Once Upon a Dream

by Sierra Simone

  And with each and every one weal he cares for, the awful truth assembles itself in front of me.

  He has ointment for the welts.

  Which means he knew the welts would be there.

  Because he sent the dress in the first place.

  He was my date all along.

  I’m going to kill Mark. Maybe he’s the former assassin, but I am going to kill him so fast and so hard, and then I’m going to kill him again and again. How dare he?

  And how dare Lorne?

  I lied earlier. This was why I divorced my ex-husband. Because every whiskey-sweet moment inevitably turns sour; because every moment blissfully intoxicated is paid for with nausea and pain later. Because every heady, happy orgasm is stained by its price.

  I let Lorne finish; I let Lorne carefully rearrange my silk underthings and then tear free the bottom layer of the skirt, the layer that had inflicted so much pain.

  I let him smooth the skirt of my dress back down. And then I turn to face my ex as he stands up.

  “You were testing me,” I say quietly.

  He’s already shaking his head. “There’s no test you have to pass for me, Morgan, and there never was. I was proving to you, not testing you.”

  “Proving what, Lorne? That I’m too stubborn to take off a dress when there’s clearly something wrong with it?”

  He touches my jaw, and I turn my head away. Petulant, maybe, but prudent too: I don’t want him to see my eyes swimming with tears.

  Instead of answering my question, he asks one of his own. “Why did you really ask Mark to help you find a lover?”

  I don’t answer. I’m worried I won’t be able to speak without wavering, without choking on four years’ worth of loneliness and a lifetime of pride.

  “Was it because you knew he was a good enough friend to sense what you needed? Was it because you knew he would find a Dominant lover for you without you having to say the words out loud?”

  I still don’t answer, and I can’t look at him. But I do finally manage a tiny nod.

  Lorne lets out a long, jagged breath, pulls my face back to his and drops his forehead to mine, mask to mask. “Mark came to me because he is a good friend to you, no matter what you might be thinking right now. He came to me because he knew I could give you what you were looking for and keep you safe. And that’s what I was proving. That I could give you everything. That it could be enough, even if just for one night.”

  “I feel humiliated,” I say.

  “Would you still feel humiliated if it had been a stranger to give you this dress? To fuck you while you were welted up from it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “No. I don’t know.”

  “You were wet, Morgan. The dress made you wet.”

  “And that’s what you needed to prove? That I can be a switch after all?”

  He sighs and lifts his head from mine.

  “I was with you all night, Morgan. While you dressed, while you drove here, while you walked in. Because my touch was in that dress, because I was wrapping my desire and discipline around you before you even knew you’d see me. Yes, I wanted to prove that it could be fun and good—but only because you already wanted someone to prove that to you tonight as well.”

  I don’t have an answer to that, because it’s undeniably true.

  “You wanted to feel the weight of someone’s will on you,” he continues, “and I proved that I can do that with just a few nettle patches in your dress. For four years, I’ve been asking myself if there was anything I could have done, any argument I could have given you, any gesture I could have performed, to show you that you can play however the hell you like and still be the woman you need to be. I thought—”

  He stops, and a muscle leaps along the carved line of his jaw. He looks down at his hands, still holding the tube of ointment, and I hate that I can’t read his gaze right now, I hate that I can’t see his whole face.

  He doesn’t finish what he was saying, and I can’t think of what to say. I just came harder than I ever have; I came so good that my body is craving infinitely more. But I cannot be un-humiliated, and the sting of my pride is worse than the sting of the nettles.

  And…yes. I’m afraid.

  Still.

  Lorne screws the cap back onto the tube of ointment and then places it in my hand, curling my fingers around it. “Hydrocortisone cream. If the welts aren’t gone in two or three days, let me know.”

  “Thank you,” I say numbly.

  He takes a step back, and I realize he’s about to leave. A fresh bubble of panic swells in my chest.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “Do you want me here?”

  Always. “Of course not,” I say instead, making my voice as frosty as possible.

