AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As if reading her thoughts, Lucia added, ”I’ll handle prep with Master Mason. You can collect your things from his suite. If you don’t feel like joining us for lunch, there are snacks and fresh fruit in the fridge.” She gestured toward the kitchenette.
“Thanks,” Hannah said sincerely, relieved she wouldn’t have to face Mason. “I really appreciate that.”
She reached for Lucia’s hand, taking it between both of hers. “Thank you, Lucia. For everything. You’ve been amazing. I hope we remain friends.”
Lucia smiled, placing her free hand on top of Hannah’s. “Of course we will. I’m sure of it.”
Once she was alone, Hannah leaned back against the couch with a deep sigh. Thank goodness for Lucia. No way did Hannah want to face anyone right then. News of her meltdown had probably already filtered through The Enclave grapevine.
For a while she just sat there, letting her mind drift. Despite the rather ignominious end to her grand experiment, if nothing else, she had several pages of plot ideas jotted down in her laptop. Maybe she could finally get back to writing.
After a while, she got up and returned to the bathroom. She blew her hair dry and applied some of the readily available makeup to her face in an effort to cover the evidence of her crying jag.
She waited until she was sure everyone was seated for lunch before leaving the slave quarters. Happily, the stairs to the second floor weren’t visible from the dining room, and Hannah was able to ascend without being observed. Once in Mason’s room, she grabbed her duffel, which she’d brought up only the day before.
Unzipping the bag, she pulled out some clothing. As she pulled on her panties and put on her bra, she kept glancing toward the door, as if she was doing something illicit. She opted for a blouse and jeans, marveling at how strange it felt to wear clothing after over a week of being kept naked. If nothing else, this time at The Enclave had certainly desensitized her to her own nudity.
Retrieving her laptop case and purse, she slung the duffel over her shoulder and hurried back downstairs. Leaving her things beside the front door, she returned to the slave quarters to wait.
Her romance with The Enclave was over.
It was time to go home.
Part Three
Chapter 29
“How many times do I have to say it? I’m fine. Just fine,” Mason snapped. Mark’s third-degree interrogation about how he wasreallydoing was getting old. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him the fuck alone?
It was the first week in October. Hannah had been gone for two weeks, not that Mason was counting. Mark and he were sitting on the veranda that morning after breakfast, despite the chill in the air. Mark had been noodling on his guitar, as usual. Mason was ostensibly working up his shopping list for later that afternoon, though all he’d written so far wasfuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Mark snorted. “You’re such a lying sack of shit.”
Mason bristled, affronted. “What the fuck do you know about it?”
Mark shook his head. “What I know is that you’ve been a total asshole since Hannah left. Even worse than when Ashley moved out.”
Mason chuckled bitterly. “This is the real me, bro. I’m basically an asshole. Ask anyone I used to work with in the food industry.”
Mark ignored this. “You want to talk about it? About what happened with Hannah?”
“Not especially,” Mason said irritably. “There’s nothing to talk about. Hannah was never right for The Enclave. She’s not slave material. I knewthat going in. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, wasting my time with her. End of discussion.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Mark countered. “I’m not talking about Hannah’s potential fit as an Enclave slave. I’m talking about you. The two of you. I’ve heard it second-, third- and fourth-hand, but I want to hear it from you. What exactly went down? And more importantly, what do you plan to do about it?”
“What went down? You really want to know?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s why I asked.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you what ‘went down.’ I let my dick do my thinking for me. I got excited by the idea of taking a newbie and molding her into my ideal slave girl. I thought all she needed was the right man—the right Dom—to help her discover her true potential.”
He snorted derisively, the derision directed at himself. “Talk about arrogance. She’s not some eager twentysomething who doesn’t yet know her own mind. She told me in a dozen different ways that she wasn’t comfortable with some of what was happening. I was convinced I knew better. I let her down. I let us both down. Especially that last day…”
He trailed off, shaking his head. He’d relived that botched scene a hundred times over, cursing himself every time. It was still painful to think about, much less talk about.
“Forget it,” he said, pushing back his chair and rising from the table. “There’s no point in rehashing this. I fucked up. End of story.”
“No,” Mark said, placing a surprisingly firm hand on Mason’s arm, effectively pushing him back onto his chair. “Say what you were going to say. Tell me about that last day. Tell me what happened, and why you think it went wrong.”
