Doctor's Demands: A Submissives’ Secrets Novel

by Michelle Love

As I sat there at that picnic table, I had nothing else to do but think. I thought about the club that me and a few other of my male friends had in the works. We’d talked in great detail about what we wanted. With money put into an account just for the club we were planning, we’d purchased a piece of land just inside the Portland city limits.

  Nothing was on it. It was a flat piece of land and we’d all decided that building underground would be the best thing to do. What we were making would be on the taboo side of life for most people.

  The more hidden it was, the easier it would be to have it without the interference of people who held moral beliefs that what we were doing was sinister. We’d all been studying up on the history of BDSM.

  Once, only the gay community had clubs that catered to their specific kinks and needs. We wanted a club where heterosexuals could also engage in activities most didn’t want to do at home.

  Your normal couple didn’t want to have to explain the one room in the house that was filled with things most people considered to be torture devices. Whips, chains, and ropes hanging on the walls and bondage equipment filling the room would be a red flag to those moral people who thought anyone who was into that sort of thing must be insane. Or morally bankrupt.

  I was neither, nor were the men who sought to partner with me to build us a playhouse of sorts—one where men and women would come willingly to participate in things that needed to stay hidden.

  Lately I’d been reading things and making rules our members would have to abide by. So far, I’d found the list to be getting longer with each article I read. But we’d make sure our club was safe, sane, and consensual.

  I’d been watching an old man and his family talk while I waited. They were an animated bunch, using their hands to say nearly every word. I thought they must be a blast to sit and listen to. They all laughed a lot, including the inmate.

  My attention was drawn away from them as someone caught my peripheral vision. An orange color moved and sat on the other side of the table. Turning my head slowly, I saw my father.

  For the first time in a little over two years, I was looking into the glassy, pale blue eyes of my father. “You look terrible.”

  He didn’t say a word back to me. He looked right into my eyes, but he said nothing. The guard who’d brought him did say something, though. “He doesn’t speak.”

  I looked at the guard. “I can see that.” Then I looked back at the man who should be happy to see me. “How’s he getting along here?”

  “No one bothers him,” the guard answered me. “He keeps to himself.”

  “Do you know if he needs anything?” I asked, even though I had no intention of making his stay at the prison any better.

  “If you ask me, then I’d say he could use some pencils and legal pads. He seems to think a lot. Maybe he could write down some of those things he’s thinking about.” The guard put his meaty hand on my father’s narrow shoulder. “He has a lot going on inside of him. I look after him. He’s got a lot weighing on him. My heart aches for him sometimes. A look can come over him that’s heartbreaking.”

  “Are you aware of why he’s here?” I asked the tall, muscular man who seemed to have a case of empathy for the killer who sat in front of me.

  “I am.” He cleared his throat, making me look at him instead of at the shell my father had become. “People do all kinds of crazy things we don’t all understand. This man is your father. You share blood, DNA, and history. You both love the same people. The rivers that connect you two run deeply.”

  “You make it sound romantic, but it’s not.” I looked back at my father who sat stoically. “I don’t know the man who’s sitting in front of me. He’s not the man I took to the airport that day, a couple of years ago. He’s a stranger to me now.”

  “That man who you knew is still inside of that body. Why not talk to him like you used to? Why not see if you can help him regain who he was?” The guard stepped back a few steps. “Ignore me, young man. Visit with your father.”

  “So, you’re looking nothing like yourself,” I said. “And you’re a hell of a lot quieter than you were. I remember when I would come in late, after drinking and chasing women when I was far too young to be doing it. Boy, you’d lay into my ass. Shouting, cursing, and threatening to take my car away.”

  I stopped and waited to see if his expression would change. It didn’t, and I felt sad inside. Darkness was building and I was losing my grip. Shaking my head to push the anger back down, I found a lump lodged in my throat.

  He moved a little and I looked at him. His eyes were on me and a single tear fell down his cheek. I couldn’t take it anymore. I got up and walked away. I would not allow myself to feel sorry for the man.

  My mother was dead. He wouldn’t let us know what the fuck had happened. He wasn’t the one I wanted to feel sorry for. He was to blame. Mom’s death was on his shoulders. That was it. End of story.

  I made it five steps before I stopped. Turning around, I saw him getting up and walking to the guard, a man who looked at me with conviction in his brown eyes.

  He held my eyes as if by magic. I couldn’t look away even I wanted to. I knew it and he knew it. “Wait.”

  The guard put his hand on my father’s shoulder. “Do you want to talk to him anymore, Mr. Jamison?”

  Without turning back to even look at me one last time, my father shook his head and walked away from me. The guard turned to go with my dad.

  I was shaking when I turned to leave. The man I knew was gone. I couldn’t see him ever coming back, and I didn’t know if I could accept him if he did return to normal.

  Walking to the parking lot, I opened the door to my jag, and on the front seat, there was a brand-new box of pencils. Under that was a legal pad of yellow paper. I’d bought them to jot down notes when I thought of things that might be cool for the new club.

  The only thing on the pad of paper was the sketch I’d drawn of a castle. I left it on top and took the things back to the prison, leaving them with a guard and asking if they could be taken to my father.

