All's Fair in Love and Mastery

by Sparrow Beckett

  No more holding back with Grant.

  Why had she fought him so hard on the collaring issue? She knew that he was nothing like Nigel—she’d known that all along. Holding him at arm’s length out of principle had been ridiculous, as though he couldn’t hurt her just because she wasn’t collared. All of the fighting they’d done over the past year had hurt worse than what Nigel had done to her—especially because she’d known she was doing it to herself. The truth was, she cared more about Grant than she ever had about Nigel. The puppy love she’d had with her ex wasn’t the same as the deep connection she felt with Grant. He’d never deserved to be painted with the same brush, and now that she looked back on things, it was obvious that all she’d done was waste time they could have been happy together.

  She’d been punishing Grant for another man’s shortcomings—scared enough to push him away because he had a history of liking women.

  Groaning, Dex rubbed a cold, damp hand over her tired eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” Echo asked. “Was it that bad?”

  “No, no. It was that good, actually. It cleared up a decision I’d been balking about for the last few months.”

  Echo whistled. “That’s the ultimate compliment you can give a love song—that it spoke to you.”

  “I—”

  There was a loud thump and the bushes to their left started to shake violently.

  Echo jumped to her feet and yanked Dex up beside her. Panic scrambled Dex’s thoughts as she tried to remember what to do in case of a bear attack. Cold dread filled her already icy veins. If they died here . . .

  The bushes rustled again, and Echo backed away pulling Dex along in a death grip. Dex’s heart fluttered wildly, and her breath caught somewhere between out and in.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Dex lied, sounding as terrified as she felt.

  A shadow—large, ominous, panting—slid from the shadows, prowling toward them. There was a flash of white teeth. It was impossibly tall—taller than any beast had a right to be. A bear.

  Like something out of a horror movie, Echo lurched backward, tripping over a tree root in the process, dragging Dex down.

  Instinctively, Dex curled into a ball on the wet ground, wet leaf mold strong in her nose, the taste of copper in her mouth.

  Fuck. She’d bitten her tongue. Could bears smell blood?

  “Curl up and cover the back of your neck!” she barked at Echo.

  She didn’t have time to check on her friend before the thing was upon them.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She was safe!

  Relief flooded through Grant so hard and fast that his knees buckled. He crawled the last few feet to the small figure curled on the ground. She lashed out with a foot straight at his face, screaming like a finalist in a karate tournament.

  Grant deflected the kick just before she connected, then grabbed her ankle before she could try again.

  “Arabella, it’s me!” Belatedly, he remembered his flashlight and flicked it on.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you have your flashlight on the whole time?” Arabella shouted, uncoiling and sitting up enough to smack him in the arm and shoulder a few times. “You scared the fucking shit out of us!”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled into her hair after he dragged her into his arms. It was hard to hug her while she was wearing a bulky life jacket, but it was smart of her to keep it on for the extra warmth. “We were looking for a light or a campfire. Easier to do when our flashlights were off or aimed low.” She kissed him hard on the mouth and he kissed her back, his eyes stinging. He’d put a brave face on for Luc and Tarka, but he’d been fucking terrified that something had happened to her.

  Visions of the two women drowning had plagued him during the entire search. They’d investigated the areas Grant thought Arabella would be most likely to go, but it had been complete luck that the spotlight’s beam had fallen on the beached canoe.

  “Why did you come out in this storm?” she admonished as she broke their kiss. “Someone could have gotten hurt! We would have been fine until things let up tomorrow.”

  He frowned at her and swatted her ass. “We couldn’t know that you were fine since someone didn’t bother take a walkie with her, or even a SPOT Trace.”

  “It’s my fault,” Echo cut in before Grant could get any further. “I was already leaving when she saw me. She wouldn’t even have gone canoeing at all if I hadn’t been hell-bent on going alone.”

  “And why were you going canoeing alone, young lady?” Tarka interjected, stalking up to Echo with a stiff fury in his bearing that made Arabella mutter “uh-oh” under her breath. “Wild is in the middle of nowhere. This isn’t Central Park, Echo Borden.”

  Tak sounded seriously pissed—as though Echo was his submissive and she’d put herself in danger. When they’d realized both women were missing from Wild, Tarka had been almost as freaked out as Grant, and when Luc had found the whiteboard note at the boathouse he’d started muttering about how some little girls needed a firm hand. Grant hadn’t realized how attached Tarka had gotten to Echo over the past few months. Knowing Tak, he might not have realized it himself.

  * * *

  * * *

  They took the aluminum fishing boat back to the lodge, leaving the canoe behind to retrieve tomorrow. Grant didn’t care if he ever saw the damn thing again.

  All the way back, he held Arabella on his lap and whispered threats in her ear about what he was going to do to punish her. She wriggled and kissed him, but didn’t once try to dissuade him.

  When they were back in the lodge, cold and soaked to the bone, Tarka took Echo by the hand and led her away. Echo flashed Arabella a gleeful look over her shoulder, and his little slave cackled.

  “Should I ask?” Grant murmured to her.