  I can’t let him see how much I want him, not after he embarrassed me, not after he lied. He’s plundered everything else of mine, and the fact that I enjoyed the plundering as much as him doesn’t soothe me in the least.

  He nods, as if he expected this answer. “Then I’ll go. And I am sorry.”

  “Sorry for which part?”

  Those gorgeous eyes trace my face. “All of it. But especially that none of it was enough.”

  And then he pushes through the gauzy veil separating our alcove from the ball and disappears into the lavish, glittering fray.

  4

  I cry all the way back to the city.

  I have my Secret Service team drive me back, not Mark, because I’m not entirely sure I won’t kill him for his part in Lorne’s deception, but mostly because I need to be alone.

  When I get to my hotel, I tear off the wings, the dress, the still-damp silk covering my pussy. I kick off my shoes and I throw the mask in the trash.

  And it’s when I’m climbing into the shower for a nice long shower-cry that I catch a glimpse of my ass in the mirror. Those welts which feel so huge and which throb in aching time with my raw, unhappy heart—they’re so small in reality. They’re the size of peas.

  Peas.

  And here I was acting like my dress was the sartorial manifestation of a Geneva Convention violation. Acting like Lorne had paddled my bottom raw before he fucked me.

  I nearly snort at myself through my tears. Some fierce Domme I am. A few pea-sized welts and I might as well have had a vibrator between my legs.

  I hate the following week. I hate work, I hate not working. I hate being with people and I hate being alone.

  I don’t go to the club, and whenever I masturbate, I think of Lorne fucking me against a wall, his stubbled jaw scratching my neck as the nettled-dress scratched my bottom. I think of the reverent aftercare—the kisses and the ointment.

  I think of his jagged, male sigh as he used my cunt to come.

  I never do put any more ointment on the welts. I find that the idea of not feeling them is worse than the irritated skin itself, and when they finally feel better after a day or two, I am strangely bereft.

  There’s only so many times a horny vice president can use a vibrator, and there’s only so many nights Morgan Leffey can endure being this restless and inflamed.

  On the eighth day, I break, and I find myself walking into the trendy but economical—and ostentatiously eco-friendly—offices of Lothian and Associates. It’s late, and Lorne is the only one still there.

  I leave my Secret Service people outside.

  Inside the glass and concrete space, I move to Lorne’s private office, where a light spills out into the dim co-working area. When I get to the door, I see him turned away, leaning over some papers while a hand lingers over his laptop keyboard, as if he’s about to take notes but can’t decide which ones yet.

  “Would you give it up for me?” I ask, stepping into the room. “Being a Sir to me?”

  His posture stiffens, and for a moment, I think he won’t turn to face me. But then he does.

  No mask, no dress-up. Just thick, dark hair that threatens to curl at the tips, just those bold eyebrows and those whiskey eyes. Just a jaw that could cal
ibrate protractors, and that greedy, sculpted mouth.

  He lifts his gaze to me, and I see wariness there. But also love.

  Fuck, he loves me. Still, somehow. After everything.

  “In a heartbeat,” he answers. “I’d give it up in a heartbeat for you.”

  I move around his desk so I can lean against it. Our knees touch.

  My voice is thick when I ask, “Why?”

  “You know why. I love you. I’d rather have you than anything else. But is that what you want?”

  I’m starting to cry again, and I swipe at my cheek. “No. Isn’t that stupid? I left you, I shut you out, I thought if we weren’t together, I wouldn’t be the kind of woman who wants her husband to choke her during sex.”

  “And what kind of woman are you now?”

  I offer him a tremulous smile. “The kind of woman who wants her ex-husband to choke her during sex.”

  I can tell he’s struggling to keep the space between us, that he’s fighting the urge to take control of me physically. I offer him my wrists, and without a second’s hesitation, he circles them both and yanks me into his lap.

  He’s already hard underneath my ass, and when I curl into his chest, I don’t feel like two different women—one who has her own Secret Service agents outside and one who would like to be fucked over a desk.

