Maybe she was always this...this deceitful thing, and I just couldn’t see it back then. But no, she was just a young woman in pain. I truly don’t believe there was malice in her back then. Although I don’t know if I can even trust myself anymore. Everything I thought I knew… I was such a fool, so blindsided by what was to come.
But for awhile, I thought I could still hold everything together. Her father’s company. Her. I thought we could make it, that I could be strong enough for all of us.
She blinks up at me in the darkness, those luminous eyes that I so long mistook for soul-searching. I break her gaze and roughly undo her wrists. “Get your beauty sleep. You’ll need it, considering what I have planned for you tomorrow.”
Fifteen
7 Years Ago
Daphne
“Wake up, sleepy kitten,” Logan’s gently teasing voice wakes me. “We’re home.”
I blink open my eyes. We went for another beach outing, something we’ve done several times this summer, even though it’s not even technically summer anymore. September’s just begun but that meant the beaches were less populated.
Logan and I swam in the ocean like we always do, my favorite part since it’s an excuse for him to sometimes put his hands on me. Like an idiot, I live for those touches.
But things have been so bad at home that I was especially eager for the escape today. Because I’m a terrible person. Eager to leave her ill mother and worried, moody, anxious father… But Mom told me to go, said she’d be angry if I didn’t.
And the day on the golden sand, stretched out beside Logan, counting the freckles on his arm and dreaming up new constellations from the way they’re arranged while the waves crashed in the background and the sun warmed my skin…heaven.
My whole body is still relaxed from the day as I sit up in the truck, still sleepy. “What time is it?” I reach for my phone only to find it’s run out of battery.
“About nine o’clock.”
“Wow.” I scrub my face, the smell of salt and sand permeating Logan’s truck. “Sorry to just conk out on you like that.”
He smiles sideways at me as he pulls into the driveway in front of Thornhill. “Don’t be. You’re angelic when you sleep.”
His eyes linger on me and the intensity that seems to occasionally spark between us lights up like a firecracker in the small space of the cab.
I want to reach out and touch his face. I want to climb his body like I did in the ocean when I pretended to be afraid of something in the water even though I knew it was really just seaweed catching at my feet.
I want to ask him if it really is just obligation that’s had him spending so much time with me or if it’s something else, if he sees me like a man sees a woman. If there could ever be something between us or if I’m going to be doomed to this hopeless longing forever.
But the moment is suddenly broken when the front door of Thornhill crashes open, slamming against the wooden frame of the house, and my father storms out.
“Where the hell have you been?” he shouts.
I stumble out of the truck. “Daddy, I’m so sorry, what’s going on?”
And…that’s when I realize he’s not talking to me at all. It’s Logan he’s shouting at. “My wife is dying and you have your cell phone turned off all day? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dad gets right up in Logan’s face. “She’s turned and could be a matter of days if we don’t save her now and you’re off gallivanting with—”
A matter of days? Oh Mama.
Then Dad’s eyes turn disdainfully my way, looking me up and down. “And you would just abandon your mother like that? I thought I raised you to be a better daughter.”
His words cut to the quick and I flee towards the house.
“Daphne!” Logan calls after me but I don’t turn to look back. I have to see Mom. A matter of days. And I missed one of them, at the beach, being one of those idiot girls I hate, stupid about a boy who doesn’t even like me back.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks by the time I make it to Mom’s room.
And she does look worse than when I left her this morning. She’s got an oxygen mask on and her skin, it doesn’t look right. It seems papery and gray and like the veins are too close to the surface.
“Mama!” I cry, rushing to her bedside and crashing to my knees beside it, taking her hand. Her eyes are sunken and they move slow, like it takes her effort to even move them to look at me.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here!”
But she shakes her head and motions for me to remove her oxygen mask.
“You need it.”
She frowns at me in that demanding way that is so Mom, I smile through my tears and do as she asks.
