CHAPTER FOUR
As Perry Bradford was being restrained and his submissive led away for questioning, Nik carried the beautiful woman into a nearby public exhibition room that was set up like an exam room in a gynecologist’s office. Jay flicked on the light and the two men sat side by side on aleather sofa against one wall. The woman was still sniffling, but as soon as she realized that she was alone in a room with two strange men and sitting on one of their laps, she shot upright and pushed against Nik’s chest, struggling to get up.
“Be still, lapochka. I promise we will not hurt you. You are safe here.”
Nik felt her muscles soften, and thought she was going to relax back against him. But then she stole a glance around the room and her body tightened again, a look of utter horror crossing her face. “No!” She pushed even harder against his chest trying to shove her hips off his lap. But he held her fast. “No! Let me go! I can’t stay here! I’m not—I can’t—”Suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. She clawed at her throat, desperately trying to suck air into her lungs.
Shit, she’s having a panic attack!
Instantly Nik took her head in his hands and directed her gaze to his, while Jay began stroking his hand up and down her back in a slow, soothing motion. “Shhh, lapochka,” Nik murmured against her ear. His voice, though deep and rumbling, was astoundingly gentle and she found it strangely compelling. Just as she found him strangely compelling. “Shhh,” he said again, stroking the heel of his right hand up and down her cheek. “Relax. Relax. There’s a good girl. Just relax and listen to the sound of my voice, okay?” She nodded. “Good. Very good. Now do exactly as I say. Sigh, as if what I’m saying annoys you. Let your shoulders and upper body sag. That’s it, good girl.
“Now, put your hand on your tummy. Take a deep, slow breath through your nose, letting the air push your tummy out while I count to five. One, two, deep, deep, all the way into the bottom of your lungs, three, that’s it, four, five. Hold, two, three, four, five. Now, breathe out through your mouth, slowly letting your shoulders relax and your tummy compress. One, two, three, four, five. Very, very good, malyutka. Again.” With utmost patience, Nik guided her through the deep breathing exercise, while Jay’s steady stroking motion up and down her back gradually eased the cramping of her muscles, the choking tightness of her throat and chest. After just a few minutes, she was once again breathing normally.
With a smile that gentled the fierceness of his aspect, Nik placed a kiss on her forehead and released her cheeks. “That’s a very good girl.” His tone was filled with approval. ‘You are safe here,” he repeated. “Nothing bad will happen to you. You have our word on that.”
Jay slid his hand from her back and picked up one of the hands she was twisting in her lap. She looked up at him, nearly drowning in his sea-green eyes.
“Hi,” he said with a grin that totally disarmed her. ‘I’m Jay Gillespie. And this giant Russian teddy bear is Nik Rostov. We would love to know who you are.”
“Charlotte,” she replied with an answering smile. “Charlotte Fielding.”
There was a knock on the door. It opened to reveal the handsome man who had covered Jay Gillespie with the blanket after his punishment. Jeez. What’s with this place? It seems to be rife with handsome men. Are they having a Hot Guys Convention or something? Charlie just stared as he entered, smiling at her and extending his right hand.
“Hi. I’m Dr. Lucas McKay.”
“Hi,” she replied shaking his extended hand. “Charlotte Fielding.”
In his left hand, he carried a black leather medical bag, which he set down on the counter beside a sink in the corner. He opened it and removed a pair of latex gloves, which he pulled onto his hands with a snapping sound.
“I witnessed part of your exchange with Mr. Bradford and caught a glimpse of the cuts he left on you. They looked pretty vicious from where I was standing. If I may, I’d like to have a look to make sure they’re not infected.”
When she hesitated, Lucas McKay added quickly, “It won’t take long. And you don’t even have to get up. You look pretty comfortable sitting right there on Master Nik’s lap.”
She was comfortable sitting on Master Nik’s lap. “Okay.”
The doctor sat in the empty space on the other side of Nik. He touched her shirt. “Can you raise your top for me, please?”
