Evernight Publishing ®
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Copyright© 2015 Author Name
ISBN: 978-1-77233-276-6
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Jessica Ruth
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WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
My thanks to J.J. Lore for her faithful read-throughs of all my revisions as I wrote The Death of You. Welcome to the dark side, J.J., and all those alpha males I favour. Ally
THE DEATH OF YOU
Allyson Young
Copyright © 2015
Prologue
Her scream echoing within the confines of the bedroom, Maddy Powell scrabbled amongst the linens, yanking them aside until she could reach the gauzy fabric of the nightgown covering her belly. Now fully awake, she pressed her hand against the thin length of raised tissue throbbing with the prickling phantom pain that had catapulted her out of a fitful sleep. No telltale wetness or shards of agony resulted from her tender touch and she fell back against the pillow, limp with vast relief. Just a flashback of being slashed, then. Not real. Slowing her breathing with every exhale, she rolled her head to check the clock. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep, so she clambered off the mattress and headed for the bathroom to shower.
The steaming water rinsed off her favorite soap in bubbly rivulets that coursed over her bountiful curves, but the warmth didn’t prevent a shudder as details contained in the flashback coalesced—Ryker’s evil, curiously handsome features twisted with rage, the slash along the side of his face a seeping crimson streak that soured her stomach and made her falter…and the tables turned. With a gasp she reached to wrench the tap to cold for an instant, and the resulting deluge shocked her mind into neutral, erasing all the images.
Resting her forehead against the tiles, she focused on the night ahead. Club Vantage didn’t really get started until midnight on the weekends, and while she could have used some additional rest, the familiar curls of excitement soon overlaid the crash of adrenaline, building to warm her insides and pool between her legs. Time to choose an outfit and escape her past, even for a few hours. Maybe the Masters who occupied most of her waking thoughts would be there, and she could indulge in the fantasy that they were more to her than one scene. It was a dangerous fantasy, because she suspected they were indulging in the same wishful thinking, and that would never do. But a girl could always dream. Even a girl like her.
Chapter One
“We’ve chosen you for another scene, Maddy.” Master Connor’s muscled body invaded her space, causing her to nearly drop the toys she was carting back to the medical room. The Dom who’d used it earlier had carried his submissive away with them in his haste to take her privately, and Maddy was happy to retrieve them at his request, clean them up, and put them back for use later. She’d passed her first weeks of training at Club Vantage with flying colors, and doing the bidding of the attached Doms was the easiest thing of all. Certainly easier than avoiding this Dom and his best friend, Master Rafe, who stood right beside him. The rubbery texture of the items suddenly felt cloying in her hands as she cursed her failure to pay attention to her surroundings. She knew better.
“Uh, sorry, Sir.” She cast about for something, anything, to excuse herself. Fantasies aside, these two Doms scared the ever-loving shit out of her. Her first and only scene with them let the Masters far too close, too deep inside her head. Like all good Doms, they wanted to know the real her, and that she couldn’t do. It was play. And the pain that cleansed her. Cleansed her of her sins, however temporarily, because she couldn’t even take much more than erotic pain. And she had the right to choose to scene unless it was about correction and punishment, not that she’d earned many of those. Ignoring the way she really felt about the two Masters had become habit. Because she couldn’t trust the cacophony of emotions these men drew out of her, all cumulating in one that she daren’t identify because it lodged smack in the middle of her chest.
Master Connor stood patiently, never guessing out loud, although she knew he was gifted at reading body language. Ex-military intelligence, his cropped blond hair bespoke that past life, and his blue eyes were razor sharp with intelligence. Not to mention his tall, muscled body that—
“Maddy!” Master Rafe’s impatience shone through. The dark to Master Connor’s light. Yin and yang. Such a balance. Maddy gathered herself and lied, unable to outright refuse them, although it was her right. They’d made no secret of the fact they were interested and had been for weeks, always around and always watching, making her aware.
“I’m not feeling well. And I kinda promised Master Christian something later. Sirs.”
Using only their big bodies, they hemmed her in. She stepped backward down the corridor until she hit a dead end, the toys held in front of her like small weapons. Master Connor plucked the big pink dildo from her hand and smiled, his eyes filling with speculation. And speaking of speculums…Master Rafe took that small tool from her weakening grasp. His thick dark hair gleamed under the subdued lighting, black as a raven’s wing, his Native American heritage evident in both his coloring and slash of high cheekbones.
“This takes precedence, sub. Master Christian will understand, seeing as he’s gone home already.” Rafe looked pissed, and Maddy felt Connor’s disappointment, knowing she’d fibbed. “And you don’t appear sick.”
“I…” Her voice trailed off as her body’s response to the two men broke past her mental barriers. Her breasts felt weighted and tender, the nipples beading so tightly she ached to soothe them, and her pussy was so wet her thong chafed. She scrambled to raise her shields again, her brain urgently reminding her how they’d gotten past her barriers last week with just a simple flogging and foreplay. The orgasm had been stunning, but it was her desperate need to interact and share that raised every flag her psyche could muster. Danger! Warning! Shoals ahead! She’d damned near wrecked on those jagged rocks. She sought kind words to refuse them and came up short.
