Rebecca's Lost Journals, Volume 3: His Submissive Read online

  “And who is this?” the man asked.

  “My lovely new prospect,” my Master replied.

  “Indeed. May I admire her?”

  My Master touched my back. “Look at him,” he ordered.

  Admire me? I fought the urge to back away and somehow I lifted my gaze to stare into the man’s eyes, my heart thundering wildly in my chest.

  Raw male interest flashed in his stare. “Innocence personified,” he murmured, cutting his attention to my Master. “Will you be taking her to the main floor?”

  “No. I’ll be keeping her to myself.”

  Relief washed over me. The man glanced back down at me. “A pity.” He gave me a small bow. “I hope to see you again soon.” He stepped around us and I let out a breath.

  “Come,” my Master said, urging me up the stairs and leading me to another pair of red double doors.

  We stepped inside a small sitting room with high-backed chairs. A separate door led to someplace, I didn’t know where. My adrenaline was cranking up so hard and fast that the soft sound of him locking the doors behind made me jump.

  He stepped behind me. “Untie your coat.”

  I did as he ordered, and I heard the quiet whisper of the cloth as he disposed of it. My Master stepped in front of me, and looking into his eyes, seeing the possessiveness in them, shook me to the core. I could barely swallow, let alone think.

  “This,” he said softly, “is the only room in my private quarters where you are allowed to wear clothing. Undress, Rebecca.”

  I drew a slow breath, nervous to undress without knowing what was behind the other door, but I knew that if I was going to do this, to let him be my Master, I had to trust him. I unzipped the dress and let it fall to the ground.

  “All of it,” he ordered.

  I stripped off my panties and bra.

  “All of it,” he repeated.

  I kicked off my shoes and then peeled away my hose. When I finished, his gaze swept over my body, his expression fiercely primal. I craved his touch and hungered for him to undress. He gave me neither of these things. Instead, he hit a button on a remote I didn’t realize he’d been holding and the mystery door slid open. He stepped aside and motioned me forward. “Stop just inside the room.”

  Anticipation burned inside me as I walked toward the door and tentatively entered. Beneath my bare toes, a thick, luxurious burgundy carpet absorbed my steps. Candles flickered, creating a sweet vanilla scent in the huge circular room. There were two more doors, one on each side of the room, and a wide archway directly across from me. A large chaise longue sat by one door. A small pedestal sat by another. Drapes were positioned at several places on the walls and I wondered what they covered.

  But what really caught my eye was the archway that I couldn’t see beyond. My Master stepped behind me, leaning in close but not touching me. “Go through the archway, Rebecca.”

  For some reason, I knew whatever was beyond that arch would change me in some way. I knew that no one would ever use the word “innocent” when talking about me again. A part of me hesitated, holding on to that innocence. Ignorance can be bliss, the truth painful. My mother had taught me that all too well. But not knowing the truth, the facts—I don’t want that ever again.

  With that thought, I walked steadily forward. I wanted knowledge. I wanted to know whatever there was to know. I didn’t want to be naive and blind anymore about anything if I could help it.

  I walked up three stairs to the main level. Curtains covered every wall around a circular room that was empty but for a pedestal in the middle that held some sort of steel archway shaped like the one I’d just passed through.

  “Stand in the center of it,” my Master ordered.

  I moved forward without hesitation. I’d come that far and I wanted to complete what I’d started. Once I stopped under the archway, he stepped in front of me. “On your knees.”

  I did as he commanded.

  “Hands behind your back and lace your fingers,” he ordered next. ”Don’t move them or I’ll bind them.”

  Again, I did what he ordered, the position thrusting my breasts high in the air. His hot stare swept over them, puckering my already sensitive nipples, and I could almost taste his hunger, his desire. He enjoyed me bowing down to him. I know this as I write, as surely as I knew it in that room. He enjoyed the control it gave him. The power. And I was aroused by those things in him, wet and slick between my thighs.

