Masters of the Castle: Witness Protection Program

by Maren Smith

  Which was funny, because cups of coffee had pretty much made up the whole of her breakfasts from about high school on.

  “Also, you’re going to be so busy there won’t be time for you to eat later on.” Grimsley handed her back the plate. “Try the frittata, unless you’re a vegetarian. In which case, we also have oatmeal and fruit.”

  She didn’t want to try the frittata. She wanted a cup of coffee and flat shoes to walk in. Twenty minutes into wearing them and already her feet were done with these heels.

  She saved her glare for the first moment when he wasn’t looking at her, but that made her feel guilty. Edging along behind him, she put a piece of toast on her plate so he wouldn’t keep frowning back at her. She was halfway down the super long line of culinary breakfast options when she realized she was the only one there with a mostly empty plate. It wasn’t even that the food didn’t look good. She just wasn’t a morning breakfast kind of person, and her eyes kept drifting to the coffee dispenser set up with all the other drinks against the far wall.

  A braver person would have stepped out of line, leaving Grimsley to frown all he wanted while she got herself a damned coffee. At no point had he told her she couldn’t go off on her own, but it felt wrong somehow even just wanting to leave his side. So, Eden stayed right by him, step after microscopically small step, past the biscuits and assorted gravies, past the eggs and steaks, sausage and bacon. Past the pancakes.

  He looked at the toast on her plate and frowned; she drizzled syrup over the crisp triangle in hidden, albeit sullen, defiance. She wasn’t planning on eating it anyway.

  Catching her casting longing looks at the coffee line, the Master Butler stopped abruptly in front of the corned beef and potato hash and she promptly walked right into him. He dropped his plate onto the buffet, only from a height of about two inches, since he’d been in the process of putting it down anyway. She managed to hold on to hers, but her toast slid right off the edge of it, dropping syrup-side-down right on the point of his shiny black shoes.

  She stared down at the dribbles of syrup beading down the length of his pants from knee to ankle, all that stickiness obscuring the polish. She wanted to cry.

  “Oh dear,” said the blonde woman directly behind her. She stepped slightly out of line, peering around Eden to get a better look, then tsked.

  Grimsley wasn’t tsking. He wasn’t saying anything. He simply picked his plate up in one hand and politely excused himself out of line. Eden knew it was coming before he caught her by the ear, she was already up on tiptoes, wincing and apologizing as he dragged her around the buffet cart and marched her through the swinging doors into a very busy kitchen.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” a portly man said, his mostly bald head shining from the heat as he worked over a steaming griddle covered in choice cuts of steaks, all of them brown and sizzling in butter.

  “Mind your business!” snapped a female chef already descending on them from the biscuit station across the kitchen. Her apron was wet down the front, streaked with the same flour that she was wiping off her hands. She smelled of cinnamon, which made sense since she’d just left several racks of unbaked cinnamon rolls, ready for a warm room and time to rise.

  “I have a problem,” Master Grimsley said as the cook neared them.

  “Yeah,” she scoffed in agreement. “So I see.” She looked at Grimsley’s syrup-drizzled pants leg and then at Eden, trying vainly to ease the pressure of his grip on her earlobe. Finally, she sniffed. “I can take her over there.” She thumbed over her shoulder to a sink laden with unwashed dishes.

  A tiny thump of shock hit the bottom of her stomach and lay there, quivering. He was going to leave her here? Eyes wide, Eden ripped her own ear out of Grimsley’s grip as she looked from cook to butler.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Grimsley replied, making no effort to reclaim his grip. Beckoning for Eden to follow, he marched her to the sink. He neither did nor said anything, but simply standing there in front of that mountain of dishes was pretty self-explanatory. Shoulders slumping, Eden unhooked the spray nozzle from the wall, selected a dirty pot from the top of the pile and started rinsing.

  Grimsley sighed. “My leg, Eden.” He sounded tired. “You made a mess. Kindly clean it up.”

  Oh. She looked down at the trail of syrup on his pants and then his shoe. Right.

