Sadistic Master Bundle (BDSM Billionaire Erotic Romance)

by Dalia Daudelin

  There was always the risk, though. Always the hope that he had just made up whatever he thought he had seen. He took a deep breath and started running again. There was the stranger, a broken and bloody mess in the dust. His last mistake had been getting anywhere near either of them. Ashton mourned him for an instant as he ran by, no more.

  He took the side—now top—of the stagecoach with a single hard jump, pushing and vaulting himself up onto the side, letting his momentum carry him a little way past the door. Empty. God-damned empty.

  Ashton screamed out a curse, the heat of the sun starting to warm the chill that had set in. That had been it. That had been him. Ashton was sure of it. What else could it have been?

  The best opportunity they had ever had, possibly the best they ever would have, to get revenge for his master, and he'd let it go. For what? Because he was afraid of shooting a man?

  He fought to keep himself from screaming. He'd have to make it to town somehow. The horses had been pulled over when the stage went down, and neither made an attempt to get back up. They just looked at him with sad, confused eyes as he looked them over for a moment.

  There was important work to be done, but he couldn't bring himself to let the animals suffer. He said a few words for the dead and dying and eased the horses passage into the next world.

  Then he went back to following the stage line. He'd glanced at a map of the route, and it was mostly straight. It would take the rest of the day to even hope to make it into town, but there wasn't much choice. He had to do what he had to do, after all.

  Ashton didn't let himself think about anything as he walked, sometimes jogged. It was still early in the season, and there was even grass growing some places. It wasn't quite the hellhole he'd imagined out here, but this was exactly why he stayed back east. Too much danger, too little civilization.

  If he exerted himself too much, he would feel the lack of water sorely. The good news was, from the place markers he could make out, they had made it most of the way. He would make it before the dark came. If he didn't, then it wouldn't change what he had to do. There was no way that he could leave Cora behind, not with a creature like the one that had killed the other men on the stage, had killed King Peters and who knew how many others. A death march suited him just fine.

  He made the best time he could, though. As much as he deserved to be taken in the darkness of night, Cora needed him. He wasn't about to abandon that duty.

  The town, when he finally reached it, was empty. Or at least, near enough to it. A dozen shops, each of them manned. Ten or twenty women walking from place to place, some of them standing there gossiping.

  Ashton could feel that he'd torn his god damned jacket again, just like he'd known would happen. He was walking through town, covered in trail dust and wearing a hundred-dollar suit torn into a nickels'-worth of rags. If he wasn't filled with such a terrible sense of purpose, it might have been humiliating.

  The first stop was the telegraph office. He'd seen the lines running along the stage line, and someone needed to get word back that their driver had died.

  "I need a message sent back to the city."

  "What should it say?"

  He thought for a second. "Driver dead. Stage overturned."

  The man scrawled about as fast as Ashton could say it, and then asked him for a quarter. Ashton paid up and left. He wasn't about to begrudge them the money when he had other things to take care of.

  As he walked out, though, an idea occurred to him.

  "You know anything about a family around here? Husband and several wives. Can't say about children."

  The telegraph officer shook his head, but he had a look on his face like the answer wasn't 'no.'

  "Thank you for your time, then," he said. No reason to cause too much trouble. Not yet.

  He made his way out into the town, slipping the jacket off his shoulders as he did, emptying the pockets into his blue jeans. It made a strange, uncomfortable bulge in his pocket that would take time to get used to. By the time he had, he'd be back in Cincinnati and he could get a new jacket.

  That, or he'd be dead, and then the discomfort wouldn't exactly be any sort of problem.

  Twenty-Two

  Cora didn't know what was going on until she set her feet on solid ground again, and she didn't want to know. All she wanted was to know that she was going to survive the next thirty seconds. Whatever it was, she knew that the man whose hand she had taken was nothing like a man. He was some sort of creature, but he was man-shaped.

  And, now that she got a look at him, he was quite a specimen as far as men's shapes went. Lean in all the right places, with a pleasant width to his frame that would have been flattering on anyone with the way his hips came together.

  "Are you hurt?"

  "No," she said softly. That wasn't what she needed to know, though. What she wanted to know was where she was. Why had she been brought here? Could Ashton find her before she got hurt?

  She wasn't about to ask this creature any of those questions. That would have been suicide, she knew. If it caught wind for even an instant that she wanted to leave, then she would get her wish, but she wouldn't be leaving quite the way she wanted to.

  "Come on," it said. The cold was still powerful, burning its way through her. Why couldn't she get warm?

  She knew why. That man. That… thing.

  He turned, a tired smile on his face. "Let's get you out of the elements. It's much cozier inside, and I think there's someone who wants to meet you."

  It was hard to reconcile what she knew with what she was seeing in front of her. Whatever he was, he wasn't human. That wasn't good, she knew. Couldn't be good. He'd brought her here under the pretense of helping her out of the stagecoach cabin and nothing more. The lie only made her doubt more.

  But now that they were here, now that the damage was done, the man had taken over again, and the man was… surprising, to say the least. Almost kind.

