Dark Master (Dark Masters Book 1)

by Shana Vanterpool

  “My brother’s a cop. We all have to have one. It’s come in handy a few times,” he admitted. “These aren’t the best people in town.”

  “You’ve fired it?”

  “Only at the range.”

  The next place we went was the library. He didn’t get out for this one. He drove around back between the library and a Chinese restaurant for a break in the fence. There was an opening cut into the fencing and a couple of people in worn dirty clothes were peering out of it.

  Jaxon stopped, idling. I felt tension in him, causing my mouth to seal. After a few minutes and nothing happened, he drove away with a heavy sigh.

  “Where the fuck is she?” he breathed, fear and anger crashing together. “We’ll go to the park and wait for her. You mind waiting that long?”

  “No.” I would wait forever for him.

  He parked near the frozen river near Forest Park and the Northwest Industrial Area. The Willamette River was slow today, chugging through ice and frost. The forest on our left was offset by the manufacturing companies at its back.

  We parked at the end of a trail and sat there for a long time in the car. He seemed hyper-focused on his mother. Like he was alone and wouldn’t stop until he found her. The Lexus was on E, the heater draining the gas tank, and midnight had come and gone before he threw in the towel.

  He didn’t talk on the drive home. He went straight to his office and slammed his door. I waited up until two in the morning before my eyelids fluttered closed.

  I woke in the middle of the night when he came to bed, pulling me into his arms in a painfully tight grip. Our bodies melted together, fitting inside of the grooves and curves. We fit together so perfectly.

  I just wished there was something I could do so the man in him and the monster in him could learn to get along.

  24.

  A package arrived for me the next day. A smart phone with only one number inside, and I could guess who’d purchased it easily.

  “Hello?” he answered, flippant and at the same time, put out.

  I rolled my eyes, pacing the length of Jaxon’s living room back and forth. He was still in bed, but I didn’t think he was sleeping. He was quiet, had been since last night. He’d opened a part of himself searching for his mother, and not being able to close it left him empty. It sounded like a heartbreaking cycle for him. How often did this happen? How many times had he put his heart on the line, for her to only break it?

  “Thank you, Sam. I’ll try not to smash this one.”

  “I hope not.” He paused. “I was wondering if Jaxon was willing to exist without you for a few hours? I want to bring you to the warehouse I’m going to use, show you my plans. This can be a good thing, Miya. For both of us.”

  “Why are you so sure this is good for me?”

  “Because you took to this lifestyle in a way most cannot. They play, but they don’t understand that it’s not always spanks and whistles. You understand that. You get it in your soul what it means to be a submissive, and what it means for a dominant. I trust you, I just wish you’d trust me too.”

  I felt his disappointment deep in my soul and knew I couldn’t let him down, even if I wasn’t as confident in myself as he seemed to be. “I’ll consider it.” It wasn’t like I had anything going for me job wise anyway. Maybe it would be a good opportunity and I could learn different facets of this lifestyle from others that might help me with my master.

  A breath of relief sounded on the other end. “Thank you, My Sweet. I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “I can drive myself.” I was tired of being treated like a burden.

  “I have no problem driving you, doing things for you. It makes me happy, and nothing does that these days but you.”

  I closed my eyes in guilt and misery. “Sam.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty. Dress warm.”

  “Okay,” I relented.

  Jaxon was sitting up in bed, beard thicker, eyes darkened. I approached him cautiously, setting a mug of coffee and some scrambled eggs on his nightstand near him.

  I sat on the edge of his bed and touched his face, rubbing my thumb over his course cheek. He leaned into my mouth and closed his eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

  But he smiled with his eyes closed. “Don’t. I’m fine. I … it feels wrong when I let myself … hope. I should know better at this point in my life to do so.” He grabbed me around my waist and pulled me down on his chest, hugging me to him. “I have you, Miya. There’s nothing more comforting to me than that.”