Charlie raised the back, but held the front scrunched up in a wad in front of her in an effort to keep her large breasts covered. Dr. McKay examined the welts on her back, his touch gentle and impersonal. She should have been distinctly uncomfortable, baring herself like this in front of three strange men. Especially three such big, raw, dominant men. But for reasons which she simply could not fathom at the moment, she wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable. It just felt…right. Powerfully so. And that was a feeling she didn’t want to examine too closely. She didn’t even want to acknowledge its existence. She was through with men. Especially men like these, the aforementioned big, raw, and dominant. She’d had enough of Dominance to last her a lifetime. Holding herself perfectly still, she tried not to hiss as Dr. McKay touched welts that were still painful, even after four days.
“I don’t like the looks of some of these.” He reached into his bag and withdrew a tube of antibiotic cream. He squirted a line of cream out onto his fingertip and started rubbing it into some of the deeper cuts.
“I’ll need to see your breasts, sweetie,” Dr. McKay said when he was done, gently uncurling her fingers from their death grip on the bunched-up knit fabric of her top. “Those marks looked particularly bad.” When she didn’t move, he added, “You’ll need to take this off.” With a resigned sigh, she raised her arms like a child, offering no resistance as he took hold of the scrunched up fabric and pulled it up over her head, baring her completely from the waist up.
Nik and Jay could barely restrain their gasps. Her breasts were gorgeous! Full and shapely with large, brown nipples the size of blackberries and smooth, round areolas that made both their mouths water. Nik could barely restrain himself from closing his hand around one of those nipples and lifting it to his mouth to suckle.
Jay couldn’t take his eyes off of them. They were perfect, with flawless, satin-smooth skin so pale and translucent he could see the fine blue tracery of veins just below the surface. All he wanted to do was bury his face between them and press their fullness against his cheeks, while bathing in her sweet, feminine scent.
And all that smooth, feminine perfection had been desecrated by some of the most vicious-looking welts any of the three men had ever seen. This woman had been beaten so savagely, her body would bear the scars for the rest of her life.
Overcome with an emotion he couldn’t identify, Jay leaned forward and placed his lips gently against one of the worst of the marks.
Charlie just whimpered and closed her eyes, fighting tears. She felt Dr. McKay’s touch, cool against her skin, as he examined the deep welts left by Perry Bradford. “Crop?” he asked. “Or single tail.”
“Both. But the worst ones are from the single tail.”
A couple of them troubled him. They were red and angry looking and hot to the touch, meaning infection had most likely already set in. She was going to need more than just an antibiotic cream for these. “How long ago did this happen?” he asked, careful not to let his troubled thoughts show on his face.
“Four days ago. Friday night.”
“Were they seen by a doctor?”
“Yes. After he beat me, he ordered me to s-suck his cock. When I didn’t do it fast enough to suit him, he backhanded me so hard I banged my head against the granite countertop in the bathroom. It knocked me out cold. When he couldn’t get me to wake up, he took me to the Emergency Room. Of course the doctors asked him how I had received such injuries. He lied and told them that a friend of his had whipped me and that he’d gotten there just in time to rescue me. He also said he’d already reported his friend to the police and they were dealing with it. Another lie. He’s the one who whipp
ed me. And beat me—”Her voice broke and she started crying again. “I was afraid that if I contradicted him and told the truth, he would kill me. When the doctor told him I had a concussion and they’d have to keep me overnight for observation, and that he would have to leave, I thought Perry would pitch a fit. But he finally agreed to come back first thing the next morning. I knew that, concussion or no concussion, I had to get out of there and get as far away as possible before then.”
“Did you report him to the police?”
“Oh, yeah.” Her face turned red again. “They just laughed at me. Said it was my word against his. That he would say that I asked for it—that I wanted it.”
Nik shook his head adamantly. “No one wants this, malinkaya. And no Dom worthy of the name ever inflicts this kind of punishment on a sub. Not ever. He assaulted you, pure and simple.”
