by Lexi Blake
The hits kept coming. Had there been drugs at the party? Had Mason taken drugs? Had he allowed Emily to take them?
“Cole?” Mason held on to the railing as though it was a lifeline.
He ignored Mason. Mason had broken the rules they’d agreed on. It didn’t matter whether he was drunk on alcohol or he’d gone insane and tried cocaine or whatever. This wasn’t some faux pas Cole had to fix. This was a dead body and he couldn’t even look at Mason now. He turned to Nate. “Where do I claim her body?”
He owed it to her. She didn’t have family. She only had her Masters. She only had him and Mason, and Mason had failed her.
Fuck. He’d failed her. He should have known Mason wasn’t strong enough. He should have known Mason was decadent and followed only the rules of pleasure. Tears blurred his eyes, guilt welling inside him. He should never have allowed her to go to the party. He should never have allowed Mason to watch over her.
He thought they’d turned a corner, that Mason had become reliable, the kind of man he not only could love, but who he could depend on.
Mason stopped on the bottom step, his arms outstretched as though he desperately required comfort. “Please. Master.”
God help him. Cole hadn’t truly loved Emily. All his life he’d only loved Mason, but Mason was a butterfly flitting around and now it had cost him something precious—his honor as a Dom.
Cole took a step back.
“She’s at the hospital in Del Norte,” Nate replied. “They’re going to release her to whatever funeral home you choose.”
He had to choose a funeral home. God, he’d failed. He’d failed by not being able to love her. He’d failed by allowing Mason to watch over her. He’d failed on so many levels. He had one job—to keep her safe—and he’d failed.
He stepped back as Mason moved toward him. One thing. He’d asked one thing of Mason and Mason had chosen to disobey when it counted the most.
Mason stopped, that gorgeous face going blank as he seemed to understand there was no comfort waiting for him. “I didn’t drink. Master, this isn’t what you think. I don’t understand what happened. Please.”
How many times had he heard that before? It wasn’t what he thought. He hadn’t meant to get in trouble. It wasn’t truly his fault. Nothing was ever Mason’s fault.
Cole looked to Nate, who suddenly seemed interested in his boots. It was all Cole needed to know. He turned away.
There was nothing for him here. He had to go to Del Norte. He had one last task to perform for his submissive.
His heart ached. He loved Mason. Mason was his touchstone, but he couldn’t trust him.
He couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
Chapter One
Dallas, TX
Present Day
Though his elegant office was kept at a perfectly cool temperature, Cole had started to sweat. It was stupid, but he was nervous.
“So to what do I owe this pleasure, Julian?” Cole asked as he offered a chair to his old friend.
And tried to settle the worry gnawing at his gut because he had a suspicion why Julian Lodge had decided to show up in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday. If the meeting was about business, he would have called or sent an e-mail. So this visit must be personal and if it was personal, then there was only one way in which Cole intersected with Lodge’s family.
“I’m here about Kitten.” Lodge let the statement drop, a rock he’d dumped in between them. There was a politely blank look on Julian’s face that told Cole he was serious.
But then when wasn’t Julian serious? He was practically the grim reaper and Cole was suddenly worried Julian had come to end something important to him.
And that pissed him the hell off.
Still, he held on to his temper. It wasn’t the time to play the possessive caveman. Not with the man who could very likely take away the possession he wanted to keep. Kitten’s primary loyalty was probably still to the people she considered family. He had to view Julian as a potential father-in-law, though Cole doubted he would appreciate the comparison. “We had a nice time at dinner the other night.”
It was best to put on a brave front. He was in charge of Kitten Taylor and he didn’t want that to change. Not when he was almost certain he was falling in love with the woman.
The trouble was, he couldn’t seem to reach her. She’d been living in his home for almost a month and he wasn’t any closer to real intimacy with her. He’d taken everything slow. Even after they’d signed a contract, he’d done his version of courting her. He’d allowed her to stay in Julian’s home for a while. He’d called and spent time talking to her. He’d walked the dungeons with her. He’d escorted her to a wedding. He’d thought things would move more quickly once he’d actually moved her in.
He needed more time.
“Leo feels she’s losing hard-earned ground,” Julian stated flatly. His thousand-dollar shoes tapped against the floor as he enumerated his points. “She slipped into third-person speech twice the night you brought her over to the penthouse. She’s obviously lost weight. And you haven’t brought her to The Club on a regular basis. I don’t know that I like that.”
“Do you want to complain about the collar I bought her?” He seemed to be complaining about everything else. Why not bitch about Kitten’s collar, too? It was Cartier and stunning. If Julian complained about it, he might punch him in the face.
And as Julian was the closest thing his submissive had to a father, that would go over so well for him.
The possessiveness he felt was something new and he rather liked it. It had been so long since he’d wanted someone to belong to him.
“No,” Julian replied, his expression never changing once. “Her collar is perfectly satisfactory.”
Her collar had cost him twenty grand. He’d meant it as a promise of the future, one he hoped to have with her. “You have to give me time, Julian. What happened to Kitten can’t be erased in a month.”