  “Oh, I’m sure you can figure that out easily enough.”

  He pinched her ass and she squawked in surprise.

  “Ow!”

  “Ow. She thinks that deserved an ow . . .” he muttered to himself. “Get your sexy ass upstairs, woman. We’re going to have a little talk.”

  “Nooo! Not yet. I’m too cold for that kind of talk.”

  He chuckled and picked her up, jogging up the stairs fast enough to make her squeal. When they were safely in their room, he stripped her clammy clothing off, then his own, and ushered her into the shower. By the time they were done, the bathroom was so thick with steam he couldn’t see the door.

  Wrapping her in a big towel, he perched her on the vanity and blew her hair dry so she wouldn’t get chilled. As he worked, she watched his face with an adoration any other Dominant would envy. His relief over finding her safe was making him think all sorts of pushy dominant thoughts, like how maybe he should propose or something.

  Propose though? Like actual marriage?

  He hadn’t thought he wanted that with anyone, but then again, Arabella wasn’t just some random, imaginary idea of a woman to settle down with sometime in the future. She was his best friend and he never wanted to be apart from her again—at least, not for longer than strictly necessary.

  “You don’t even seem worried about the punishment you’re going to get,” he observed, trying to distract himself from the intensity of this need to bind her to him more permanently. If she wouldn’t accept his collar, maybe marriage was another good way.

  “How bad can the punishment be? You saved me from having to listen to Echo sing the lizard family song all night. Compared to that, your peril isn’t that perilous.”

  He tsked at her. “So sassy for a girl who’s now going to have to sing me the lizard family song on top of the punishment I already had planned.”

  “Damn it. You, Master Grant, are diabolical.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, woman.” He bit her shoulder just hard enough to make her squeak. “Are you feeling well enough to take your punishment now?”r />
  “Actually, I wanted to give you something to think about first.”

  He arched a brow at her, expecting her to do something lascivious, but she went to her duffel bag instead.

  After rifling around in her bag for a few moments, she withdrew a small velvet bag. When she turned back to him, her eyes were wide. She bit her lip and he frowned, wondering what had his little spitfire so uncertain. After all that had happened between them, she couldn’t be worried about showing him whatever was in the bag.

  “So, you’d have to admit that we don’t exactly have an old-school power exchange relationship, right?”

  “Not exactly, no, but it works for us and our dynamic isn’t anyone else’s business.”

  “See? That’s what I like about you—you’re so open-minded.” She smiled sweetly.

  What was she up to now? If there was a cock cage in that bag, he was going to sprain his hand on her ass before they went back downstairs.

  “Up to a point,” he said cautiously.

  Her face fell and she looked at the bag in her hands.

  “I mean, I know this is pretty unorthodox, but I couldn’t think of a way to bring this up that wouldn’t seem really . . . forward.”

  “You don’t usually have a problem being forward.”

  “But this is topping from the bottom—I mean, really seriously topping from the bottom. Probably the worst case of it in history. We’d have to agree to keep this a secret between us. Well, not a secret, but—”

  “Arabella.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I could watch you stumble all over yourself all day—you’re so fucking adorable when you’re uncertain about something. But you’re working yourself up for nothing. This is me. You can tell me anything. It doesn’t mean I’ll agree, but I’ll seriously consider it.”

  She held the bag out to him and he took it, watching for a moment as she laced her fingers together in front of her and twisted them.

  “Open it!”

  He loosened the ties on the bag and peered inside, but the velvet ate up the low lighting in the room, giving him no clue as to what he was holding. Curious, he tipped the contents of the bag into his palm.

  A thick steel chain coiled on itself in his hand, the links matte rather than bright.

  “You—bought me a necklace?” He lifted his gaze to hers to find her wincing and grimacing.

  “Well, no. It’s . . . well . . . a collar,” she finished, blowing out a long gusty breath.

  “You want to collar me?”

  She opened her mouth and her brows shot up. “What? No! It’s for . . .” She pointed at him, then at herself. “For you to give me—I mean, if you want.”

  If he wanted? He thought about the collar that was still tucked away and stifled a laugh. Apparently they were on the same page, and that was fucking amazing.

  “I don’t want to presume,” she stammered, “but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I never thought I’d want this again, but I do. With you. Every time I think of you when we’re apart I wish I had something—some symbol of how we feel about each other that I can touch. I never thought I’d want a collar again, but with you it’s all different. I wasn’t sure how to tell you I was serious and not just trying to please you.” She smiled uncertainly, but her gaze on his was hopeful.

  Some people in the lifestyle would definitely think this was topping from the bottom, but right then he didn’t really care. She’d felt so strongly that she wanted to wear his collar that she’d bought her own?

  This was huge.

  He went to his own bag and pulled out the necklace he’d bought, hoping she wouldn’t freak. The stainless chain twirled at the end of his fingers. The two pieces of jewelry were remarkably similar.

  “Great minds think alike?”

  She stared at the custom chain he’d commissioned, her eyes round with surprise. Her lips parted, too, but she didn’t look horrified, she looked delighted. He held both necklaces in one hand and went to her.

