Masters of the Castle: Witness Protection Program

by Maren Smith

  Eden couldn’t move. She couldn’t see anything but the rock lying on her face, and she couldn’t breathe past the blood seeping from her nose and filling up her mouth. She couldn’t raise her head. She couldn’t even turn it. The crushing weight of a spanking bench—or was it a door—kept her pinned. Everything hurt, something was burning, she was suffocating. She had to get out of here.

  Help. Her jaw refused to move. No air pushed up through her throat to turn that cry into sound. Blinking, she rolled her eyes upward until she found a tiny hole in the rubble piled on top of her. She saw light that shouldn’t have been there. Was that a window or a hole in the wall? It was hard to tell through the billowing drifts of black smoke and dust.

  A sudden shadow staggered between her and the light. Eden almost didn’t recognize the man, or the woman fighting to get out of his arms—the detectives. Nick was trying to get Terri back to the stairs and out of his hallway; she was struggling with all her might to break away from him and run back into the worst of the smoke. Terri’s mouth kept moving, but all Eden heard was the deafening ringing in her own ears.

  Come back. She mewed, but her jaw wouldn’t work. Her feet felt hot. She could see crackling shades of orange and amber lighting up the drifting smoke. She was going to burn.

  She had to get up, right now, or she was going to die.

  Move!

  Pain exploded through her, for just a moment squelching the constant ringing. She heard her own agonized shriek, but her body did not move, only two fingers. She saw them suddenly lift, which was disconcerting because her brain kept trying to tell her her right arm was trapped at her side under the door with her, not stretched out over her head and sticking halfway out into the light like it was. But then again—she rolled her eyes until it hurt trying to better see it—if that was her arm then the angle it was lying at was not a good one.

  Oh fuck. Her arm wasn’t just broken, it was bending-backwards broken. Where was her other arm? She couldn’t feel it any better than she could feel the broken one. She couldn’t feel her legs, either. She really was going to die.

  The smoke and shadows up ahead of her flickered as the shadows of running men dashed between her and the light. Help was coming. The door covered her head, the smoke shielded their faces. She cried out, terrified, because they raced right past her with fire extinguishers in their hands and they never even saw her. She cried out again—but the ringing was back, maybe she wasn’t making any noise at all. How were they going to find her if she couldn’t make noise? How were they going to avoid stepping on her?

  Someone grabbed her hand. She almost blacked out.

  The crushing weight on top of her jostled. All she tasted was blood until, suddenly, the weight and darkness vanished and she was engulfed in smoke, dust and light.

  On his hands and knees in the rubble, Grimsley heaved away the rock that had been smashed up against her mouth and nose. He kept hold of her hand, too, barking orders she couldn’t hear, but she could see his mouth moving. She could imagine his tone as he sent a man racing back down the hall the way they’d come. She didn’t know if they got the fire out or not, all she could see was Grimsley’s face as he lay down on the mound of rubble with her. He touched the back of her head with his hand, laying his head upon the rock pillow next to hers to keep her company.

  One would never know by looking at him that she was dying, but Eden knew. She saw his mouth move, gentle shushing noises that caressed her face with his breath. He stayed right there with her, while the blackness began to creep in around the periphery, stealing away the light and the pain and dulling her awareness.

  Raising his head, he pressed a gentle kiss upon the backs of the only two fingers she could move.

  Oh, sure, she thought, not unfondly. Now you kiss me. Suck-up.

  Losing consciousness was a lot like slipping into a warm bath. It crept up over her toes first, crawling up her body to pull her into its comforting and weightless embrace.

  “Stay with me,” Grimsley mouthed, but the darkness took her anyway and then she was gone.

  Grimsley stood at the window in the hospital waiting room, staring out over a parking lot full of automobiles, each one associated with someone going through exactly what he was right now—a silent, earth-shattering, heart-screaming hell. The waiting area was full of police officers, all of them with Masters pulled slightly away from one another as statements were made. Marshall was sitting with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, trying to answer as best he could when Grimsley knew all he must be thinking about was his pregnant wife, Kaylee, in premature labor because she, too, had been caught in the blast.

  Jackson was standing by Chris, an officer from his security crew who had been assigned to guard Marshall’s cousin, Grace. The words ‘kidnap’ and ‘assassin’ kept cropping up. Grimsley didn’t know what had happened there, but he knew Grace was also being checked out. It was hard to tell by the shell-shocked look on Chris’s face how bad it might be for her. On the other side of the room, Eric was standing in for everyone who outranked him. He was talking to the other cops, the detectives no longer undercover, and someone who might have been FBI—Grimsley was not an eavesdropper. He didn’t know who he was and honestly, he didn’t much care. He thought someone said, “Then I guess he’s dead, killed in the blast.”

  A doctor came into the room, half a dozen people jumped to their feet, some of them sinking back down again when he came to Marshall first. “We got the labor stopped,” he said. “You can see her now if you like.”

  Marshall didn’t even excuse himself from the police or their interview. He ran back through the ICU doors, only barely pausing long enough for the nurses to unlock them for him. Everyone else remained condemned to wait.

