Master of Hearts: A Domination And Submission Romance Anthology

by Erika Masten

  "I'm a Finlay. Connor Finlay."

  Connor Finlay. I repeated it silently. I decided I liked the name. "And you have a cousin who's a cop?"

  "Archie's cousin the cop would be my brother Brandon. He's a couple years older than me."

  I waited for him to ask me something. Your turn, Blue. Wasn't that the way polite conversations developed? He didn't. His attention was concentrated on the road.

  After a couple minutes, my curiosity got the best of me. "Were you really an interrogator in Afghanistan?"

  He made an indecipherable sound. "There and other places."

  That felt ominous. What sort of other places? Black ops prisons in sketchy countries? Had he tortured people?

  "You were pretty scary in the bar."

  He shrugged. "I can play a role." He shot me another glance. "You still scared?"

  I flushed again, wishing he hadn't noticed. "No," I lied.

  His mouth curved up and I thought, great, he knows I'm lying. He's probably trained to detect lies.

  "Maybe a little," I amended.

  "Don't be." He gave me a smile. I got the feeling he was stingy about his smiles, but I liked it, so I smiled back.

  It was late and there was no traffic. The road we were driving along was overhung with trees, still bare from winter, not yet showing any signs of their spring renewal.

  Neither of us spoke for a bit. Was he shy? He probably thought of me as some ditzy college kid. I wasn't sure how old he was, but he had a few years on me. Mid-twenties was what I was guessing. There were no discernable signs of aging on his face, but no one would ever card him in a bar, either. He probably couldn't wait to get me home, drop me off, and be rid of me.

  "I hope I'm not taking you too far out of your way," I tried.

  "Not a problem."

  Another silence. I was wracking my brain for something to fill it when he asked, "What actually happened back there? I got the gist of it but not the whole story. You caught your guy fooling around with another girl?"

  "With a guy. After I messed up your pool game, I was so rattled that I barreled into the men's room by mistake and there he was, getting a blow job from some dude."

  He gave a half laugh, half snort. "I take it you didn't know he was gay or bi or whatever?"

  I shook my head. "We'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks."

  Another sideways glance, curiously intense. "How's your heart?"

  I liked the way he put it. I thought about it. Actually, my heart felt okay. "I'm good. I guess my heart wasn't involved."

  "But you were going on break with him?"

  "Yeah. It's beginning to make more sense now. We'd only been hooking up for a couple weeks when he surprised me with dinner with his doting parents. He acted as if we were an established thing, a real couple. The vacation was to be spent with them, in Myrtle Beach."

  Connor raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like you were a decoy for a closeted gay."

  "It does seem that way, doesn't it? I'm fine with it if he's gay, but I wish he'd told me. I don't like being used as cover."

  "I don't blame you. How was the sex?"

  "Well, you and everyone else in the bar heard his assessment."

  "You don't think anyone believed that, do you?"

  I hoped that was a rhetorical question, because I didn't want to have to answer it.

  "You're well rid of him," he added when I didn't reply.

  As we drove, I could hear the low purr of the car engine and the occasional crunch the tires made on a road that was rough from the winter potholes and frost heaves. "What do you do for work?" I asked when no other friendly subject came to mind.

  Dead silence met this question. It was an emptiness, as if the air had been sucked out of the car. Anxiety swept through me again. Several ridiculous scenarios leapt to my over imaginative brain:

  "I'm a hit man, and I'm here to blow you away."

  "I'm a psycho killer and you climbed right into my car."

  "I'm a trafficker, and you're about to vanish into a life of slavery."

  I noticed that the car had slowed down. Blue shot me a glance as he flicked on the blinker and made a turn onto a narrow road that bore no sign. This was not the way back to town. Or my apartment. Maybe it was a shortcut?

  "I'm a hacker," he said.

  Okay, I thought. That wasn't too scary, right? "Like those Anonymous guys? Isn't that illegal?"

  He gave me a tight smile. "Depends on who and what you're hacking. And who's paying you to do it."

  "You get paid? I thought people hacked for fun. Or to cause havoc. Or just to prove they could do it."