  I melted against his chest. “You always have me. Always.”

  We lay that way. My mind did what it always did around him. It became him. Only him. I listened to his heartbeat, inhaled the scent of his skin, I did my best to be what he needed. A sense of comfort.

  His nose skimmed along my shoulders and into my neck, nuzzling me as he pulled in a lungful of my scent too.

  “Do I smell as good to you as you smell to me?”

  “Let’s see.” He pulled in a deep breath, tickling my neck with his nose. “You smell so fucking good, I spend half my time around you breathing you in. Your hair, your skin, your sweet breath, the way your pussy sweetens when you’re turned on, the way your sweat mixes with mine. If I smell half as good as that, I’ll take it.”

  A moan escaped my lips when his tongue slid enticingly across my pulse.

  “I can feel your pulse speed up when I kiss you here.” He kissed me, sucking gently at my flesh.

  My heartbeat accelerated. “It feels good when you kiss me there. It feels good everywhere you kissed me.” His erection grew between us, pressing into my sex through my panties. “I want to play in your chambers tonight.”

  “So soon?” His hands reached down to grip handfuls of my ass. He fondled me, stretching my cheeks apart, his nails digging into my flesh. “I was going to look for my mother again. Word sometimes takes a minute to reach her. We can play when we get back.”

  “Can I ask you something without upsetting you?”

  “Probably not, but let’s hear it.”

  “Are you going to do this forever? Spend hours a month for the rest of your life searching for her? Look what it’s doing to you. I can’t even imagine you doing this all by yourself.” I buried my face in his neck. “Does she ever come to you?”

  His grip slid to hold me around my waist. “Yes, I will do this forever,” he said simply, no doubt, no anger, just acceptance that he would spend the rest of his life searching for his mother. “She’s my mother. She created parts of me and she took them at an early age. I need her. I stopped trying to figure out why years ago.” He sighed into my hair, pressing a kiss to the top of my skull. “The dean called. He wanted to personally apologize for the mix-up. Apparently, the person who tipped off academics was mistaken. He wants to reinstate my position at the university starting Monday.”

  He didn’t sound excited to have his job back. I wondered if he’d managed to create a fantasy in his head that was far more enjoyable. And I feared that fantasy had something to do with me, and this bed, and never leaving either.

  “That’s great news, right?”

  “Of course,” he responded, but I didn’t believe him.

  To test out my fears, I rose to meet his eyes. “Sam’s coming to pick me up. He wants to show me his plans.”

  His eyes hardened into stone, pinning me to his chest. “Sam will be disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not going anywhere. I love you, Miya, but I’m still your dominant. You can’t make plans without checking with me first. That’s rule number one. Have you forgotten what this relationship is?”

  “No, but I thought it was transforming into something else. The more I love you, the more I love myself. The more I want for myself. To get a degree, a job, take care of myself, instead of relying on you. That’s not smart or good for me. To just be your sex pet.”

  His eyes became defiant. “Don’t push me. You won’t like the backlash.”

>   “Jaxon!” I erupted, struggling out of his grip to my feet. “Get out of bed and go back to work. You’re right. Normal’s not scary. You showed me it wasn’t scary. It can be good, and with you, it can be amazing. We can’t stay in bed all day and all night. Life won’t stop and wait for us to come down off our orgasm.”

  “Miya,” he said, eerily calm, gaze leveling the way the sky did before a storm. “The more you love me, the more you love yourself?”

  He seemed to be waiting for an answer. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “The more I love you, the more I hate myself.”

  My mouth popped open and a squeak escaped my lips, the only sounds of my heartbreak.

  “I don’t like me on a good day. On a bad one? Well, it’s quite dark in here.” He tapped his chest. “But with you, there is peace. You’re showing me all my dark parts and you keep trying to pull the light from me like there is any. There is none. There is only light in you. You are my good, my sweet, my everything. Why would I ever want to go anywhere without that? Spend eight hours outside these doors with people who make me despise myself? We are not leaving. We are not going anywhere. I am not going back to work. You are not working for Samuel. You are staying right where I can see you. Love you. Keep you.”