Her eyes soften but she looks so tired, a frail shell of her former beauty. “I’m glad,” her voice comes out a frail whisper. “I’m glad you went. Too much of your life,” she takes a heaving breath, “in this sick room.”
“No, Mom, all I want is to be with you.” More tears well and spill down my cheeks. Please, the last thing I want her to think is that she’s a burden. “You’re the best part of my life.”
She smiles at that and then lifts a wan hand to run through my hair. “A mother’s job is to send her daughter out into the world. To see her happy.” A big, heaving breath. “Not to hold her back like your father and I have all these years.”
I shake my head fervently. “You haven’t held me back. I’ve been so happy.”
“You will be. You will be. Live your life. For me. Swear you will. Swear it.”
I nod, trying to swallow back tears. “I swear.”
“Good,” she breathes out. “Because I want you to spend every day at the beach. To fall in love a hundred times. Or maybe just once with the right man.”
I can’t help lowering my eyes as my cheeks flush.
Mom squeezes my hand. “Oh darling. Logan?”
I open my mouth to tell her it’s just a stupid crush but when I look up, she’s beaming at me. “He’s a good man. And I see the way he looks at you. Like you hang the moon and stars.”
And then she relaxes back into the bed, her eyes closing. I suspect it’s taken more effort than I thought for her to say so much, but still she whispers. “I’m so glad. You’ll need someone strong to look out for you when I’m gone.”
I shake my head and start to chide her for negative thinking, but only her gentle snores meet me. She’s fallen asleep.
Her hand is cold in mine and when I feel along her arm and her feet, her entire body is cold. So I climb in bed beside her and nestle in behind her, chafing her arms lightly to warm her up.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Mama,” I whisper, terrified I don’t believe my own words. “Everything’s going to be okay. Daddy’s going to fix you, just you wait and see.”
But the next morning, when I wake up, it’s to the loud buzzing of machines alerting of a problem.
And my mother is cold in my arms.
Dead and gone from this world.
Sixteen
Present Day
Daphne
A huge dark shape moves over me in the darkness, then settles behind me, grabbing both of my wrists in one strong hand and holding them at the small of my back.
“Surrender,” he murmurs, his cock gliding along my fingers and then settling in the cleft between my legs. He is a wall of heat behind me as his body weight settles into the mattress. His cock a hard, unyielding promise. My hands fist but my bottom rises to meet his thrusts. “Let go. Let yourself be mine. Every part of you. Don’t hold a single part back.”
“Logan,” I whisper. I flex my fingers and he releases my wrists, but only so he can guide them over my head where he takes hold of them again.
But not before a dark glint catches my eye. The ring is a weight heavy on my finger. Not a diamond, though. A signet ring crowned with a gold beast’s head. The mark of his claim. My heart soars at the sight.
Logan threads his thick fingers with my small o
nes, covering my hand with his. In the dark, my lips curve.
“I was always yours.”
My eyes snap open and the sun hits me in the face. My pussy’s tight and aching, my hips rocking towards the ceiling. I breathe out in frustration, so turned on from my dream it must have freaking woke me up.
And no wonder. I look down at myself and my breath hitches again. I’m still covered in Logan’s cum. Was it only last night? He barged in here, made me beg and then…
I turn and bury my face in the pillow, wishing I could have stayed in the dream a little longer. Maybe in that dream world he would have eventually let me touch him. Maybe even wrapped his arms around me like he did that one night…after the funeral, when I felt more alone than I ever had before in my life.
But then Logan came.
I blink and lay on my side, staring at the sun pouring in the eastern window. For once in my life, there’s no rush to be anywhere. No lab tests, no meetings, no board breathing down my neck.
No inconvenient fiancés.
Still not getting out of bed, I reach over and pull out the bedside table drawer. The diamond flashes at me from the engagement ring. I pulled it off and tossed it in there as soon as I could, along with my phone.
