COMMAND
Changing Roles Series, Book 1
Ellie Masters
JEM PUBLISHING
Command, Book 1, Changing Roles
Copyright © March 2016 by Ellie Masters
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Ellie Masters or JEM Publishing. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
Editor: Ann M. Curtis
Published in the United States of America
Publisher: JEM PUBLISHING
This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Warning
This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. JEM Publishing books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your books wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
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DISCLAIMER: Please do not try any new sexual practice, especially those that might be found in our BDSM/fetish titles without the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Neither Ellie Masters nor JEM Publishing will be responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained in any of its titles.
This book is the first in the Changing Roles trilogy and was previously part of the Changing Roles omnibus, published by Loose-ID publisher in 2016.
The books in the Changing Roles Series are not stand-alones.
They must be read in order.
COMMAND
CONTROL
COLLAR
by: Ellie Masters
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my one and only, amazing and wonderful husband.
Without your care and support, my writing would not have made it this far. You make me whole every day. I love you “that much”, which for the rest of you means from the beginning to the end and every point in between. Thank you, my dearest love, my heart and soul, for putting up with me, for believing in me, and for loving me.
My husband deserves a special gold star for listening to me obsess over this book and for never once complaining while I brought these characters from my mind to the page.
You pushed me when I needed to be pushed. You supported me when I felt discouraged. You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. If it weren’t for you, this book never would have come to life.
Author’s Note
This story contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. This story isn’t suitable for those who don’t enjoy dark romance, uncomfortable situations, and dubious consent. It has strong elements of BDSM with both male and female domination and submission. The story is sexy and twisty and dark. The themes of safe, sane, consensual practices are held by the main characters, as they should be in real life. Heed this warning, and enter the world of Changing Roles.
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Contemporary Romance
The One I Want Series
By Jet & Ellie Masters
each book in this series can be read as a standalone and is about a different couple with an HEA.
Aiden
Brent
Caleb
Dax
Rockstar Romance
The Angel Fire Rock Romance Series
each book in this series can be read as a standalone and is about a different couple with an HEA. It is recommended they are read in order.
Ashes to New (prequel)
Heart’s Insanity (book 1)
Heart’s Desire (book 2)
Heart’s Collide (book 3)
Hearts Divided (book 4)
Dark Romance
Captive Hearts Series
each book in this series can be read as a standalone and is about a different couple with an HEA. It is recommended they are read in order.
She’s MINE
Embracing FATE
Forest’s FALL
Romantic Suspense
Changing Roles Series:
this series is about one couple and must be read in order.
Book 1: Command
Book 2: Control
Book 3: Collar
HOT READS
each book is a standalone novel.
Off Duty
Nondisclosure
Down the Rabbit Hole
Romantic Suspense (standalone)
each book is a standalone novel.
Twist of Fate
The Starling
Redemption
HOT READS
Becoming His Series
this series is about one couple and must be read in order.
Book 1: The Ballet
Book 2: Learning to Breathe
Book 3: Becoming His
Sweet Contemporary Romance
Finding Peace
~AND~
Science Fiction
Ellie Masters writing as L.A. Warren
Vendel Rising: a Science Fiction Serialized Novel
Chapter One
Kate
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A sharp dividing line separated work and play. I hunted men during the day and toyed with them at night. My life was in perfect balance—until it all fell apart. That was two years ago. I struggled for a time, gave up everything I loved. Now I’ve adjusted to a new normal. A very featureless and bland vanilla existence.
Despite everything that had happened to derail my career, pursuing criminals still ran in my blood. My dad had been a cop. His dad had been a cop. I was a virtual poster child of blue-blooded protect-and-serve. I had been a cop myself, a detective, and I delivered men to justice one criminal at a time.
That all changed because someone decided being a detective was not compatible with dominating men.
Instead of working on the front lines of law enforcement, I’ve been consigned to the fringes, and with a little more elbow grease combined with honest work, the Kate Summers Detective Agency would be nearly solvent.
The door chime rang in the outer office, announcing the arrival of a potential client. I looked through the one-way glass separating my office from the waiting area and hoped a job with a decent payout accompanied whoever had entered. I valued these glimpses because of what I could learn in those few moments before my office assistant, Mitzy, ushered them in to see me.
