by Linnea May
I want to touch her, hug her, take the pain of grief away from her, but I know I can’t. This is something she will have to overcome herself, and I know she will.
There are many things I can do for her, though. And I vow to do every single one of them.
I’m relieved to see her smiling as she goes down on her knees to place the bouquet on the grave.
“A tombstone that looks like an opened book,” she says, directed toward the grave. “Just plain and simple, with no silly quote. I bet you’re glad they didn’t bother with any of that nonsense.”
She gets back up on her feet, still smiling.
“He hated it when people expressed themselves with quotes,” she explains, wiping away her tears as she turns to me. “He always called it lazy.”
I smile. “Smart man.”
“He was, very straightforward, and a great mentor,” she tells me. “I’m going to miss him.”
I wrap my arm around her, pulling her closer, while she finally gets a chance to grieve the man who was more than just a boss to her.
We stay for a few more minutes, standing mostly in silence. I want to give her all the time she needs, and wait until she asks to leave.
“Goodbye,” she says as we turn away from the grave.
Her words are heavy with meaning, addressing not only her former boss but an entire life she leaves behind.
Then we turn to head back toward the car and the new life that awaits us
Epilog
Liana
“Are you sure this is okay?” I ask, nervously playing with my new dress. “And my hair? You don’t think I should do more with it?”
Joseph fixes the cuff on his suit and smiles at me through the reflection in the mirror.
“You look fantastic, Liana,” he says. “Stop worrying so much.”
“Mhm,” I say, trying to catch my delirious breath.
I pace up and down the width of the bedroom, trying to think of things I still have to do before we drive to the airport, but there’s nothing left. Nothing needs to be cleaned, baked, prepared. There’s nothing to occupy my busy mind.
“You are so adorable,” Joseph comments from across the room, now walking over to me. “What are you so worried about?”
I look up at him. It’s been six months since we’ve come to the end of our arrangement. Six months during which I turned my life around with his help.
Despite our uninterrupted first thirty-nine days together, I was reluctant to move in with him when he asked me to. I’ve made the mistake of moving too fast before. Luke and I moved in together after only knowing each other for a few weeks, and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t repeat that same mistake.
Of course, with Joseph things are different. So very different. It was a stubborn certainty that things would fall apart that kept me from agreeing to do the thing that felt truly natural with him. This house had become my home before I was even willing to let it happen. It’s outside the city, the countryside, a place I never thought I’d want to live.
But things change. I changed. I’ve come to love the calm landscape, the beautiful estate surrounding our mansion, the gardens and the sound of birds replacing the constant rush of traffic that I’m used to. Besides, the city with all its hustle and bustle is not far away.
Saying goodbye to the apartment that carried so many bad memories of my former relationship was the easiest part of all. I was glad to leave it behind.
Yet I’ve only officially been living with him for two months now, and I still catch myself calling it his home instead of ours. For some reason, Joseph thought that this would change once we invite two people who’d welcome me into this home just as much as he does.
His grandparents. The people who raised him and who turned his life around for the better.
They’re on their way here now, and we are about to leave for Logan Airport to pick them up.
“I’m just so nervous,” I say, my entire body shaking. “I mean, meeting family, that’s huge. And, it’s you. Your grandparents.”
He chuckles and places a kiss on my cheek.
“You say that as if I was someone to be scared of,” he whispers. “Or them.”
I shake my head.
“I just want them to like me,” I say, knowing how silly that must sound.
“They’ll love you,” he promises. “I mean, I do. I never thought I’d deserve to be loved by a woman like you. And I didn’t think I was capable of giving love in return.”
He pauses, his dark hazel eyes fixating on mine with intent.
“You proved me wrong,” he adds. “If I can’t resist your charm, how could anyone else, especially my grandparents?”
He kisses me again, his finger tracing along the sterling silver that adorns my neck.
I’m wearing my day collar, a subtle silver chain with a ring-shaped decor at the front. It sits rather snugly around my throat, but other than that, it can pass off as just another piece of jewelry. An innocent necklace my loving boyfriend bought for me.
I was a little heartbroken when he took my collar away on that day we left his house together for the first time. But he soon replaced it with this, after giving me a few days to decide whether I really wanted to be with him, all things considered.
I didn’t need those few days, but I took them anyway, trying to sort out my life and even considering what it would be like without him in it.
But I knew I couldn’t return to my old life. I knew it when I said my goodbye at the cemetery, and that certainty only grew during the days I had to spend away from him to think about everything.
I’m perfectly happy where I am right now. Happy, not just content.
And that’s something I’ve never been able to say before.
“You’re sure they won’t notice?” I ask him, pointing to my collar.
