutched her bags to her ribs as she scuttled away from the pressure of eyes following her every move. It wasn’t long until she became lost in the crowd. Her heart calmed the farther she dove into people who didn’t give her a second look.
Not the couple in latex.
Not the woman with dark roots and platinum blond hair swinging side to side with her clip-on ponytail.
Not the raven-haired man on stage, Jack, she stared at through wire cat-eye glasses.
She was invisible.
For most of her life, Katherine had been this way, whether she wanted to be or not. It only became more prevalent since she started working for her aunt as a sort of apprentice. She did as she was told and complained only later when her aunt handed her a cup of tea and asked how her blisters were doing. A dozen sores were hidden beneath thin canvas shoes she traded her ballet flats in for after her second day traversing up and down city blocks. She got lost more than the number of packages stuffed with leather and lace that she had to deliver.
The first few weeks she’d started working alongside Emilie was painful in every sense of the word, yet Katherine was glad she remembered her eccentric aunt in the city who only came to visit the suburbs once every year or two after Katherine’s mother left.
It was also a very good thing Katherine knew how to use a needle and thread.
A family trait, apparently, Emilie remarked with pleasure when Katherine arrived on her doorstep.
So was people leaving them.
If it wasn’t, Emilie would’ve never opened the small lingerie shop to begin with. Using the money left over from when her husband screwed her best friend and left almost eight years ago, where would they be otherwise?
Katherine would be on the streets, regretting not replying to any of the universities she was accepted into after her high school counselor insisted upon her applying. Emilie would never have turned the bespoke boutique into one of the most beautiful places to window shop in Ashton—at least in Katherine’s opinion.
Her aunt managed it all on her own, save for the occasional design intern from the art institute a few blocks over. Emilie dreamed, designed, cut, and sewed almost every single item that was sold within the shop. And if there wasn’t something there that a customer liked or a size they didn’t put on display, her aunt simply told them to come back by the end of the week.
When they did, they’d find their perfectly imagined frills wrapped up in lilac-colored tissue paper.
Anything else they needed that Emilie couldn’t produce with her own two hands, she sourced. Most of which Katherine now held in the bag she carried past the red Private sign and down the stairs into DuCain’s infamous dungeons.
“It would be either silly or stupid for me not to cater to all my clients’ needs, Kit,” her aunt informed her not long after she started. Emilie smugly smiled that day as she taught Katherine about each one. “I
n my opinion, it would be the latter.”
After the past few months running deliveries and meeting all of Emilie’s patrons, including those who made the low sounds through the cracks of dungeon doors, Katherine had to agree.
Dropping her bags to the ground of the storage room, Katherine nearly groaned with relief. They started to make her shoulders sweat from the final stretch of summer heat bleeding through the city. Pulling out each item, Katherine easily got to work replenishing DuCain’s supplies. The storage room was a mess the first time she arrived in the club, wide-eyed and unprepared, but now, after reorganizing the shelves, everything had its place.
Thigh-high stockings went on one shelf beside the fishnets. Gloves went on another along with the sanitary wipes Katherine must’ve replenished the most often out of everything at DuCain. For obvious reasons, she imagined thinking back to the hallway she came down.
Finally, the last of her deliveries were at the bottom of her bag. Enclosed in individual boxes, shiny new and the most-essential riding crops waited their turn. Katherine smiled at them as she stood up on a chair to reach one of the highest shelves in the closet. She slid each next to other daring implements. Floggers, canes, and clamps—it didn’t escape Katherine how, at some point, they turned into casual terminology.
Stepping back down, the door across from her crashed open, slapping against the black concrete wall. Neither of the two who shoved their way inside seemed at all startled by the loud noise.
Katherine, on the other hand, froze. Halfway back down to solid ground from her folding chair, she tilted to the right and caught herself before she fell the rest of the way.
“Shut up and hurry.” Katherine immediately recognized the voice of the command, and if she didn’t, the sight of her plowing the rest of the way inside would’ve been all the reminder she needed.
Besides the fact that the woman was nearly nude, yanking up a pair of exceedingly tight leather pants over her hips, deep red curls fell over her shoulders, caked with glitter and hairspray.
Avril Queen.
The burlesque star first made her mark in Ashton before taking on the rest of the world. Katherine had seen her before on her deliveries to DuCain as well as at the sensational dance lounge, Rosin, where she often mended costumes and restocked plenty of glitter. Katherine always said she’d have the courage to dress up in something perfectly Moulin Rouge, and watch the solo dancers as well as the chorus numbers permeated with dirty jokes, champagne, and the very Queen of Burlesque herself. But now, she was directly in front of her.
Queen’s C-cups glinted with handsewn crystal pasties Katherine knew well, seeing similar pairs in the shop as well as bespoke photos Emilie kept of pieces she was most proud of. All of them usually managed to adorn the redheaded vixen in front of her.
When a deep voice sounded, Katherine still hadn’t managed to open her mouth as she stared from Avril to him.
The two of them were always something of a pair. Katherine, however, could never quite figure out in what way. They lay on the edge of the stage together some afternoons as crew adjusted the theater lights above them. They laughed and shoved each other, his arm looping over her shoulders whenever they moved.