I loved Mitzy and couldn’t have handled the solitude of this job without her. A treasure, she was barely twenty and had a hacker’s gifted mind. Her quirks left me with the cleanest office known to mankind and the most secure computing system in town. Mitzy bounced to her feet for the meet and greet, while I used the faint reflection in the glass to apply mascara, hoping to ma
ke myself look more presentable, more successful, and therefore more likely to land the case.
Mitzy shifted out of the way, and the client came into view. My blood pressure spiked, and my words rushed out in a low, heated growl. “What the hell are they doing here?”
And by they, I meant Mayor Westmoreland and his wife, Catherine, the two individuals singularly responsible for destroying my career.
Diamonds adorned Catherine Westmoreland. The precious stones were small on her bulbous knuckles and large on her grotesque earlobes. They also encircled her fat neck.
Would be nice if they choked her.
She sniffed the air with a wrinkle in her upturned nose and applied a lace handkerchief to her face. As if Mitzy would allow any offensive odor to grace the Kate Summers Detective Agency. Mitzy kept my office three sparkles beyond clean.
The mayor wore a dark-blue, three-piece suit with a cherry-red tie cutting off circulation to his neck. His fat jowls shifted to and fro as he moved his massive bulk.
My nemesis—and destroyer of careers—picked her way through my waiting room like she was wading ankle deep in filth. But her hard, brittle eyes lacked the edge I was all too familiar with, and those diamonds she wore shook with fine tremors.
Mitzy, oblivious to politics on any scale, didn’t seem to recognize the power couple. She invited them to sit, handed out our standard intake questionnaires, and proceeded to her desk, where she continued her computer game.
Mayor Westmoreland collected the clipboard from his wife and placed it on Mitzy’s desk, the forms left untouched. He said something, and Mitzy’s eyes widened. Her fingers flew to the intercom.
I let the phone ring while a range of emotions swirled within me. I backed away from the one-way glass until the desk bumped against the back of my thighs.
Their accusations had ended the upward arc of my career. Only a month before I’d been let go, the mayor himself had bestowed upon me the distinguished Detective of the Quarter award. I had been firmly set to make Officer of the Year. Not a bad showing after eight years on the force. Then, a spectacular fall from grace occurred. Catherine Westmoreland had discovered my nighttime proclivities, and like a tempest, she’d swept in and derailed my life.
Balls of steel were all well and good, but add leather, a whip, and a penchant for dominating men, and the golden child of the police force was suddenly no longer welcome to protect and serve.
The incessant buzzing of the intercom continued. I pressed the button. “Yeah?”
“Boss lady, you’re never going to guess who’s waiting.”
Mitzy always acted as if I couldn’t see through the one-way glass. I took in a breath. Counted. One. Two. Three. Very slowly I exhaled, releasing the tension lodged between my shoulder blades. I had no idea why they were here and needed to remain professional. I certainly wouldn’t let Catherine Westmoreland see me crack.
“Send them into my office. And Mitzy?”
“Yeah?”
“You can take the rest of the day off.”
After this confrontation, nothing productive was going to happen in my day. Already the exhaustion of having to face this dynamic duo pulled at me.
“Sure thing, boss.” Mitzy escorted the Westmorelands to my office door.
I sheltered myself behind my beat-up desk, taking what refuge I could from the distressed metal. A poor shield, but I would need a barrier between those who’d destroyed my dreams and myself.
The mayor seated his wife in the one bare metal chair reserved for clients and stood behind it, shifting from foot to foot. “Detective Summers—”
I tapped my fingers on the metal desktop. “Due to the destructive work of your lovely wife, I no longer claim that particular status. I’m a private investigator now.” No need to waste pleasantries.
His wife avoided direct eye contact. “Miss Summers.” Mrs. Westmoreland bit her lower lip, took in a deep breath, and pressed on. “We wish to employ your services…and your discretion.”
I wanted to laugh, but the serious expression on her face had the laughter dying in my throat.
“You want to offer me a job?”
My gaze flicked to the mayor. He redirected me and gestured with his hand, letting his wife take the lead. Of course he would. His wife clearly wore the pants in their family.
“What makes you think I’d help you?”
