Fearless

by Maren Smith

  Black Light: Fearless

  Maren Smith

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Maren Smith

  Black Collar Press

  BLACK LIGHT: FEARLESS

  ©2018 by Maren Smith and Black Collar Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art by Eris Adderly, http://erisadderly.com/

  e-Book ISBN: 978-1-947559-04-2

  Print ISBN: 978-1-947559-05-9

  Published by Black Collar Press

  Created with Vellum

  Black Light: Fearless

  He was the last thing she thought she needed, but she was everything he wanted.

  Abused and alone, Kitty had no idea how far she’d have to flee after she finally got the courage to run. She never would have guessed she’d end up halfway around the world, or in the home — much less the arms — of dominant Australian whip-master, Noah Carver.

  He knows she’s damaged, that she needs safety and time to heal, but the way her submission calls to him has Noah thinking more about what could be between them than her history.

  The only question now is what she fears more: standing up to her abusive ex-dom, or staying with a man she’s afraid to love?

  A Note from Black Collar Press

  Dear Reader,

  Kitty and Noah first appeared in Maren Smith’s novella Shameless in Black Light: Roulette Redux, released in February 2018. In this powerful story, we followed Hadlee’s return to BDSM after surviving Ethen’s torment. During the Roulette Redux event, she found her strength with the very sexy help of Garreth and Noah. While Kitty’s part was small, Maren left us all hanging by a thread with the brief mention of her at the end of Shameless, which led to the incredible novel you are about to read — Black Light: Fearless.

  If you haven’t read Shameless yet, that’s okay. Fearless reads beautifully as a standalone, but we promise you will love it even more if you take the time to read the novella in Roulette Redux before you dive in. Check out the blurb below, and grab a copy if you’d like to know the story of Hadlee, Garreth, and Noah as well.

  Shameless by Maren Smith

  He called her Piggy-girl, and for six months now Hadlee has struggled to leave that part of her in the past. Then Black Light sends out its second annual invite. For Hadlee, making it through the night means more than a month's free membership. It means a return of dignity, courage, respect — and just maybe, the one thing Hadlee isn't looking for... love.

  Available on Amazon + in Kindle Unlimited

  Black Light: Roulette Redux

  Without further ado, enjoy Black Light: Fearless!

  Thank you all for wanting to hear Kitty’s story as much as I wanted to write it.

  - Maren Smith

  Chapter 1

  Ethen O’Dowell had been her contracted dom for more than a year now and she’d never been more terrified of him than she was right now. Of course, she was such a mousy thing, Kitty-girl couldn’t remember when last she hadn’t been afraid. Like when traffic made her late coming home at nights, or when she stepped on the scale for morning weigh-ins to find she’d gained a few ounces—at five and a half feet tall, 115.2 was the weight he’d assigned her, that was her magic number—but this… this was different.

  This fear was colder, sharper. It cut in through her fingers, tightly clasped as they were in her lap, because this was the proper way for Kitty-girls to ride in the car. Straight and tall, and not shaking, because showing one’s fear only invited punishment. Only the guilty need be afraid of anything, as Ethen so often liked to say, but Kitty couldn’t help it. She shook, and shook, and couldn’t make herself stop. Every breath was a struggle; a shuddering inhale that her too-tight chest strangled back out on the exhale. The drumbeat pounding of her heart was so loud she was sure even he could hear it. Maybe that was why he kept glancing back at her as he drove them home. His eyes in the rearview mirror were every bit as cold as she was and, unless they happened to pass beneath an amber-lit streetlamp, they were black as the shadows that covered his lean, chiseled face.

  Pony-girl wasn’t shaking. As regal as ever, she sat on the front passenger seat, naked but for her harness and pony boots, and the tan trench coat they were allowed to cover themselves with only when they were out in public. Not that play nights at Black Light counted as ‘public,’ but the brief walk from the secret entrance through the psychic shop and down the street to the parking garage where Ethen had left his car, did. Usually they were allowed to take their headgear off for those walks, but not tonight. Tonight, Pony-girl sat with her white-blonde hair still pulled up tight in its ponytail mane and her black leather bridle and blinders still on. Her high pointed ears touched the cloth roof of the car. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t show it. She knew better.

  Behind Pony-girl on the seat to Kitty’s right, Puppy-girl was practicing slow, deep breathing behind the stifling black leather of her puppy mask. Her hands still encased in glove paws were on her knees, palms turned obediently upwards. Not once did she glance in Kitty’s direction, because to look anywhere but straight ahead was forbidden. Talking was forbidden, fidgeting was forbidden. The rule was eyes forward, attention fixed on the only one in this car whose comfort mattered: that was Ethen.