  He reached for me, his hand extended. The early morning sun penetrated the room, but the headboard on his bed cast a shadow over his body. My monster was cloaked in dark and light.

  When I placed my hand in his, so was I. But he pulled me onto him and the darkness encircled us completely, engulfing me and snuffing out the light.

  This fear, this heartache, settled in my bones.

  All this time I thought Jaxon was falling in love, and maybe he was, but all he had been doing for sure was creating a submissive in every single facet of the word.

  He’d taken his time to create a me that worked for him.

  He’d taken my heart and molded it to fit around his, he hadn’t changed his. Because he didn’t think he had one.

  “Love doesn’t make you better,” he’d said. “It shows all your flaws, but it doesn’t make you a better person. Fixing those flaws does.”

  “What are you saying?” Tears burned in my eyes. “What do you want out of us? Is this all I am? I know you love me, I know you care for me, but you can’t control me and love me, Jaxon, eventually you’re going to have to choose what you want more. Me or your dominance. How can I thrive if you won’t let me?”

  Vega did this. Pyper did this. His mother did this. And I had done this.

  Jaxon was being pulled in four different directions by women who owned a piece of him.

  “I want you, Miya. All of you. I want to feel you all day and all night. Hear your moans of pleasure, see that sexy look in your baby blue eyes you give me when I turn you on. I want your love, your support, the way you look at me like I’m not in fact a monster. The way you’re looking at me right now like I’m breaking your heart. I want to mean that much to you. But I’m not normal. I can’t exist without this lifestyle. I can’t do it. If you want me to be only your boyfriend, I’m not sure how that’s going to work.” He crushed me to his chest, his arms pinning me to him. “I want all of that. But I want your submission more.”

  The strength he saw in me was beginning to burn in my blood. “I want an us more than I want to be spanked. Don’t let your fears do this to us, Jaxon. Don’t be afraid to love me. I promise I won’t hurt you like your mother, like Vega. I only want to love you. Make you happy. I only want what’s right for us.”

  His sob was as deep as his damage. We clung to each other, both too afraid to let the other go.

  “We have so much left to do. Fall madly irrevocably in love. Spend our lives together. Marry.” Desires I never knew I had begun to fall from my lips. “Have kids. Love them the way we weren’t loved. Protect them. Heal your hurts and heal mine, too. Don’t you want that, Jax? I want that so much.” I lost control, matching the depth of his cries.

  “I can’t give you that.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No, Miya, I can’t.” He pulled back, his eyes red and swollen. “I can’t give you that. It’s impossible.”

  “What’s impossible?”

  He looked away, his eyes closing in defeat. The weight of his pain settled over him. I could feel it. Feel his breaks. They were everywhere, turning his heart into one huge scar.

  “Marriage. Kids. That can’t happen.” His head fell back, catching my gaze. “I can’t have kids.”

  I’d been too afraid to ask why he hadn’t used condoms. I knew that we should, but Jaxon wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t think he should. “We used them before.”

  “My subs always take STD tests and are always on birth control. It makes it so this conversation doesn’t happen. But you were a virgin. I used condoms the first two times to make it comfortable for you. And,” he breathed, “To save myself from this conversation.”

  “What conversation?” I didn’t know why, but a sense of unease settled in my stomach. He was taking my fantasy away from me right now. Our future.

  Us.

  Without hopes and growth we’d never change. We’d always be this. Dominant and submissive. When I wanted to be so much more. Light and dark. Demon and angel. Jaxon and Miya.

  “I had a vasectomy when I was eighteen.” Dread filled his eyes.

  Because I wasn’t dumb. Rage sizzled in my veins. I tried to push off him, but he held me down.