  It was a long time before the next doctor appeared. Holly, one of his own Little Maid submissives, fell sobbing into her chair at the news he brought. She hugged herself, rocking as only the deepest pain could make a person do even as Jackson moved in to embrace her. He held her hands so she couldn’t claw herself. He held her head, too, letting her beat it against his shoulder only once before she ripped out of his embrace and spat out that she quit. Holly was one of the few employed submissives in Grimsley’s care whom he’d actually disciplined. He should have gone after her, but his feet were rooted to the floor.

  Jackson met Grimsley’s gaze from across the waiting room. Turning his head, Grimsley straightened his uniform jacket. It was dirty, stained with Eden’s blood. He went back to waiting and staring out the window.

  Eventually, the number of people in the waiting room dwindled. The cops left. People not associated with the Castle or its explosion came and eventually went again, and the sun moved slowly across the sky, dipping down to touch the tree-skirted horizon. It got dark. Parking lot lights winked on; Grimsley assumed the stars came out, but the hospital lights were too bright. He couldn’t see them.

  “Mr. Anderson? Wade Anderson?”

  He hadn’t gone by his birth name in years. Anonymity was key, right? Even for let’s-pretend butlers. It took hearing his name being called twice before Grimsley recognized it, or that the doctor calling it meant him. He was startled to find he wasn’t the only Castle Master left in the waiting room. They were lined up—Marshall, Eric, Chris and Jackson, squeezed in shoulder to shoulder in chairs that were almost too small for them. To a man, they stood and came to join him when the doctor crossed the room.

  Clipboard in his hands, he took a deep breath. Good diagnoses never started off like that, Grimsley thought, bracing himself for what he’d known was coming from the moment he’d heaved a door and a hundred pounds of broken stone off his submissive to find her lying even more broken underneath.

  “She came through surgery better than I thought she would,” the doctor said honestly.

  For one perfect second, Grimsley thought his knees were about to go out from under him. Somebody put a steadying hand against his back. From the sheer size of it, it was probably Jackson. Grimsley hadn’t kn
own his shaking was that noticeable.

  “Two broken ribs and a punctured lung, compound fracture in the right arm, fractured left cheekbone, and a concussion,” the doctor said, rattling off a terrifying litany of injuries. All of which Grimsley listened to without a flinch of expression; all of which he felt as keenly as she must have lying under the door. “Quite frankly, considering what could have happened to you all tonight, you’re lucky the injuries weren’t a whole lot worse. That more people didn’t die.”

  As if it were their fault. As if they were responsible for planting the bomb in the first place.

  He didn’t think he’d moved, but Jackson’s hand shifted from his back to his right shoulder, not supporting now as much as it was staying. Marshall’s steady hand took hold of his left shoulder. Grimsley really honestly didn’t think he’d moved, and yet there was a great deal more emotion trembling through his voice when he at last managed to swallow past the ‘fuck you’ that came first and asked, “May I see her?”

  Scolding delivered, though he obviously doubted what good it would do, the doctor nodded. “She’s groggy, but she’s awake. She’ll spend the night in ICU and probably be moved to recovery as soon as she’s out of the woods. It might be tomorrow afternoon, but I’m thinking Tuesday or even Wednesday much more likely.”

  Jackson patted his back. Marshall gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze. They both let him go when he took that first heavy step toward the ICU doors. His legs felt rubbery with relief and yet that wasn’t why he paused just before he passed the doctor.

  Behind him, Jackson swore and tried to grab his arm, but his eyes were all on the frowning doctor. More importantly, however, was the startled look on the doctor’s face when Grimsley leaned in to him and said, “Think what you like about us, but before you say one ugly word to Eden, you would do best to remember what it is I do for a living. I promise you, Doctor, I’m good at my job too. I could make anyone enjoy it, even one such as you. But I doubt I would.”

  “Grimsley,” Marshall groaned, rubbing his face with both hands. “That doesn’t help.”

  Perhaps not. But seeing the doctor stumble half a step back before he caught himself did feel good.

  Sadly, it was a feeling that lingered only as far as the threshold to Eden’s hospital room. He thought he’d seen the worst this day had to offer when he’d seen her lying on those rocks, or when the EMTs had bundled her into the back of their ambulance and taken off with lights and sirens blaring. But seeing her like this, with one arm in a cast, her face so swollen and bruised that she was hard to recognize—this was easily the worst that he’d yet lived through.

  He approached the bed silently. Though she looked like she was sleeping, just as he drew near, one badly-bruised eye peeled open.

  “Look,” she croaked. “I can move my fingers.”

  She was on a lot of drugs, so he’d forgive her for the fact that the only finger that moved was the middle one on her casted hand.

  “The next time the doctor comes in to check on you, promise me you’ll show him that.” Grimsley eased down to sit on the bed by her hip. Watching carefully for the slightest hint he might be hurting her, he took gentle hold of the limp hand that wasn’t in a cast. “How are you feeling?”

  “Mm,” she mumbled. “Like I blew up. Do we get ice cream for that, or is that only tonsils, do you think?”

  Grimsley tsked. Part of him wanted to scold her. He’d just spent how many hours scared out of his mind, and here she was cracking jokes. If this wasn’t the drugs, he was going to have his hands full once she got out of here.