  "That's why kids hack. As you may have noticed, I'm not a teenager."

  "So why do you do it?"

  He gave me an angelic smile, but he didn't answer the question.

  He drove maybe a couple hundred yards down the increasingly narrow road before he pulled the car over and stopped.

  "What the hell are you doing?" I asked, my voice rising to a squeak as he shut off the headlights and twisted his body to face me.

  "Close your eyes."

  "What?" Instant panic struck. My heart started pumping insanely fast and there was sweat beading on my palms. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Had I seriously gotten into a car with a man I didn't know and allowed him to drive off with me into the cold, black night? A guy they called The Claw?

  I fumbled with my seatbelt, trying to get it unhooked so I could scramble out and run.

  One of his hands covered mine where I fumbled with the seat belt release. Damn thing wasn't working and now he was preventing me.

  "Angel," he said, quiet but intense. "Close your eyes and listen to my voice."

  Angel? My hands stilled. What the fuck? There was only one person who called me Angel. My heart might be safe, but my confused mind was splintering in two. "Why did you stop the car?"

  "We need to talk." He squeezed my hand. "Focus, Angel. You know me. You're not in any danger. It's me, Dax."

  "What?!"

  "I'm sorry it's such a surprise. It was a shock to me too, when you told me your name."

  "Am I dreaming?" I'd thought his voice had seemed familiar, and now I knew why. "Dax?"

  He smiled and gave a small nod.

  "You're Dax?"

  "Yup. I did tell you I lived nearby."

  "I don't believe this," I said, probably sounding almost as hysterical as I felt. I was sitting in a dark car on a deserted road in the middle of the night with the guy whose avatar was more familiar to me than his actual body.

  Although, I had to admit, his actual body was not exactly a disappointment.

  This was the guy who had, for months, killed monsters for me. Every time he got beaten up and damaged in his battles, I'd healed him back to full health and strength. We had never met, but we were a team. "This is the weirdest fucking night of my life."

  He glanced at me, giving me a sideways grin, "It's gonna get even weirder."

  "How could it?" I asked. Then I remembered. This was also the guy who had ordered me to take a naked picture of myself. He hadn't even touched me, but he had made me come. Other guys fucking me didn't make me come, but Dax had been able to do it from a distance with his sexy voice and his confident demands.

  The memory of that made me go all hot and soft inside.

  He started the car again, and began to drive. "You wanted to be whisked away, remember? You got your wish, babe. I'm kidnapping you."

  Chapter Four

  Okay, so I wasn't alone in an unfamiliar car on a dark road with a stranger; I was alone with the brave, sword-wielding warrior who had saved my digital ass time and again in game. No matter how scruffy he looked in real life, or how narrow those blue eyes could gleam or how frowny that slash of a real mouth could turn, I couldn't be afraid of him.

  Could I?

  "You're kidnapping me?"

  He nodded decisively. "You should think of it more as 'I wish my dark hero would ride up on his mighty steed and whisk me away from all this.'"<
br />
  "And how did you get to be my dark hero?"

  "I've always been your dark hero."

  I thought of our sexting, which had been darkly thrilling. Maybe he was right.

  "This place you're kidnapping me to better have booze. After everything that's happened tonight, I may need a whole bottle."

  "Kinda smells like you've already had a whole bottle."

  "That was why I went to the ladies room. One of Archie's servers spilled a couple of drinks all over my top. I wrung it out, but that didn't get rid of the smell."

  "Well, that's a relief. Wouldn't want to take advantage of someone too drunk to say no."

  "Can I say no to the kidnapping?"

  He grinned. "Sure. Safeword, remember?"

  I started giggling. I wasn't drunk. I had only consumed one mug of beer all evening. But everything seemed funny to me. Andy was gay and Blue was Dax and Dax was kinky. Of course. On a night like this, how could I have expected anything normal?

  "How long have you known who I was? Were you stalking me? Did you hack into my game account?"

  "No, I didn't hack you or stalk you. I didn't realize it was you until you told me your name."

  "But how did you know my real name?"