Mrs. Westmoreland choked back a sob. “Please, don’t make this difficult.”
Oh, I wanted to make this all kinds of difficult. My eyes narrowed as I tilted my head. “How can you think I would ever work for the two of you?”
Mrs. Westmoreland dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her fine Southern lace handkerchief. “Miss Summers, it’s my little girl.” Her lower lip stopped quivering. “The police found her. She was…she was tied to a beam. They m-murdered her!”
No matter my feelings for the woman sitting in front of me, the death of a child was the worst possible tragedy I could imagine. I couldn’t help but feel her sorrow. I hated that she made me feel any sympathy for her at all when all I wanted was to hate her.
But there it was; her sobs almost had me stepping out from behind my desk to offer comfort. “I’m sorry for your loss, but I don’t see how I fit into this.”
“Elizabeth was twenty-two.” The mayor barely got out his words.
Tears poured freely down Mrs. Westmoreland’s cheeks now. “My little girl had cuffs around her ankles. Cuffs on her wrists. She had one of those…those collars around her neck. I know what that means.”
Her lips twitched into a disapproving frown, and her gaze flicked down to the floor. “I understand what she was…involved in.” Her fingers twisted the fabric of her skirt. “You can help. My husband says you are the best.”
The best detective or the best Mistress? I wondered which he’d meant. Neither applied anymore. I’d given up the Mistress life when it had cost me my detective badge.
The mayor found his voice. He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief pulled from his inner pocket. “Of course, the police are investigating, but they don’t really understand. Not like you would.”
“I haven’t heard anything in the press.”
Surely something like this would have hit the local news. As a private investigator, I routinely scanned the police channels. There hadn’t been a whisper of the murder of the mayor’s daughter.
The two of them exchanged a look.
“We’re trying to keep it out of the press.”
Of course. The mayor’s proud, influential family wouldn’t want their name dragged through the mud. Mayor’s Daughter Killed in Sex Games Gone Wrong. Those headlines would never see the light of day.
“When did she die?” Nothing in the press meant this must have happened in the past day or two.
Mrs. Westmoreland blubbered out another sob. Her husband put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s been four days.”
Four days? I wanted to either claw their eyes out or laugh hysterically. They’d waited too long. In a murder investigation, the first twenty-four hours are considered the golden window of opportunity where the majority of cases are solved. Each successive day lowered the odds of finding the killer. Four days meant my chances were practically zero.
I hated how the tragedy of their daughter’s death moved me, but of course it would. A twenty-two-year-old girl who’d died in a scene was my past coming to life. My gut seized with the briefest flash of memory.
I’d been just shy of seventeen myself and had missed death by a sliver of a moment. My breath quickened, and I locked those images back into the never-revisit-the-past memory vault where they belonged.
As a minor, my name had been scrubbed from all the reports, but the mayor was a powerful man. He could know more than he should. It didn’t matter. As much as I detested these two, the death of an innocent demanded justice. I would help them. It ran in my blood, a part of that blue-blooded legacy of protect and serve.
“My baby was a brave little girl.” Tears tri
ckled from the corners of her eyes. “She wrote and told us she was happy. She’d met someone special. I can’t imagine her being involved in something like this.”
Nice girls liked to get dirty all the time. “You never know what she may have been into, Mrs. Westmoreland.”
A look of disgust washed over her features. “Not Elizabeth. She wasn’t like that.”
“You mean like me?”
She glanced away, and the mayor put a hand on her shoulder. “Look, we don’t know what happened to Elizabeth, except she…”
“She what?”
He breathed out a deep sigh. “We haven’t been close.”
“By close, what do you mean?”
They exchanged a look. He answered. “Elizabeth ran away a few years ago. We hadn’t heard from her in a long time. Then a few months ago, she started talking to us again, told us she’d met someone—”
“The prince of her dreams,” said Mrs. Westmoreland with a sigh.
He patted her shoulder. “Yes, the prince of her dreams. We didn’t think much of it, just that we were so happy she was speaking to us again. Now she’s gone.”
“Miss Summers, I found this card in my daughter’s things,” said Mrs. Westmoreland. “I think it’s one of those fetish clubs.” Her parchment lips turned on the word. “Please. We’ll pay triple your usual fees.”
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