  I left then, feeling empty and numb, hating him and the whole damn world.

  Nothing made any sense to me. My parents had loved each other. How could a man who loves a woman take her life?

  I left that day, thinking I’d never understand it.

  Jack

  We weren’t sure if the cuffs were magic or what, but after a month of messing around with them and a few other fun items, Daphne told me she’d missed her period. We let one more month come around, and when she missed that one too, we headed to the doctor.

  Sure enough, she was pregnant, and we were on top of the world!

  The months moved by like molasses, but finally, a stormy night came and we welcomed our first child to the world. A son. We named him Grant John Jamison and he looked a lot like his mother. Dark blue eyes peered up at me when I’d go get him out of his baby crib every morning.

  He and I’d spend the mornings together while his momma made breakfast, then she took a shower while I ate and talked to Grant like he was a man already.

  He’d sit in his high chair and I’d spoon eggs into his waiting mouth. I could make him laugh just by making a silly face. He could make me smile just by seeing his adorable face.

  We were happy. Happier than either of us knew was possible. Grant was the missing piece of our family. We both knew that.

  We’d have been happy to have only him, but we kept being blessed with more children. It was funny in a way. Daphne kept getting pregnant until each bedroom had been filled. Then she couldn’t have anymore.

  It’s weird how things happen.

  Grant was the best big brother in the entire world. He was our little man. Looking after the younger kids was like second nature to him. We didn’t have to ask him to do it. He just took it upon himself to help out.

  No one could have asked for a better son. Not that I or Daphne would. We were quite happy with every one of our kids.

  Did they all test our
patience at one time or another? Of course.

  Grant went through a stage when he was sixteen and had just gotten his driver’s license. I thought he’d been replaced by an alien. The young man had turned into a crazy person.

  Chasing women, drinking, and smoking whatever he could find to smoke. Grant was on the fast track to Trouble Town. and I had to figure out a way to get through to him that life wasn’t going to be easy if he took that route.

  A few groundings, along with selling the car I’d given him on his sixteenth birthday, had him staying home more and helping his mother and me with daily chores. It took a few months to get him back on track, but we did it. Together, Daphne and I could accomplish most anything.

  Grant went on to college, graduated at the top of his class with a business degree, and got a job with a real estate company, in the marketing department.

  He just kept on succeeding. From that job, he was promoted to the head of marketing, then he was offered a job at another company, one that handled the air.

  It didn’t make sense at all to me at that time. Who owned air?

  But someone did own the air, and sold it to companies who used it so we could have cell phones. And there was my oldest son, right at the forefront of all that technology. To say I was proud just doesn’t do it justice.

  Grant was working his ass off, and all that work paid off for him. He moved up and up until he was offered the CEO position at American Cellular, Incorporated. And with that position, he was given stock in the company and quickly became a billionaire.

  The first thing he did was offer to buy his mother and me a new home. We didn’t accept that offer though. Our home was a part of us. It was the first thing we’d bought together. It was where we’d brought our babies home and where we raised them all.

  No, we didn’t want a mansion like the one he’d bought for himself. That was his legacy that came from his hard work. We were damn proud of him, but had no desire to ride on his skirt tails. That wouldn’t have been right, in my opinion. No matter how rich he was, I would always provide for Daphne, myself, and our other kids. At least until they were old enough to take care of themselves.

  When we’d had Grant take us to the airport that day, it was difficult to say goodbye to him. Daphne had a dinner party the night before we left. The other kids were there, but Grant couldn’t make it.

  Our original plan was to take a taxi to the airport, but we hadn’t gotten to tell our oldest son goodbye. Daphne had called him that morning and asked if he could take a couple of hours to take us. He’d agreed and we got to say our goodbyes.

  I knew it’d be the last time either of us got to say anything to him. I tried to think of the best things to say to all of our kids, but I just couldn’t think of any last words to say.

  Maybe that was because, somewhere deep inside of me, I’d known I’d be coming back home. I knew Daphne so well. Our plan had been to die together, but deep down, I must’ve known she’d never allow that. And she must’ve thought that if I was the one to cut her wrist, then I’d become a murderer.

  The days came and went once I got back to the Oregon and began serving my life sentence. My oldest son came and saw me only once. I couldn’t tell if it had been a day or a hundred years since I’d seen him.

  He looked different, older, sadder, wiser, and he looked like he hated me. I’d take it. I’d accept his hatred. To keep his mother’s secret, I’d take all the hate he and all of my children might hurl at me.

  For Daphne, I’d do anything. That included accepting the responsibility of her death. She lay in the cemetery near our home, her body at peace and her soul in heaven.

  I knew she was watching over us all. Things must’ve been the way she wanted them to be. Thanks to my confession about cutting her wrist, there’d been no autopsy, which would’ve found the cancer that would’ve taken her life, albeit much more slowly and painfully.

  It was all for the best. I was fine, all alone in the confines of my cell. Our children were fine on their own in the world. Grant was making sure of that. At least I thought he was.

  Grant looked different, but he had to be the man he was when we left him. No one changes that drastically from trauma. Do they?

  Grant

  “You have a call on line one, Mr. Jamison,” my secretary told me over the intercom.