  “I can choose to let others watch us in this room,” he informed me.

  My heart jackhammered and I opened my mouth to object when he added, “But tonight we just observe. You observe and discover all that you don’t know.” He hit a button on the remote he held, and the curtain behind him began to lift to reveal a gigantic video screen.

  My Master moved to stand behind me, allowing me to see the image of a man chained to an archway like the one around me, two women on their knees before him, licking him and teasing him. “He’s being punished, Rebecca,” my Master explained. “The female on the left is his Master.”

  Punished? The man seemed to be enjoying himself, his expression stark with desire, his hips thrusting forward. I was certain he was about to come. Abruptly, though, the two women pulled away from him and began kissing each other, leaving him wanting for completion.

  “Each time he nears release, they stop,” my Master explained. “It’s a far worse punishment than flogging or whipping.”

  The channel changed and a new scene appeared. A woman stood on a pedestal on top of a stage, tied to another archway with what must have been twenty-five people surrounding her. A man dressed in leather used a whip on her back and she bucked against each blow. I could see pain etched in her face. I watched the whip come down on her and I gasped with the impact I imagined she felt. I couldn’t watch it again. I needed to get out of there. That woman needed out of there.

  I dropped my hands and started to get up. My Master wrapped his arms around me and pulled my back to his chest, burying his face in my hair. “Stay. I need you to stay.”

  He needed me. Those words were probably the only ones that could have penetrated my need to escape. As they seeped into my mind, my body relaxed against his. But my mind was uneasy—fearful, even. “Is that what you want to do to me?”

  “I told you I wouldn’t ever punish you in public, and I won’t. This is about seeing everything that goes on here, so you aren’t shocked later.”

  “Somehow I think I will still end up shocked later.”

  He didn’t deny that I was right. Instead, he stood up and walked around to squat in front of me, his finger sliding under my chin. “We decide what we do. We make our rules. And you always, and I mean always, have your safe word. Say it now, Rebecca.”

  Looking into his eyes, I felt myself coming back to him, calming fully. “Red,” I whispered.

  “Red,” he repeated. “You know it. I know it. I’ll listen when you use it. I’ll stop whatever I’m doing, no matter where we are. The control is ultimately yours.” He hit the remote on those words and the curtain closed, but not before I saw the woman grimace with another blow that set me on edge again.

  I hugged myself, suddenly aware of my nakedness. “She was being beaten.”

  “When I spanked you, were you aroused, Rebecca?”

  “I didn’t expect to be.”

  “But you were.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut without answering.

  “Answer, Rebecca,” he ordered, his voice hard, sharp.

  “Yes.”

  “Look at me.”

  I forced my eyes open. “She is also aroused,” he insisted. “Her Master isn’t taking her anywhere that she doesn’t want to go. It’s his job to know her like no one else does, like I want to know you. And showing you these things tonight helps us both know what you want and where your limits are, in a way that just reading a contract didn’t allow. Unless you’ve decided you want me to take you home.”

  He wanted to know my limits. Once again, he’d
said the right thing at the right moment. “No. I want to stay. I want to continue. What next?” I swallowed hard. “Master.”

  His eyes flashed with approval. “You will stand up, and I will tie you to the archway so you know what being in the center of this room, the showcase of the scene, and at my mercy, is like.”

  I was okay with his mercy. Maybe he hadn’t earned that, but it was an instinctive feeling I had with him or I wouldn’t have been there at all. I pushed to my feet. He stood before me, staring down at me for eternal seconds before he ordered, “Raise your right arm to your side.” I did as commanded and he bound my wrist to the archway with some sort of rubbery cuff that didn’t bite into my skin, then repeated the action with the other arm.

  He stepped back, as if he was the audience that might be behind the curtain. I knew what he was doing; forcing me to feel what being on display would be like. With my arms wide, my body naked, his eyes hot as they caressed every inch of me, I have never felt so exposed in my life, but neither have I ever been so aroused.