  “I’d just decided to wait for a few more months before offering it to you. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d accept it, but I wanted to show you my feelings for you are serious.”

  He dragged the necklaces over one of her bare shoulders, around the back of her neck, down the other shoulder, then brushed them back and forth across her nipples, the chains clicking against her nipple piercings.

  She lowered her gaze from his and squirmed a little, then knelt at his feet and pressed her forehead to the floor. After a long moment, she sat up and smiled, unshed tears shining in her eyes.

  “Master, I would be honored to wear your collar.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, hating to rock the boat but not wanting to have this moment of complete bliss only to have it yanked away minutes or hours from now.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I wouldn’t accept one from any other man, but I will always trust you.”

  He knew a moment of dread, hoping he’d never let her down. Of course he’d never cheat on her, but “trust” was a big, encompassing word, and it covered different things and came with different expectations depending on who was using the term. But, like himself, Arabella was pretty levelheaded and wasn’t one for drama. Whatever happened, they could sort it out.

  For what seemed like forever, he fought with the clasps, feeling like his hands were four sizes too big for the task and possibly belonged to someone else. She watched him struggle, her gaze filled with loving amusement.

  “If you laugh at me right now, we’ll be adding to our long, long discussion later. This is a very serious moment, young lady.”

  She groaned. “A discussion? Do you always have to phrase it that way? When you say we need to have a ‘discussion’ I have the urge to flip over and show you my vulnerable underbelly.”

  “That’s the whole point.” He smiled at her and slipped one chain around her neck. “I had a whole speech prepared at one point, but I think you sucked it out of my cock last night. So let me just say this—I love you, Arabella. If I fuck up please tell me and I’ll do my best to fix it.”

  “Fair enough.” She bit her lip and ran her fingers under her eye as a tear slipped out. “I love you, Grant. If you fuck up I’ll tell you with my big girl words, and if I fuck up I expect the same from you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  On the first try, he managed to fasten the chain she’d chosen, and he couldn’t help but hope it was a sign of good things to come. Then, of course, he struggled for a few minutes trying to fasten the one he’d chosen for her, just to keep him humble. By the time he was finished they were both shaking with laughter. Not exactly the kind of smooth collaring a Dominant always assumed they’d be able to manage, but luckily Arabella had never expected perfection from him.

  As he helped her to her feet, they grinned at each other. It was nice to see she was as giddy about this development as he was. They had already gone through so much just to get to where they were, that maybe the trials of their relationship would be over for a while.

  He touched the crown of her head, love swelling his chest so fully it ached. He’d never collared another woman, and with any luck and a lot of hard work maybe she’d be his indefinitely. It was hard to be sure whether she was ready to think of things as long term yet, but in his heart of hearts he knew she was the only woman for him. She always had been, even before he’d realized it.

  Epilogue

  Pain seared across Dex’s skin, and her whole body went rigid. Belatedly, she screamed, the white-hot slash too much to process all at once. She strained against the leather cuffs on her wrists and ankles, but her Master had made her chains so short she couldn’t wriggle out of place.

  And to think she used to be jealous of the women he played with? Fucking sadist.

  Only this morning, she’d been so excited to try out the new dungeon Grant had built in her basement . . . th
e sweet, summer child she’d been two hours ago.

  It was hard to believe he’d gotten so much work done over the past month—on top of moving in. He’d had way too much free time since he’d closed Wild for the season. Other than picking up some of the slack at Catacombs, he’d made his time all about her.

  His work-roughened hand smoothed over the spot he’d connected with and she hissed in protest.

  “You have to stay still, naughty pixie. I wouldn’t want to hurt you . . . by accident.”

  She opened her mouth to say of course he’d only want to hurt her on purpose, but he was dragging the end of his single tail whip over her skin, and the feel and scent of the leather made her moan. By the time he got to her pussy, he’d switched the whip for a smooth glass dildo. Ignoring her protests, he coaxed the toy into her slickness—it was damned cold, as if he’d packed it in ice. The strange sensation of cold inside her was only turning her on worse. Whimpering, she rocked on the dildo, unable to help herself even though she needed something on her clit far more than she needed something filling her. He knelt in front of her and fought one-handed to clamp her clit, but she was too wet for the clamp to stay on. Even so, she was shrieking at him by the time he’d given up, and felt raw and sore.

  His tongue flicking over the slippery bud did nothing to fix things, but he rose and left her hanging—literally. He yanked the dildo from her pussy, leaving her empty and needy, then ran his thumb along the glass phallus and licked the moisture there.

  She pouted at him. “I need that!” Whether she meant the dildo or his tongue was a mystery even to her.

  A Dommy eyebrow rose in disapproval, and she shivered at his utter deliciousness.

  “What a bad girl. You’d rather have a glass dick than your master’s cock?”

  “Nooo,” she whined, thrusting her tits out at him and enjoying the way his gaze went heavy lidded and approving. He caressed her breasts, pinching them far too lightly for her liking, then he was behind her again.