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Returning her focus to the ceiling, she continued, “Turns out my friends were right. Despite my efforts to keep my head in the sand, I was finally forced to face the truth. There was no way to spin it. A week before our bloody marriage, I had an unexpected afternoon off, and I came back to our flat early. I found Nigel in bed with one of the girls who had warned me about his infidelity.”
“Whoa,” Master Jack interjected. “What a couple of ass-hats. Both of them.”
Cleo snorted with wry amusement, managing a genuine grin. “You got that right. To add insult to injury, she was the one domming him!”
She briefly closed her eyes, the image returning to her as if it had been yesterday. It was almost like it had happened to someone else. In a way, it had, as Cleo was no longer that naïve, lovesick puppy. Time, common sense and maturity had relegated this once seemingly insurmountable betrayal, to just another in her list of bad choices.
“So, what did you do?”
“There they were, in our bed. Nicole, my so-called friend, lay on her back, legs spread wide. He was between her thighs, his hands shackled behind his back, a butt plug up his ass, for crying out loud. He looked over at me with an apologetic grin, shrugged, and went back to his task. Needless to say, the engagement was terminated by mutual agreement,” Cleo added darkly. “Turns out I’d apparently ‘forced’ him to Dom me, when his own orientation was submissive, though it was the first time I was bloody hearing about it.”
Jack barked a sudden laugh. Shaking his head, he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light of it. I know that must have been hard on you.”
“Uh, yeah,” Cleo said dryly, but then she grinned back. “It was funny, in retrospect. Glad I found out before we got married, at any rate. Imagine the train wreck that would have been—two subs fighting over who has to play the Dom.”
“She did you a favor, sounds like—taking that loser off your hands.”
“Yeah,” Cleo agreed. “I heard a few years later that she had thrown him out after catching him in bed with one of her friends. Just desserts, I suppose.”
“Ha,” Master Jack rejoined. “Once a cheater…”
“Yep. I stayed single for a while, licking my wounds. Then I met this amazing guy—Harrison Grey. He was some bigwig barrister at a fancy London law firm. Older than me by a decade, he was commanding, sexy, dominant, and knew all the right sub buttons to push.”
Cleo shook her head, remembering that first time she’d laid eyes on Master Harrison, beautifully dressed in black leather, his dark eyes flashing with power and charisma. “We met at an underground club and I was smitten from the start. We started seeing each other outside of the club, too. He was really busy with work, and I didn’t get to see him as often as I liked. But when we did get together, it was bloody brilliant. He would take me to dinner at some impossible-to-get-into London hot spot. He would send me flowers and fancy chocolates.”
She sighed, remembering the good parts, before it all derailed. “One time he took me on an impromptu trip to Paris for a long weekend. He bought me a beautiful necklace that he said would be my secret collar when I was out in the vanilla world. He made all kinds of promises about our life together, once he had his career a little more under control. I was floating on air, thinking I’d finally found the man of my dreams.”
She shook her head, recalling what a gullible idiot she’d still been, having learned nothing from the debacle with Nigel.
“There had been clues all along,” she continued, “but I ignored them, or explained them away. That started getting harder and harder to do as time passed. I thought it was kind of odd that he never brought me home to his place, preferring my tiny, one-room flat. But he always had some good reason why it wasn’t a good idea to take me home. Idiot that I was, I didn’t question it, or at least, I didn’t pursue the matter.”
Cleo sighed again, recalling Harrison’s sweet, romantic words, his mastery in the bedroom, and all those broken promises. With a snort, she continued, “You know that old adage—if it seems too good to be true, it probably is?”
Jack nodded. “I think I can guess where this is going.”
“Right? Once again, I’d willfully ignored the obvious. Not only was the sodding bloke already married, they had three kids! I found out totally by accident when his wife came into the beauty shop where I worked for a mani-pedi. She had a loud, high-pitched voice that was impossible to ignore. She was blathering on about her wonderful husband, Harrison, the successful barrister. I was cutting someone’s hair at a nearby station and heard every word. After she left, I checked her name on the schedule—Marian Grey. No way were there two Harrison Greys working at the same London law firm. I felt like such an idiot.”