Now the club owner’s mouth tightened, his eyes narrowing slightly. “It’s been years.”
Sympathy crept up on Cole. In the end, Julian was simply watching out for a woman he viewed as family. And he understood. As a Dom, Julian wanted to be able to do something. To command the problem to go away. Life wasn’t as simple as it was in the dungeon. “And it will likely never truly go away. She was kidnapped, raped, and molded into something she wasn’t before. She has to figure out who she is now, and that’s a difficult process.”
Julian finally sighed and sat back in his chair, his left ankle resting on his right knee. “I hoped she would be better when I found her a proper Dom.”
At least Julian still considered him “proper.” “We’re working on her problems, but you know I move cautiously.”
Patience was required to forge a good relationship.
Except sometimes a wildfire took over. Sometimes passion couldn’t be contained. Like Mason. Images rushed through his brain. Their hands tearing at each other’s clothes. Mouths fusing into one. Arms and legs tangled.
But he had to be patient with Kitten. It wouldn’t hurt to remind himself that wildfires tended to burn a man. He was done with the wildfire portion of his life. Now he would plan out his future and that included using everything he knew to help Kitten find herself again.
“I understand, Cole. It’s one of the reasons I selected you,” Julian said finally. “I believed you could truly be patient with her. You have a reputation for working with difficult subs. I still find myself worried about her now that she isn’t under my roof. She’s important to Finn, you see.”
Liar. She was important to Julian, though he would never admit it. Julian liked to play the stoic, cold bastard, but Cole had watched him over the last few years. He’d watched Julian Lodge go from heartless Dom to family man.
Damn, but he wanted that for himself. He’d known he might be able to have it if he could help Kitten. If he could show her that she could find herself through discipline and careful work. She would never be the
same person she was before. She would be someone new, but she would be able to choose for herself.
He wanted to make sure that when she chose, she truly chose him. That was the delicate balance he was walking.
“I care for her. I honestly do. She’s a sweet woman and I want this to work. And I think we can expect her to slip more than once. I know she’s been under a Dom’s authority before, but I’m her first real Dom. I’m the first one she’s lived with and truly submitted to. She slips back into the habits that bastard taught her. It’s only to be expected. She didn’t know anything before him. And in some circles, referring to herself in the third person would be perfectly acceptable. You have full-time Masters and slaves at The Club.”
Julian was right back to being the hawk, his eyes sharpening. “Is that what you’re looking for? To own her?”
Frustration welled, a wave that threatened to swallow him. “You knew what I was looking for when I inquired about her. I prefer a Master-slave relationship. I prefer a firmer power exchange than most of the couples and trios at your club. And that’s what she needs as well. We simply have to find our footing. I can’t do that if you continually threaten to take her away from me.”
This wasn’t Julian’s first visit. Julian had inspected Cole’s home, tested his private dungeon equipment for sturdiness, run multiple, invasive personal checks through his in-house private investigators. Setting Chase Dawson on a man proved that Julian Lodge was a complete sadist. He’d had to submit to interviews by not one but two psychologists. He’d expected to deal with Leo Meyer, The Club’s resident psychologist. He hadn’t expected to be treated to an afternoon with Eve McKay, a lovely woman who used to profile serial killers for the FBI.
Cole truly worried for the first young man who was stupid enough to try to date Julian Lodge’s daughter.
Cole had suffered through it all because from the moment he’d heard her story, he’d wanted to help her. And the minute he’d actually seen her… Fuck, his dick got hard thinking about her. She was the first human being to move him since Mason left, and he meant to do right by her.
“Is she happy?” Julian asked, his face softening slightly.
He had to be honest. “I don’t know.”
She was with him one moment and somewhere in her head the next. Kitten was elusive. She was fragile and he had to be careful not to harm her when he caught her. He didn’t truly want her in a cage. He wanted her to find her freedom through submission.
“Perhaps you would consider bringing her to The Club more often.”
Cole nodded, relaxing a bit. The tension had gone out of the room. “Yes. I will if you think it might help. I wanted her to settle in with me. We’ve been playing privately on a regular basis. Nothing heavy, just some impact play to get her used to me.”
“I appreciate your patient approach. I truly do, but you should know that she’s performed some hard-core scenes with her handlers. She’s a bit of a pain slut. She needs it.”
“And she’ll get it, but not until I discern what is for her pleasure and what she’s forcing her Doms to give her in order to punish herself.” He couldn’t move on until he was sure.
“And how about affection? You didn’t even hold her hand at dinner the other night.”
Because in the last two years he’d forgotten what real intimacy felt like. Since Mason had betrayed him, he’d become cold. Perhaps he’d been born that way, but at least with Mason around, he’d had someone to remind him to show his affection. Mason always prodded him for kisses and rarely allowed him to leave a room without a hug. Mason had been the one to teach him how to curl up on a couch and that dinner tasted better when someone else fed it to him.
Kitten couldn’t ask for the affection she needed. He struggled to remember to show his emotions in a physical way.
He was starting to feel inadequate.
“I thought I should give her time,” he reiterated.
Julian took over. “To get used to you. Yes, you’ve said that. Are you giving her time? Or yourself?”
