His gaze locked on mine, he reaches out to stroke my chin with his thumb, a move that’s both utterly commanding and utterly sweet at the same time. My body goes perfectly still, soaking it in.
“Yeah, you might be right about that,” he says. “And it’s time for me to morph, too, to take command of my life. Of myself. To stop being so damn impetuous and force myself to focus, force myself to adopt the discipline I’ve been trained to and rejected mostly out of pure stubbornness.” He pauses, blinking at me, his lion eyes gleaming with golden light. “Maybe my adult life really starts now. Because of you.”
Love washes over me, my skin going warm, my muscles softening all over. When he pulls my face close and brushes my lips with his, I know we’re going to be okay.
Pulling back, he asks, “Tell me what you want, Damon—you know I need to hear the words. Do you want me to take over the House? Do you want to belong to me? To Aimée, too?”
“I want it all, yes. But Christopher…” I need to say the words, but they’re going to come out hard, rasping my throat because it feels like a risk. Because I have to know. “I can only do this if you love me, as I love you.”
He grabs me and pulls me in roughly, pressing his mouth to mine and kissing me so hard he leaves my lips bruised. When he releases me the male taste of him still floods my mouth.
“You know damn well I love you,” he says, his voice low and full of heat and gravel, his breath warm on my cheek. “Would I put up with this shit if I didn’t? Would I share Aimée with you otherwise?”
I shake my head a little. “No, never.”
His hand slides behind my neck once more, and the heat of it seeps immediately into my system. I inhale, breathing him in. Do I dare yet to feel that everything is right with the world?
“Christopher, I have to ask you what you want. Do you understand? I need to know, to hear it. Because this is huge—so much bigger than me, or us, even. There are so many other people involved, and I have to consider everything.”
“I know you do. Don’t think I haven’t realized the scope of this situation,” he assures me. “Look, it won’t be an easy transition, and it’s going to last a while. Everyone won’t adjust right away, but it’ll be easier that so many of them have already seen me as a Master. It might take a little longer for them to accept you as a slave, but as Alexa said, they will. I’ll fucking see to it, if nothing else, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
I hope he’s right, because relying on him to strong-arm their acceptance of me will make it that much harder for me to accept it.
“So, this is what I propose,” he says. “No. This is the goddamn way it’ll be: I will accept the position as Master of the Training House. You and Aimée will belong to me, and I’ll take over ownership of any other current House slaves you have. And I think I will have that ‘coming out’ party Alexa suggested. What an insanely evil idea.” He cracks a smile. “Evil and fucking effective as hell. We’ll relaunch the Training House under new management. And before then, you’ll talk to your staff with me and we’ll get the logistics worked out. I’ll take over the suite that belongs to you, and you and our girl will stay with me there—our happy little family.”
My body is buzzing with love for him, with desire so acute it makes me ache all over.
“What’s going on your head?” he demands.
“You always could see right through me.” Which is still both comforting and terrifying. Will his perceptiveness ever cease to amaze me?
“Spill, Damon.”
I sigh. “It’s difficult to believe that…that I can have this.”
His golden eyes narrow. “Someday soon, I’m gonna beat this martyr shit out of you.”
“I certainly hope so,” I tell him with a wry grin.
“We can start right now,” he says, reaching for me.
He has me on my feet and stripped bare in mere seconds. Then kicks my legs out from under me, driving me to my knees and leaving me naked and hard and yearning. He moves behind me, and I have one moment to take in the sweet sound of his zipper coming down before he lowers himself to one knee, bending the other at my side.
The pain as he enters my ass is searing, but I welcome the sensation, my body firing on all cylinders as he leans in and bites my shoulders, my back, the back of my neck. I stifle my cries, pride kicking in, but then I realize what I’m doing. I can’t hang onto control any longer. That’s what this is all about—this dynamic, allowing myself to love. To let go.
Have to let it all go.