“Did the hospital take photos of these?” Dr. McKay asked.
“No. I did. With my phone.”
“I’d like to see them, if you don’t mind.”
Charlie stuck her hand in her purse, her eyes widening in shock when her fingers encountered the mangled mess of hors d’oeuvres she’d dumped in there earlier and completely forgotten about. Of course, whacking Perry on the head with it probably hadn’t helped. When she finally pulled out her phone, holding it gingerly with two fingers, both it and her hand were smeared with several kinds of gooey cheese. She just stared at the mess, biting her lip, while hot color flooded her cheeks.
The doctor quirked one black eyebrow and held out his hand. Grimacing, she placed the messy phone in his open palm.
Chuckling to himself, Jay got up and went over to the sink in the corner of the room to get a towel. He handed it to Lucas, who used it to wipe off the phone. “Care to explain why you have a purse full of canapes?” the doctor asked without looking up from his task.
Not on your life. It makes me appear desperate and cheap and needy.
“Not really.”
“Fair enough.” While Lucas McKay was scrolling through her photos, Jay sat back down and picked up Charlie’s hand, lifting it to his mouth. Her fingernails were just as red and shiny as her lips and his heartbeat quickened, wondering if her toenails were the same color. He loved painted toenails on a woman. He lifted his gaze to hers, and she fell into it, floundering to keep from sinking into those green depths.
Robbed of her ability to breathe, she watched him take her index finger into his mouth and swirl his tongue around it, licking off the cheesy goo and other bits of food, lingering on the satin smoothness of her nail. The heat and moisture of his mouth made her shiver. Her skin started tingling everywhere he touched her.
Jay knew exactly the effect he was having on her. Because it was exactly the same effect she was having on him. His cock was hard as iron, his heart beat was so erratic it felt like it was jumping all around in his chest, searching for a way out. He just grinned as he licked her second finger. “I take it you were hungry.”
You have no idea. She grimaced. “You must think I’m the worst person in the world.”
Nik Rostov’s hand stroked her upper arm. “No, malyutka, just low on options. Tell us what else he did to you.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” she finally asked, unable to contain her curiosity one second longer. “What does it mean, anyway?”
The big Russian chuckled, a sound that came rumbling up out of his cavernous chest, sending goose bumps rippling down her spine.
“It is a Russian endearment, roughly translated as ‘little one’.”
She just stared at him. “Seriously? You think I’m little?”
He grinned. “You are to me.”
She laughed. “Can’t argue with logic like that.”
Dr. McKay looked up from the pictures on her phone. “Tell us more about what brings you here to Club Risqué.”
“Bradford kept me prisoner inside his house for three weeks,” she confessed. “When I finally managed to escape four days ago, I literally had no place to go. He knew where I lived, he knew where I worked. I was terrified he would come after me. So I grabbed all my personal stuff, which wasn’t much, and left everything else behind. I closed out my bank account, which also wasn’t much, and hightailed it out of town. I needed to hang onto as much money as I could because I didn’t know how long I’d have to make it last. I needed at least enough to get me to a new place where I could start over. I discovered that I had accidentally picked up Perry’s invitation to this Open House and thought, okay, maybe I’ll just pop in, grab some food, and leave without anybody noticing.”
All three men laughed. Jay lifted his free hand to stroke her cheek. “Darlin’, you’re six feet tall and one of the most beautiful women we’ve ever seen. Ain’t no way in hell you’re not gonna get noticed, especially in a place like this. Every Dom in here is talkin’ about you, wonderin’ who the hell you are. And why you’re alone.”
“Where are you headed, Charlotte?” Nik asked, her name sounding foreign and exotic on his tongue.
“Charleston, West Virginia. I have an audition Saturday morning at nine. Figured I’d get there a couple of days early and look for a job.”
“You’re a musician?” Lucas asked.
“Singer. Country, mostly.” She shrugged. “Some rock.”
Nik and Jay exchanged glances, but neither man said anything.