He shakes his head.
“You’d have to know what it is to understand,” he says. “And if you know what it is, you don’t ask about it.”
He pauses and laughs.
“Besides, I highly doubt my grandparents are in to any of this,” he adds. “They’re good people.”
“Oh, and we’re not?” I ask him teasingly.
Joseph places his palm against my cheek, smiling lovingly at me.
“No, my pet,” he says in a soft voice.
“We are us.”
THE END
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"Happy anniversary, my pet," he whispered as our kiss ended, holding my chin up with two of his fingers, so I was looking at him. His dark eyes were as unreadable as ever, shielded with mystery. Yet, I had already uncovered a range of hidden parts of him - and I knew he would let me in more and more with time.
I smiled. "Happy anniversary, master."
"Are you happy to see me?"
I nodded. "Yes, sir."
I knew he would check. I knew he would check if I had obeyed his wish. And he did. His hands wandered along my back, then moved to the front, gently kneading my breasts through the fabric of my dress.
"Good girl," he whispered, giving me a little peck on the forehead.
And then one of his hands moved along, wandering down my belly, cleverly reaching underneath my light dress. His fingertips skimmed my inner thighs as he slowly moved upwards. I moaned when he reached my center, caressing my wet clit with two of his fingers. Even after all that had happened between us, I was still amazed at how wet just being around him made me.
"You're such a good slut for me," he breathed. "Such a perfect, wet girl."
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Also by Linnea May
TAMED: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance
BARRED: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance
Undisclosed Desire
Master Class
For my Master('s)
His Secret Muse
Dark Romance with Stella Noir
Silent Daughter: A Dark Billionaire Romance
… Curious to read more?
If you enjoyed this book, you may also like my other Dark Billionaire Romance Silent Daughter. Turn the page to read the first few chapters for free!
Silent Daughter
A Dark Billionaire Romance
Chapter 1
LIZ
Her big day has finally come. My sister Sandria can hardly contain her excitement and has been fluttering about for days and weeks. If this is what she is like during the preparations for a simple engagement party reception, I cannot wait to see what she will be like when the actual wedding approaches.
My graduation from college a few weeks ago was by far less interesting to my family than this event. For everybody except me, that is. I didn't even expect my family to show up that day, but they did. All four of them sat there, my two older sisters and my parents watching as I dutifully received my degree and hurried off the stage right after. They clinked glasses with me, they congratulated me in a formal and distant manner—as it has always been with us—and then they drove off, only to have Sandria announce her engagement a few days later.
So that was that.
When it comes to my family, I'm not even mad or disappointed any longer. When there are no expectations, no need for their praise or attention, no hope for affection on their part—how could I ever feel bad?
I am the third of three daughters, and obviously, I was meant to be a boy. After two girls, I was my parents' last attempt at conceiving a male heir who could continue the family name. Instead, I not only turned out to be another girl, but I also grew to look like my late grandmother on my father’s side. A dark haired woman with big, dark eyes and what my mother considers a “challenging personality.”
My grandmother was a rebel, mostly because she married late and reproduced even later, focusing instead on her own career. She was a writer, a journalist, and an avid traveler. All that was tamed a little when she married my grandfather and became a mother. But she stopped after having just one child and—heaven forbid—divorced her husband when my father went off to college. She dove right back into her work, traveling the world and writing pieces about all kinds of topics for the biggest newspapers.
She died when I was seven years old after that bitch cancer took a hold of her. Although I only remember very little of her, I feel a deep sorrow for her early death. I feel like she was the only person in my family that I was close to.
Just like her, I didn't follow along the path that has been laid out for me as eagerly as my sisters did, despite giving that impression at first look. I have always been a good student; I took every class they wanted me to, learned to dance and play music. My little rebellion when I took to the goth community for a while during High School can hardly be seen as anything but cute.
Doesn’t sound too bad now, does it? Others would say that I am the perfect daughter.
But I never make the right friends. I never say the right things, and I am unwilling to behave as they wish me to. I am too quiet, too withdrawn, too weird, and too blunt. I have too little interest in the right people, the right men, the right topics that define life. When they let me chose an instrument to take lessons for, they were delighted to hear that I wanted to play the violin. Such a decent and perfectly elegant instrument, an excellent choice for a daughter of the Barrington household. However, they neither wished nor expected me to fall in love with the instrument. Instead of a silly little decoration, something to brag about, the violin became my companion, my only outlet for expression. The better I got, the more I played, the less I spoke.