“Maybe a bit of both,” he admitted. “I don’t want to screw this up. She’s been through a lot. She doesn’t need a ham-handed Master making things uncomfortable for her. She needs to settle in. We signed a six-month contract. There’s no rush. I’m not going to force her into bed with me.”
“No one is worried about that.” Julian stared at him for a moment. “I am worried that you won’t see the signs that she genuinely wants to sleep with you.”
“With me? Or with any Dom?” It was a definite worry in the back of his mind. He didn’t want to be a stand-in for some other Dom. She’d had several and she talked about her former Masters often. Including Logan Green. He definitely didn’t want to be the stand-in for a kid he’d watched grow up. Sometimes he wondered if he was too old for her, but then he would catch glimpses of the sadness that lay under her surface and he knew that no matter what her chronological age was, she’d seen enough that she wasn’t truly young, not the way other twenty-five-year-olds were.
“She only tried to sleep with one Dom,” Julian said, his face so serious that Cole knew he was struggling with what he had to say. “I don’t like to gossip, but this is important. She wasn’t in love with the men who watched over her.”
“But she wanted one of them.” He hated the fact that jealousy was burning through his gut.
“Not really. She wanted something familiar. She went to Chase one night and begged him to hurt her.” Julian shook his head as though releasing some terrible memory. “Chase declined. Finn had to calm her down. I worried for her sanity that night. I worried she would never be able to tell the difference between love and abuse. You have to understand that she didn’t receive love and affection from her parents. They were cold. Hawk was a monster, but she found some physical affection from him. And she became close to her fellow hostages. I believe she thought if she allowed Chase to hurt her, he would pay her back with affection. She’s come a long way since that night.”
Chase Dawson had a dark side, but he wouldn’t hurt a woman. God, Cole could only imagine how Chase had felt about being the man Kitten picked to hurt her. Cole was trying everything he could to make sure she didn’t make that mistake with him. “We need more time. I’ve been working a lot lately, but in a week I should be free and I plan on spending plenty of time with her.”
“And if she disappoints you?”
What the hell was that about? “I don’t expect she will.”
“But if she does?” Julian prodded.
“Then I suppose I would try to work it out. If I couldn’t, I would find a way to ease her out of my life.”
A single brow rose over Julian’s eyes. “That’s good to know since you didn’t do that with Mason.”
Fuck. Even the mention of his name caused an ache. “What happened between Mason and me is my business.”
“No, it’s my business if it’s the way you treat your submissives. Kitten is my family. She’s my responsibility and she will remain that way until such time as I trust the man who cares for her. I do not trust you yet, Cole. Not with her. She’s had a hard life. Even before her unfortunate kidnapping, her life was marked with intolerance and harshness. Her father has a limited view of what love means. Of what love is. There was no affection for her. No kindness. If you can’t give that to her, I need to take her back.” Julian’s face tightened, the closest Cole had ever seen to the man becoming emotional. “I have to do right by her. I hope you understand.”
He did. Julian was one of a few men that Cole understood. His life was defined in a particular way. He needed to make things right for the people he cared about. He needed to be important, and that included placing boundaries and guarding them. Kitten was firmly within Julian’s fence line—the one between him and the outside world. That made her important to him. Cole needed him to understand that she was in his fence, too.
“I’ll take care of her. What happened between me and Mason was different. He let me down. We had a sub we share
d and she died on his watch. She died because he couldn’t control himself. Can’t you understand that? I loved him, but I did what I had to do.”
Julian sighed and stood. “I truly do understand, but not in the way you think. I understand that you did what you thought you had to. I merely question the fact that you think what you had with him was love. I believe if it was love, you couldn’t have broken him the way you did. And you should watch out for it. I also happen to know that breaking a man that way can come back to haunt you. If you choose to break with a person, it’s almost better to eradicate them. I should know. I had a relationship very much like the one you had with Mason. The man let me down and I cut him out of my life. My Mason almost killed Danielle.”
Cole had heard the story. Julian had caught his male submissive with drugs in his club and had dismissed the man. He’d come after Julian, nearly killing both him and his now wife, Dani, in the process. “I don’t discuss Mason with anyone. That part of my life is over.”
Though lately Mason had been more and more on his mind. He didn’t quite understand what Julian meant by “breaking” Mason, but he was unwilling to ask for clarification.
“That’s a shame. I watched you with him. I rather thought it was love. You proved something different. Know that if you treat Kitten with such indifference, you will deal with me. I will not be as simple to handle as Mason.”
Julian stood and walked out the door, his message plain.
What the hell had Julian meant? He’d loved Mason with everything he’d had. How was he supposed to forgive him for what he’d done? Mason had broken with everything that they had agreed on.
Julian was married to Danielle and Finn. Wouldn’t he break with them if they harmed each other?
Or would he simply try to figure out what had gone wrong?
Cole took a long breath. Julian didn’t understand. Mason had caused the death of their sub. His sub. Mason had put pleasure before the woman Cole had pledged to protect.
He was in the right. Surely.
He stared at the door Julian had shut behind him, memories of Mason playing through his head.