Lucas finished his examination of the cuts on her breasts. “Okay, sweetie,” he said. “I need you to stand up so I can check the welts on your bottom.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “This is so embarrassing.”
Nik pushed her up off his lap and stood up right behind her as she staggered a bit stiffly. Grabbing hold of her shoulders, he steadied her, turning her around so Lucas could see her ass. Reaching back, she lifted her skirt, holding it up out of the way while Nik stepped into her and put his arms around her. Lucas applied dabs of cream to a couple of locations. “Do you have any other injuries?” he asked, re-capping the cream.
Her hesitation told him the answer to that.
“Please let me see them, Charlotte.”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“I think I’m a better judge of that than you are, sweetie. I need to look at them.”
“They’re—they’re in an embarrassing place.”
Lucas just smiled. “I’m a doctor. No place on a person’s body is embarrassing to me.”
She just gnawed on her lip, still hesitating. “Okay,” she finally relented. “But only if they look away.” She nodded her head toward Nik and Jay.
Lucas’s mouth worked. In reality he was biting his cheek to keep from laughing out loud. Nik and Jay were going to have their hands full with this one. “These men have just saved you from a beating,” Lucas pointed out calmly. “Surely you know what that means.”
For a long second she just stared at him, then slowly shook her head.
“You are a submissive, alone in a BDSM club without a Dom. It means that they have publicly proclaimed themselves your protectors. It means that, at least for this time and this place, they are your Doms, responsible for your safety and well-being. That includes being able to assure themselves that you are well and healthy.”
Still Charlotte hesitated.
“Please show him, malyutka.” Nik Rostov’s voice was low and gentle. “We aren’t going to hurt you. We would never hurt you.”
“Nik’s right,” Jay echoed. “We just want to make sure you’re not suffering any ill effects from the beating you took.”
With all three men looking up at her expectantly, Charlie finally relented. “Okay. But I need to be sitting.”
Without releasing her, Nik turned and sat back down on the sofa, tugging her after him. With a resigned sigh, she sank down onto his lap and spread her legs. All three men gasped at the mark high up on her inner thigh. Perry Bradford had bitten her. And the mark he’d left behind was badly infected. As Lucas lifted his hand, she gasped and flinched.
“Do
n’t worry, sweetie. I’m not going to touch it. It’s obviously painful. But it’s not included in the pictures you took of your injuries. So I’m going to take one now.” He lifted her phone and took a clear close-up of the bite mark. Then he handed the phone back to her. “Are you allergic to any medications?”
“Not that I know of.”
He capped the tube and put it back into his bag. He took out a blister pack with bright pink caplets. “This is a five-day Z-pack,” he said. “Take it as directed and your infections should clear up without any complications.” He handed her top back to her.
She pulled it down over her head and arms, and took the package from him. She had barely gotten herself covered when there was another knock on the door. It opened and in strode Jesse Colter. Jay jumped up from the sofa and stood practically at attention at his entrance. Charlie wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d saluted, that’s how much respect he evidently had for the man.
Jesse’s grim expression softened as soon as he saw Charlie. “Miss Fielding,” he said, approaching her and extending his hand, “I am Jesse Colter, one of the owners of Club Risqué. I am so sorry you were assaulted on my premises. Perry Bradford is an arrogant prick and I’m pleased to tell you that he will very shortly be enjoying the hospitality of the Marshall County Jail while he awaits arraignment on charges of aggravated assault.”
“Then I should be going to jail, too, since I hit him back.”
“Nonsense,” Jay, Nik, and Lucas all said in unison. “He attacked you! You were clearly defending yourself.”
“Don’t worry, Charlotte, we saw the whole thing,” Lucas added. “And we’ll be happy to testify on your behalf in any court.”
Jesse took both her hands, hunkering down in front of her, putting his face below hers to keep her from feeling threatened or overwhelmed. He could sense how skittish she was and he didn’t want her to bolt. “Do you know the young woman who was with Mr. Bradford?”
Passion's Hope (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 3) Page 8
