Club Pleasure 7
Enough
Jordan Sterling is well aware he can't pursue a career as a psychologist without resolving his own central issue—that of never feeling enough. Emily Brown applied at Club Pleasure before, only to run before actually entering the scene, feeling fearful and undeserving.
Jordan accepts Emily as a training submissive, and she has no intention of falling for her Dom, hoping only to overcome traumatic childhood issues impacting her adult relationships and find some future happiness.
Fighting their attraction, Jordan gives Emily mixed messages, making her his exclusive Club submissive and collaring her. She comes to accept what love looks and feels like, and, no longer a coward, she tells her Dom, who immediately rejects her.
Devastated—and furious, Emily must accept being released. No longer vanilla, she attends a sister club where Jordan, coming to his senses, finds her. He gives her what she needs. Him. He’s enough for her, just as she is enough for him.
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary
Length: 37,941 words
ENOUGH
Club Pleasure 7
Allyson Young
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
ENOUGH
Copyright © 2014 by Allyson Young
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-775-4
First E-book Publication: May 2014
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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DEDICATION
For author Lynn Rae, who writes romance from a different perspective. My thanks for her feedback and support.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Author
ENOUGH
Club Pleasure 7
ALLYSON YOUNG
Copyright © 2014
Prologue
Jordan watched Emily pull her clothes on, barely contained stress evident in every stilted move. He recognized it for what it was because he knew Emily, inside and out. She’d been with him for some time. He tried not to acknowledge a very real sense of loss, given that she was leaving him. Of course there was loss. He’d trained her and she’d been his personal Club submissive for several months now. Even if he didn’t love her, he liked her and was certainly attracted to her. Losing her was bound to have an impact.
She kept her slender back to him, and he absently noted the faint stripes and welts on her buttocks and upper thighs. They still patterned her usually flawless skin from her correction. He had tried then to convince himself it wasn’t their last contact, despite her ultimatum.
Okay. He had to be honest with himself in that regard. Emily hadn’t issued an ultimatum. She’d spoken from her heart, and he’d refused her gift of love as gently as possible. Emily had long since moved past the bitchy, ambivalent woman who’d really been a survivor defending herself, hiding behind her snark and apparent self-centeredness. She learned to trust and to accept and like herself over the past while since joining Club Pleasure and putting herself in his hands.
Jordan knew it was her gratitude and the intense D/s connection they’d established through true power exchange making her believe she was in love with him. He simply wasn’t available to her in that way. He once thought he’d been enough for Olivia, but she was Cameron Fraser’s. He’d never take that chance again, and risk facing the hard truth. The discomfort, the actual pain in his chest over Emily’s decision to move on, rather than remain in their present relationship and maintain the status quo, was likely because he was really comfortable with her. He was also proud of her. He felt as though he’d saved and recreated her, and as the Chinese said, once you save a life you forever own it, or something like that. But Emily made her choice, and he would respect it. She wanted more than he was capable of giving.
She turned to stare at him, her lovely little body now veiled from his gaze in a drift of silky fabric, not that he didn’t have every glorious, curvaceous, naked inch of her emblazoned in his memory. The tears were gone, a few silvery tracks drying on her cheeks the only evidence of how she’d wept after they’d made love for the last time. Jordan corrected his thinking. They had sex. He’d fucked her. A farewell fuck. Any love was on her side. He blanked his face and shuttered his eyes. He wouldn’t make this harder on her by giving her any false hope, however inadvertently. Or give himself any.
“Good-bye, Jordan.” She dropped his title, and his alpha side rose, unbidden, to challenge her before he pushed it back down. He guessed he wasn’t entitled to it anymore and she wasn’t being disrespectful, simply recognizing the change in their status and putting distance between them. But he didn’t like it. He’d mastered her, been her Master, and his gut actually churned to think of her being mastered by another. Yet she would be, because t
here was no option. Emily could never actually be herself in a vanilla relationship. She would retreat and hide again, probably slip back into old habits, not only because she required the erotic pain to release the way she stored her personal angst. Emily needed a Dom to guide her and force her to live up to her full potential.