He bites me harder, plowing into me and fucking me in long, punishing strokes, probably tearing my ass up, with no lube and his magnificent roughness. And I do let it go, pleasure and pain, love and relief all welling up in my throat as I issue an animal cry that’s half growl and half sob.
I’m about to come, barely able to hold it back, when he flips me over onto my back on the floor, and in superb Christopher style, he grabs me by the throat, squeezing the tiniest bit. He chokes me out by allowing the pressure to build a little at a time as he presses his beautiful cock into me once more, and I’m lost in a haze of sweet pleasure and oxygen deprivation that has my mind and my eyes glazed.
He looks into my face, and for the first time ever, his features really let go, loosening and softening as much as I have on the inside. In a mad, lovely rush I realize I am seeing him for the first time, down to the bottom of who he is. He is my beautiful Christopher, my Master. My love. All the exquisite pain and tragedy that has gone into creating him, and he is finally showing me for the first time. I am stunned. Awed. In love.
When Aimée’s lovely face appears over his shoulder, he turns and smiles at her, taking her hand and drawing her in. She’s wearing nothing but a little silk slip in the same pale green as her eyes, and he slides it over her head with one deft hand, revealing her perfect breasts, the nipples a dark pink, full and luscious. Her sex is a pretty little V between her sleek thighs. But my gaze has to return to her face, to the curve of her pale cheeks, to her sensual lips, and perhaps most of all, to her gorgeously gleaming eyes. An entire world lives in there, deep and dark, sweet and light, all the sides that are her—our girl.
I reach for her, as well, and together Christopher and I pull her down onto the floor with us. He guides her to straddle me, his strong arms around her, lifting and lowering her, and then spreading my thighs, still entirely in charge.
And yet there is a certain fluidity to every motion, to each moment of flesh meeting flesh as I thrust into her, as he thrusts into me. He sinks his teeth into the side of her neck, and she sighs, leaning her head back against his shoulder. With his free hand, he digs his nails into my hip, then my waist, and it is that pain and pleasure continuum, where it’s impossible to tell where one sensation begins and the other ends. Except that it doesn’t have to end. I am theirs. And they are mine.
Desire builds, soars, and I fall from that keen edge, into the darkness inside me. But it’s a darkness they share with me. What a relief, to know it’s true.
Our beautiful Aimée tightens around me, groans, then cries out. “Damon! Ah, Christopher…my Master, yes! Oh, oh…”
Then Christopher is stabbing into me, his gaze on mine, fierce with his peaking pleasure. He drives his cock so hard inside me, the pain rises, spirals, and so does my need to come.
Christopher says, “Yes, do it!”
As I growl out my pleasure, he yells his, pumping into me. “Fuck, yeah!”
We fall into a heap on the floor, the scent of come sharp in the air. Their skin is warm on mine, their panting breaths in my ears like music—that and the knowledge that we are together.
Aimée curls into my side, tucked between Christopher and me. “I love you, Damon. We love you.”
Stroking her face, I murmur, “I know you do. I finally know it. And I love you, my beautiful girl, and my beautiful Master. God, what a strange mess this was.”
Christopher laughs. “We’re a fucking strange bunch, but would we have ended up
together any other way? I always say we are the freaks of the world, and that feels more true now than ever.”
“Yes, we are,” Aimée agrees. “But we are freaks together. We are together.”
“I just realized…” I start, then have to pause to get a firm hold on the idea forming in my head. “…that despite my position in the kink world, and the brave face I’ve worn all these years, a part of me has felt, until now, that perhaps I didn’t deserve this. That despite my protests about how those in our community are simply expressing their desires and working out conflicts in a healthy manner, maybe I didn’t feel I deserved to have this. To have love.”
I have to stop once more, to swallow down the emotion clogging my throat. Or maybe it’s the heaviness left over from Christopher choking me.
