Her Master's Kiss 3 (Erotic Romance)

by Sparx, Vivien

  Again she felt the cold hard slap of his words, made all the worse because he was right. She had no defense. There was nothing she could say to lessen his anger, and so she lowered her eyes shamefully and the tears rolled down her cheeks until she was sobbing and trembling.

  Stefan recklessly poured more whisky into his tumbler. He swallowed it like poison.

  “This changes everything, Renee,” he said, and now, suddenly his voice was calm and steady without anger, bitterness – without any emotion at all. He was cold and remote and that – even more than his raging anger – filled Renee with fear. She felt a sickening premonition of dread. She swayed on her feet as the color drained from her face.

  He went to say more. He opened his mouth and then snapped it closed again. He knew this place; it was the precipice. He knew all too well that words said now could never been retracted. He took a long deep breath and brought his temper under control.

  “I think you should go to bed,” he said, all of his emotions locked behind an expressionless face.

  She felt the last shreds of hope burning away. Her shoulders slumped. She wiped at tears but more fell to replace them. She sighed, and it was like the dying breath of something once beautiful and perfect.

  “What about you?” she asked meekly.

  “I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  Renee turned to leave the room but the anxiety gnawing in her gut was simply too voracious to ignore. She turned back to him and her face was a mask of heart-wrenching agony. “Do you still want to marry me?”

  Stefan stared at her for a long time and the silence hung heavy between them. Then he slowly shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

  Renee turned away and her sobs echoed down the hallway until she quietly closed the bedroom door behind her.

  Eleven.

  Stefan came awake slowly, filled with a heaviness that weighed on him like a sense of mourning. Fragments of conversation drifted in his mind as he rose to consciousness and realized outside it was daylight.

  He sat up stiffly and stared at the clock and listened to the silence of the house. There was a bitter taste in his mouth.

  He shook his head. He had left himself open to this; he had let Renee into his heart, and now he was suffering the pain for trusting her.

  He tried to pinpoint the moment it had happened. His mind played back over their relationship, from the first moment he had met her, and he tore each incident apart and tried to determine when he had begun to love, and when he had begun to lose the one thing he had coveted for so many years – control.

  But he knew there was no one moment. Love hadn’t come in a downpour nor even as a torrent that had swept him away. Instead it had come slowly and gradually – like soft rain on a dry field. It had settled the dust, and then it had brought new life to blossom. It had nurtured and sustained, until now the field was saturated.

  He pushed himself off the sofa and stared down the hallway to where the bedroom door remained closed. He could make the pain go away. All he had to do was knock on the door. All he had to do was forgive, even if it was far too soon to forget.

  He took three paces down the hallway and then hesitated. Then he took two more and suddenly he was standing outside the bedroom door. He bunched his fist – raised his hand to knock. His hand wavered, and he slowly lowered it to his side again.

  He turned away stiffly, back towards the living room, and there was no one else awake in the house to see the haunted look in his eyes or the slump of his shoulders as he headed outside into the grey morning light.

  Twelve.

  Renee was surprised to find herself still wearing the terry bath robe and lying on top of the bed when she woke. It was light outside the bedroom windows but the room felt cold. She sat up and rubbed at the bleary redness of her eyes. Then she remembered – and the terrible pangs of her despair came hunting from out of her memory. She glanced at the place beside her. Stefan’s side of the bed had not been slept in.

  She swung her legs off the bed. Jeffrey was sleeping curled up in his basket, one paw comically thrown over his face. Renee knelt on the floor and picked the puppy up.

  Jeffrey came awake, yawning, his eyes still milky and unfocussed and she cuddled the warmth of his body to her chest and felt the soft beat of his heart and the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

  “What have I done?” she asked softly. “How could one mistake cost me everything I have ever hoped and dreamed of?”

  The sound of Renee’s voice and the scent of her roused Jeffrey from the soundness of sleep. He licked at her chin and she felt him wriggle in her arms.

  She set the puppy down in his basket and went leaden into the en suite. Her eyes were puffy and there were dark smudges the color of old bruises under her eyes.

  “Why didn’t I tell him?” she agonized. “Why didn’t I just tell him everything when I had the chance?”

  She knew she couldn’t face him. Not then. She couldn’t bare to see the hurt and anger in his eyes.

  She threw herself back on the bed and began to cry again. She pressed her face into the pillow and it muffled the sound of her sobs.

  Thirteen.

  Renee’s relief was obvious when Stefan appeared in the door. “Hi,” her smile was brittle and uncertain. “You’ve been gone all day. I… I was getting worried.”

  Stefan didn’t react. His face stayed grim. “I went up to Picnic Rock to think,” he said.

  She came to him then and took his hand.

  “Stefan, I’m sorry. I should have told you about James Matterson as soon as I came home. I don’t know why I didn’t. I really am sorry.”

  He stared down into her face.

  “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you chose not to tell me when you know how important trust is to me.”

  He knew he sounded harsh, but over-riding his compassion was a deeper instinct. Some kind of a warning that sounded in the deep recesses of his mind, so vague and elusive that he could not capture it.