Connor didn’t look patient—or even vaguely amused—any longer. Reaching to his left he rapped on the red painted door, and Maddy’s arousal dried right up and her heart sank to her shoes—or it would have, if she’d been wearing any. Going to Master Thomas’s office was kinda like going to the principal’s. It never boded well. Not that she’d ever been summoned there, not since he’d interviewed her and approved her membership. But still…and what did this have to do with a scene?
“Come.” Master Thomas’s gravelly voice sounded like a dragon behind that door, and her heart left the vicinity of the floor and took up residence in her throat.
Connor, and she’d better start thinking of him as Master before she misspoke and was punished for it, opened the office and walked in ahead. She followed, as if drawn on an invisible leash, Master Rafe’s heated form guiding her along like a herding dog might. She was indeed a sheep, more like a lamb. And if Master Thomas’s forbidding countenance was to be read correctly, a lamb to the slaughter. His amber gaze bored into her hazel one, and she swallowed convulsively, now flanked by the other two big Doms. Without another thought, she folded to her knees in the prescribed stance, the short skirt of her shimmery tube dress inching up to barely cover her nether regions and the top sliding down to nearly bare her nipples. The room filled with stifled tension.
Master Thomas
bent a quizzical look on the items Rafe and Connor were still holding, and each tossed their little burden onto a nearby table where they hit with a solid thump and clank. Maddy shivered, and the club owner’s attention refocused upon her at the slight movement. The weight of his gaze was palpable and she wilted before it. He leaned forward, lips pressed against his folded fingers, and simply stared. Maddy dropped her gaze.
“Masters Connor and Rafe run a security firm, Madeline, among other things.” The use of her name rather than the diminutive signaled real trouble, not just Doms screwing with a naïve subbie. So this wasn’t a role play, bad girl sent to the office and all. Crazier things happened at Vantage, so it wasn’t an unreasonable hope. Maddy was talented at lying to herself, more obfuscation than outright untruths.
She waited, unsure if she should respond, acknowledge his comment. She’d heard what the men did for a living, both ex-military, talented in protection and investigation, although the details were fuzzy. Cold washed over her body. She literally felt the sensation as if someone had poured a fog of dry ice vapor down her spine. Oh, no. They’d found something out…
“Madeline Pollock. Age twenty-eight. Five foot four inches. One hundred and thirty-two pounds.” Master Thomas’s voice crisply enunciated her address, phone number, medical information, and personal information such as marital status, parents, and place of work.
“Don’t think she lied about her weight,” Rafe commented, and Maddy flinched. She was curvy; plump, some people called it. Her size rarely bothered her here. As with most clubs, the other members accepted all body types. Few were perfect examples of what society denoted as the benchmark, although the three men in the room were damn close. But Rafe found her fat.
A sharp tug on her hair snapped her out of the painful realization and she gasped against the sting, staring up into his implacable face. “I put you at one thirty, sweetheart. A nice little armful.”
Sweetheart? Armful? Before she could process much further, Master Thomas spoke. “It does look as though that’s the one thing she didn’t lie about.”
Silence descended and with it the heavy blanket of guilt Maddy struggled against each and every time she had to mislead someone, especially here. She thought she’d get used to it, but it never got easier and she hadn’t been good enough at it the last time… So she waited it out, forcing herself to choke back the words that demanded to be set free. God, how she wanted to explain herself, tell these men the whole, awful truth and let them help her. Except there was no help for her. Abbott would mow anyone down that stood between him and her. She was certain she could feel him getting ever closer, having bought herself just over seven months of distance now. It couldn’t last. It never did.
“We know you’re not Madeline Powell. That your name and social security number belongs to a woman who’s so elderly she’s probably at death’s door, let alone working as…” A keyboard clicked before Master Thomas continued, “A marketing consultant for women’s personal products.”
The chair groaned under his weight as he leaned back, and Maddy dared to look up at him. He gave her such a dark smile she very nearly got to her feet to flee, except Masters Rafe and Connor closed in and put a hand on either shoulder and pressed her motionless.
“Did you think the personal products idea would keep most people from looking deeper, subbie? It was clever, I admit. But Doms aren’t easily put off, are we?”
It was a rhetorical question, she hoped, so she just stared back at him and labored at keeping her face blank.
“So, if you’re not Madeline Powell, who might you be? And what’s your purpose here?” His voice was deceptively gentle over a cruel lash.
Maddy shuddered. Her mouth dried up, and working her tongue against her teeth didn’t elicit any moisture.
“Are you even a Madeline?”
She was. Margaret Madeline. Maddy for short, and it was probably stupid to allow the use of her middle name, but she’d left so much behind…
“Are you twenty-eight?” She ducked her head.