And how apt that I’d think of such a thing in the middle of this discussion. Oh yes, we are the weirdos of the world. It makes me smile. “I’ve felt entirely deserving of having any luxury, any indulgent fetish or slave or piece of equipment at my disposal, and yet, I didn’t feel I deserved to have the two of you.”
Christopher gives my face a gentle slap. “I never think I deserve any damn thing in life. It’s not even about that.”
“But it is,” comes Aimée’s soft tone, and I’m glad she’s said it because Christopher still obviously has lessons to learn too.
“If you say so, prettiness,” he says.
“No, please don’t,” she begs. “It’s the truth. What we do, the things we desire—I don’t care how odd it must be to other people. It’s us, and we are the only ones who need to approve. As you would say, Master, fuck them all if they don’t like it.”
He and I both laugh at that, at our sweet, sophisticated and well-trained Aimée using such profane language.
“Good girl,” Christopher says. “Our wise girl.”
“Yes,” she agrees, “sometimes I am. Being in this life has made me realize my value as much as it has you, Damon. And Master Christopher, you will, too. We’ll help you. Oh, I know you don’t like to hear that you need help with anything, but isn’t that part of our job?”
Christopher kisses her on the cheek, and she squeals when he bites her there. “Your job, little one, is simply to love us.”
It hits me like a lightning strike: our job—all of us—is to love each other. That is the ultimate truth. The life I’ve been living all this time, ever since I lost my brother, and then my Master, has been a sham. I’ve been protecting my heart from the very thing it craves. Requires.
As Aimée said, the rest of it—the kink—doesn’t matter. It’s this. Hearts beating together in between breathless moments of pain, of pleasure.
Reaching for our girl, I hold her soft cheek. “You are wiser than you know. It’s you—both of you, but you’re the one who started these ideas in my head, Aimée—who’s made me see the truth. It’s love that is my emancipation, my redemption. I am no longer the Master, but simply Damon, and I can finally accept him for who and what he is. I’ve found what I require. Who I require. Who I am. And it’s you, my lovely girl, and my Master. What else could possibly have pulled me from the stuck place I’ve been half buried in all these years, busily convincing myself that was a life?” My chest goes tight, swelling with emotion so strong, so deep, it takes my breath away. “Thank you.”
Christopher smiles, that crooked grin we all fall in love with, but no one more than Aimée and me.
“Well, you’re welcome, of course. But don’t worry, you’ll repay me. With pain and service, and whatever else I can think up for you.”
“I have no doubt that I will. Thank you for that, too. I need it. I need it almost as much as I need you both to love me back.”
“We do,” Aimée says.
“I know you do. It was myself I doubted. But not anymore. I finally know myself, what I need, what I deserve. I believe it.”
It’s the truth—a truth I would have thought impossible. I am comfortable in my skin, whether I am slave or Master. It no longer matters. I simply am me. And that’s good enough. Finally. Because my two loves, and love itself, have shown me the way.
Take a sneak peek at some of Eden’s other kinky books!
~~EXCERPT from Book One in The Training House Series, GIRL
He walks into the room and I don’t know where to look, what to do with my hands, what to say. Of course, I’m not supposed to say anything, am I? But even if I could—even if I dared—he is simply too overwhelmingly beautiful.
I didn’t expect it—didn’t expect him. My bare feet shift on the soft Persian rug, the wood floor beneath creaking like a quiet sigh of pleasure. Taking in a quick, gasping breath, I inhale the scents of aged wood and plaster, the papery smell these old San Francisco Victorians have. Scent and sound were all I knew until a moment ago, when someone removed the blindfold from my eyes. I know the city I’m in, but not where, exactly. I am not supposed to know. And now I know what the man I have been sold to looks like. My new Master. The man I would have served with deep devotion simply because he owns me, because this servitude is what I want—what I need—but who now is making me dizzy with indescribable lust and expectation.