  Time ticked by eternally, and finally, he began to undress. I was spellbound by his male beauty, his long, lean, athletic body. His cock was thick and hard for me. He wanted me. He was turned on by my being tied up like this. My gaze tracked his path as he moved to my right and I watched him open a cabinet with rows of whips, chains, and various toys inside, and my heart raced. He ran his fingers over one item, then the next, and I knew he meant to taunt me, to build anticipation and make me wonder what he intended to do to me.

  His selections turned out to be a flogger with long leather tassels and a flat leather crop. I let out a hot breath of relief. I didn’t know what a crop would be like, but I knew what a flogging felt like, and I’d enjoyed it. Familiar territory in unfamiliar surroundings was welcome.

  With his toys in hand, he approached me, all sleek muscle, with a predatory gleam in his eyes, before he stepped behind me. His cock pressed beneath my backside, his breath whispered on my neck.

  “You were relieved I picked the flogger.”

  “Yes.”

  His hand came down on my backside and I jumped at the surprise, the erotic contact. “Yes what?” he demanded.

  “Yes, Master,” I panted.

  “I chose it because I knew you wanted me to. Because it’s my job to know what you want. What is your safe word?”

  “Red,” I answered.

  “Say it again.”

  “Red.”

  “Use it and I stop. Understand?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  He began to massage my backside. Anticipation burned inside me. I knew the first blow would come soon but not from which toy, and my sex clenched and ached. My nipples tightened. His hand left my body and I sensed him take a step back. I held my breath and waited to discover if the flogger or the crop would come first. The first light smack of flat leather sent a spike of adrenaline through me. A series of repeated smacks to my backside immediately followed. None of them hurt, but my skin heated and I became so wet and needy that my thighs clenched against the emptiness I needed filled.

  Without warning the long leather tassels of the flogger splayed over my backside, heavier than the crop, sending waves of sensation through me. A motion of leather on skin repeated over and over, and the room faded, and all ability to think began to disappear. It was heaven, freedom from worry, from the outside world. From the need to control anything at all. I gave in to the sensations. I wanted my mind to become a blank canvas. I craved more of the prickling pain that morphed moments later to pleasure. And he gave me more, using the crop in short, gentle pats on my breasts, between my thighs, and on my legs.

  I barely remember the moment he dropped the crop and the flogger and untied my wrists. I only know that I was suddenly weak, exhausted both physically and emotionally. I collapsed against him and he lifted me, carrying me from the room. I curled into him, his warm body my cocoon, and I didn’t even question where he was taking me. I’d given myself to him some time back under that archway.

  Our destination turned out to be a bedroom off the main room, where dim lights cast a glow on the massive bed. I melted into the velvety-soft blanket beneath me and rolled to my side, off my sore back and backside. My Master slid into bed behind me, and began to kiss every single place he’d used the leather on. He was gentle, worshipping my body, kissing me, telling me how beautiful I was. How perfect I’d been under the archway. Amazingly, time had, once again, stood still, and the sting of the leather faded. I was lost in my Master, in the way he commanded my body. Yes. In that bed, I knew him as Master more than I ever had, and I understood the escape that came from giving him that control, and the pleasure he promised would come with it. At some point I faded off to sleep, into a blissful, sated state of wonder.

  • • •

  I woke up this morning in his private chambers, with him wrapped around me, holding me. I remember so very clearly the moment I inhaled the luxurious male scent of him, absorbing the delicious weight of him pressed to me. And I remember blinking in surprise as the velvet box came into focus on the blanket in front of me, open to display the ring. My throat tightened at the sight and I sat up, the blanket falling to my waist, displaying my naked body.

  My Master raised up on one arm and leaned in to lick my nipple, the intimate act sending ripples of pleasure through my aching, satisfied body. “Now or never,” he challenged me with a hot, intense stare. “Isn’t that what you said yesterday?”

  I had, and there was no hesitation in my reply. Not after the way he’d made love to me the night before and known exactly what I needed, what I craved. “Now” I reached for the ring, sliding it onto my finger.