Jordan belatedly realized he owed it to her to find a Dom who would suit. He wondered how he’d never thought about it during their time together. Because you never thought to let her go.
Fuck! Where had that come from? He wasn’t looking for a permanent sub, a woman for his own, outside the Club. Not since Olivia was claimed by that prick Fraser. She’d been the sub he’d been looking for, hoping for, and if thoughts of her no longer intruded on his sleep or waking state, well, it was because he’d been busy. Busy with Emily. Jordan shook his head and Emily’s face tightened. Shit, he’d been thinking a long time without responding, and now he’d hurt her again.
He didn’t want to hurt Emily except in a good way, and he impulsively stretched out his hand. She looked at it as though it was contaminated, and he allowed it drop to his side. She didn’t appear quite so hurt, and he thought he should be glad there was now some hostility in her eyes. She had spirit, and it was no longer constantly twisted into the need for self-preservation. She’d moved past that need. Jordan just wished she wasn’t angry with him. It was an altogether unfamiliar experience of late, and not one he liked. She pushed her blonde curls away from her face and tightened her sweet lips. He realized she was still waiting for him to respond.
“Good-bye, Emily. Although I’m sure we’ll see one another again.” He heard the hint of desperation in his voice, and she heard it, too, the anger visibly fading from her beautiful blue eyes. Eyes he had often looked into and seen the best of her. And the best of him reflected back, if he was honest. Jordan hastened to correct any inaccurate implication of his comment, and again lied to himself in the process.
“I’ll be happy to introduce you to some Doms who’d be a good match.”
She flinched, and he couldn’t help himself. He was an asshole and making a fucking mess of this. He went to her, to hold her maybe, or ask her to stay. He didn’t know, but she rebuffed him simply by holding up one small hand, the palm soft, the fingers delicate, as effective as any brick wall. He halted in his tracks.
“I don’t need your help, Jordan. I told you what I ultimately needed, and you’re convinced you don’t have it to give. You’re wrong, but who am I to tell you? You’re the Dom. Maybe you’ll figure it out, but I’m not going to beg, not for this.
“You don’t love Olivia, you loved the idea of Olivia, and using her to keep us apart is cowardly. You taught me about cowardice, remember? And how to be brave. Take a page from your own book, Jordan. I hope it won’t be too late for you.”
His hand itched to smack her nice little ass until she took that back. How dare she? He was furious and opened his mouth to give her a set down, but her shoulders slumped and she looked so sad, defeated.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to say those things.”
The “even though I’ve been thinking them for a long time” didn’t follow, but he heard them. He was insightful enough to look at himself when his anger was so overwhelming. Hell, he was trained, so he knew to look within, although he’d never managed to fix a certain part of him. He ground his teeth to keep silent, nodding in dismissal, hiding behind arrogance.
She slipped from the room like a wraith. Jordan couldn’t help making the comparison. He truly believed he’d helped to pull her back from a miserable, empty, loveless life, and wondered if he just pushed her right back into one. The conceit of that thought had him shaking his head again. She’d be fine. She’d find another Dom who would give her what she needed. His life would resume and move on, and he would get it done. And if the future stretched out there, barren and cold, well, it was nothing more or less than he’d expected. Losing Olivia placed him on that path, and he’d merely detoured with Emily.
Chapter One
Several months earlier…
“Your name?” His deep voice poured like caramel over her jangled nerves, and his big, fit frame seemed to take up all the available space in the room, somehow comforting her with his scent and total focus.
Emily Prentiss aka Brown literally quaked in her cute little boots, the footwear she’d chosen to wear while she played this part. She agreed to try a D/s connection because of her friend Elise Cooper, primarily because Elise was so obviously deliriously happy. And in a committed D/s relationship with an amazing Dom named Ross Lassiter. Elise had changed since meeting Ross, and Emily took careful notice of that remarkable fact. She’d changed significantly, and for the better. Emily and Elise never talked about their painful pasts but were drawn to one another because of the sisterhood of survivors. It didn’t matter what they’d survived or how old they’d been when their lives were so significantly impacted. They had a common bond. Emily actually had the temerity to wonder if she might eventually feel a hint of that happiness Elise attained.
