The Dani Collins Erotic Romance Collection: Mastering Her RolePlaying the Master

by Dani Collins

  “I’m fine,” she croaked in a voice rasped by bile.

  He left and she ran into the bathroom for another round of retching which thankfully passed quickly. By the time she had showered and emerged, beginning to feel better, Fonzo was back, but the room was otherwise empty.

  She collapsed into sleep, waking late in the night, starving. After sneaking to the kitchen for a croissant and a glass of water, she couldn’t sleep so she logged into the laptop. Porter appeared almost immediately.

  Feel better?

  Much. Thank you. I’m not pregnant. I swear.

  It wouldn’t bother me if you were.

  She doubted that, but before she could question him, he continued.

  Actually, I would be mad as hell, but at Cain for not being honest. I wouldn’t press you to have an abortion. Do you want kids?

  She thought about how Raina had wanted children, but not until she and Fonzo were in a better situation. Her mother had certainly fallen into a bad one and having Ann had complicated things for her.

  The conditions would have to be right. You?

  Never.

  Short and final. Amazing how much such a tiny word could hurt and for no reason at all.

  I wasn’t intending our marriage to be a real one, he wrote.

  I know.

  He didn’t reply to that. After a moment she added, It doesn’t bother me that it will only be on paper. A lie, but a small one.

  You just want your money?

  She wanted away from Cain, to be able to walk down the street, to be free. But reducing her need for autonomy and independence to a grab for cash seemed derogatory and tasteless.

  I’d like my mother and the past ten years of my life back, but since I can’t have those, the money will do.

  No reply. She’d been too impertinent, but for once she didn’t care what consequences it might bring. Honesty felt good.

  I know, he finally said. I’d give anything to have Tomas back. Rest now.

  Not wanting to end the connection, she cheekily typed, Has anyone ever told you you’re bossy?

  Once or twice. Goodnight, Ann.

  His username faded to indicate he’d logged out. She waited a good ten minutes, but he didn’t come back online. Sighing, she did as she was told, turned off her computer and fell asleep thinking of the way he had let his hand caress the length of her back through her abaya as he’d set her on the bed.

  * * *

  The tenderness in her midsection was a tangible reminder of the kind of vengeance Eloisa might deliver if she went downstairs without her coverings and allowed Porter to see she was Violet. Given how Eloisa seemed to know so much about what went on in this house, Ann wouldn’t put it past her to outright poison her.

  Claiming to still feel off, Ann ate lightly in her room and stayed there until she was notified the car to the spa had arrived. She used the excuse of returning her dishes to stealth her way down the servants’ stairs, through the kitchen, and out to the courtyard without running into anyone.

  Then she leaned her head back and asked herself why she hadn’t brought her modest stash of euros and made her escape once and for all.

  Cringing her eyes shut, she knew the answer, but she loathed admitting it even to herself: she was only thinking of Porter.

  And Violet, if she was honest. Ann was a husk. Violet was the life inside, breaking free and reaching toward the sun that was Porter. He made her feel good and strong and optimistic. Things she had thought were fairy-tale wishes, experiences she had wanted to believe could happen to her, but that she hadn’t truly believed ever would.

  So marry him. Show him you’re Violet. The words came to her like an imperative deep in her mind, making her heart reverberate.

  She didn’t have to listen to Eloisa, she thought rebelliously. A rush of courageous defiance shot through her, something that for once wasn’t fear-based. She had dreamed a million times of making moves against Cain, even took a few steps here and there, but they’d always been sly, insignificant ones chased by terror. Her cowardice had been a conditioned response after gazing into her mother’s hopeless gaze so many times. Seeing Raina’s anxiety and even a certain wariness in Fonzo had not encouraged her toward acts of rebellion. Cain had held power over all of them and she’d felt the lash of his anger often without ever having any means of escaping it. The risk in defying him hadn’t had enough payoff to be worth it.

  Porter was worth it.

  And if she married him, she wouldn’t need Eloisa and her help when the time comes.