  Setting the pot aside, she found a folded white rag on a wire rack next to cleaning supplies and wet it under the faucet spray. She lowered herself to her knees and, gathering the excess cloth of his dark pants in a way that hopefully would not smear the syrup any worse than it already was, she did her best to wipe it off.

  Everything she touched, from the moment she’d arrived here, all went to crap. She was seriously starting to wonder if she shouldn’t just go home.

  Grimsley clasped his hands behind his back. Waiting seemingly with all the patience in the world, one never would have guessed he was upset with her when he said, “I am growing tired of being constantly bumped into.”

  Eden said nothing. What could she say? Everything that came sprinting to mind was either sarcastic or petulant. Bowing her head, she wiped the syrup off his shoe instead.

  He sighed again. “That was your cue, Eden, either to offer an explanation or to vow to do better.”

  “I’m trying,” she finally said, but only when she was sure she could manage the words without bursting into tears. His shoe was blurring. She could barely see what she was doing.

  “What must I do then, if this is the best you can offer?”

  Gently though he said it, all Eden could feel was the lash of the sentiment behind it and it broke her down completely. She tried to cry soundlessly. At least until she got his shoe clean, but it was hopeless. She was hopeless. Dropping the rag on the floor, she covered her mouth with both hands and pressed hard, but the sobs would not be stifled. Her shoulders shook as she choked on them.

  He’d asked her a question though and, bound to him, she had to answer.

  Her hands flopped in the most hopeless of shrugs as she gave the only answer she had. “Send me ho-home?”

  He was silent. The weight of his disapproval crushed her; she couldn’t even look up far enough to see how fiercely he was frowning. She got about halfway up his body, far enough to see the bulge of his erection tenting the front of his trousers, and stopped. She stared at that, shocked. He was erect? Why would he be looking at her like that—with that—when everything she had done over the last twenty-four hours was nothing short of colossal failure?

  “Don’t,” he said softly, the timbre of his voice husky with—was that lust?

  Her gaze snapped from his waist to his face, only to be captured by the dark light of hunger that had taken over his stare.

  Ever so slightly, he shook his head. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Dare what?” At this point, she hardly dared even to whisper.

  “Look at me like that. Cry for me, like that. What a hideous waste of passion, when I’ve done nothing yet to wring those tears from you.”

  A shiver ran through her, dancing down her spine on tickling fingers and straight between her legs, where it shivered her even more. “What?”

  “It’s everything I can do right now not to run my fingers through that tangle of curls you call a bun and shove my cock down the back of your throat. Do you want to cry for me, Eden?” He moved in closer. “Do you want to cry for me?”

  Don’t look anywhere but at his face, she told herself, her breath catching raggedly, feeling the heaviness of her own breasts rising so high above the neckline of her corset it was a wonder she didn’t spill right out over the top of it. Don’t look, but it was too late. In the quickest flash of disobedience, her gaze flicked from his entrancing stare to the bulge below his belt, and back again.

  “Stand up,” he ordered, soft as thunder.

  Her legs shook, but she managed, rising to stand in those awful heels. She barely felt the pain.

  “Turn around.”<
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  She faced the sink, staring without seeing the mountain of dirty dishes or the free-hanging metal nozzle, constantly dripping water into her now discarded pot. Hands clasped in front of her, she wrung at her own fingers.

  “Bend over,” came the dreaded order, but in a tone that sent a rush of wanton warmth flowing down onto her tensing thighs. She wore no panties to catch the moisture and soon a trickle of liquid was tickling its way down the inside of her leg as she laid her hands upon the lip of the sink and slowly bent herself over it, presenting her bottom for correction.

  The whole of her world felt frozen in that moment, and yet the busy kitchen bustled on. She could hear the scrape of multiple cooking utensils on metal pots, pans and bare cooking griddles. Metal sheet pans clattered in and out of ovens. People were talking, calling what they needed to those who might have it and letting others know what dishes were running low on the buffet in the dining room. Someone else laughed; the female cook. Hers was a low, throaty chuckle that preceded her drawled out, “Yeah, my kitchen always has plenty of that.”