Tethers to my old life, which feels increasingly far away. If only I could walk away forever, wave a wand and have all my responsibilities disappear.
The old Daphne would never feel this way. But…is that necessarily a bad thing?
I shove the drawer shut. I was going to call my dad, check in, but I’m not in the mood. The last few times I’ve called, he’s been asleep or busy with PT anyway. I can call him later and it’ll be fine. And I can pretend this is my life—a simple existence as Logan’s plaything—a little longer.
If I stop and think too hard, I know nothing about this is simple. And yet it is at the same time.
I close my eyes and will the dream to continue.
His arms around me.
But it’s not a dream that plays behind my eyelids. It’s the memories again. Memories I can’t escape, that somehow feel so fresh it’s as if it all happened last night.
His arms around me that terrible night, comforting me as I wept for my mother. How safe and cherished he made me feel. I think… I think that was the last time I ever felt that until… until now. Until he came back into my life.
First with my mom’s death and then his disappearance out of nowhere. Everything just sort of…stopped.
I just…stopped.
Emotionally and as a person, all the gears inside me slowed down and came to a grinding halt.
I was hurting so bad and there was no one there to help me understand or figure out how to get through it. Certainly not my father.
I frown and finally roll out of bed, heading for the shower.
The shower spray is cleansing hot. I wash, rinse, and rewash my hair several times, and survey the marks on my body. Mostly faded. Will Logan give me more today? Please, Master, will you whip me again? My laugh echoes around the luxuriously tiled room.
Dear gods, what is my life?
Because the thing is, while I might have been frozen in amber at 19, now at 27, I am waking the fuck back up. In a completely full-grown woman’s body.
I get out and blow-dry my hair, taking the time to style it. The woman in the mirror is a sloe-eyed seductress. I pucker my lips and she blows me a kiss.
Have I ever done this? Enjoyed a lazy morning, primping in the bathroom? Surely there was a moment in my teens when I posed for the mirror, figuring out how to get my hair to fall in sultry waves just so.
I wrack my brain but there’s no memory of happy time to myself. My teen years were dedicated to school, research, taking care of my mom. No fun with girlfriends. Not even a sleepover.
Not that I regret it. But, other than being the youngest recipient of the Avicennius grant, and a straight A student, and a dutiful daughter, who was I then?
Who am I now?
I run the brush through my hair. The woman in the mirror looks more serious now, but still calm. Of course she is. She doesn’t have a schedule. She has nothing to do but look beautiful and follow Master’s commands.
I envy her.
It could be like this forever.
I grip the edge of the countertop. No, I can’t think that. Is that what I want? To be Logan’s slave? His plaything?
But I’m more than a plaything. Isn’t that what I just realized? It’s not a one-way street.
I look myself in the mirror and I’m finally honest with myself: I’m not here for the patents. Whatever Logan’s motives, I’m here because I got a taste of being awake and alive, and I can’t go back.
Was your old life so much better anyway? The beauty in the mirror looks me straight in the eye. Well? Was it?
A company on the brink of collapse. A father who loves me only as an extension of his own scientific accomplishments. A fiancé I never wanted.
Still, it’s not like I can just give all that up, can I? Walk away from my responsibilities?
Were they your responsibilities in the first place? Was it your life? Your choice?
Yes. Everything I worked for, everything I was—I wanted. My heart starts beating quicker at all the rebellious thoughts. Right?
A sharp knock has me scurrying out of the bathroom. By the time I open the door, Logan is gone. Either that, or little elves delivered a cart with a silver, covered breakfast tray to my door. I roll the cart inside, my stomach clenching at the smell of bacon.
When I remove the cover, a note falls to the floor. My daily instructions.
After you eat, open the box by your bed.
I’m too curious to wait. Munching on a strip of bacon, I head to the bedside table where, sure enough, Logan left a plain black box, a bit bigger than the kind fancy chocolates might come in. It could hold anything.