  Her new, stalwart sense of will stayed with her as she moved from the car through the hidden entrance to Eloisa’s private domain. She didn’t bother trying to hide her excitement. If anticipation put color in her cheeks and Eloisa saw it, fine.

  Then she came up against Eloisa’s catlike eyes and found herself freezing, suddenly aware what it was to be an animal happening into another’s territory—or guarding her own and coming upon an intruder.

  Animosity crackled in the silence between them. Knowledge and the weight of decision. Fight? Or flight? Her nerves drew into taut, stinging lines that filled her with tense readiness. She would fight. Yes, this time she would.

  “Vraiment?” Eloisa asked with a lift of her elegantly arched brows, as if a conversation had taken place. As if Ann had admitted her intent and Eloisa couldn’t believe the impudence she was revealing.

  “If he wants me, who are you to say he can’t have me? That’s my choice.” It wasn’t easy to say it, or keep her chin up, but she did it. She let Violet infuse her and glowed with triumph at finding her mettle.

  Eloisa’s complexion darkened with anger, but she only narrowed her eyes and said in a chill tone, “You’re right. You must make up your own mind. But let it be a fully informed decision, Ann.”

  She wasn’t sure what that meant, but Eloisa directed Tsitsi to dress her. Ann was impatient enough to see Porter and get away from Eloisa that she didn’t bother asking.

  Releasing her hair, she enjoyed the feel of the curls dropping in rippled waves around her nude body, teasing her sensitized skin as she lifted her arms to take the white dress Tsitsi held.

  It was a thin veil, reminiscent of a slave toga. The halter neckline came down in a thick gather of silk caught in two spangled clasps above the swells of her breasts. Each side then flared out to a thin layer over the globes. Her aroused nipples poked blatantly against the light fabric, straining even more as the silk shifted and fell into place in a skirt gathered in a matching spangled band beneath her breasts, then fell to barely cover her nether lips.

  Thankfully Tsitsi had a pair of underpants, but it was only a thong of silver string and a bejeweled triangle about the size of her nipple, revealing more than it covered.

  Violet’s blood raced with eagerness to show herself off to Porter. She slipped her feet into glass and silver sandals—five-inch spikes that would break her ankle if she hurried to reach her lover the way she wanted to.

  “Do remember what I said about his breaking hearts, Ann,” Eloisa urged with false solicitude as they walked side by side down the hall. “Do you really believe he’s falling in love with you?”

  Violet said nothing, heart stalling. She wanted to believe it. Desperately. But she couldn’t say it with any degree of confidence, which only made her more determined to disregard Eloisa and her warnings and throw herself at Porter for reassurance.

  They sailed through the quiet lounge where a janitor vacuumed. She couldn’t help looking up from the bottom of the stairs, enjoying the way Porter turned from the rail with a slow smile of possession. She arrived at the top with a roll in her step, hot embers of sweet joy flaring to life inside her.

  As she reached to grasp the hand he held out, Eloisa made a tsking noise. “Merde, Porter, you’ll ruin my reputation, losing your touch this way.”

  He narrowed a look on her, hand tightening on Violet’s.

  “I get paid by her Dom either way, but you’re not being fair to Violet, are you? Yo
u said you’d educate her on the kind of relationship she’s entering into. The kind of man she’ll belong to and what he expects from her.” Turning a hard look on her, Eloisa said, “You have decided to give yourself over to your lover and everything he demands, haven’t you?”

  Grasping at her newfound valor, she stood tall and said firmly, “Yes.” But a niggling awareness of undercurrents gave her a quaver of doubt.

  Porter’s grip on her became almost painful before falling away completely.

  Apprehension rippled through her and she jerked her gaze to his, wanting to explain he was the lover Eloisa was referring to, but Eloisa said, “Give her a proper education today, won’t you, Porter?” she said with a disdainful smile. “Pretty please?”

  His visage grew stony and remote, leaving Ann trying to keep the warm impression of his hand within her closed one.

  “I already know,” she defended, sounding naive to her own ears without Eloisa’s rich laughter to underline it. But even though this was all very new, she was certain of her attraction to Porter.