  Everyone in that kitchen could have been on a whole different planet for all the notice Eden gave them. It was only her and Grimsley in this moment. Her and Grimsley, and the brush of his knuckles up the side of her thigh as he lifted the back of her skirt, baring her bottom to his gaze. He cupped the full flesh of her there, molding the curves of her in his palms, prizing her open. Was he looking at her pussy? At the dusky rim of her back hole? And—her body startled—did she really just feel the dribbling coolness of liquid spilling down into her crack right before his fingers caught it, arresting the fall in favor of spreading that liquid all around her anus.

  Eden rolled her lips tightly together. She almost rolled her eyes too. God, that felt good. Good, but mortifying, intimate and far more vulnerable than she knew she was going to be back when she’d knelt down to clean his shoe. She became a thousand times more vulnerable and mortified an instant later when the tip of his finger began a few circling passes all around her puckered rim.

  “I need you to focus,” Grimsley said. His finger pushed, penetrating her by knee-buckling degrees.

  She mewed and rolled her lips tighter, fingers clutching the lip of the sink in a death grip.

  “Focus,” he said again. She wanted to say she was focusing, but she was too distracted by the pleasure of his retreating finger. Push and retreat, push—deeper now—retreat again. Her throat wouldn’t let her speak, not even when, on his next push, it wasn’t the slow penetration of one finger that she felt stretching her open. It was two.

  She squeaked. It would have been a moan, a deep, toe-curling, passionate moan, except her too-tight throat cut it off.

  “Focus,” he crooned. Catching the back of her bun, he dragged her head back until the heat of his breath burned her ear. “When you are with me, you will keep your eyes on me, your mind on me, and the next time you walk into me, I will sodomize you with the largest cock I can find. Who knows, it might even be my own.”

  Eden shivered, her ass clamping down on his slow-thrusting fingers.

  “Do you want me to sodomize you?” he asked, and now it was three. Three fingers, thick and long, impaling her and bending her that much further over the sink as she rolled her lips to keep back the primal, guttural, lustiness of her escaping grunt.

  That was a loaded question. To say yes would be the same as admitting she was doing it intentionally just to be difficult and that she would eagerly do so again, as if she were trying to get him to punish her. She wasn’t. She didn’t want him to be mad at her. She didn’t want to be punished. To say no, however, would be a lie and her throat wouldn’t let her do that either.

  Grimsley pulled her head back even further, pushed his three fingers even deeper, winning from her the most animalistic grunt—a sound equal parts pleasure and pain, lust, and the humiliation that came only from having a man put his fingers in her ass. “Is that what you want? Do you want me to sodomize you because you can’t be trusted to keep your mind on the task at hand?”

  “No,” she whimpered. Not for that reason. Never for that one.

  Slowly, his fingers retreated. He’d forced them so deep, she’d never felt more stretched open. Now, in the absence of his touch, she’d never felt emptier.

  “Let’s see if this won’t help keep you mindful.” His touch returned, only now, instead of his fingers, she felt the hard, cool bump of something wet and roundish nudging against her anus. It was not as big as his three fingers had been, but then, he only had the object halfway up inside her before the coolness of it began to yield into a warming tingle, and then a smarting burn. Her eyes bulged. Her jaw dropped.

  “Oh my God,” she panted, her knees buckling into the side of the stainless-steel sink. She gritted her teeth to keep from shrieking as Grimsley thrust it, in and out, the brutal imitation of a hard, uncaring fuck with something that burned like the devil.

  “Say, thank you, Master, for keeping me mindful,” he ordered, the words caressing up the side of her neck, shivering her with their silken seduction.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, voice trembling and breaking. “Th-thank you, M-Master, for keeping me mindful.”

  “Again,” he ordered, pushing the ginger root deeper, applying circling pressure against the base to make the bulbous end embedded inside her rock and rotate. Every part of her that touched it, burned. She wanted it out. She ached for it to be deeper, spreading the intensity of all that delicious burning into her needy flesh.

  “Th-thank you, Master, for keeping me mindful,” she whimpered, teeth gritted against pain that should have been unpleasant and yet which barely met the definition of the word. Her body knew better. Her arousal flowed freely down her thighs, leaving drips on the floor.