  She looked back in the direction they'd come from. She couldn't even begin to guess how far they'd come, except that she couldn't see where the stage had fallen any more. It could have been five miles or a hundred, and she wouldn't know any better.

  She turned back toward the big house and started making her way into it.

  The minute she passed through the door she could feel the cold melting away. Like he'd gone away. Cora let herself wonder about that for a while, but she knew there wouldn't be any answers, not for her. Not here.

  "Come on, this way."

  She let herself be led by the man. There was something about the way he was acting that seemed strange. Now that they were there, his attitude wasn't just kind, wasn't just thoughtful. He seemed nervous about something, as if this was the critical moment in some grander scheme.

  They stopped outside a closed door, and the man-shaped thing turned to her and spoke softly. "Stay there until I call for you, alright?"

  "Why?"

  "… Please."

  Cora looked it in the eyes and saw the pleading in them. She nodded and stepped back a bit. The door opened and the man walked inside.

  "Good morning, sunshine. Are you feeling alright?"

  "John, is that you?"

  "It's me."

  "Why is it so cold?"

  The long, sad silence that followed almost made Cora feel bad.

  "I've brought you something."

  "What is it?"

  "It's a surprise, darling."

  A woman came up behind her, almost making her jump. Cora caught herself at the last moment. The woman spoke in whispers. "Are you our new sister?"

  "What?"

  "Oh, John is so wonderful. You won't miss your old life. You won't miss it one bit."

  "I don't want to stay here."

  The woman looked past her at the open door. "Poor dear. Are you—you aren't. You couldn't be."

  "Come in, dear," came a call from inside. Both of them started moving at once, and as she stepped inside she noticed others coming along as well, in t
heir own time.

  "Say hello, Sunshine."

  "Hello. John, what's going on?"

  The woman lying in the bed stared into the room with unseeing eyes. She looked tired, even frail. Whatever had taken her sight had taken her strength, taken everything from her. She was sitting up, though, her back propped against pillows.

  Cora tried to speak, but found that she couldn't. The words wouldn't come. So many questions answered, but now that she finally had what she had come looking for, her voice failed her. Finally, coming out like a croak, she managed to get one word out.

  "… Momma?"

  The blind woman's eyes went wide, and she reached out into the empty air. "Cora?"

  Twenty-Three

  It was damn hard to find the place, Ash thought. He didn't mind that. Of all of the things about this job, finding the place was the most normal. Working a case like this almost brought an air of normalcy to it.

  Nobody seemed to have seen them, per se. They'd all heard stories from a friend of friend about a place outside of town, but which direction seemed to vary.

  That was how it often was hunting Devils. Twice as many stories as there were leads, and three times as many rumors as stories. Half-remembered and half-whispered to folks in the night. But they were out there, and he hunted them, and compared to some of the hucksters out there, he was good at it.

  Ash pulled a little amulet out of his bag. Not much different from the protective amulets he used, except for the thin iron chain that held it around. The whole thing together might have weighed a quarter of a pound, but even that quarter of a pound was heavier than he wanted to have around his neck all the time.

  Walking into hell seemed like a good chance to find a use for the thing. The stories had common threads, and that was how you always rooted out Devils. You see where the stories are common, make a few educated guesses, and go rooting around in the dark for a while.

  It was never surprising, not any more, what he found. But Ashton had a sneaking suspicion that this case might be a little different. Especially since the connecting threads were all about the places being isolated, hard to find from the outside. Folks wandered into a box canyon, they said.

  Or, no, they were herding goats in the mountain. Or, wait, this time—

  The one thing he knew for sure was that it wasn't anywhere too obvious. The rest was a hodge-podge of stories that weren't true, stories that were only half-remembered, and if one of them was true then he'd be surprised.

  But that didn't mean he wasn't going to check first. It would take time, and that was time he didn't really have, but the alternative to doing the leg-work was not being able to find the place. It brought things a little bit into perspective. He could afford the time after all, if that was the alternative.

  During the investigation Ash started trying to figure how the conversation would go with Arthur Little. How he'd explain that he absolutely did his job and didn't screw the whole job up.

  Maybe, just a thought, the first thing he should try would be not to bring up the trouble he and Cora had gotten up to. Then, once that was done with, he could start trying to explain that the whole situation had been some kind of setup from the beginning.

  He went up the mountain first. He was starting to run lower on money than he would like, down below a hundred dollars of advance money, but the horse was a necessary expense. The trip up the mountain was easy. Cold, windy.

  But then, the whole town was. The whole place had the unnatural chill over it. Which meant, Ashton thought with a mix of frustration and optimism, that they were within a few miles.

  Anything further out than that, the Sign would have trouble manifesting itself. So it meant that there were precious few places to look.

  The town sat at the base of a mountain, the mountain where the silver vein had been found and was now being opened up into a mine where everyone seemed to work. It turned the town, every day, into the strange ghost town that he had walked into that first day.