  Porter took Eloisa’s mocking look like a challenging shove in the chest. It wasn’t that she was cutting down his ego—although he didn’t like how lacking in discipline and control he’d been since setting eyes on Violet. No, it was the truth underlying what she was saying. He wasn’t being fair to Violet. She was not only falling for him, openly and easily, but he was encouraging it. And he wasn’t in a position to give her anything back.

  He was, in fact, setting her up for a world of hurt if she didn’t fully grasp what she was getting into by becoming a man’s submissive. He couldn’t release her into a relationship with a hard-assed Dom. Not as she was. Eloisa was right. She needed an education, not an affair.

  Which didn’t mean he liked the sly look Eloisa cut to him, or the way she trailed her gloved fingers along his forearm. “Sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind. We both know that, don’t we, my love? We could even call it your specialty.”

  “She’s mad that I’m not falling into her plan to tease and torture you,” Violet said pithily as Eloisa walked away. She stood close and lifted wide eyes filled with worship in exactly the way that fed a Dom’s ego. She was engagingly eager to please, he could see why her Dom had pulled her into this world, but she lacked any deference for his position or discipline in herself. When she said, “To hell with her,” with a cheeky smile, he knew how far he’d led her down the wrong track.

  “But you’re here to learn how to take orders,” he reminded, adopting a neutral tone that didn’t betray any of the regret he was feeling. “If you’ve been given to Eloisa, she’s a placeholder for your Dom. Challenging her is challenging him. You’re begging for discipline and punishment with this behavior.”

  He said it, but didn’t believe it. He didn’t see glints of manipulation in her eyes. She drew back, puzzled brows coming together before she cocked her head and studied him as though sensing the adjustment he was making to their relationship and not understanding it.

  He didn’t understand her, either, but if she was serious in pursuing the relationship she’d started with her Dom, he owed her decent insight into it.

  “It’s time for a proper education to begin,” he asserted softly. “Follow me.”

  Ann obeyed without hesitation. Her trust in Porter was firmly established. She thought. But there was something unpredictable about him all of a sudden. His mood had changed drastically in five short minutes, making her step falter even though her heart tugged her forward.

  “Porter—”

  “Master,” he corrected. “And you’ll only speak when I ask you a direct question.”

  What? “But yesterday you sa—”

  “Do I tape it?”

  “My mouth?” she asked, askance.

  “That’s your last chance.”

  She stared at the back of his head, trying to penetrate his skull and read his thoughts, stunned that he would threaten her like that. He didn’t sound like the man she was coming to know. That was Eloisa goading him in some way, interfering because she was jealous.

  The thought of the other woman renewed her anger and determination to rebel against Eloisa’s efforts to drive them apart. She strode after Porter through several doors, only realizing at the last second that she might not have wanted to come this far.

  It was a grimmer version of yesterday’s bedroom. Here the irons on the wall were already in place, the bed a plain wooden table. There was a padded bench with cuffs on the legs and a variety of paddles and whips on the wall.

  Suddenly she remembered things she’d read online, before she’d met him. Master of Kink. Lady Killer. The kinds of things she had decided were too scary to face so she had picked pockets and begun to formulate a plan of avoidance.

  But that man wasn’t Porter.

  Was it?

  Bringing her gaze to his with disbelief, she silently asked him if he was serious, realizing belatedly that she was shaking her head in refusal to believe any of this was real.

  “Eloisa was right. I’ve provided a false impression. From this point forward I will do this right.” Resting his black card in the reader on the wall, he punched in a code, speaking to her almost like she was an after thought. “People come into this life because they want boundaries. Discipline. Rules. Subs do not typically wear clothes, by the way. Not in a room like this. Remove those and tell me about your experience. Obviously you have some, from the bruises on your back. You like to be marked. What was used? How many strokes?”

  He turned and her stomach curdled. She didn’t like to be marked. She didn’t like any of this. Folding her arms, she stood motionless, mind racing with trying to figure out what to do.

