Her Master's Kiss

by Sparx, Vivien

  The crushing sense of loss broke his heart beyond repair.

  Thunder rumbled overhead and then a sudden wicked jag of lighting tore the clouds apart. Stefan turned his face to the sky, and the tears that streamed down his cheeks mingled with the spatters of warm rain.

  * * *

  The hospital parking lot was not full. Stefan parked the car and ran towards the warm lights of the reception area. Behind wide glass doors he could see nurses going about their work behind a high counter.

  The doors slid open before him and he kicked clods of mud from his shoes. His legs were trembling. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He felt cold; numb. The blood in his veins was like ice. The roar in his ears left him dazed. Everything around him seemed misty and unreal.

  A young dark-haired nurse wearing a pale blue uniform was sitting behind the information counter. She was talking quietly on a telephone. She looked up and saw Stefan. She didn’t smile. Her voice became more hushed as she spoke quickly into the receiver.

  Stefan waited for three seconds. Then he leaned across the counter and stabbed his finger down hard on the cradle of the receiver, cutting off the call. The nurse looked up at him, a sudden flare of outrage in her eyes. There was an angry rebuke on her lips.

  Stefan stared at the woman, his eyes like black daggers. “Renee Blake,” he said. His voice was soft but there was menace in his tone and there was a wild fury in his expression. “She was in a car accident that also killed my unborn daughter. Where is she?”

  The nurse froze for a split-second and then her face softened and became compassionate. She didn’t consult a list or computer screen. She knew.

  “Room 103,” she said softly. “The doctors are with your wife right now.”

  Stefan strode down the corridor, his eyes scanning the numbers on the wide painted doors on either side of the aisle. Stainless steel trolleys full of medical supplies, and carts stacked with empty plates, were parked against the walls. Through the waist-high windows of the wards, Stefan saw patients in high beds. None of the patients looked like Renee.

  He went down the wide corridor quickly, counting the numbers off. The passage ended at a T-intersection. Stefan turned left.

  Room 103.

  The door was closed, the blinds pulled down over the windows. Stefan stood outside, alone in the passageway. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the glass. A stranger’s face stared back at him. The face was haggard with dark purple smudges of fatigue below eyes that were red and raw. The lines around the mouth were deeply etched, and the skin pale and bloodless, stretched across the gaunt bony frame of his jaw. He stared at himself a moment longer, shocked but numbed, and then he closed his eyes, felt himself begin to sway.

  Overhead the hospital paging system chimed and a call went out for a doctor. Stefan heard the door open in front of him and he blinked, suddenly alert once more. A tall man in a dark grey suit was coming quietly from the room. He had wispy grey hair combed across a high forehead. The man’s eyes were serious and thoughtful. He had a clipboard in one hand. He saw Stefan and stopped.

  “Mr Blake?” he asked kindly.

  Stefan nodded.

  The man reached out gently for Stefan’s arm. “I’m doctor Raynor. I’ve been attending to your wife since she was admitted. Come with me, I think you need a coffee.”

  Instinctively Stefan flinched. “No. I need to see my wife,” his voice sounded shaky and loud in his own ears. He shrugged free of the doctor’s grip and glared at the man belligerently.

  The doctor seemed to take no offense. “You will,” he promised. “But not just yet. We’re still running some tests. In the meantime, there are some things I want to tell you.”

  Eight.

  There was a small private room at the end of the hall. Doctor Raynor held the door open and Stefan stepped inside.

  The room was painted in soft pastel shades. It smelled of antiseptic. There was a long brown sofa along one wall, the upholstery faded and worn. In the opposite corner was a stainless steel coffee machine on a long bench covered with cups and cutlery. The doctor poured two black coffees and handed one to Stefan. He accepted the cup absently, his eyes never leaving the tall man’s face.