  I picked up the office phone. “Grant Jamison here.”

  “Hi, Grant, it’s me, Jake.”

  I huffed and hung the phone up. My brother and sisters could all go to hell for all I cared. They all had one thing in common. They all thought our mother had had more to do with her death than anyone knew about.

  After seeing my father, I knew he would’ve talked to me if he was innocent. He and I had been closer than he was to any of my siblings. I had the money to get him a barrage of lawyers and a trial. All he had to do was open his mouth and tell me he was innocent. But he’d kept his mouth shut. And the tear that he’d let fall free told me he’d done it. He’d killed the woman he loved.

  There was nothing I wanted to hear from my brother and sisters. They were as dead to me as our mother and father were.

  The End?

  Grant Jamison’s future is set, and he’ll become one of the founding fathers of The Dungeon of Decorum, the common thread in the novels of Submissives’ Secrets. Each novel stands alone, but all have a home at the Portland, Oregon BDSM Club.

  With each new novel, Grant’s story will unfold a bit more in standalone short stories you can only get in our Newsletter. So spread the word!

  His Brother’s Wife (A Brother-in-law, Billionaire BDSM Romance)

  By Michelle Love

  When beautiful classical pianist Amalia Rai married billionaire Jackson Gallo, it is not a happy union. Amalia’s father has blackmailed his daughter into marrying the man who can save his company – and in return, he will allow Ama’s younger sister, Selima, to divorce her abusive husband.

  Walking down the aisle, Ama’s life is changed forever when she sees Enda – Jackson’s illegitimate Italian half-brother, and the attraction between them is obvious.

  Beginning a sensual, erotic affair with Enda, desperate to relieve the tension from her sham of a marriage, Ama falls in love with him, but when Jackson finds out about the affair, his rage is all-consuming.

  Fleeing to Italy with Enda, Ama begins a new life, making friends with Enda’s best friends, Raffaelo Winter and his lovely wife, Inca. Happier than ever, she is shattered when, after months of silence, Jackson takes his revenge, shattering everyone and everything Ama cares about…

  Can Ama find the strength to fight for the people she loves and live happily ever after with the man of her dreams?

  Not for the first time, Amalia Rai gazed in the mirror and wondered how the hell she had gotten here. This is the twenty-first century, right? And yet, she, a successful classical pianist and music professor, was about to be married to a man she barely knew – and could barely stand.

  Amalia closed her eyes. She could hardly stand to look at the sadness in her own eyes. At twenty-seven, she had accomplished so much, had thought herself free of her controlling father, of all the bullshit that went on their family. If it hadn’t been for her desperation to save her little sister’s life, she would never have agreed to this.

  But her father held all the cards. He would not allow Selima to divorce her abusive husband unless Amalia agreed to marry Jackson Gallo – her father’s rival in business, and the man who had nearly brought her father to his knees. When Gallo offered Gajendra Rai a lifeline – give him his eldest daughter in marriage, and he’ll give Gajendra a multi-million-dollar cash injection - Gajendra had not hesitated in going to Amalia and demanding she marry Jackson.

  Amalia had turned him down flat. That she and her father were not close was an understatement. For months she had held out, until the day Selima had called her – from the emergency room of the hospital. Her husband had beaten her so badly that she could barely speak, just sob down the phone to her si
ster. Amalia went to her and was horrified by her injuries and by what she had been through. Gajendra, though, refused to let Selima divorce her husband…unless Amalia married Jackson.

  Desperate, Amalia agreed, and now, in a few minutes, she would take her father’s arm and walk down the aisle in the church Jackson’s family had built in their luxurious compound on the outskirts of San Francisco. A prison, not a compound, thought Amalia, now, as she straightened the wedding dress that cost seven times her salary. Her father had paid, of course, and although Amalia would have preferred to marry in the traditional Indian attire befitting her heritage, her father insisted that a white dress would be more suitable for the society pages.

  Amalia shrugged to herself now. What did it matter? This wasn’t a real wedding, it wouldn’t be a real marriage. She had made it clear to Jackson that in no circumstances would the marriage be consummated. Jackson had laughed, and she knew he thought she was joking. He would find out tonight that she was deadly serious.

  Jackson Gallo was handsome in a bland preppy way. The youngest son of billionaire property magnate Macaulay Gallo, Jackson was often to be found in the pages of gossip magazines, romancing some of the world’s most beautiful women. When he had laid eyes on Amalia at a benefit gala where she was performing, he pursued her relentlessly until Amalia had grown frightened of his vehemence. She had finally thought he’d got the message she wasn’t interested when the call from her father came. Jackson had been victorious when Ama had agreed to marry him, but for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why he would settle on her. Yes, she was a renowned pianist and a very successful Professor of Music at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Yes, she knew she was considered a beautiful woman, with her creamy coffee-and-pink skin, and bright green eyes, her long wavy dark hair, and curvaceous body, but to society and Jackson’s world, she was completely indifferent.

  A knock came at the door, and her sister, dressed in a simple lilac silk sheath came in and smiled at her. “Hey, sis…are you nearly ready? Dad’s hovering outside.”