He must be six-foot-four, with broad shoulders under a dark blue button-down shirt. European tailoring—the shirt fits his shoulders and his narrow waist too perfectly to be anything else, which I recognize right away from my time in Italy, Spain and London with my previous owner. A small stabbing ache in my chest at that thought, but I focus on the shirt, on the man before me, and the pain drifts, fades away.
His sleeves are rolled up, revealing strong forearms. There is a tattoo of a Japanese style dragon curling around his right arm—a symbol of power, which suddenly, inexplicably, seems funny to me, if only because this man’s power seeps from every pore and needs no sign of proof. I let out a small, stupid giggle. Unable to help it. Helpless. Perhaps that’s why the giggle.
Helpless. Yes.
Or perhaps because the giggle is more from relief, the knowledge that my desire for pain, for punishment, will soon be sated.
He raises one dark brow over eyes that gleam like pure, blue fire in the dim light of the room. His voice is a low threat. Upper class American accent. “You find me amusing, girl?”
Girl. Is that to be my name in this place? Not Aimée? Why does that frighten me so when this is everything I’ve asked for? To be rendered invisible in a way I choose.
A flash of my father, his back turned to me. How many times did that actually happen, and how much of it is purely symbolic, when in fact, I hardly ever saw him? But I don’t want to think of all that now. I am here to forget. To forget my past. To forget myself. To immerse myself in this powerlessness that is of my choosing.
Still, it occurs to me for one moment, sharp with the edge of panic, that maybe I should have read the contract more carefully before I signed it.
“Speak up,” he demands.
“No, Sir.”
“Nerves?” There’s a long pause—long enough to make me feel the truth of what he’s suggested down to my toes, in my belly, in those dark, dark recesses of my mind that brought me here to begin with.
“Of course you’re nervous,” he goes on. “If you weren’t I’d send you back. I don’t take foolish girls. I don’t take a lot of things, but you’ll find out about that soon enough.” He steps closer and even his earthy, spicy, elegant scent frightens me, partly because he smells so good I want to drop to my knees before him—need to—which scares me half to death. “What I will take…is you. Whenever I want. I will do whatever I want to you. And any time you doubt why you’re here I will find a way to remind you. I will remind you through pain. Through denial. Through darkness. I will remind you by giving you exactly what you asked for when you agreed to come to my house. The Training House never fails its…victims.”
I’m shaking now, my legs trembling so hard they’re about to go out from under me, and then I will be on my knees, like it or not. I will like it, which I already know. I am also drenched
with desire, my pussy slick and pulsing, which should not be surprising, but it is. Every single detail about this moment is shocking to me.
He steps closer and I look up at his face, knowing this may be the last opportunity I’m allowed. And God, his eyes are so, so blue—midnight blue, eyes like I’ve never seen before. His hair is dark and the slightest bit unruly. His jaw and cheekbones are sharply cut, as if from stone, and his mouth is both lush and cruel. I want to touch it, with just my fingertip. I don’t dare even think of kissing him. Oh, but I am a liar; I do think of kissing him. I think of that mouth between my thighs.
Neither of those things is likely to happen in this place.
Torture.
Torture already, and I’ve just gotten here.
© Eden Bradley 2015
~~EXCERPT from Book Two in The Training House Series, BOY
“Are you fucking kidding me, people?”
I kick hard and connect with a body—Gilby’s chest, I think. I know it’s him from how hard he’s breathing, the rasp more from the excitement of abducting me than from carrying me down the stairs with one of his henchman to help.
They’re taking me away again, to the Pet Ranch in Carmel Valley. I've been there before. It’s not that I don't like it there. I do. I’m just fucking pissed that the Master is sending me away again. I love and hate the way they do it—grabbing me in the middle of the night, bag over my head, throwing me into the van. And now I know what’s coming even before I feel their hands grab me roughly and close the metal shackles around my ankles. I kick again, chains rattling, but all I hit is air—it whistles as he strikes my thigh with a leather strap. I barely feel it, but I kick again and he hits me again—it’s our same old dance. We both enjoy it.
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