  Taking the highway out of D.C., they passed under another streetlamp. Again, Ethen’s cold stare found her in the mirror. What parts of his face that she could see were a mask of absolute calm, but she wasn’t fooled. No one in this car was. The silence was suffocating. The metallic bitter taste of bile kept creeping up the back of her throat. Her knee refused to stop jiggling up and down, despite the no fidgeting rule, and her hands squeezed at her own fingers, wringing and pulling at them in her nervousness. Her nipple rings under her trench coat were jingling. Could he hear that traitorous vibration over the hum of the engine and the rush of heated air blowing through the dash vents? God, she hoped not. She was in enough trouble as it was, and this wasn’t even her fault.

  How could it be? It wasn’t like Piggy-girl had told Kitty she was going to run away. Kitty hadn’t known, no one had. And for sure, she hadn’t kept Piggy hidden out of Ethen’s reach these last six months, either. She’d been as surprised as anyone else that Piggy-girl—Hadlee now, since she’d taken back her birth name—had shown up at Black Light to play in tonight’s Valentine Roulette challenge. From the moment Piggy—Hadlee—had ascended the stage to accept the dom who had spun her name on that wheel of chance, Kitty had known someone was going to pay for Hadlee’s new-found freedom. She’d known Ethen’s temper would be pricked by the time they left. She’d known he would choose a victim.

  She’d known then that, unless Hadlee took this same long and terrifying ride home with them, that the victim would be her. Because she had once dared to be Hadlee’s friend.

  Tapping the turn sign
al, Ethen took the next highway exit onto a rural backroad that would eventually wind them to the remote farmstead that he called home, and she called hell. As the car slowed enough to turn, he looked at her again. There were no lights here, just the neon glow of the driver’s dashboard illuminating the hard lines of his face. She didn’t need anything brighter to read the dark promise etched in the chiseled tightness of his jaw. He was going hurt her tonight, and it was going to be bad.

  The drive took twenty of the longest minutes of her life and yet was over way too soon when Ethen finally turned off the main road onto his unpaved driveway, sheltered on both sides by the naked branches of the Yoshino Cherry trees that led all the way to the farmhouse yard. He pulled into a graveled circular area and parked the car not far from the front porch steps.

  Both knees were jiggling now. Kitty was sure she shook the car. Her breathing was too loud inside the kitty mask that clung to her face, damp from her breath and the cold sweat beading her skin. She had to get a grip on this. She had to stop, because if he didn’t intend to hurt her before this, he absolutely would the second he saw her. Hands on her knees, she pushed down, willing the shaking to stop. Please, stop.

  He shut off the engine, the click as he unlatched his seatbelt in the stifling silence of the car almost as loud as her breathing. Like a good little Menagerie should, none of his pets moved—except for Kitty, who couldn’t stop shaking or jiggling, no matter how hard she pushed at her knees.

  Without looking at her again, Ethen got out of his car. He walked around the front to open Pony-girl’s door, offering her a steadying hand.

  “Step out,” he commanded, granting her permission to unfasten her seatbelt.

  The horse-shoes on her black pony boots ground against the gravel as she carefully stood before him, straight and almost as tall as he was, waiting while he divested her of her trench coat.

  “Tea,” he said. “With cream and honey. You know how I like it.” Giving her bottom a pat, he sent her into the house ahead of him.

  Stepping carefully on the rocks, Pony-girl obeyed.

  Ethen took the time to fold her coat before dropping it back on the front passenger seat. Shutting that door, he continued on to Puppy-girl, offering her a hand out, taking her coat, sending her into the house with a pat upon her bottom and the coveted words, “You did well tonight. Go on, I’ll be in momentarily.”

  Puppy-girl scampered into the house while he took the time to fold her coat, left it resting on Puppy’s assigned seat, and shut that door too. In measured steps, Ethen rounded the back of the car.

  She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe. And yet if she didn’t control her breathing right now, she would be hyperventilating before he reached her side.

  Too late. With a soft click, the door yawned open and a rush of icy cold that had nothing to do with the frozen temperatures outside swept in over her. Kitty stared in dread at the hand Ethen offered.

  “Step out,” he said, as calm as could be.

  She had the most absurd urge to bolt, but inside the back of his car, surrounded by woods and the remoteness of his farm, in the middle of the night, in the dead of winter, dressed in only a harness and the thin cover of her trench coat—honestly, where could she go?

  Trembling, Kitty took the hand he offered. She felt sick. Her legs barely held her as she stepped from the car. Was it her imagination or did he really stand there for a few seconds too long, staring at her with that cold, unreadable stare of his before stripping her out of her coat? He said nothing as he bared her to the merciless February cold. It wasn’t snowing anymore, but two inches of icy drift covered the ground. Her nipples pebbled around the rapidly chilling rings that pierced her. The studs and attachment rings that linked the thin black-leather straps of her uniform harness over her shoulders, around her ribs and her breasts, turned to ice against her skin. She was already shivering, but that didn’t help.

  Rather than releasing her as he had done with the others, Ethen took his time folding her coat, laying it back in the car, and finally, drawing her aside far enough for him to close the door. Thin ice and snow crunched dryly under her bare feet. Her knees all but knocking, Kitty stood where he put her, staring up at him in dread. This man who had once promised to guide her with love and care through the labyrinthine world of BDSM.