  "You told me your real first name ages ago, Ms. Joanna, Jo-for-short. You mentioned things about college, your interests, your friends, where you grew up, and so on. You're on several social media platforms. Getting your last name was trivial. No one's anonymous on the internet."

  "That doesn't count as stalking?"

  "Nope." He sent me a grin. "I wanted to meet you, but when you kept putting me off, I let it go. I wasn't about to chase a woman who wasn't into me."

  "It's not that I wasn't into you." Particularly now that I'd seen him. Dax was much more attractive than I'd ever imagined.

  "Then what was it? We have a connection. We're friends. And you never seemed too excited about Andy."

  "I can only hookup with one guy at a time," I said primly.

  "No problem. But now that he's history, I'm staking my claim."

  It was beginning to look as if he was serious about the kidnapping thing. Not to mention the part of this "whisking away" that was going to involve getting naked.

  "Look, I need some time to get over the guy I broke up with less than an hour ago before starting up with someone new."

  "I'm not new. I've known you for over a year. I've seen a couple guys come and go, with me providing a digital shoulder for you to cry on when they treated you badly. This time I'm moving fast, before the next candidate comes along."

  "But Dax, er, Connor—"

  "You can keep calling me Dax if you want. My full name is Connor Daxton Finlay."

  "Okay." That made things easier for me, in a way. Dax was somebody I knew. "Just because we play well together as a team doesn't mean we have anything in common. Or that there's real-life chemistry." But as I spoke, I was already fascinated by his hands on the steering wheel, his muscular arms, even his right leg as he applied it to the pedals of the car. I could hear my own voice trailing off.

  "Have you heard of the 6 Second Rule?"

  "Is that some gaming thing?"

  He shook his head, looking amused. "The Six Second Rule states that it never takes longer than six seconds for a guy to decide if he wants to get naked with a woman. That yes or no decision is almost instant.

  "I didn't know who you were when I saw you stumble into Cranmore's shot. But I knew in less than six seconds that I wanted you." He flicked me a longer look. "That I had to have you, bare-limbed and laughing in my bed. I knew I was going to touch you. Fuck you. Make you come."

  The lust I'd been feeling in the bar came exploding back. I guess it had taken a brief hiatus while I'd been trying to fit the Blue pieces into the Dax jigsaw. But I'd been sensually aware of him from the moment I'd seen him approaching with the pool cue in his hands. The attraction hadn't really built until he'd started helping me get my purse back. I envisioned that electrifying moment when he'd leapt up on the bar.

  I wondered if he could make me come. It seemed to be a tall order for other guys.

  "It takes women longer than six seconds," I said, not entirely sure what I was referring to.

  "I'm willing to go slow," he said with that wicked smile.

  Just after he said this, he made another turn to an even narrower road that curved sharply. The crunch under our wheels sounded like gravel, and the headlights revealed a house, quite alone, sheltered by several mammoth trees. "Where are we?" I asked as he pulled up and stopped in front of the house. No lights shone within.

  "My place."

  "You live out in the middle of nowhere?"

  "I'm a private sort of guy."

  "How's the WiFi?"

  He started to laugh. "I thought you might be frightened at how isolated it is here, but you're more worried about your internet connection?"

  "Should I be frightened?"

  He shook his head. "Nope. You're my healer and I'm your warrior. I kill monsters for you, Angel. We're a team."

  But I was having a crisis of trust. I knew that if I went in there with him, we'd be having sex tonight. Not only sex, but some kind of freaky sex. I'd never had freaky sex. What if I sucked at it? What if I couldn't please him?

  Screw that. What if I couldn't trust him and he did something I didn't want or didn't like? What if he hurt me?

  I tried to focus on everything I knew about the guy. Truth was, I'd always liked Dax. In our game, he stayed the course, never quitting or getting discouraged if we wiped. He was a good leader, too—calm, quick thinking, good at analyzing a situation, great at strategy and tactics. He didn't suffer fools lightly, and could be a bit nasty at times, but all the members of the team, myself included, relied on him to get us through tricky situations in the game.