  He leaned down and kissed it. “And now,” he said, possessiveness in his tone, “you belong to me.”

  I belong to him. Despite his saying this to me before, the ring, the finality of our agreement, hit me with a bit of a shock. I belonged to someone else?

  “Say it, Rebecca.”

  I blinked at the order and realized that this was the real test—not last night. This was the moment I would give him my ultimate trust. It was terrifying. I’d only given that kind of complete trust to my mother, and she’d betrayed me in the end.

  But I’d taken a leap of faith when I’d taken the job at the gallery, and it had paid off.

  I was in too deep with him now not to take a leap with him. But I prayed then—and I pray now—that he deserves it.

  I drew in a breath and breathed out the words that gave him all that power over me. “I belong to you.”

  Click through for an exclusive sneak peek at Lisa Renee Jones’s sizzling next installment to the Inside Out trilogy

  Being Me

  Available June 2013 from Gallery Books

  The idea that I’ve convinced myself he is less controlling than he is has my heels colliding heavily on the driveway. I charge toward his car, the same car I’ve let myself drive instead of holding on to my own identity. I don’t look his direction but damn him, I can feel him all over, everywhere, inside and out, and in intimate places I can’t convince my body he isn’t welcome. It’s beyond frustrating to know that anger this potent isn’t enough to stop the thrum of awareness that just being near him creates.

  Not for the first time, I feel Rebecca’s words from that first journal entry I’d read deep in my soul. He was lethal, a drug I feared. I relate to her, and I understand the inescapable passion she felt and lost herself inside. I don’t want to be her. I’m not her. And for the first time since my initial first few encounters with this man, I wonder if I am drawn to him because I’m self-destructive, and he to me for the same reason.

  Suddenly he is there, at eye level, as he had been the first night we’d met, when I’d spilled my purse. My gaze lifts and meets his, and a blast of awareness shakes me to the core. My breasts are heavy, my thighs achy. My skin tingles. A fine line between love and hate, Alvarez had said, and I understand the words in this moment. I stare into his eyes and I wonder if he too is thi
nking about the night we met and the many ways we’ve made love. The many we have not and I want us to, when I should not. I should be seeking space, independence, and my own identity, which he is threatening by taking over my life. It makes no sense how I feel in these eternal moments. How can I be this furious with him and still powerfully, completely lost in him?

  “We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” he asks, breaking the spell. His tone is low, and the rasp of anger in his voice is impossible to miss. It jolts me back to reality. He showed up at my client’s house and he’s angry with me?

  My temper overpowers all other emotions in me and I reach for the key. His hand closes over mine and heat races up my arm and over my chest. “Don’t do what you did tonight ever again, Sara.”

  The sharp command in his voice hits a bull’s-eye on every physiological male dominance issue I own, of which there are many. I try to pull my hand back but I am captive to his grip, leaving me with words as my only weapon. “Ditto to you. And yeah. We have a lot to talk about—somewhere other than my client’s front yard.”

  His eyes glint fire a moment before he releases my hand and helps me to my feet. There is a possessiveness to his touch that has me leaning into him when I should be shoving him away. He notices, too; I see it in the slight narrowing of his eyes, the gleam of satisfaction in their depths that I both hunger for and reject.

  “I’ll follow you to my place,” he informs me.

  “I have no doubt you will.” I click the key clicker to unlock the car. I’m about to open the door when his hand comes down on it, and he leans close, so close his breath is warm on my neck and ear. That woodsy scent of him, which I could luxuriate in for a lifetime, permeates my senses, tearing down my already weak defenses.

  His hip nudges mine. “Don’t think for a minute that when we pull up to my apartment, you’re going to ask for your car and leave.”

  It is all I can do to fight him when he touches me. Purposely, I do not look at him, certain all my resolve to distance myself from him will crumble. “If I decide to leave, you can’t stop me.”