Drawn to a Master Like a Moth to Flame! Caroline has a secret. Her submissive heart is owned by her married boss. When all eyes are turned away she kneels for him and she obeys. But, when her beloved Daddy and Master Thomas has a massive heart attack that puts him a coma, Caroline goes into a tail spin. She screams with need and grief she dare not show. Enter Brian, Thomas' son from a previous marriage. He tells Caroline at the hospital one night that he knows all about her relationship with his father. For, Brian, like his father, is a dom, and Caroline soon finds herself drawn to like a moth to a flame. Brian is everything the father is not: rugged, domineering, almost brutal. Caroline cannot resist. Helpless, guilt-stricken Caroline submits and the more demanding that Brian becomes, the more she wholly she is willing to obey his commands. But what are Brian's intentions? Is he only using Caroline for revenge on the father who abandoned him, and will he throw her away like a broken toy afterward? Or does he truly love her as no other?
EXTRACT
CHAPTER I
They can't see me cry...
For my sleeping Prince Charming, Master, lover, mentor, friend,
George Burns to my Gracie, Daddy to my baby girl. It can't be
real--how could that lion's heart be giving way? A ruptured aorta,
standing at the kitchen counter, mixing juice one minute, collapsed to
the tile the next, his life hanging in the balance, a list of
complications so bad, and yet I'd give anything to get that far along,
to be talking about tomorrow, about a wheel chair and therapy and
cognitive re-orientation.
Those hands ... all male, powerful enough to be gentle. Let me show
you how that looks, he told me once. Hands with fifty five years of
experience, pain and love, hands that have awakened, healed and
aroused me, enthralled me ... set me free.
He's not mine. I have to tell myself that ... he has a wife. I'm an
employee, a friend if I don't stretch it too far.
This man is not mine ... but I'm his.
Has it been just a day since the heart attack?
Just a year since he came into my life?
I have to have a cigarette. I've been avoiding them--because I know I
will break down, but the stress load is too much. Monica is here and I
have so many mixed emotions about this. Thomas adores her, he's given
everything and she probably can't help it but she's been a terrible
burden to him, a cause very possibly of his heart exploding. She's a
needy, busy little blonde, the trophy wife he calls her.
She has only one of the three things he must have in a woman. Big
tits. The other two, a hairy pussy and a penchant for tobacco are my
department.
It's a second marriage for both of them. Monica's first husband died
of cancer, when her two girls were little, so I feel extra bad for
her. She's not really reacting to things because of the shock but
there's a role for her here at least, when she comes around.
Me, I'm just all consumed about the cigarette. Thomas went ga ga for
them. It got to be a joke at the tidy little office we kept for two,
me his ever-faithful assistant and go-to girl. Bend over girl more
like; because all I had to do was light up in front of him and I was
going to end up bent over something. If I happened to be distracting
him--like that was my fault--I'd get a few healthy swats. Otherwise, I
would get his hard, wet cock, fed between my sex lips.
Yes, I said wet cock. Thomas had this thing he did, where he would
ooze pre come, more than any man I have ever known. The first time I
thought he had already ejaculated.
I can't describe that feeling, a hot, turgid shaft in my hand, almost
purple with pulsing blood ... and covered in tantalizing,
man-lubrication.
It meant one thing to me. That my Daddy owned me completely and
naturally, being able all on his own to make the liquid he needed to
maneuver himself inside my tight asshole.
Oh ... jeezus, I need the cigarette. And a hard fucking. I need Daddy
to look me in the eye, center me, make me squirm like the sweet little
baby girl slut he loved to see me as.
`I'll get Kasey or Erin,` I say to Monica, sniffling into a
handkerchief, golden hair disheveled over her padded shoulders.
I must have said it like an apology because she looks at me with
bloodshot eyes. `It's all right, Caroline, stay, I know he was close
to you.`
`You can only have two visitors in ICU,` I say quickly. `One of the
girls should be here.`
`Thank you,` she releases me with a smile.
I find Kasey first. Sixteen years old, auburn eyes and chestnut hair.
She is Thomas all over; you'd swear there was a biological link. She
has some of the same expressions, the twinkle in the eye. She is
passionately devoted about everything, she's a gung ho first child,
clear proof what having a good and devoted daddy in your corner can
mean for a little girl. She was eight years old when Monica and Thomas
married. He made it clear to her up front, and to five-year-old Erin,
too, that he would not try and replace their father; that he only ever
wanted to help them treasure his memory.