  “Did anything else happen between you and James Matterson?” he asked, and his eyes pierced her like jagged pieces of black glass.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve told you everything…”

  He didn’t believe her. He’d seen the shadow pass behind her eyes and it was there at the corner of her mouth when she answered. There was something else. Something that she wouldn’t tell him, and the need to know gnawed away at his want to forgive her.

  “Are you sure?” he asked again, staring down into her clear innocent eyes.

  Please, Renee, please tell me everything. I can’t give you all my love until I can give you all my trust. Please, tell me now what else you are hiding.

  He tried to convey it all with the sheer force of his gaze but Renee shook her head. “There is nothing else,” she said.

  Stefan nodded stiffly, and his face was hard as stone.

  Fourteen.

  “You will be fine,” Renee smiled. She hugged Tink and stood back to look at her. “I’m glad you chose the red dress. It’s sexy.”

  Tink smiled. “I wanted to impress.”

  She had showered and re-styled her hair into a loose pile on top of her head. Renee had loaned her a pair of earrings, and then – as an afterthought – had fastened her diamond bracelet around Tink’s wrist for good luck.

  “You will,” Renee assured her. “If Master Peter has got any sense at all, he’ll want you to move in as his submissive straight away and we’ll have a fight to keep you here.”

  Tink pulled a face. “It’s only a meeting,” she repeated Stefan’s cautions. “And I don’t have any expectations. I just hope he’s kind.”

  “And good looking?”

  Tink smiled. “That would be a bonus!”

  She looked over her shoulder for more reassurance from Stefan. He nodded solemnly. “He is a fine man, Tink. I can personally vouch for him. I wouldn’t take you to meet him unless I was sure he would be a suitable Master.
But it will be your choice, not mine. It will be up to you and Master Peter to decide if you have a future together. At this stage, all I ask is that you have an open mind.”

  It was late afternoon. Already the sun was low in the sky, obscured by a menacing bank of dark storm clouds that stretched across the horizon and blurred the line between daylight and night.

  Stefan rattled the car keys in his hands. “It’s time we left,” he said. Master Peter will be expecting us and it’s an hour’s drive to Drakesburg.”

  Renee and Tink embraced one last time, and then the girl bent and scooped up Jeffrey into her arms. She kissed his wet nose and scratched the top of his head. “Wish me luck, Jeffrey.”

  Jeffrey just yawned.

  Fifteen

  Chrisy Golfin arrived a few minutes early, driving a sporty red hatchback.

  Renee met her in the driveway.

  “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it,” Chrisy smiled brightly. She looked up at the sky and there was a little frown of concern on her face.

  Ominous dark clouds were rolling in on the wind, spreading across the horizon like an ugly black stain and changing shape as they boiled down through the valley. Renee looked up at the mountain and saw its crest obscured as the storm front swept over the peak and plunged closer to the ground. The clouds were the color of dark smoke and bruises, weighted with the rain they carried.

  A violent gust of cold wind almost knocked Renee off balance and she had to reach out for Chrisy’s arm to keep her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” Renee shouted above the sound of the howling wind tearing through the tree tops. There was a loud and sudden ‘crack’ as a branch snapped and landed on the street in a hail of leaves and debris. “I should have called you and made another time.”

  They ran to the relative shelter of the front porch before the sky was suddenly rent apart by a deafening crack of lightning that seemed to sizzle the air around them.

  “You shouldn’t stay,” Renee insisted. “You need to get back to Bishop’s Bridge before the storm sets in.”

  Chrisy nodded. She had seen the bad weather approaching on her drive to Renee’s home, but she hadn’t anticipated its ferocity.

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “But I have some gowns for you to look at and try on in the back of the car. Let me leave them here with you and I’ll call you tomorrow to talk.”

  Renee nodded. Thunder rumbled overhead and for a moment the ground seemed to tremble with vibration.

  They ran to the car together. Chrisy opened the hatch and handed Renee three gowns, all covered in black plastic. She draped them over Renee’s arm.

  “Try them on when you get a chance and tell me if you like any of them,” Chrisy’s voice was carried away on the wind so that Renee had to lean close to catch the words before they were snatched away. “Call you tomorrow.”

  A single drop of rain fell, landing on the roof of the car, sounding like a hail stone. Then another fell. And another.

  “Drive carefully!” Renee warned, and then she was turning away from the car, running into the teeth of the wind towards the house, holding the dresses up in front of her to shield her face from the dust and debris.

  Sixteen.

  Outside the car, the storm gathered quickly, darkening the sky ominously with premature nightfall.

  Stefan flicked on the headlights and the car’s interior was filled with a dull luminous glow as the instrument panel came to light. A set of headlights ahead in the distance winked through the gloom and when the car had passed them Stefan switched the car’s heating on low, turning the interior into a warm cocoon, removed from the outside world.

  Tink sat quietly with her legs curled up under her, staring into the darkness, following the path of the headlights as the road unwound before them. It was an uneasy silence – a brittle thing – and every few minutes Stefan would snatch a brief glance at the girl’s profile.