And so here she was, taking a huge step forward in her life, yet unable to compose the syllables of her name and force them past her quivering lips. Instead, a sob spilled over, when the reason for her messed up life surged up like an evil specter against the backdrop of her churning thoughts. She instantly blanked the memory of his leering face, skilled in doing so, but like radical surgery for cancer, it also cost her all her memories, leaving her nothing to explore and cherish. Empty. Empty and lost.
“I’ve got you, little one.” Hands gently grasped her upper arms, and Emily didn’t automatically pull away. Instead, she stepped into him, and he enfolded her against his chest. He saw her angst and responded, but in a way that spoke to her and didn’t make her want to flee. He’d given her space, hadn’t pressed her, and she’d chosen to let him in. The implicit power of silence. Emily vaguely understood something momentous had just taken place but couldn’t process it because she promptly dissolved into a volley of sobs.
This Master Jordan held her and let her cry, occasionally rubbing her back in little concentric circles, resting his chin on her head, but never telling her it would be okay. Emily didn’t crave reassurance. Her parents reassured her even if they hadn’t believed her initially. Her school counsellor reassured her even when the woman was clearly out of her depth. The therapist she’d seen offered reassurance, and what did he know? Reassurance was a lie. Things would never be okay. Ever. But maybe they could be different, and enough for her.
When her own personal rainstorm subsided, he eased her onto the edge of the bed and helped her perch there. Emily’s knees felt weak, and it wasn’t just from the exhaustion of crying. She was aware of an undeniable attraction to this Dom who was amazingly hot with his muscled physique shown off by a tight shirt and leathers that lovingly cupped his ass. A handsome face with dark, mysterious eyes and a full head of black hair with just enough curl to tempt her fingers to stroke it completed his appeal. He exuded the temptation of mind-blowing sex, the kind she dreamed about and hoped to have. Master Jordan Sterling.
It was probably just because her emotional guard was down. She was here to explore D/s and perhaps find that something she’d been searching for to ease the painful emptiness. Even if she wasn’t sure what that something was. It didn’t hurt she found him so very attractive.
Master Jordan carefully wiped her face with some tissues, and she was glad she’d obeyed the rules and went with light makeup. He stepped back. “Let’s try again. Your name?”
“Emily. Emily Prentiss. I mean, Brown. I used to be Prentiss.” Didn’t anyone tell him her name? Or did he train so many submissives that he couldn’t keep up? And why on earth had she told him her real name? She’d left all of that behind her when she moved here, all the memories, all the knowing looks resulting from the media coverage. Breaking news in a small town where people had nothing better to do that chew on the hardships of others and roll their eyes as they contemplated her debauchery. It t
urned her stomach.
“Tell me what brought that on, Emily.”
She blinked, once again yanked from bitter thoughts. He waited, never taking his eyes from hers. And waited. Patience. That was okay. Emily could outwait the devil. She’d had a ton of practice. The world narrowed down to the two of them, invisibly connected.
“I’m not sure.” Was that her? Master Jordan wasn’t the devil. She hoped.
“You’ve been through orientation, Emily. Master Patrick approved you some months ago, but you didn’t follow through. We’ll get to that later, but here’s the first rule. I ask and you answer. Honestly. Basic D/s. Communication. I won’t ask you twice in the future. I’ll correct you. So answer or use your safe word and leave.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She had failed again. It was far too confusing. She’d fallen apart, and he’d comforted her, supported her through it. She thought quickly because she realized she didn’t want to take the easy way out by using that safe word. It was time to make an effort, borrowing from his strength.
“I had a flashback. Almost a flashback. I managed to put it back, lock it up. But it cost me, weakened me, and I cried.” Because I daren’t remember anything and so I have nothing. There. He could take that revelation and for certain tell her to leave. This man didn’t need damaged goods to train. He would have his pick of raving beauties, sexual women who wanted to be trained to please a Dom.
Enough [Club Pleasure 7] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 1
