by Kitty Thomas
He laid one across the bed for Claire. “You probably don't want to wear jeans until the brand heals. I would stick to loose cotton dresses. Did Ari get you any of those?”
She nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
He helped Saskia into the other robe.
“Who do you think it is? The police?” Claire asked.
Kane shook his head. “The police don't ring doorbells like that. I have my own suspicions. If I'm right, he might need backup.”
When all of them were reasonably dressed they went upstairs to find out what was going on. Claire could hear the shrieking well before she reached the front of the house.
“You've already replaced me with some whore?” a woman's voice shouted.
“Already? Holly, it's been going on a year,” Ari said. “We were done. You made that very clear. And I should have kicked your ass out before that if we've decided to settle finally on honesty between us.”
Ari and a woman with dark blonde hair stood in the kitchen.
“You are such a drama queen,” she said. “We weren't done. I told you I got a modeling contract. I had to take it. It was a huge opportunity for me. What? You wanted me to sit around here like a bored housewife and be your little fuck doll with no ambitions of my own?”
Claire winced at that. Wasn't that her life now? And she'd happily gone along with it. For the longest time, her greatest ambition had been just to survive. And now it seemed to be orgasms, which made her feel self-conscious—like she wasn't aiming high enough in life.
“That is not what happened,” Ari said. “Paris obviously gave you a creative memory.”
“Whatever.” She looked up and saw them standing there. “Hey Saskia, still being a good obedient little slave for your pervert master? How many other men does he have to share you with before you realize he's just not that into you?”
“Are you still an insufferable brat?” Kane asked.
Saskia blazed across the floor and slapped Holly across the face. Before the blonde could react, Ari had restrained her. Holly, not Saskia.
“That's ENOUGH!” he said. “All you're doing is reinforcing the mutual decision to end this. Do you want to know what I think happened? I think Paris wasn't all you dreamed it would be. I think you saw the unappealing side of the work involved in modeling and that it isn't just about people catering to your whims all day. I think you realized what you lost and came crawling back. And it's too late. It was too late as soon as you walked out the door.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “Really? That's not what I heard. I heard you spent weeks moping. Drinking away your sorrows. Admit it baby, you missed me.” Her lips turned down into a pout that she'd no doubt used on him to get her way many times in the past.
Ari let go of her, and she spun around to face him. “You know what we had was hot. You like the fire. The struggle. Admit it. No matter what you say, you don't want some perfectly obedient pet who says Yes, Master and No, Master and never ever thinks to defy you. You want the passion of the struggle. What we had was hot and you know it.”
Was that true? Claire wondered. Did this woman present a challenge he liked? Claire couldn't defy him that way. It wasn't in her. All she wanted to do was please him. Was he going to get bored with that? Did he want a woman he had to overpower constantly? Did he need that sort of constant stimulation? Maybe that's all the branding was, not some sign of something permanent and secure, but him trying to raise the stakes.
She remembered that first night, the look of triumph on his face after he'd overpowered her and changed their positions. Did he prefer that to her obedience?
“You've never known the first thing about what I want,” he said.
Holly reached out and grabbed Ari's cock through his jeans. Claire's mouth fell open. Ari pushed her away.
“Get. The fuck. Out.” he said. “And if you ever ring my doorbell like that again, I will file a restraining order.”
But Holly wasn't done. She spun to face the others in the kitchen, giving Claire a long, slow look.
“Another blonde, Ari? Really, that's so predictable. Has he been putting you in schoolgirl outfits, too? He has this thing for naughty schoolgirls. So, how serious is it? How long have you been his little rebound slut?”
Ari grabbed Holly's arm and started dragging her down the hall.
“Fucking let go of me! If you leave a bruise I'll report you to the police.”
“Fine,” he growled. “Either way we'll get a restraining order, and neither of us gets to be within five hundred yards of the other. Works for me.”
She continued to struggle.
“How many drinks have you had?” Saskia asked. She'd practically stolen the question out of Claire's head. The woman did seem a bit drunk.
But Holly ignored the question. “Wait,” she said.
Ari loosened his grip, and she wrenched free, taking a few steps back. They'd all made it out into the hallway by this point.
Holly held up her hands.
“Are you going to be calm and behave like a rational human being?” Ari asked.
The blonde took in the four other people in the hallway and smiled. “Okay, fine. You want this other slut. For now. I can wait. And Kane has Saskia. But what about the bald guy? He's the odd man out. I could take him and then we could be a sixsome. Is that even a thing?”
“Fuck no,” Marcus said.
This time it was Marcus who grabbed her around the arm and hauled her to the door. Ari pressed his thumb against the keypad, the door opened, and Marcus shoved her outside.
“Don't come back,” Ari said. “I'm not kidding about the restraining order. Sober up, and stay out of my life.”
They all watched out the window as she screamed, her hands balled into fists, looking as though she were going to make a run at the door. But after a few minutes of this, she stalked off, got into a yellow sports car, and zoomed away, narrowly missing backing into one of the gates.