As soon as I open it and see the gleaming metal, I know. My stomach swoops and my heart starts to beat faster.
Each butt plug is numbered strangely. 11:00-12:00. 13:00-14:00. 15:00-16:00. And the largest: 19:00. Times of the day, I realize. I’m to wear each one for an hour, graduating in size. This is my only task for the day.
Under the box is a final note. Meet me in the dungeon at 19:30.
The dungeon. Unf. My pussy clenches. I pick up the smallest butt plug and grimace at my distorted reflection.
But it’s immediately followed by a thrill of excitement.
Tonight, Logan claims all of me.
* * *
He left a final note with further instructions with my lunch. I could walk down the stairs to the dungeon. But as soon as I passed through the heavy doors, I had to crawl.
But he laid out a carpet. Red. Strewn with rose petals.
A second before I cross the threshold, I drop to my knees. I can’t describe what it feels like, the dirty thrill I feel at lowering myself to the ground. It’s dirty and sexy and when I crawl seductively, I can feel his eyes on me almost like a physical thing. Can he see the large plug in my ass from this angle? Gods, I never knew there could be such power in being on my knees.
I crawl until Logan’s feet come into view. They’re bare, roped with veins and dusted with dark hair. He’s seated on a huge throne-like chair, the grandly carved wood dark with age. A king in his castle.
I settle myself on my knees before him and wait. Seconds tick by like years.
“Did you follow my instructions like a good girl?” His voice is a throaty growl.
I dare then to look up. “Yes, Master.”
His eyes gleam. “Up.” He indicates the table in the center of the room. With a shaky sigh, I rise and climb onto the leather-padded top. Sitting like a patient waiting for a doctor, bare ass naked.
Except this patient has a huge butt plug stretching her sphincter. I subtly lean on one hip.
“On your back,” Logan orders, and leaves his throne to collect items from a cabinet.
Deep breath. I lay back and try to relax. As if this is a pap s
mear or some sort of similar torture.
Sessions with Logan have a big advantage over a regular doctor’s visit, though. There’s more pain, but way more chance of orgasms.
I school my face into a blank expression as Logan returns, rolling some sort of cart with him. His shadow falls over me and my leg twitches. I shift on the table, trying to get comfortable with the biggest butt plug I’ve ever worn stuffed inside me. I might not know what’s coming, but that’s always been part of the thrill, hasn’t it?
“Do I need to tie you down?” Logan rasps when I shift again.
“No. I trust you.” I give him a nervous smile.
Nothing. He’s still wearing the mask. A black one tonight. With his silk shirt and slacks, he’s a thin mustache away from sexy Zorro.
And now I want to smile. I must be nervous. That’s why I’m making bad jokes, even if just in my head.
But the thing is, I meant what I just said. I do trust him, in spite of everything that’s happened. He’s never betrayed or hurt me. So I take a deep breath and still all my twitching limbs.
“Since you wore the nipple clamps so well.” He holds up a tiny jeweled ornament. Similar emeralds, but no clamp attached. It takes me a second to recognize what it is and when I do, the breath leaves my body.
Oh shit, he’s going to pierce me.
This is permanent.
“No comment?” he smirks at me. I shake my head slowly.
If this is what he wants, then I want it too.
Is it really that easy? Has it really been that easy all along? All I needed to come alive again this whole time, to find my freedom— the solution was never to clench tighter and try to control things like my life was a series of scientific labs steps to follow.
What I didn’t know, what I could never know without Logan coming back into my life and showing me, was that the truest freedom can only be found in ultimate surrender.
I don’t tell him this. Instead, I let my body sink into the table as he briskly brushes antiseptic over my nipples. The sharp, clean scent stings my nose. The act is supremely erotic. The silence, the slight tickle of the brush. The care Master takes with his slave. My breathing deepens, my body slipping into that submissive state, readying me for what’s to come.
Beauty and the Thorns Page 7