  “I thought you liked me. That you…” She lifted a hand, at a loss and feeling tricked. Play with me, he’d said yesterday and their interaction had been carefree and wonderful. “Yesterday when we talked about submission, it was…different.” Her voice dried up under the sear of his laser-like stare.

  “Yesterday you were still deciding, today you are committing. Now I’ve given you an order and you need to do as I say or risk the consequences.”

  “Strip down and talk about—” No. She couldn’t tell him who she was and reveal how utterly and thoroughly he held her fate in the palm of his loosely curled hand, not when he was talking to her like this, without empathy. Explain how her only friends and allies had cut and run, leaving her to Cain’s fury and blame? Tell him how she’d been trapped in a silent house in an arid country so hot and airless she’d felt squashed and pinned at every turn? How she’d seen this move to Paris as a tiny crack in the door to freedom and she’d blown it by coming here to see him?

  “I’m tired of orders,” she told him, swinging past him to go to the door.

  “It’s locked. And that looks like an invitation to be disciplined. Get yourself belly down on that bench. We’ll start with a few bats of the paddle.”

  Like she would invite such a thing? Jerking around to confront him, she said, “Fuck you, Porter,” before she even knew the words were in her. Maybe they came from years of hearing Cain say things like that, but they felt incredibly good. She loved the way it captured his attention. And she’d never felt so sincere in her life. No more orders, no more boundaries. No more being trapped. “Let me out of here,” she demanded.

  “You have a safe word. If you want to call a halt and talk things out, use it,” he said, but there was a watchfulness in him, like he was preparing for something.

  She felt gathered and ready herself, stinging with adrenaline. Every hair on her body seemed to stand up like a cat’s fur. A ball of frustrated energy expanded inside her, threatening to burst her too-tight skin.

  Safe word, she thought scornfully. That sounded like backing down and giving in, leaving all the power resting with him. She was so done with being compliant and passive and weak.

  “Open the door,” she insisted.

  “Get on the bench and take your punishment, or I’ll put you there an
d make it memorable,” he returned. The lack of emotion in him was heart stopping.

  Where was the man who’d shown helplessness at how attracted he was to her? Where was the tender man who had carried her up the stairs because she was sick?

  This icy-eyed robot who reached casually to the wall for something that looked like a hairbrush without bristles and moved toward her with matter-of-fact purpose was all wrong. He was a front. A shield. He had to be.

  When he reached for her hair, she knocked his hand away, the first time she’d ever come close to striking back when attacked.

  He jerked his hand from her blow. Anger flashed in his eyes, a kind of frustrated disappointment before he adopted a more resolute expression. Stoic, even, as he reached for her again.

  She’d never had the nerve to fight back with Cain, but she never expected anything other than brutality from him. She had trusted Porter. She’d come to him with adoration and excitement. Her shiny new confidence twisted into resentment when he grasped firm hands around her upper arms. He was letting her down. Completely and utterly. She hated him for that and told him so.

  “You bastard. I hate you. Hate, hate, hate,” she cried, struggling and kicking as he lifted her, voice rising. “I hate you.”

  He withstood her vitriol, showing little emotion as he gathered her in his strong arms. So strong. She refused to go easily, injustice searing through her and fueling her to use everything in her to escape him: nails, teeth, knees. She released her rage in full-throated screams and yanked at his hair, kicking and trying to bite him.

  He said nothing, arms like a constrictor that locked and squeezed.

  Abuse poured freely from her as she gasped and writhed, fighting his carrying her across the room. “Cock-sucking fucker, don’t touch me, you fucking bastard.” She didn’t know where it came from, but she was fighting for her life.

  Distantly she felt pain in her hands from punching and hitting him. Her elbow connected with his thick skull and vibrated with a dull ache. Her toe met shins like iron and throbbed.

  With startling ease, like a rodeo cowboy flipping and subduing a calf, he pinned her across his lap. Pulling her arms behind her, he took a handful of her hair and arched her to his will, infuriating her. Her legs wound up pinched between his, hands trapped in the small of her back, gripped into place by one of his.