  I just feel like one woman. One Morgan.

  “I had this idea,” I murmur into his chest, “of whom I wanted to be. And it wasn’t a switch. It wasn’t a woman who enjoyed kneeling, ever, ever. It was so clear in my head of whom I should be. Even when I would never tell another woman the same thing. Even if I would tell a switch or submissive that she was wrong for having the same idea I did.”

  Lorne kisses my hair. “Ideas are meant to guide us, to help us—not the other way around. We can’t suffer and sacrifice just to keep the idea in place if it doesn’t serve us anymore.”

  “My whole life is ideas, Lorne. My entire career, my present, my future—it’s all spoken about as ideas. As beliefs.”

  “But is it not,” he counters gently, “also your job to marry ideas to reality? And to marry reality to new and adapted ideas?”

  “Shut up,” I tell him, which is my way of saying fine, you’re right.

  He hums in what sounds like amused indulgence and draws circles on my thigh with his finger. Even though his body is unmistakably aroused underneath mine, he is in complete control, content just to hold me. Just to cradle his prideful little ex-wife in his arms.

  “What made you come here tonight?” he asks, after a minute of us cuddling like this. “What made you change your mind?”

  “I wish,” I say slowly, “I could say I had a big revelation about kink and choice, and about how choice means we can stop doing something when it no longer works or when we change and no longer want it. About how choice means I can choose who I am in different places—when I am Morgan Leffey and when I’m your little witch. I wish I could say that I made peace with the word switch, and that I finally accepted you were telling the truth about standing in my shadow when it came to my career and my public life.”

  “You wish you could say?” Lorne asks, still drawing circles on my thigh. “So, you didn’t have these revelations?”

  “Well, okay, I did. But mostly I was just horny.”

  He laughs, his entire body shaking under mine. It feels so nice that I smile into his chest.

  “And I missed you,” I say into his shirt. His laughter fades a little and my voice gets quiet. “I missed you so much that I thought I’d break with it. I’m not old, Lorne, but I’m not young either, and I don’t want to scorn happiness because I’m scared.”

  He kisses my hair again, holds me tighter. “I can’t make your fears disappear,” he tells me. “But I can promise to hold you close whenever you’re afraid. I can promise to listen. And I can promise to stop, if that’s what you want.”

  I nod against him, sliding my hands up to his chest and sighing in contentment. “I know. I know that now. Sorry it took me a divorce and four years apart to believe you.”

  A low chuckle. “You wouldn’t be the Morgan I love if you made things so laughably easy.”

  Well. True. Of all the things I’ve been accused of during my ambitious—and frankly dramatic—career, being easy for other people has never been one of them.

  “So, what next?” I ask my ex-husband. I tilt my face up and nuzzle into his jaw.

  “Are you asking me what I want?”

  “Yes, Lorne.”

  He moves me so that he can look down into my face. His dark curls fall over his forehead, and like this, I can see the shadows on his cheeks from his long, thick eyelashes. “I want to marry you again,” he says softly. “I want to be in your bed every night, and I want to be by your side every day. I want to make up for every minute we’ve been apart.”

  “Oh,” I whisper. I press my hand against his face, my chest tight and my throat knotting up. Because I don’t deserve that. Not after what I’ve put us through. “I want that too, but are you sure you can trust me? I’m still trying to figure things out, and I don’t feel particularly trustworthy.”

  He manages to keep cradling me and shrug at the same time. “Trust isn’t a perfect thing, Morgan. Neither is faith. But what’s the alternative? Living without my little witch for another four years?” He brushes his nose over mine in a tender gesture. “Unbearable.”

  I should protest more for his sake, really, but what can I say? I’m Morgan Leffey. “Then let’s get married, ex-husband.”

  “And you’ll be mine? When it’s just the two of us?”

  I smile up at him. We’re so close now that we’re whispering against each other’s lips, like teenagers in the dark. “Are you asking because you’d like to start now?”

  “How you read my mind, ex-wife.”