  “It wasn’t Vega’s idea. I promise. It was mine. I was a monster who loved sex and I did not want to have kids. I never have. Vega supported my decision. That’s all.”

  I fought him harder, digging my nails into his sides. He growled, fighting me. He was taking us from me and I was livid.

  “How could you do that?” I stopped fighting and sagged against him, drained in my soul. “How?”

  “What kind of father would I make?” The absolute sureness in his words shattered me.

  “You’d make an incredible father. Are you insane? How would you even know that? You spend all day long hating yourself. You’ve never even tried to love. You gave up. You gave up on us the second we met.”

  “I need you. That’s what makes sense. That’s what I’ve always been able to come back to. You. When I think of later, I can’t take it. Because I know you’re going to want more. Submissives always want more. But you’re not like them. You’re better in every way. Because for the first time I want more too. I don’t know how I can give that to you and keep the control I need … over women inside and sexually.”

  A hush fell over us. I didn’t understand his pause, his defeatism. When I didn’t catch on, he found my eyes, his deep dark caverns of misery.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I need control over women in here.” He tapped his head. “And I need severe control over them sexually. Even before Vega, I was rough. I had to have their arms pinned down, or their hands behind their backs. I had to fuck them with their faces in a pillow, in my shirt, anything to keep the sound of their voices out of my mind. Anything to gain control. When I became Vega’s submissive, it was like the dark clouds opened up. I learned what it took inside to give someone else the control I myself desired. Becoming a dominant wasn’t some sick sexual fantasy. It was a necessity. I need this.”

  There was something monumental in his words. A secret within his truth I wasn’t able to grasp. But I sensed it. I could feel its damaging affects like warm sinister air down my back.

  “Now you know everything,” he said, bracing himself with an ever so slight narrow in his eyes. “That’s my secret.”

  “You mean your past wasn’t your secret?”

  “Part of it.”

  “What’s the other part?” I sat back on his lap. He didn’t let me go far; his hand wrapped around my wrist.

  Like a leash.

  My mind flashed back to the collar in his chambers.

  My heart dropped. “You need control over women mentally and sexually?” He nodded
hesitantly. “Because the women in your life took it from you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know why I am the way I am, what definitive action turned me this way. Maybe it was everything. My mother, the abuse, the rage, losing every ounce of control at such an early age—I am the way I am. That’s what you’ve never understood.”

  “So, no matter how much I want more for us, there won’t be any?”

  “How can there be?”

  I scrambled off his bed, clutching at my chest. He followed, standing in front of me like a wall.

  “Yes, there can. There will be. Look how far we’ve come already.” I motioned between us. “We can be whatever we want to be. You promised. Whatever I wanted. A ‘regular’ relationship with spankings. What was all that for? A way to keep what you really needed without having this conversation?”

  I understood Vega’s threat now.

  He loved me. I didn’t doubt that. We were meant to be together. I’d known it the first time I laid eyes on him.

  But if I knew how deep his desire for control went, how much it was wrapped around the roots of his monster, how much more power it had over him, I wouldn’t have taken him back after he cheated.

  Not to lose him a second time when I started wanting more from us.

  It was inevitable, to want more from the man I loved, the monster I craved.

  I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Why?” I whispered, falling to my knees.

  He fell to his too, pulling me onto his lap and rocking me back and forth. “I’ve never felt this way about another person. You are in here.” He took my hand and pressed it to his bare chest, over his heart. “I need to be in here.” His hand cradled my head, my thoughts.

  “Is that where you want to be? Owning my thoughts, my submission?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I want to be in here the way you are inside of me.” The hand on my head came to rest over my heart. We were heart to heart right now, our love warring with his demons. “But I cannot function if I lose control. I have none over myself. I never have. I need it from you.”

  I kept my hand over his heart. “Then you have it. But you have to give me this. Your heart is what I need from you. I never knew how incredible love could be until I met you. Please don’t take that from me.”