Not being able to hold a proper conversation with their guests at the dinner table is a deadly sin in my family's world. They tried to take the violin away from me, but there was nothing they could do about it when I left for college. As much as they wanted to control me, they also wanted me to follow the normal path of a well-educated child of a good family. So they had to send me off to college.
When I told them that I decided against both Brown and Yale to go to a private liberal arts college instead, they didn't even put up a fight. They didn't care anymore. Besides, college was primarily supposed to be a place for me to meet a man after all. For them, it doesn’t matter what I majored in, but for me to attend an Ivy League school would have been appreciated. It sounds good. And there are suitable bachelors gracing the campus with their presence.
Then again, my choice for a different school was a good fit to the overall “challenging personality” that I allegedly inherited from my troublemaker grandmother.
It’s okay. It has its place. Even having a bad seed in the family is seen as an accessory in their world. I am that bad seed. The weird outcast that no one understands and no one cares for. Like an adopted puppy, I am taken care of just enough, but always know that I don't belong. I have become invisible to them.
They don't have to show me. I don't need their dismissal to feel out of place.
All my life, I have felt that there is something profoundly missing for me. I know that I am yearning for something, but I still cannot put my finger on it. All I know is that I don’t fit in. I am not even hurt by the fact that my family has become alien to me and vice versa.
It’s all the worse that I had to move back in with them. No one is happy about this arrangement, and I don’t know who’s hoping more for me to get out of here as soon as possible: me or my parents.
Our house is a location for parties, receptions, and dinners all the time, but very few are as big as today’s event. I am standing among all these people, shaking hands, greeting everybody I have to greet until it finally gets crowded enough for me to become an irrelevant factor at this party. The redundant daughter that some people don’t even know about.
I grab my glass of champagne, the third of the day already, and flee to the garden, staring off into space in an attempt to avoid further conversation.
I hate social events. I hate groups, and I hate socializing. In a way, I am perfectly fine with just myself—and in a different way I am not. Not at all.
Happiness is such a mystery to me.
There are few things that make me smile, and some of them scare the hell out of me.
I can still feel the restraints around my ankles when I walk. The places where the rope cut deep into my flesh. I didn't do anything to help my tortured skin, and I am not trying to hide it. No one will notice anyway. The faint, red lines that circle my ankles just above my feet. They burn with every step as the pantyhose rubs against them.
They make me smile. Pain makes me smile.
Like many others, this one is self-induced. A reminder of the darkest corners my mind wanders off to when I am by myself. When I touch myself to the thought of being tied up, choked and raped by a stranger.
I am always alone with these thoughts. I am the one who ties my ankles, spreading my legs as far as I can and tying them to the bedposts to restrain myself while another piece of rope goes around my neck, only choking myself enough to feel it but never bad enough to leave marks there. I still have to be careful, especially when I have to look presentable for my sister’s engagement party. But if it were up to me, there would be marks around my neck as well. I cherish bruises, even if I have to inflect them myself.
My family is right to keep me at an emotional distance.
There is obviously something wrong with me.
Our house is filling up with more and more people. I decide to fetch myself another drink, determined not to engage in any small talk or even eye contact with anybody as I make my way to the bar.
A swarm of faces crosses
my path, old and young, strange and familiar. I don't care for any of them. I see my parents standing close to the entrance of the parlor, where they positioned themselves to greet every single guest who enters.
They are talking to a man I have never seen before. Dark and tall, with black hair and broad shoulders beneath his tailored suit. Everything about him is black, his hair, his suit, his tie, even his eyes, as far as I can tell from here.
I try to avert my eyes, as I would usually do. But I can't.
I turn away for just a moment before I find myself searching for him again.
He looks rough. His angular jawline is studded with a three-day stubble, something that is rarely seen in these circles. I am sure that he is only a few years older than me, but he radiates a maturity that is well beyond that.
I wonder who he is. Not only have I never seen him before, but I also cannot assign him to any of the stories my parents have shared about some of the unfamiliar guests that are to be expected tonight.
I cannot place him at all.
It takes more effort than I'd like to admit to finally avert my eyes from him. I exchange my empty glass with a new one and find myself turning towards him again as I make my way back to the terrace.
He is still talking to my parents, now standing with his back to me. The way he stands feels unnatural to me. So straight, with his shoulders back, chest out, legs slightly apart. He is taller than my dad to begin with, but the way he is standing only emphasizes the difference. The tailored suit hugs his impressive frame in just the right places.
They are joined by my sister's future father-in-law now, and the way the two men greet one another suggests that they know each other well.
Is he a family member of my sister’s fiancé? If so, why have I never heard of him before?
If he was indeed related to William Bishop, I am sure I would have heard about him or at least any man whose description he would fit.