  “Will my wife…?”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. She will be fine,” he said and there was the touch of a smile on his lips, but it was mingled with a deeper, sadder expression. Stefan saw the pity and concern in the man’s eyes. “Your wife will recover,” doctor Raynor said. He led Stefan to the sofa and they sat down. Stefan hunched on the edge of the cushion, his eyes intent and searching.

  “She has some cuts and contusions, mainly on her forehead and face. She also has a concussion, but it’s nothing to worry about. We’ve taken x-rays of her arm and shoulder. I don’t think there is a break, but she has some heavy bruising and swelling across her chest where the car’s seatbelt restrained her.”

  Stefan nodded. Said nothing.

  The doctor glanced down at the clipboard in his hand and flicked through several pages of paper, then glanced up at Stefan again. “It’s too early to be sure, but there appears to be no major internal damage. Overall, she was incredibly lucky. If all the tests come back negative, she may even be discharged in a couple of days.”

  “I understand.” Stefan nodded his head with a jerking motion and wiped his face with his open hand. It was a gesture of weary defeat. He sighed, and then closed his eyes. His chin sank down onto his chest. The room was silent. The doctor watched him with quiet care.

  At last Stefan opened his eyes again and stood up slowly. He tried to smile but his lips trembled and would not hold the shape. He felt tears filling his eyes again and he cuffed at them irritably with the back of his hand.

  “I’m sorry about your baby. There was nothing we could do,” doctor Raynor said.

  Stefan heard the man’s voice as if it came from far away so that the words only just penetrated his despair. He tried to respond but it felt as though he was crushed under a great weight. He hunched forward over his hands, and he felt himself beginning to tremble.

  The doctor rose from the sofa. His arm went around Stefan’s shoulder. “Your wife is going to need you now, Mr Blake. More than ever before. Her physical injuries are slight compared to the emotional trauma of everything that has happened. I can mend broken bones – but this is beyond my skill. It might be wise for you both to consider counseling at a later stage. But for now, you need to be with her. You need to turn to friends and family and draw strength from each other to endure the sadness ahead. Most of all you need to give yourselves time to grieve.”

  Stefan nodded. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.” His voice was strained, sounding rusty and thick with his pain. He swallowed with an effort – and took a deep shuddering breath.

  Doctor Raynor led him towards the door, stopping just before they stepped back into the hallway.

  “I am sorry for your loss, Mr Blake. The heartache will never go away – but it will fade a little in time. Give yourself that time. Do whatever it takes to heal, and to help your wife heal. She has lost her child, but she hasn’t lost the ability to have more children in the future. If nothing else, take some small comfort from that.”

  The doctor reached for the brass door-handle but suddenly Stefan’s hand lashed out, locking around the man’s wrist, his grip a fierce over-reaction.

  “How?” he asked, and there was a trace of menace in his voice. “Do you know how the accident happened?”

  “No,” the doctor shook his head. He flexed the fingers of his hand and Stefan’s grip loosened. “The paramedics who brought your wife in said it was a single car accident, Mr Blake. The vehicle veered off the road and collided into a tree about five miles outside of town. Luckily a passing motorist saw the incident and called 911.”

  Stefan listened, the words muffled in his ears through a haze of rage that flared bright and blinding for a single instant, and then turned to cold ash.

  “There’s no one
to blame,” the doctor said sympathetically, understanding Stefan’s need to focus his frustration and give vent to his futility. “It’s just a cruel twist of fate.”

  Nine.

  The blinds had been pulled away from the windows when Stefan reached the door to room 103. He glanced through the glass. He could see Renee laying on her back on the hospital bed under a single crisp white sheet. The sight of her frail shape under the cover was a shock to him. Beside the bed were metal frames holding plastic bags filled with fluids. Long tubes poked from Renee’s pale arm. In one corner was a machine, filled with blinking lights and displaying red digital numbers.

  Stefan took a long deep breath that sounded as a ragged sob, and then he eased the door open quietly and stepped into the room.

  Renee turned her head at the sound from the doorway and their eyes locked.

