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“For six long months, not a word, nothing. It was like you’d fallen off the face of the earth. And I understood. I did. You were grieving. I had no right to expect you to waltz into the club and start scening. I figured I was just collateral damage, someone to remind you of Annette and all you lost. I had to let go of my stupid fantasy that I might be able to become something more…”
“But I did come back, Cleo,” Jack said softly. “I did come back.” He stroked the hair from her face.
She looked up at him, a welcome spurt of anger pushing aside her terrible sorrow, at least for a moment. “Oh, yes,” she agreed with a sniff. “You came back to all of us. All the pleasure subs at the Masters Club, one after the other, each as interchangeable as the last.”
“No,” Jack interrupted. “That’s not true. Or if it was, it was because I was still coming to grips with my own shit. My own guilt over Annette—that she was dead while I was still alive. Guilt that my attraction for you had always been something just a little too large to contain, even before her passing.”
Cleo stared at him, trying to understand what he was saying. “What?”
“You weren’t the only one who had feelings she couldn’t quite contain or explain away. You left the club—shit, you left the damn country—without a word. It was like pulling teeth to get Ellis to even tell me where you’d gone.”
Ellis Campbell was the proprietor of the London Masters Club. He had been instrumental in helping Cleo get her placement at the New York branch, and in navigating the legal barriers to being a foreign national.
“That’s right,” Cleo replied, aware of the bratty tone in her voice. Attempting to modulate it, she continued, “I asked him not to tell you. I wanted a clean break. And, damn it, I’m happy here in New York. While my relationship with Master Grayson and Mistress Dominique isn’t intimate, it has been very fulfilling, and I love my job.”
She realized she was twisting her slave ring around her finger—the ring that symbolized she was the cherished property of the Masters Club. It reminded her she still had community and love, even if not romantic love. She had a life now, apart from Master Jack. She’d carved that life for herself from the wreckage of the old one.
“I’ve made a good place for myself here,” she asserted. “I serve a loving dominant couple with our other house slave, Brandon. I take care of the pleasure subs and slave trainees. I do the scheduling, and I get to use my hair styling and cosmetic skills to help make them as beautiful and confident as they can be. Most importantly, I’m there when they need me, for whatever reason. I wanted a clean break, you see. When I got your letter, I tore it up,” she lied. “You were a part of that old life—the one I’d walked away from.”
In fact, the much-read, creased and tear-stained letter was just beneath Jack, hidden between the mattress and box spring. She would never admit how many times she’d searched the breezy, impersonal lines for something more intimate, as if by rereading, something new might appear that she had missed.
Gathering that little ball of anger still burning in her belly, she looked Master Jack right in the eye. “By your own admission, your even being here at all with me was nothing more than an afterthought, once your big, important business was complete. You’d just stop by the Masters Club, get your jollies, and then fly back to your regularly scheduled life.”
She wrenched herself out of his arms and rolled from the bed in a single, swift movement. She faced him, arms crossed, defiant and unapologetic.
She glared at him, though she no longer had any idea what the hell she was doing, or why. Still, it felt good, at last, to get it all off her chest. He’d said he wanted to know. If he couldn’t handle the truth, that was his own sodding problem.
“I signed the contract, Master Jack. I’ll finish the terms, if it pleases you. And then, I need you to please get the bloody hell out of my life.”
Heat suffused her entire body. Though she held her defiant stance and fixed gaze, she silently begged the floor to please open up and swallow her whole.
Instead, Master Jack met her gaze with a calm, if bemused, expression. “I’ll tell you what you need, young lady.” A smile tugged at his lips. “And that’s a good, hard spanking.”
Chapter 15
Cleo’s eyes flashed and her color was high. She stood there glaring at him, her hands on her hips. Her expression was fierce, not a trace of submissive grace in her bearing. She was exasperating, and so fucking adorable it hurt.