To that end he helped them each make up a scrapbook of favorite
photos and mementos of Craig, their biological father. Those are some
lucky girls, let me tell you, to have a man step in like that.
I would have given my real one up to have that kind of step dad,
trust me.
`What's the deal?` Kasey tucks her straight hair behind her ears. She
is frustrated as hell that she can't grow larger breasts and she is
having a real problem with one of her girl friends who is bisexual and
is starting to have feelings for her.
I know this through Thomas. I know all kinds of things through Thomas
I'm not supposed to. If only this were France where the mistress could
stand proudly beside the widow at the funerals of presidents and
dignitaries.
Fuck. I said funeral. Will someone shut me up, please?
Say goodnight, Gracie.
Goodnight Gracie.
I don't know how that started, except he thought I was just like
Gracie Allen, the cute as a button little straight woman who ran poor
George Burns ragged.
`Your mom needs a little TLC,` I tell her.
Kasey nods. She's all about helping. That's like Thomas, too. `I'm on
it.`
Erin is different. Erin is a little version of Monica. Since Thomas
started living half time down here a year and a half ago to start
Montage Property Development, he has gotten a dozen calls a day, half
from Monica and half from Erin. Monica's crises concern their business
ventures in Atlanta, everything from paint schemes for their corporate
office to maintaining the perpetually disorganized books.
Erin calls about nail polish, boyfriends, the latest pop groups and
who is in or out of her all important inner retinue. I get such a kick
out of hearing this man, so much on his plate down here, deal with
equal and total respect for both of them. Sometimes he'll have me hop
on the Net to check and see who the Blog Boys are or why Hillary Duff
is soooo five minutes ago compared to her little sister.
To fit the part, Erin has the lighter hair and it's curlier, too.
Kasey favors her father, who looked a little like Thomas. Presumably
Monica has a type of man; though Thomas sometimes jokes the main thing
that attracted her to him was the fact that he was dating her sister
Julie before he went out with her.
Erin's down in the waiting room, text messaging. I remind her about
not using a cell phone in the hospital.
`I'm not calling anyone.`
`You're using the phone, though.`
She sighs, rolls her eyes to the fluorescent ceiling in high drama.
I think Erin is a smidgen spoiled. Thomas won't admit this, and I
could be biased. But I need nicotine, so I'm not responsible for my
opinions.
`Where's K?`
`She went in with your dad.`
`Brian was here.`
Freeze frame. `What did you say?`
`Brian,` Erin repeats, her head bobbing slightly to the music piping
into her brain from the Ipod. `He was here.`
`Where did he go?`
`I don't know,` she makes a halfhearted effort to relate to the
outside world. `For coffee, maybe?`
`He said that--he was going for coffee?`
`I guess.`
My imagination is racing. `Did he say anything else?`
`I don't know. He has a beard like dad. Weird.`
I blink. `That's all you have to say. You just meet your half brother
for the first time and that's it?`
I'm being hard on her. I don't want to see Brian, but I know I have
to. I've never met him; it's not that. It's just ... well I'm not sure
what it is.
`Take a pill, Caroline.`
She means a chill pill, but I'm thinking of the other kind. Thomas
has a thing about that, he likes to make sure I take mine and when he
can, he watches me.
`That's it sweetie, that's my baby girl,` he will kiss and hold me,
knowing as he strokes my hair how important this is to me, how I have
vowed that I will never have children for very good reasons. It's not
like I wasn't taking them already or like I would stop without
him--that's not the kind of power that turns Thomas on. It has to do
with the affirmation, with seeing how his praise turns me on ... how
much I want to be a good girl for the right reasons, for once in my
life.
`If there's a regret,` he told me once, while we were having our
daily tea and philosophy session across the street from the office at
Starbrew's. `It's that I had to wait so long to find you; that I
didn't get to tell you all along how special and beautiful you are.`
Comments like that put me in la la land, so much so that after I go
to the bathroom and come back I forget how my panties are hanging at
the moment over his leather desk chair, a little trophy from our lunch
time lust session.
`You're going to give them quite a view,` he points out of the two
men at a nearby table who are in full range to see up my skirt.
`Omigod.` I quickly go to close my legs, red with shame, but he stops
me, a hand between my thighs. `No. Stay as you are. I want them to see
what they can't have.`
His voice has deepened, silk over steel, the seductive tone of the
Master, pushing his submissive girl to new limits. My eyes convey my
panic, my passion, and my need.
He knows what a stretch this is, how I am terrified of the least
little embarrassment, how I can't bear to stand out in public, a
legacy, probably of growing up in a family with so many dark little
secrets.