  Stefan felt a vice seem to close around his heart and restrict his breathing.

  Renee’s face was swollen, a smudge of darkening bruises along her cheek and beneath her eyes. Her hair was lank and matted damp against her forehead. Her top lip had been split. Now it was puffy, distorting the shape of her mouth.

  She made a heart-breakingly feminine gesture of vanity – prodding the tendrils of hair from her face, and her eyes brimmed and glistened with sudden tears.

  It was Renee’s eyes that shocked Stefan the most. They were dark sunken hollows in her face, made huge by the bruising around them. The dazzling blue of her iris had dulled and lost their sparkle. They were empty eyes; dark and haunted.

  He crossed to the bed slowly and Renee turned her face to his, looking up from the bed at the deeply ravaged lines that despair had etched around his mouth and brow. His skin looked grey and ashen, drawn tight across his features.

  Stefan reached for her hand, careful of the tubes that jutted from her wrist, and he gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. And then the tears came, and there was nothing Stefan or Renee could do to hold back the deep desolate anguish that crashed over them like a wave and left them broken and shattered, clinging to each other.

  They cried together for a long time, Stefan on his knees beside the bed, clutching to Renee’s hand. His face was buried in the sheet, Renee’s free hand holding him against her breast. She cried too – deep racking sobs of sadness and guilt that seemed to tear within her body.

  Finally she broke off and sniffed back tears, then wiped at her nose. It was such a fragile childlike gesture and Stefan felt his heart breaking all over again. He rose from his knees and kissed Renee gently on the forehead, and she cuddled herself against him, drawing comfort from the size and strength of his body.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Stefan asked gently.

  For a long moment Renee stared blankly at the ceiling. Her lips trembled, and Stefan could feel the shudder all the way down to her fingers. She licked dry, cracked lips and said softly, “A deer…. or maybe a dog…. It was on the road. I swerved…”

  Stefan squeezed her fingers a little tighter as if to will her to continue.

  “The car went off the road… gravel… I lost control and…” her voice tailed off into a haunted wide-eyed silence.

  Stefan smiled down at her, but the expression was all wrong. The smile quivered on his lips for just a moment and then slipped away. “I’ve just spoken to doctor Raynor. He says you’re going to be fine. There doesn’t appear to be any serious injuries. You might even be discharged tomorrow or the day after.”

  She turned her head towards him, her face bloodless and white as alabaster, and she nodded slowly.

  Renee looked very small and fragile in the bed with the crushing weight of sadness and despair upon her, and Stefan felt a great rush of tenderness wash over him. He wanted to hold her – shield her from the sadness, but he knew it was impossible. He searched for words, but he could not find them. Instead he said, “They have some more tests to run first, but once they come back clear, you will be discharged,” Stefan pressed on, trying to sound upbeat.

  Renee nodded her head again. She was weak. Her hand within Stefan’s felt cool and listless. She looked carefully into Stefan’s face once more, this time her eyes searching.

  Stefan looked different. Not dramatically so, but in subtle ways. The sharp lines of his features she thought once carved in stone were now suddenly blurred at the edges, as though eroded. And the dark pierce of his eyes had dulled, like a steel blade that had lost its edge. He looked older. He looked tired – not tired from lack of sleep – but the kind of weary tired that ached in the bones and robbed of vitality. And life.

  He looked shattered.

  The door swung open suddenly, and two hospital orderlies pushed a wheeled gurney into the room. They stood back respectfully for a moment, and then one of the men said with soft compassion, “I’m sorry, folks. We have some more x-rays to take and doctor Raynor want’s a scan re-done…”

  Stefan nodded dully.

  Renee reached up and tenderly traced the line of Stefan’s cheek with her finger. She shook her head slowly from side to side. Her eyes filled with fresh tears making them glisten, and a single drop spilled over the lid and clung to the long dark lashes.