They were like magnets.
An amused expression passed over Jack’s face as he rolled his lined eyes.
And it was only right that the most beautiful man also had the most beautiful eyes in the entire world. Bright and flecked with shards of honey.
As those eyes landed on her, she felt herself inhale, and then they swept right past as if she wasn’t there at all.
For a second, Katherine wondered if she truly became invisible.
“Grab your stuff and let’s go, Queen. You’re already making us late.” Jack gripped the side of the door as he stood waiting. He tapped a watch he didn’t wear.
Avril shuffled through a bag Katherine hadn’t realized until then was stuffed deep into the corner.
For months Katherine had seen them, and like when she stared at the raven-haired professional dominant, she imagined what would happen if she ever managed to muster up any ounce of courage. She surely had a bit of it, she was certain, even if it was just to say hello.
And now—
Topless, yet completely at ease, Queen threw something at Jack.
He caught it in one hand, looking down at the corset.
“Not my fault you decided to get a little handsy on stage and they wouldn’t let you off before a second encore.”
“Says the woman who decided to give a surprise performance.”
Avril pursed her lips in satisfaction. “Nik was practically begging.”
“So you say.”
Studying the corset, Jack twisted it one way and then the next until he found the laces caught together in a large knot. Katherine noticed with wide eyes. With a single finger, he gestured for Avril to turn around. “You realize I usually only have to deal with taking these kinds of things off, right?”
If he pulled on the corset, while twisted like that, he could ruin the piece.
Katherine couldn’t hold it in anymore. Something deep inside erupted before she could clap a hand over her mouth at the horror she was about to witness.
“Stop!”
Both heads snapped toward her. They both were oddly calm, as if they truly didn’t notice her standing there watching them until then.
Or, more likely, didn’t care.
Katherine’s bottom lip stuttered, trying to find the right words before she went on.
“Stop. Please.” She glanced at Jack, extending her hand out to the man who continued to stare at how it quivered as if she was some strange creature he never encountered before. “You’re going to ruin it.”
Queen raised her delicately colored eyebrows. She took the corset back and tossed it directly into Katherine’s hands.
Katherine volleyed the piece before gripping it tightly in her fingers, looking at the woman in front of her who suddenly didn’t look much older than she did.
“Well?” she asked, glancing at Jack, still standing next to her. “Lace me up, darling.”
Lace her up. Right. Katherine carefully began to unknot the problem sections before she approached Avril. Reaching toward her breasts, she paused.
Avril only looked more amused. “Tits up? Don’t worry, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
No, Katherine gave a light laugh. She couldn’t imagine it was. Rounding Avril’s back, Katherine settled the cups into the right place. It fit her like a mold, perfectly. One gentle tug and pull at a time, Katherine restrung and tightened Avril Queen into a corset, just the way her aunt had taught her.
Lacing had been one of her first lessons, and one she practiced often on herself when she was left too long in the workroom. If there was one thing Emilie specialized in, it was magnificent, magical corsets.
She felt Jack’s eyes settle on her as he watched her work, up until the very last tie in the center. Katherine smoothed her hands over either side of Avril’s now prudently cinched waist.
“There you go,” Katherine nearly whispered.
Avril twisted around with a grin. Her canines were sharp as they punctured her lower lip. “You’re Emilie’s new girl, aren’t you?”
Katherine opened her mouth to answer but once more nodded in acceptance. Yes, that was exactly who she was.
“Name? Or would you prefer me to keep calling you darling?” Avril joked with a smirk back at Jack.
“I, uh…” She finally cleared her throat. “It’s Katherine.”
Avril’s brow crinkled. “Doesn’t quite fit, Kitten.”
“That does.”
Katherine’s eyes flickered to the deep rumble of a voice again. Jack’s face fluctuated, confused between enjoyment and pain as he stared off toward the floor. Dust was more entertaining to him.
With a shrug, Avril was already grabbing the bag she dropped as she got dressed and headed back to the door. “We’ll work on it. Let’s go. Mr. Grump-ass over here is becoming easi
ly insufferable.”
Jack had already tilted himself back into the hallway, taking a step back toward the emergency exit.
Avril was halfway when she looked back. Her bloodred lips curved.
“Well? Are you coming or not?”
Chapter Two
“I’ll make it easy and tell you the right answer. It’s yes.” Avril Queen, the most talked-about woman in Ashton, looked at Katherine. She looked at her as if she might’ve been someone interesting as her hand clasped around Katherine’s wrist and pulled her along. “It is Saturday, after all.”
“What’s Saturday?”
“What’s Saturday?” Avril looked scandalized. “Did you hear this girl, Jack?”
His eyes flicked between the two of them, giving Avril a dark look. “Oh, I heard.”
“Saturday is basically a holiday,” Avril explained as they pushed open the emergency exit to the parking lot. No alarm went off.
“Reed is calling me again.” Jack glanced down at his phone screen before pulling open the door of an army green–colored Jeep. Hopping into the driver’s seat, he let it drop into the cup holder.
“The idiot.” Avril gave a shake of her head. “Are you going to answer?”
“Have you been?”
Avril turned back to Katherine without answering as the two of them squeezed into the car. It was clean, surprisingly so.