  Taking a moment to adjust his coat, at last he clasped his hands before him and said, “You seem quite frightened, my little pussycat. And that confuses me, you see, because only the guilty have reason to fear anything from me.”

  It was going to be bad. Hot stinging tears rushed her eyes, slipping through her lashes and turning cold halfway down her cheeks. She didn’t dare take her eyes from him, not even to blink them back.

  “I’ve often wondered these last few months what role you might have played in our dear Piggy-girl’s premeditated leaving, but I wanted to believe the best of you. Now, however…” He dropped his gaze, letting it travel slowly back up her and noting every twitch and quiver with growing disdain. “Now, I begin to think I may have put my faith in the wrong place. Did I do that, little pussy?”

  “No,” Kitty whispered, but he was a dragon—too big, too strong, his teeth too white and his breath steaming the air. Her throat choked her, killing all sound before it could reach her trembling lips.

  Only the guilty need fear him and his stare did not warm. Nor did he react at first, although when at last his smile did come, it came gently. The smile of a lover.

  Cupping her face, Ethen stroked her cheek with his thumb, then tsked. “Liar,” he lovingly decided, then he punched her.

  He moved so fast, Kitty had no time to react. One moment, his hand was on her cheek. In the next, his other fist slammed into her gut and she buckled over, a marionette with strings abruptly cut, collapsing to hands and knees as she sucked, then retched, then sucked for air again. The pain was almost a belated thing, eking in around the shock, because of all the things he’d ever done to her, he’d never punched her before.

  And then she heard it, the telltale clank of a buckle working open and the slithering hiss of a belt yanking free of trouser loops. Kitty looked up as Ethen drew back his arm. He didn’t wind the buckle around his hand or fold the length in half. He simply whipped her.

  Kitty flattened to the ground. She covered her face with her arms, but each lash bit at her in white-hot bursts of agony that she could not lay still for. She tried to crawl under the car. Grabbing her ankle, Ethen hauled her out on her belly and whipped her harder. She had no air to scream, but the agony retched out of her as he spared nothing—not the backs of her shins, the bottoms of her scrambling feet, or even her head.

  It was brutal, but it was brief and he was not even winded by the time he dropped the belt in the snow, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to her knees.

  “Get up,” he ordered.

  No part of her was free from pain when he flung her facedown over the trunk of his car.

  Kitty knew better than to scream, but she was dry when he forced his cock into her. She bit her lip, the taste of blood filling her mouth but she managed not to cry out. Not until he yanked from that hole and switched to a different one. Knowing better did nothing to ease the savagery with which he shoved back into her. Kitty did scream then, over and over again until he yanked her back off his car, dropping her to her knees and forced his cock into her mouth.

  When he finished, he left her there. Lying in the scuffle of snow, ice and gravel, in so much shock and pain that she could not move.

  “When you’re ready to apologize, you know where to find me.” Once more as calm as could be, he walked away from her. His heavy shoes climbed the porch steps, and then the front door opened and closed.

  Somewhere between gasping and panting, Kitty broke down. She covered her mouth with both hands, her sobs ripping out of her in wracking, jerky coughs that made her harness studs jingle. But that would only get her punished again, so she quickly got herself back under control. Rolling over was nothing
short of sheer hell. Her back was ablaze with growing welts. There was no part of her that didn’t hurt. Even her kneecaps were red and scuffed where she’d fallen on them, first when he’d punched her and then again when he’d… he’d…

  Cold as it was, she lay on her belly, staring aimless under the car. She didn’t know for how long, but eventually the lights in the house winked out.

  He never once came outside to check on her. Not one time. But then, why would he? She couldn’t go anywhere. Dressed like she was, no shoes? She’d freeze.

  She was freezing now. Every shiver that wracked her, from the cold now instead of fear, made the welts all over her body pull tight, burning and hurting that much more. She didn’t want to get up. Getting up was going to hurt and she was too much of a coward to want to face it.

  She was too much of a coward to simply lie here and die too, and it was getting colder. Or maybe now that the attack was over, her body was ready to deal with the next most immediate threat to her survival. Her shivers grew worse. As much as she didn’t want to get up, she had to. Get up, go inside, go to bed. Maybe when she awoke in the morning, she’d find all of this had been merely a very bad dream.

  A bad dream that wasn’t over yet. She had welts on the bottoms of her feet and her two littlest toes were already bruising, which made every limping step she took sheer torture. She dragged herself up the stairs by the railing, but when she at last reached the door and pushed her way inside, she found a note waiting for her on the whiteboard by the fridge. None of the lights in the house were on, apart from two Coleman lantern-style nightlights. One by the stove, lighting up the countertop, and the other by the whiteboard. It was bright enough for her to read the stark missive he’d written her.