  Then, at night, there were too many people cramped into a town far too small to hold them all. He could have seen the man himself in a crowd and been able to do nothing. And that was if he was even able to see the man through the thick crowd.

  Ash forced himself not to worry about it. There were other problems that he would have to deal with. Bigger problems.

  He remembered the map that he'd glanced at as he walked into the surveyor's office. The focus hadn't been on the mountain itself, but the mine. It had the information he needed, but there was plenty of information he didn't need, and it was muddling things. If he had read it right, though…

  The ground started to fall away into a harsh downward slope up ahead, leading into a little bowl. That was exactly what he was looking for. Ashton took the horse down, checking the load on his pistol again to help make sure.

  Sure enough, he nodded. There it was. Right where he'd hoped it would be. Well, right where he had expected it, at least. Ashton pushed the pistol back into the leather holster, pulled it a little way free again. Even after he'd done it a dozen times, even a hundred times, there was still that doubt that he wouldn't snag on it, and he wanted to be extra sure this time that it wasn't sticking in.

  There was nothing coming out of the darkness at him just yet, and that was a good sign at least. Now if only he could confirm that this wasn't just some homesteader out here, trying to find a place away from people for his goat ranch, then it would be sure.

  No goats outside, that was sure enough. No tilled land waiting just a few more weeks to plant. No stable for horses. Just one big farmhouse. Must have been twenty, thirty rooms in the place. Enough space for Ashton and everyone he knew.

  He wasn't going to live there, though, regardless of what he found. There was too much that he didn't want to give up back home. If it wasn't the place he was looking for, then someone else was already here, and if it was, then soon he would have too many bad memories of the place to let the luxurious space sway him.

  As he pulled up, he found himself questioning. The place looked like nobody lived there. The windows were dark, some of them even boarded up. Then there was the fact, though, that Cora had just taken him to a place only a little smaller, a little colder than this.

  He tested the pistol again in its holster as he pulled off the horse. It still came easily, built exactly right. Like everything he owned, less the jacket that he'd folded up and put into his saddlebag, unable to justify leaving it behind entirely.

  When he went in, the first thing he noticed was the way that the amulet, hanging there on his chest, started to burn. He didn't like anything about this house, and now he had proof that something was going on here. Well, he could ignore that.

  Ash didn't announce himself. It was past that, now. Instead, he went door-to-door. He could hear a voice that he was sure was Cora's, but it was a little ways down. She seemed calm, even relaxed. The first door took him into a bedroom.

  It was furnished like a monastery. A bed, a table by the bed, a small hearth, and a whole lot of nothing else. The walls were bare.

  Cora's voice got a little louder. She was excited or upset about something. Then a little louder. He could hear what she was saying, now, even through the distance.

  "Momma?"

  Lying in the bed was a skeleton, maybe a hundred years old. Maybe older, he thought grimly. He stepped into the next room. It was almost the same. The picture would repeat, he knew. The bodies would be different ages, some of them more recent. Others less.

  But he knew what he was finding.

  This wasn't a man with several wives. This was a creature, and his wives were long gone. He made his way to the open door, already knowing what he'd find there.

  Cora had a chair behind her, but she wasn't sitting in it. Instead, she was trying to shake a woman awake who wasn't ever going to wake up again.

  Twenty-Four

  Cora let herself slump back into her chair, too tired for anything else. She knew she'd made a commotion, and it had brought
the other women back in to see what had happened. No matter how many of them came in, no matter how much they cooed over her, it wasn't going to bring her mother back.

  "It was just her time," one said softly.

  "She told me the same thing," Cora said, sadly. She could feel her mother's presence, still there, as if she might get back up any minute.

  All this time, and Cora had lost her. All this time, and they'd had a couple of short days to spend together. Then, as suddenly as the woman had come into her life, she'd been taken back out again. Just like when Cora was a little girl, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for her mother leaving.

  She was just sick, and there was nothing to be done to stop it. That's what she said. But it felt wrong. Cora felt like she was being cheated. Maybe she was. It wasn't fair. What had she done to deserve this? What had her mother done to deserve it?

  The women all around her gave her a warmth, though, that helped Cora to understand what her mother had gotten out of this family. They were so kind to each other, and so understanding. Every one of them seemed to so completely understand the loss that she was experiencing, even as they were telling her that nobody could understand what she was going through.

  Cora let out a sad breath. A minute later, she heard something that she hadn't expected.

  "Cora, come on."

  It was Ashton's voice. She hadn't heard him come in. There was too much going on in the room. It was too busy, too crowded.

  "I can't leave her here, Ashton."

  "We'll give her a proper burial, then."

  "It wouldn't be right."

  What wasn't he understanding? Devil or not, Momma was his wife now. What kind of funeral would someone do without the whole family there? No kind, she knew. Nobody would do that.

  The Devil hadn't been around in the past day or two. Momma didn't seem bothered by it. She said he was out, taking care of some things. They raised chickens, she said, and he was out selling the new chicks in town. No big deal, he did it every few months.

  "Cora, you're not making any sense."