“And that is why you never got a painting of Holly,” Kane said as if it needed to be said. There was a long pause and he sighed. “We need to go. I'll call you in a few weeks when our girls are healed.”
After Holly, the mood of everything was broken. Kane, Marcus, and Saskia got their things together and left. Then it was just Ari and Claire standing in the front hallway.
“You should probably get some rest,” Ari said quietly.
19
Ari bolted from bed.
“Please... please... no... NO!” Claire shrieked.
He heard her writhing and fighting with the blankets in her sleep. Ari grabbed the key and raced up the stairs, his heart pounding in his ears. By the time he reached her, she'd woken. She huddled against the wall, tears streaming down her cheeks, a terrified expression on her face as she tried to sort out what was real and what wasn't. It seemed to take her a minute to relax when she realized it was Ari standing over her in the darkness, not the man of her nightmares.
He unlocked the cuff and picked her up. She trembled in his arms, her cheek resting against his neck as he carried her down the stairs. She hadn't had the nightmares since her first night with him. He'd thought they were past them. It had been a naïve hope. Had he thought he could erase that man and those nightmares with a brand? Had that been what he was trying to do?
Ari put her in his bed and climbed in with her. He held her and stroked her hair as she tried to stop shaking in his arms.
“Claire,” he said softly after a few minutes when her body had finally settled into his embrace. He carefully interlocked his fingers with hers.
“Yes, Master?”
“Do you know what triggered it?” He had his suspicions. He'd created a secure environment for her, and he knew she felt safe inside it. Maybe even happy. But Holly's dramatic scene earlier... he knew it had unnerved her.
She was quiet for a long time.
“Tell me,” Ari said.
“I think it was because of what happened tonight.”
Ari knew she didn't mean the brand.<
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He sighed, his thumb stroking the back of her hand. “You don't have to worry about Holly.”
“You don't want her back?”
He felt her cringe as she asked the question.
He kissed the top of her head. “Never. I've never branded anyone before you. I would never permanently mark someone like that if I wasn't sure we were forever.”
“But you branded me before she came back.”
“It doesn't matter. She never meant to me what you mean to me.”
He shifted her weight carefully so that she lay on her stomach on the bed. He checked her bandage to make sure it hadn't come off and that she hadn't irritated the healing brand in her panic. Amazingly her bandage was still in place. He sighed and stroked her hair.
Neither of them could say I love you. It was too strange for their situation. How could you honestly say you loved someone whose freedom you'd taken away? If you love something, set it free. And Ari just couldn't do that. Besides, they existed well beyond the prosaic parameters of normal coupledom.
He'd told Holly he loved her. Had he meant it? He wasn't sure, but he knew now that he couldn't have possibly loved her because what he felt for Claire was far beyond anything he'd thought he'd felt for his previous pet.
“Try to get some sleep,” he said. Ari held her until her breathing evened out into the patterns of sleep. Then he got up and tucked her in.
He went to the closet and put on a pair of jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and some shoes and went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. It was five a.m. and he knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. He wouldn't be able to get the sound of Claire's screams out of his mind.
The more he thought about it, the more enraged it made him. He had her locked out here in his fucking fortress where no one could possibly find her. And even if they could, they couldn't get in. And that monster still haunted her dreams. He still owned her. Still controlled her.
Ari couldn't be sure if he was more angry at the man who'd done this to her or at her for still not belonging completely to him even after he'd permanently marked her. Or was his anger at Holly for blowing in like a chaos tornado and ruining what should have been a special night?
He slammed a coffee mug on the counter. When the coffee was done, he poured a cup, put a handful of dog treats in his pocket, and went outside. The air was brisk still, but winter had begun to thaw into spring. Trees had already started to bud, and a few colorful blooms appeared here and there on ornamental trees nearby.
He walked along the perimeter of the property, sipping from the steaming cup. Instead of hyping him up, the caffeine somehow seemed to soothe his jangled nerves. It wasn't long until the fox was trotting along beside him. Ari stopped and dropped a dog treat on the ground.
Arnold poked at it with his nose as if he were exploring some new and arcane thing.
“It's the bacon flavor. You like these. Stop being a prima donna.”
The fox let out a shrill whine as if offended and gobbled up the treat. Suddenly remembering just how much he did like bacon, he began to jump up on Ari, sniffing and licking ardently at the side pocket of his jeans.
“Down,” Ari said.
But the fox didn't listen. Foxes never listened to anything. Ari pushed Arnold off him, dug the treats out of his pocket, and sat on the ground next to the fox who was now doing a reasonable impersonation of a sugar-hyped toddler.
Ari put the bacon-flavored morsels on the ground, not bothering to dole them out one at a time. He drank his coffee while he watched Arnold making gleeful sounds and practically pouncing on each dog treat as if it were live prey he'd tackled to the ground himself.
When he was finished, he glared at Ari, a betrayed expression on his face.
“That's all. You can't have any more. You'll get sick and fat. Do you want to be a roly poly fox, barely able to run down your own dinner?”
Arnold just blinked at him.
Ari stroked the fox's ears, but Arnold was in no mood for cuddling. He put up with it for about two seconds before turning and darting off down the hill to the nearest gate.
