own head.
She didn’t come again, already spent from the spanking horse, and her master didn’t ask her to. He just used her body for his release, no words passing between them. Looking on, a stranger might have thought she was being abused. Unless it was someone like her. Other subs would know; they’d understand a merging was taking place that went far deeper than tab A in slot B.
Grace hadn’t thought she could feel more completely his or that she could love him any more for all he’d done for her, but she’d been wrong. Somehow with Asher, she didn’t feel judged or wrong anymore. Her history was a bad dream and her present wasn’t something she had to feel ashamed for.
After he’d had his fill of her, he unfastened the straps and carried her upstairs to the bedroom. She fell asleep in his arms almost the moment her head touched the pillow and didn’t dream again that night.
Ten
Asher watched through the window of his study as Grace worked in the garden and chattered on his cell phone to her friend. His hand hesitated over the old-fashioned window latch while he considered opening it and calling out to her, but he decided to leave her to her chat.
She was doing remarkably well. She’d had a few more dreams of beatings from Lucas, and each time Asher had taken her to the dungeon to remold and reshape the things running around in his pet’s brain.
The second time she’d had a dream, she didn’t fight him or show fear when he took her downstairs. She seemed grateful and relieved for the catharsis. Each nightmare only strengthened their bond as she came to count on and depend on him more. The nightmares had been gone for weeks now, though he still whipped and fucked her regularly.
Darcy had faded to the background of his mind, her death a bad mistake and bad dream of his own. He still found himself comparing the two women, which only brought on fits of guilt. How could he allow his last pet to shrink even the slightest bit in his memory after what he’d done? It felt wrong to care for Grace so much, as if he was somehow cheating on Darcy.
No matter how long he’d lived on Eleu under its rules, a part of him would always frame things in the old vanilla way, with the old rules of how relationships were supposed to be done. In reality, he wouldn’t have been cheating on Darcy even if he’d had both her and Grace at the same time. That idea made him feel worse, because somehow he knew Grace would have been the favorite. He pressed his fingertips against his temples to block out the thought.
He couldn’t imagine the kind of bratty fits Darcy would have thrown to get his attention off Grace and back onto her. In this alternate reality, he imagined he would have sold Darcy to another man before he would have let her hurt Grace in any way. He would have ensured the new master was good and decent, but she still would have lost if it had come down to it. How could he let himself think this way?
Asher pulled the book out, and the dungeon door creaked open. Grace had come to trust he wouldn’t use the bullwhip on her, though it seemed to confuse her more as to its purpose, since he’d said the cane was for punishment. The symbol of what a foolish decision could cost had become too much to look at.
The whip was the last piece of Darcy that had been left in the open. All of her things had been packed away a little at a time in the months following her death. Most of that time was still a blur as he’d spent the majority of it so drunk the gaps in his memory resembled Swiss cheese.
His hand trailed lightly over the leather. He still couldn’t look very long at the blood on the tip. Every time he saw the weapon hanging on the wall, he thought of Darcy. At times, it took several minutes to get his mind on Grace. The person who was here. The one who actually needed him. The one he loved most even though it made him feel bad to compare. It also scared him. If losing Darcy like that had caused him to spiral so far downward, what would he do if anything ever happened to Grace?
He had to bury