  “And what would starting now look like?”

  “Well,” Lorne says, brushing his lips over mine as his hand finds its way to the button of my pantsuit trousers. “You would bend over my desk and present your cunt to me. And then I would fuck it. And then you would bring me back to your residence and I would fuck you some more. And when we woke up the next morning, we would pick a wedding date, and I would make plans to leave the firm, and I would dedicate the rest of my life to supporting your dreams. And then maybe wrapping you in rope and spanking your ass raw whenever we’re alone. How does that sound?”

  My trousers are unbuttoned now, and I climb out of his lap and push them down past my hips, along with my thong. And then I bend over his desk, looking back at him over my shoulder.

  “Sounds like we should get started,” I say. And then I wiggle my bottom a bit and add, “Sir.”

  His hand is already on his belt, his erection is already coming out. He rolls a condom on, and then in one brutal drive that has me grunting against his legal briefs and ecological impact surveys, he’s inside me, sending me to my toes.

  “Little witch,” he says fondly. And then he starts fucking me like I’m actually a witch and I’ve been sentenced to Trial by Cock to prove my innocence. “My sweet witch.”

  I’m going to come, I’m going to come, I’m going to come. And I’m smiling into all these surveys, because I wouldn’t be here if not for those welts from my dress. If not for meddling assassins and ex-husbands as stubborn as I am.

  “Well, Morgan le Fay,” he murmurs, stroking into me. “Is it enough?”

  I shatter into a thousand, glittering pieces.

  “Yes,” I breathe to the man I love, the man who can call me mine. The man who left pea-sized welts of devotion on my skin. “Yes. It’s enough.”

  Thank you so much for reading! The ball is only the beginning. Want more of the Constantines and the Morellis, as well as their world of excess, violence, and starcrossed love? Read STOLEN HEARTS.

  The flare of a cigarette, the sound of a stranger’s voice, and the handsome Irishman in the shadows--I wanted it all, but I wasn’t allowed to want. Ronan was danger and beaut
y, murder and mercy. To me, he was a mystery, but he was also the only man who ever knew me.

  One-click STOLEN HEARTS Now

  "Sophisticated, engaging, and will steal your heart. A five star read that I devoured!” - USA Today bestselling author Alta Hensley

  If you’re looking for more tales with the American Witch and a round table of sexy rogues, check out Sierra Simone’s American Queen, the first book of the New Camelot Series.

  Music Box Girl

  Prologue

  Cal

  The pointe shoes were the first thing Cal noticed.

  It wasn’t that the shoes seemed strange on their own. It was just that they were wildly out of place wherever the girls brought them. Slung over their shoulders when they bought their trenta iced green teas at Starbucks. Spilling out of tote bags as they floated in and out of the library. Tossed on the thick green grass as they burst out of the studio and flung themselves tiredly on the ground, like so many gazelles at rest.

  The second thing he’d noticed was that they weren’t girls…not really. The youngest was just on the cusp of eighteen, and the oldest was nineteen. They were in that liminal space between girl and woman, a space made all the wider by their long, sleek bodies and barely-there curves, by their sheltered lives in Purkiss’s cloister.

  The third thing he’d noticed was that Purkiss was a dangerous prick, which was unfortunate, because in a very real sense right now, he was Cal’s employer.

  Cal tossed his binoculars onto the passenger seat and rubbed a tired hand over his face, feeling every week of his thirty-nine years. He’d been out late the night before chasing down a cheating husband, out even later the night before that to prove to an insurance company that one of their disability claims was spending his nights doing cash-only work for a chop shop up in Fredricksburg. He should’ve gotten some sleep before coming out to the ballet school, but Purkiss had hired him to find out where his students were going at night, and Cal was a firm believer that one couldn’t find what was done during the night without understanding what was done during the day. Thirteen years in the Army and four years as a private investigator had turned that belief into a religion. Violence, crime and lies didn’t come from nowhere; they were there on the horizon of hard-working, honest daylight, if only one knew where to look.