“Just wait,” Ari called out after him, “I'll fatten you up, and then you'll never squeeze out.”
Arnold seemed unconcerned about this.
Ari sighed and finished his coffee. He wanted to punish Holly for showing up at his house the night before even as he knew he couldn't.
Holly wasn't even the real problem. Somewhere deep down he'd known since the first night he'd heard Claire's screams that he'd have to do what he was determined to do now.
A couple of weeks passed. Holly hadn't returned. But Claire felt a tension now with Ari. She'd been right. Something had come along to break everything and destroy the fantasy. Had it been Holly? Or the nightmare that night? Had he finally realized how irrevocably damaged she was? He'd moved her to sleep in his bed and had kept her there.
She should be happy sleeping with him every night. But he didn't touch her as much as he had before. But maybe it was the brand. Logic said he was just taking care of her so she healed properly. For the first few days he'd changed the bandages twice a day. He'd put a salve on them. He'd gently cleaned the healing injury.
She felt a growing distance from him. A kind of anger. And she didn't know what she'd done wrong. All the while she berated herself for wanting this man to want her.
Claire watched warily as he prepared their breakfast. There was something different about him this morning. A scary sort of menace seemed to roll off him. Before, he'd had such a steadying energy. It was only now in its absence that she could appreciate just how calm she usually felt just being near him.
“Master, are you mad at me?”
He looked up from the frying sausage in the skillet. “Why would I be mad at you?”
She shrugged. “You seem different.”
He laughed, but it wasn't the laugh you heard after a joke.
He put the sausages and eggs on two plates with forks and carried them to the table, then he poured two glasses of milk and brought them over as well.
“Sit and eat,” he said.
Claire sat. Usually he fed her. Sure she could feed herself, but there was an intimacy in that shared act between them. He was mad at her. She felt the tears start to slip down her cheeks.
Ari sighed. “I'm not mad at you. This isn't about you. It's about him. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've decided to kill him.” The deadly look in Ari's eyes left no doubt that he was serious. He intended to take a life. This wasn't a bluff.
“Him?” she asked. But she knew. She felt both elated and terrified by this idea. What if Ari wasn't the one who walked away from the confrontation? What if that man did? What if...?
“Do you remember where he kept you?”
She considered lying. It had been nearly four years, after all. It would be reasonable to forget the way.
“Claire?”
“Yes, Master. I remember.”
“Good. You will write down the directions.”
“I-I don't know it that way. I know it if I go. I have to see things to remember how to get places I've only been to once or twice.” She'd never been good at mentally retracing her steps to find things. She had to physically retrace them.
“You're not fucking going,” he growled.
She jumped at his tone, but pressed on. “Anyway, he's long gone by now.”
“I know that. But he probably didn't put the house up for sale, being a killer and all. He may have left behind evidence or some identifying information that might help me hunt the motherfucker down.”
“If you're going, I'm going,” Claire said. Her breath stuck in her throat. She hadn't openly defied him in... well not ever. And she definitely didn't want to start acting like Holly. But she couldn't stand the idea of being locked in this house and him out there hunting that man. What if Ari never came back? She might die in this house. Or what if he took Ari's wallet, found the house, and somehow got in? She chanced a glance up to find Ari
staring at her. She couldn't read his expression.
“Fine,” he said.
They were silent the rest of the way through breakfast. After breakfast, while Ari cleaned the kitchen, Claire went to their now-shared walk-in closet and put on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a lightweight jacket, and boots. Her brand was still sore, but the jeans weren't painful.
As soon as the brand had healed enough she'd spent half an hour staring at it in the full-length mirror of the walk-in closet, trying to decide how she felt about this thing that marked her as belonging to Ari forever. She wasn't supposed to want that mark on her flesh. It wasn't as though he'd asked her if she wanted it. He'd merely explained—as gently as possible—what he'd planned to do. He'd never even pretended she had a choice. And yet, she did want it.
“Are you ready?” Ari asked, standing in the doorway, the agitated energy still rolling off him. She glanced down to find a gun holstered at his hip. Her gaze rose quickly to his.
“Just in case,” he said.
She followed him out to the garage. They passed her silver Lexus on the way to one of his cars. He unlocked the door on a nondescript black sedan which somehow looked more conspicuous than if they'd just taken the red sports car. She got in and they pulled out of the driveway.
The drive was long. Neither of them spoke except for her giving him directions as each turn and stretch of road jogged her memory. The journey took them through the city, then out to the other side, through suburban neighborhoods, and out into a somewhat more rural area where the houses were farther apart and many were abandoned, as if people had just forgotten this area existed—or no longer cared that it did.
Finally they pulled up to a dilapidated green farmhouse. Ari put on some black gloves and got out of the car. Claire was right on his heels, her breathing going shallow from anxiety even before they reached the door.
Stones were falling out of the columns, and the rotting wood of the porch creaked when they walked over it. A raccoon scurried out from under the planks and darted across the field. There was an old rusted orange truck off to the side of the house.
