AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can sometimes see the island in Jason’s eyes,” Sandra admitted. “But I’m not sure how it affects anything but our memories. Sex seems the same, and it’s very good. Maybe it mixed things up a little, but it’s all so far away now.”
“And your brands are far away, too?” Laney was getting impatient.
Sandra snickered. “It was like a worry stone for the first few months. I’d touch it and this funny feeling zapped my body. But it didn’t last. And I don’t think of it anymore, and Jason doesn’t seem to either.”
“You know, I was thinking of having a tattoo worked around the initials,” Elise said.
“So you can hide it?”
“No. I think it would add to the look.”
“And it’s just a decoration?” Laney couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“What else would it be?”
“Nothing else I guess.” Didn’t they remember what Darius said about the brands? Or what was written in the book? Were they denying it all? Had it been the island and nothing more? Was it a magic for a season that was founded on shifting sands? She looked at them both guardedly. It seemed pointless to ask now. “I suppose it goes without saying that you two wouldn’t go back to Marquis?”
“For what, Laney?” Elise looked shocked. “It’s a broken old house, with an ancient caretaker who got lucky last summer when we crashed his beach party. Maybe it was good, maybe very good. But you don’t try to rewrite the script, or even play it over again. It was what it was. And now is now, and Marquis Island really doesn’t matter very much.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Laney quietly agreed.
***
“They didn’t understand, Erik,” Laney stormed through the bedroom. “They weren’t there anymore. It was almost like it didn’t happen for them and they’re trying to rewrite history into something else?”
“Did you expect anything different?” He was taking shirts from his suitcase and putting them in his drawers, tossing dirty laundry on the floor, which Laney quickly retrieved. “Sandra’s about the most gentle soul on the planet and you think she’ll ever let herself go that dark again? Jason’s hardly any better. I think his heart would break.” He stopped unpacking his suitcase for a moment. “And Elise and Matthew? Trust me, Matt has a big fascination for S&M, but he’d be too afraid of it, and since Elise pulls the strings and has him collared, don’t expect it to go anywhere but in the dead desire pile.”
“You know, I thought I would be the one to dust off my feet and walk away.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes we surprise ourselves, darling.” He pulled her into his arms, and his dirty laundry dropped to the floor. “You want to go back, don’t you?”
Her cheek was pressed against his chest so she could feel the thump of his beating heart. “Yes, I do,” she whispered.
He ran a hand through her hair, which seemed to energize his passion.
“When I was in Boston, I met with Darius,” he told her calmly. “Next weekend…” He felt every muscle in her body tense. He imagined her biting her lip the way she did when she couldn’t think of anything to say and was just a little scared. “I already have the new collar, one Darius had made especially for you.” Perhaps without knowing, or perhaps completely by design, his hand drifted to her upper thigh where through her silk robe he ran his fingers over the initials “EP” branded into her flesh.
Laney began to ease and her cunt turned hot and liquid, feeling as though it would melt and float away. Her mind began to drift and images began to appear—of Darius’ face, and her master’s eyes, and the look of a hand grasping the handle of a whip before the thongs descended to her naked ass with a biting snap.
Property of the MarquisPrologue
Morning, at daybreak, just as the sun brightened the blue and yellow room and cast its golden light across the bed, Laney awakened, her hand outstretched along the smooth sheets beside her. For a moment before she opened her eyes, before she became conscious of the day, she imagined Erik having just climbed from between the covers and leaving an imprint of his body heat on the bed. With a soft smile on her lips, she opened her eyes and gazed at the empty space beside her, but there was no imprint of her husband’s body there, nor were there sounds of him showering in the adjacent bathroom, or the tangy aroma she associated with the man she loved. Every morning for six months she’d lived without the sounds and sights and smells of her husband, not since the private jet went down had there been any tangible, touchable evidence of his physical being.
She gazed at her outstretched arm and the bracelet that ringed her wrist with the simple platinum band. Her heart thudded in her chest with a familiar pang of grief, although today, alongside that familiar grief was a stirring physical sensation, a wildness in her belly. She tasted a new desire on her lips. She’d been dreaming of the island—Marquis Island—all night long: the air, the breeze, the scent of island wildflowers, and her legs opening wide as some man’s enormous cock was driven deep between her thighs. She rubbed against the sheets beneath her naked ass, while every sexual nerve in her was awakened by the memory of that dream. Her right hand strayed to the moist valley between her thighs, a finger pushing its way between the cleft formed by her plump labia.
“No, goddammit!” she suddenly shook herself from the delightful amusement, and jumped from bed. As she headed for the shower, she tore off her nightgown and left it in her wake. Briefs to be filed in court, a new client at ten, and the verdict of Jones v. Dalton. Then dinner with Sandra and Elise.
She rubbed her lean body with the foamy, tangerine scented body wash, then stretched to rinse the suds from her elongated breasts. Her belly was flat and firm, her thighs muscled from jogging, her bottom small, round and tight. As her hands glided over her flesh, the platinum bracelet slid down her arm; where it touched, the skin seemed to burn. For a moment, she fingered the shiny metal surface, then cradled it in her palm. Closing her eyes the isl
and returned to her again…and Erik returned to her, vivid, as if he might walk through the door alive and breathing. Her dream reformed, and behind her husband loomed the vague image of another man, an unfamiliar face cloaked in darkness. Her eyes jerked open and the real world descended on her again. The water flowing over her skin seemed to soothe the fire stirring in her belly. Sighing deeply, she shook the troubling images from her mind once again and continued to rinse herself, as if she could end the moment without any further disturbance. But then her fingers glided against the brand on her left flank. EP. Her husband’s initial burned into her skin. Her belly spasmed hard, and she felt momentarily faint. The brand throbbed as hot as it had been when it was new.
Oh, please! she pleaded to the steamy air. Jerking her hand away from her thigh, and her mind from the thoughts the mark evoked, she stepped from the shower and reached for her towel.
Chapter One
With her arms loaded with packages, Laney awkwardly reached for the door knocker and let if fall, announcing her presence at 23 Arbor St., Elise and Matthew’s brown Victorian row house. A moment later, Elise answered, looking like a vision of loveliness, as usual. Her mane of chestnut hair spread across her shoulders and her smile was gentle, although there was that fire in her eyes that Laney associated with the often high strung pianist. She was barefoot, dressed in a long, diaphanous, plum-colored skirt and a small t-shirt that rode up high enough to display her small white belly and a pierced navel. Jutting from her small breasts, Elise’s bud-shaped nipples poked right through the pale yellow fabric, and might have easily diverted Laney’s attention, however, those sweet buds were nothing unusual to Laney’s eyes.
Instead, Laney stared at the navel ring in amazement. “Woah! Is that new?”