  He backed away from her, the heat of one hand branding its staying authority into the small of her back.

  “Again,” he said, a half second before she heard the whipping ‘snick’ of the switch he always carried. No longer hooked to his belt, somehow it had come to be in his other hand and the sound it made as it rent the air was nothing compared to the sound it made when it laid that first stinging kiss right across the center of her naked backside.

  Eden sucked air, her hands both falling off the lip of the sink and slapping back into tight-gripping place again. “Ha!” she gasped, locking her lips to keep back her involuntary yelp. She breathed, struggling to absorb the pain until the worst of the sting began to fade.

  “I’m waiting,” Grimsley reminded.

  Swallowing hard, Eden forced herself to relax, for her bottom to unclench and her feet, which kept stamping mindlessly at the floor, like some well-trained counting horse, to lock back into place and stop moving. She breathed in twice, and then repeated his disciplinary phrase. “Th-thank you, Master, for keeping me, ah!” She slapped the side of the sink again, breathing through a sudden flare-up of fire and pain that surged back through her. “M-mindful.”

  Snick!

  The switch bit into her only a bare space below the first, hard and crisp, winning from her the cry she just could not keep back. Heat flared, both across her stinging bottom and down into the space between. Because damn if her pussy knew what it wanted anymore. Damn if she knew what was erotic. She humped her bottom against the sink, pinned into her bent over position by nothing more than his hand and her own sheer will not to be any more ill-behaved than she already had been. Her bottom clenched, trying to hide from the switch only to make the existing sting and burn of the thing lodged in her ass that much worse. And all the while, through the growing, flaring pain and the languid heat pulsing from each kiss of that switch as it grew into welts, her wanton, greedy pussy sobbed its empty need to be filled.

  “Please, ah!” Her knees banged against the sink. She had no idea what the hell had been burned in the pan directly under her face. She barely noticed the look or the smell of it. Every part of her was focused unerringly on what was happening behind her. On the light, but rapid tapping of the sw
itch as it searched the lowest curving point of her bottom for the next place to bite.

  “Again,” Grimsley intoned.

  She repeated the magic phrase, blurting it clumsily between ragged gasps and mewling whimpers. How many strokes was he going to give her? How many had she received last night, bent over his knee with her legs wide spread and his hand cupping, soothing, owning all the slippery folds of her that he held in his squeezing grip?

  The third stroke nearly jacked her upright but for the weight of his hand and the slipping of her scrambling feet as she lost her footing. Her heels had little traction against this floor. They skidded out from under her in opposite directions, leaving the sink beneath her hips as the only thing keeping her up off her knees and in position.

  She didn’t need coaxing this time. She said the words he wanted. She cried them, and she couldn’t even say exactly why. Yes, it hurt and it was awful, but it wasn’t that unbearable. Rather, the hurt was… well, it was fantastic. It was hot and stinging, and freeing. She’d never felt more submissive or safe, with her face half thrust into a dirty sink full of dishes and her bare ass humping the air behind her as she jammed her knees, one into the back of the other. She was putting on a hell of a show, but for all that she didn’t mean to do it, it was still a show meant for one. How much he was taking advantage of it, she didn’t know. But later, when the searing pleasure-pain had dwindled to nothing more than memory, she would masturbate to the erotic unknown of just how close he might be right now to unfastening his pants, fitting himself to the slick heat of her pulsing slit and shoving. Hard. God, she wanted to feel him all the way up in the back of her throat. She wanted to feel all the breath thrusting out of her as his hips pumped against the growing welts on her ass, spanking her all over again, bruising her over the lip of this incredibly uncomfortable sink. She wanted to feel the claw of his fingers in her hair, making of it the leash that he used to yank her back onto him.

  She wanted to feel everything… except the fourth and last cruel snick of that switch, lashing another weal on the reddening ladder he’d built across her backside. She bounced, bucking in a vain effort to throw off the sting. It didn’t help. She wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted it to. It was all knee-jerk reaction moving her until the initial ferocity of the hurt receded into a warm, pulsing hum.