“I am.”
“Are your medical records accurate or forged?” His voice thundered in the room and darkness swirled behind her eyes.
“Accurate.” Her tiny assertion caused the hands on her shoulders to tighten, then loosen.
“And I’m to believe that, sub?” Master Thomas looked furious, all signs of his famed control withering in the face of his anger.
Maddy fought for courage. “I’m Madeline. And my medical records are accurate. I would never knowingly be with others if I wasn’t sexually healthy.” He’d know about her lack of sexual interaction so far at the club, so surely it wasn’t a really big deal. “My address and phone number are accurate as well.”
She hadn’t been able to fake those. Club rules dictated three initial pickups at a sub’s home and a closed car to take her to the club, so tight was Master Thomas’s security. Even finding out about Vantage had been a fluke, one of those lucky things she happened to score on the Net one night, jumping at the opportunity because of the very privacy of the place. And her phone number, well, a disposable cell was easy enough to carry.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Nothing that will compromise the club, Sir. I promise. I…I wouldn’t.” Playing snoop, amateur spy, had nothing to do with Vantage.
“I was going to sort this out myself, sub. Madeline. But seeing as Masters Rafe and Connor here ferreted you out, I’ll leave it to them to…shall we say, interrogate, and punish you while they’re at it.” To her chagrin, he motioned her away like some failed supplicant before the throne.
The next minutes flew by in a haze. Master Connor tugged her to her feet, and when she wobbled, he grated out a laugh and leaned a shoulder into her belly, folding her over him as neatly as a sack of flour. He followed Master Rafe out of the office and toward the club proper. She was treated to an upside down close-up of his nicely muscled ass and then to a hefty slap on her own, followed by another and another, the smacks echoing like gunshots in the hallway. Her buttocks heated and began to sting. And despite her emotional angst, her body responded to the erotic pain. She actually welcomed the punishment, atoning in some slight way for Master Thomas’s disappointment. And Connor and Rafe’s. She could barely stand to think she’d disappointed them.
They chose a room that wasn’t open to the general membership, the padded door shutting with ominous quiet, although the tumblers in the lock snapped loudly and with considerable finality. Master Connor slid her to her feet and efficiently stripped the dress off her, taking her breath. She’d never been undressed. Always it was about her making the choice. Doms at Club Vantage gave the orders and subs complied, unless they wanted to safe out and end things. But this was punishment—and an interrogation. That shouldn’t titillate her, yet it did and she sought to negotiate.
As her mouth opened, Master Connor fixed her with a look. “If you don’t want your membership revoked permanently, little one, you’ll speak when spoken to and not make another sound unless it’s your safe word.”
Mind whirling, Maddy tried to find a way around this, her usually clever brain working overtime. Could she withhold certain information? She could. She had to, for everyone’s sake. Forcing a nod to acknowledge his raised brow, she was overwhelmed by how relieved it made her to see him relax a little and even give her a small smile.
Cold metal at her hip yanked her gaze away from Master Connor’s face and to where Rafe was using a pair of medical shears to cut away her thong. Her face heated. There was something to be said for removing one’s own clothing. She’d paid a lot of money for that scrap of fabric. But the look on his face when her shaved mons came into view dismissed her frustration, and moisture once again flooded her sex.
“I wanted another look at this nice pussy, sub. And Connor and I have a special interrogation technique we’ve wanted to try out for a while,” Master Rafe confided, crowding into her space, his big hands settling on her hips. “We didn’t have enough time with y
ou before.”
She looked up, feeling the heat of his breath across her temple as he pulled her against him, a thick, hard erection bulging the front of his leathers. Her own breath hitched in her lungs and her heart pounded.
“Ah, you’ve piqued our little sub’s imagination,” Connor observed, stripping his shirt off and turning to the padded table dominating the space.
Maddy turned in Rafe’s hold to stare at Connor’s torso as he moved, admiring the rippling muscles and long, sinewy tendons, noting a scar below his shoulder. She had several of her own, not all of them inside. The manner in which she’d obtained them was something else she lied about. Maybe she should rethink the Lifestyle, seeing as it involved her wearing very little or nothing at all, and people were able to see her disfigurements—and inquire.
Master Rafe lifted her and sat her bottom near the end of the table, the leather squeaking against her suddenly sweaty skin. She was scared and aroused at the same time, and the strong, manly presence of these Doms was interfering with her ability to think. She needed to keep her wits about her.
Master Connor gently scooted her along the table, the leather surface cool and pliant against her flesh. He spread his fingers at the base of her throat and applied a little pressure. Maddy went flat on her back, the curious sensation of being collared both a boon and a threat to her willpower. Her arms were stretched above her head and secured with a short length of velvet rope. It tugged and she knew it had been tied, in turn, to an eyebolt drilled into the wooden frame, effectively immobilizing her hands. She’d been on this table before, in training, although not in this position. And not with these Doms.
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