  “Stefan – I should never…. I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry…”

  Stefan kissed Renee’s cheek softly, his expression tender and concerned. He lowered his hand and stroked the tangles of her hair. “My poor darling,” his lips formed the shape of the words soundlessly, but Renee’s face was cuddled to his chest so she did not see his mouth. Stefan drew a deep shuddering breath, and though his eyes were still hollow with anguish, he forced his tone to sound reassuring and comforting. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice wavering until it broke. He swallowed hard, choking back more tears. “Don’t blame yourself. Don’t even think that way. It was fate, Renee,” he said, and suddenly the words in his mouth stung like broken shards of glass as he remembered bitterly what the doctor had said to him. “A cruel twist of fate.”

  Ten.

  There was a row of public telephones in the hospital foyer. Stefan’s feet felt leaden, his steps dragging. He went to the first phone and dialed Master Peter’s number.

  The phone rang out, and then finally an answering machine clicked on. Stefan was relieved. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to explain. He didn’t want sympathy.

  He wanted to escape.

  “Tink. Peter. This is Stefan. I have some dreadful news. Renee has been injured in a car accident. She is in Bishop’s Bridge hospital. Baby Storm is dead…” suddenly Stefan lost control for a moment so that there were just long seconds of muffled sobbing on the message before his voice came back again, rigid and stilted as he choked out the last few words. “Please come to the hospital as soon as you can. And Jeffrey is home alone. Can you attend to him?”

  He dropped the phone back into its cradle and went towards the sliding doors.

  Outside the night was cool. There was a breeze blowing; strong enough to ruffle his hair and blow a piece of litter along the gutter like a tumbleweed. Stefan stared up at the sky. The moon was rising over the distant mountains and the first bright stars twinkled.

  “Why me, God?” he cried out. “Why?”

  * * *

  Peter had converted a huge empty room at the rear of the homestead into a ‘Pleasure Room’. He had left the floor as polished timber boards, painted the walls black, and fitted heavy dark curtains over the windows so that the only light came from burning candles.

  Tink followed him into the room, her head bowed in subdued obedience, but her light excited steps almost gave her away. She forced herself to walk more slowly. If her Master guessed that she was looking forward to being punished, he might refuse her.

  She stood inside the room, her hands clasped behind her back, her legs spread, and waited quietly until Master Peter had closed the door behind them, before she slowly raised her face and stared blankly into his eyes.

  Peter was a tall, solid man, broad-shouldered and deeply tanned. The muscles
of his chest were clearly defined as if carved from stone. There was a tattoo of a leaping panther that rose up the length of his right shoulder, the big cat’s mouth open in a ferocious roar, it’s claws bared.

  Tink shuddered; a delicious little thrill of anticipation. She was wearing just brief black panties, the lace rucked high into the cleft of her tight buttocks from where his fingers had been teasing between her legs throughout the day. Now, she was trembling with an urgent need to orgasm that felt like a heavy knot in the pit of her body, desperate to be unraveled and bring the relief that had been building within her for hours.

  Master Peter went to the far wall and retrieved a leather handled flogger from a hook. He came back to where Tink stood, the expression on his handsome rugged face dark with menace, but the glitter in his eyes almost mischievous.

  The flogger was hand-crafted, the long tails of the whip made from deer leather. It was a soft, supple whip, the leather most suitable for genital and breast whipping. Master Peter flicked his wrist and the whip’s tails snapped between Tink’s spread legs.

  There was no sting, no pain. The flogger Peter had chosen was the softest in his collection, and the touch of the lash against Tink’s panties made her hips buckle. The leather felt like a caress, not a cut. She moaned, and then bit down hard on her lip to stifle the sound.

  “You are to be punished,” Master Peter’s voice was a harsh growl. Tink nodded respectfully.

  He was wearing just blue jeans, and Tink’s eyes were drawn from the broad of Peter’s chest downwards, following the tight whorls of hair that ended abruptly at the denim waistband. Her eyes drifted lower to the thick press of his erection within the jeans.