  She licked her lips, some of the sparkle fading from her eyes and her bruised face growing somber. “Did they catch the guy?”

  “The assassin? I don’t know.” He’d heard the other Masters wondering this same thing in the waiting area. Some thought he’d been killed, others that he’d got away; no one knew for sure. In the mood he was in, Grimsley would cheerfully have killed the man himself. He didn’t tell Eden that. Rather, he hoped he wasn’t lying when he promised her, “No one will ever have to worry about Carmen the Butcher again.”

  She’d been through enough. She deserved to rest easy.

  Her nod was barely movement and it was accompanied by a wince.

  The time for socializing was done.

  “You need your sleep,” he said, caressing the backs of her fingers one last time before he let her go. She tried to grab him back again when he stood up but missed and very nearly cracked herself in the head with her own cast. His reflexes were faster, he caught her arm before she hurt herself.

  “Don’t go!” she pleaded, reaching for him now with her limp hand. “Please, if you don’t stay, how will I ever get you to kiss more than just my fingers?”

  Gently disentangling his wrist, he laid her hand back across her stomach, patting the back of it to keep it there. Bracing his hands on either side of her head, he bent carefully over her. “Eden,” he said, the most grudging of smiles tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Just as soon as you are out of here and well enough, I am going to kiss you breathless. Every single morning, first thing when you wake up; every single night, just before you go to sleep; every single day for the rest of both our lives. That’s a promise.”

  It was even a promise he didn’t mind sealing with a kiss. Once upon her forehead, because it was the least likely place that he risked hurting her. And then, because he just couldn’t help himself, as gently as he could, he touched his lips to hers. Mewing, she tried to kiss him back. He broke it off before she insisted and caused herself more pain.

  “Close your eyes,” he commanded, and she did.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered one more time, already drifting off to sleep.

  Drawing a chair up to her bedside, Grimsley made his long frame as comfortable as hospital furniture allowed. Crossing his legs at the knee, he covered her hand with his. It was the only way he could hold her, but he would do it. All night long, if necessary.

  He wasn’t going anywhere.

  The End

  Maren Smith

  Fortunate enough to live with my Daddy Dom, I am a Little, a coffee whore, pain slut, administrator at two of my local BDSM dungeons, resident of the wilds of freakin’ Kansas (still don’t know how I ended up here) and submissive to the love of my life. An international and USA Today bestselling author, I have penned more than 120 novels, novellas and short stories, and am the author of the Masters of the Castle series.

  Connect with Me:

  Visit my blog here: http://badgirlscorner.blog

  Friend me on Facebook here: http://facebook.com/Maren.Smith.10

  Follow me on Twitter: @authmarensmith

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  Follow on Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/maren-smith

  Visit me on Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/authormarensmith

  Check out my Amazon author page

  Other Books By Maren Smith

  Masters of the Castle Series

  Holding Hannah, Book 1

  Kaylee’s Keeper, Book 2

  Saving Sara, Book 3

  Sweet Sinclair, Book 4

  Chasing Chelsea, Book 5

  Owning O, Book 6

  Maddy Mine, Book 7

  Meeting Marshall (A Novella)

  Seducing Sandy, Book 8

  Single Titles

  How to Live Without a Man

  Something Has to Give

  B-Flick

  Fairy Godmothers, Inc.

  Black Sheep

  Daughter of the Strong

  The Diva

  Enemies

  The Great Prank

  Jinxie’s Orchids

  Katy Run Away

  Kindred Spirits

  Life After Rachel

  The Locket

  Mistress

  Morogh the Demon

  Mountain Man

  My Lady Robin Hood

  Saga: Constance’s Story

  The Suffragettes


  Treasure

  Varden’s Lady

  The Next Ex

  The Miner’s Wife

  Angel of Hawkhaven

  Red Petticoat Saloon series

  Jade’s Dragon

  Warming Emerald

  Corbin’s Bend series

  (Multiple Authors)

  Welcome to Corbin’s Bend

  Return to Corbin’s Bend

  At Home in Corbin’s Bend

  Corbin’s Bend Homecoming

  Love in the Rockies

  Masters of the Castle Collections

  When the Gavel Falls (anthology, Owning O)

  Masters of the Castle (3-book set)

  Witness Protection Program (Anthology, Embracing Eden)

  Box Sets and Anthologies

  The Dark Forest

  The Smith Sisters Christmas Anthology

  12 Naughty Days, A Holiday Anthology

  Confessions of a Spanking Author

  Cowboy Discipline

  With Hearts Aflame

  The Naughty List

  Spanking Tails Vol. 1

  Spanking Tails Vol. 2

  Spanking Tails Vol. 3

  Spanking Tails Vol. 4

  Spanking Tails Vol. 5

  Spanking Tails Vol. 6

  Spanking Tails Vol. 7

  Spanking Tails Vol. 8

  Spanking Tails Vol. 9

  Spanking Tails Vol. 10

  Connect with Maren Smith:

  www.badgirlscorner.wordpress.com

  thetarantularanch@yahoo.com

  Tempting Tasha