  A sudden shriek of stormy wind buffeted the car, pushing it towards the shoulder of the road. Stefan caught the wheel in time and corrected – and this time when he glanced across at Tink she was staring back at him.

  “You realize you could lose her?”

  “Yes,” Stefan admitted.

  “You know that would be a mistake, right?”

  He shrugged.

  Tink shifted in her seat, and Stefan’s eyes went back to the road. When she spoke again, her voice seemed to come to him from out of the darkness of the night.

  “I’ve never had a hero until I met you,” Tink said softly. “I thought all men were terrible and cruel. You showed me that wasn’t true. You showed me that a real man doesn’t beat a woman, he respects her and treasures her. You’ve taught me a lot. Did you know that?”

  “No,” Stefan said, surprised at the girl’s admission. “I never knew.”

  “I look up to you, like an older brother, I guess. I admire you.”

  Stefan said nothing. He kept his eyes on the road as Tink continued talking.

  “You know how it feels to lose someone you love and be powerless to do anything to stop it,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” he answered. “My first wife.”

  “And you know how hard it is to find love in a world where everyone seems more concerned with themselves than with anyone else.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why, Stefan? Why would you give away Renee’s love without a fight?”

  Stefan shrugged. He’d asked himself that same question earlier on the mountain.

  “You have such a special, precious thing right in the palm of your hand, Stefan. Renee loves you with all her heart. You know that. And still you’re prepared to give her up? Why?”

  “It’s a matter of trust,” he said, suddenly resenting the girl’s intrusion. “When I was a dom, the submissive women I worked with were obedient. It was the same when Renee and I first met. She was obedient to me as her Master. I don’t have that control any more. Don’t you understand that?”

  “Yes, I do. So?”

  “So now our whole relationship depends on being able to trust each other. Without that trust there is nothing.”

  Tink sighed heavily. “Stefan, she made a mistake. She should have told you about the creep when we came home. But don’t confuse that mistake with disloyalty. Renee told the guy to leave her alone. I saw and heard it all. All she did was make one mistake. Is that really worth giving up on a relationship for?”

  “Maybe…” Stefan said stubbornly.

  Tink’s anger flared. “It’s your pride you stupid man! That’s all you’re bitter about. You’d give everything away just to retain your pride,” she said. “You…. you are an asshole!”

  Stefan flinched in shock. In all the months Tink had shared their home he had never heard her swear. The car swerved onto the gravel shoulder of the road and Stefan fought to regain control. He braked hard in a cloud of dust and reefed on the handbrake.

  In the passenger seat, Tink’s face was angry and defiant.

  “What did you call me?” Stefan asked, his voice low.

  “An asshole!” Tink snapped. “You lose one woman because you can’t do anything about it… and now you’d lose Renee because you won’t do anything about it.”

  “So what do I do?” Stefan snapped back.

  Tink shook her head slowly. “Don’t you know anything about love?”

  Stefan thumped the dashboard in frustration. “No, Tink. I don’t! I don’t know anything about love anymore. I’m drowning! I feel like I’ve lost all control and it frightens the hell out of me because I’m vulnerable,” Stefan hissed. “Alright! There – I said it! I don’t know how to handle this because I don’t know a damn thing about love!”

  There was a long silence before Tink said softly, “Forgive her. That’s all. Forgive her this one mistake before it’s too late.”

  The anger went out of Stefan in a single long breath. He dragged his fingers through his hair, and slumped back in the seat with a heavy sigh.

  They sat i
n silence for a long time staring out into the black night and the empty road before Stefan finally shook his head slowly.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” Tink said.

  Stefan released the handbrake and got the car back on the road.

  “Out of the mouths of babes…” he said softly.

  Seventeen.

  Renee draped the bridal gowns over the arm of the sofa. It was dark inside the house now. She went from room to room turning on every light. Jeffrey whimpered and scurried along at her feet.

  She picked the puppy up and hugged him close to her. He was trembling.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” she whispered to the dog and the wind blasted hard against the house in a terrifying shriek, rattling windows in their casements, smashing shutters against their hinges.

  The wind came surging through the house, slamming doors shut with the sound of gun shots, blasting dust and debris through opened windows.

  It tore through the tree tops like a ferocious shredder, snapping away branches and flinging them to the ground.

  Renee ran to the kitchen and pulled the window shut, locking it tight. In the darkened gloom outside she could see the rear fence had collapsed, posts snapped at their bases, palings cracked and broken like matchsticks.

  A door down the hallway slammed shut, the sound so loud that Renee jumped in fright. She ran to her bedroom. The windows were closed. She dashed across the hall.

  Tink’s bedroom window was open and the howling wind had flung the curtains across the bed and knocked perfumes and books from a dresser drawer. She forced the window closed and fastened the latch.

  Wicked flashes of lightning seemed to freeze everything in stark relief for a split-second. And then a moment later thunder boomed overhead, rattling the windows and vibrating through the walls.