  In instances and raids, he was our commander, comfortable being in charge. People did what he told them to do. I, like everyone else, deferred to him, trusted him, followed his instructions.

  I had followed his lead, too, on that night when our gentle flirting had turned to sexting. When he told me to take off my top and describe my body to him, I did it. When he ordered me to unsnap my bra and remove it, I did that too.

  "What's the matter, Angel?"

  When I didn't immediately answer, he added, "You're worried about what I might do to you in there?"

  I nodded, even though the thought of him doing stuff to me turned me on.

  "I'll tell you what's going to happen. I wouldn't want you to worry."

  "Okay. Tell me."

  "When you come in, I am going to strip off your clothes and feast my eyes on your beautiful body. I'm going to appreciate you in a way that your ex who preferred guys never could."

  Everything went liquid inside me. Parts of me that Andy had never properly tended to throbbed.

  "Then," said my phantom online lover, "I am going to make you kneel and suck my dick. I might hurt your breasts a little as you're doing it, but you'll have a safeword and if you use it, I will stop."

  Oh my God. Why was I getting wet at the thought of this? His voice was low and soft and he spoke of dark, secret things that excited me beyond reason.

  "I probably won't let you come, not until you've pleased me. I'll tie you to my bed and explore your entire body at my leisure. I might release you if you beg prettily enough. Or I might just drive you to the edge and make you suffer."

  I think I made some sort of sound. A little moan. I could hear my own breath and my heartbeat. Everything seemed sharper, deeper, more intense, more colorful. It was nighttime, and yet I saw colors, dominated by the vivid blue of his eyes. I could bathe in that blue.

  "I still have that picture you sent me of your breasts. For months I've been imagining teasing and caressing them. Maybe I'll pinch one of your nipples at the same time that I slide my fingers into your pussy. You'll feel pain and pleasure, and you might not be certain which is which. Then I will fuck you slowly and thoroughly. I'll eat you out,
enjoying your sweet tangy flavor, until you scream. We'll spend the night making up for all the pleasure you've missed by choosing that twerp Andy when you could have said yes to me."

  I grabbed on something I could actually respond to: "I didn't exactly say no to you."

  "You ordered me to destroy your picture."

  "And you refused."

  "I couldn't destroy a work of art."

  "Jerk," I said, but I felt all hot and tingly inside.

  "Besides, I don't take orders." His hand slid over my face and his fingers gripped my chin, making it impossible to move my head. "You, my sweet Angel, will obey me. Tonight you're mine. I know we didn't plan this or know it would happen, but tonight nothing will come between us and nothing will stop us. Tonight we play."

  "And tomorrow?"

  "Let tomorrow take care of itself."

  He took my hand and squeezed. It felt soothing, but it also increased my awareness of his body, his physicality. We left the car walked up to the house. It looked like an old farmhouse from the outside, although it appeared to be well maintained. On the threshold of the front door, I paused. "I might need a potion before going in there." I plucked at my still-damp shirt. "And my armor needs repair."

  "Fear not. It's a low-level dungeon. You won't take any damage." He gave me a wicked smile. "Or at least, not much."

  I gazed up at him, letting him see some of the turmoil I was feeling. "A lot has happened tonight and I'm feeling vulnerable."

  "You can trust me, Jo. No reason you should, but you can."

  Hoping I wasn't making a huge mistake, I squeezed his fingers and allowed my longtime protector to lead me inside.

  Chapter Five

  As soon as we got inside the dark house, he pushed me up against the wall. He pressed his muscular body to mine. My hands came up to grip his shoulders, to slide around him and embrace, but he caught my wrists and forced my arms back against the wall. Then he leaned into me and ground his hips against mine. I could feel his dick, full and hard. Instinctively I tilted my hips trying to get the stimulation where I needed it most. My panties were already sopping wet.

  His mouth pressed into the side of my throat, kissing, biting. "I've wanted you like this for far too long," he said, running the tip of his tongue around my ear. Who knew ears were so erogenous? My pussy clenched and more slickness coated me down there. I could feel my heart thundering against his.