Passion's Hope (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 3) (9 page)

She put the plate on top of the toilet paper dispenser and hung her purse on the door hook while she peed. Leaving the plate in the stall, she slung her purse over her shoulder and quickly washed her hands in the sink. The attendant, a young, perky blond, with large, perky boobs, handed her a towel. Except for the collar and wrist cuffs, she was completely naked.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said, wiping her hands. “I don’t have any money for a tip.”

“That’s okay,” the girl answered, her smile as perky as her youth and her boobs. “I’m making fifteen bucks an hour, so it’s all good.”

Fifteen bucks an hour! For handing out towels? Holy shit! I’m in the wrong line of work!
Charlie put the towel on the counter. “Thanks.” She pushed the door open and stepped back out in the hallway.

Right into Perry Bradford.

He was standing there holding the leash of a girl even younger than the girl in the powder room. She didn’t look a day over sixteen. She was standing in the Present position, legs shoulder-width apart, hands behind her back grasping opposite elbows, her head lowered, her eyes cast downward. The girl had been crying. Her mascara had left black smudges beneath her eyes and streaks down her face. The minute Perry saw Charlie, his eyes narrowed and a smile of pure evil crossed his lips. “I wondered if you would be stupid enough to come here,” he said in that oily, smarmy voice she had come to hate. “Why else would you have stolen my invitation? You just can’t get enough of this lifestyle, can you, slut?”

“Frankly,
Perry
,” she retorted, emphasizing her use of his name instead of the honorific of Master he’d insisted on. “I have had enough of this lifestyle to last me for the rest of my life. Thanks to you.” She looked at the girl, who had not moved and appeared to be oblivious to everything around her. “And what about you, kid? Did he invite you here promising you a wild, wicked, wonderful night? Oh, I forgot. He doesn’t invite. He orders. Has he had sex with you yet?” She slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead. “Oh, right. What was I thinking?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “He doesn’t ‘have sex’—she air quoted with her fingers. “He assaults. He attacks.” She pointed a finger at Perry. “He
rapes!”

“Shut up, bitch!” With lightning-fast speed, Perry backhanded Charlie across the face, a blow that jerked her head back and sent pain shooting through her, ripping a scream from her throat.

She staggered back a couple of steps, but righted herself quickly and hauled off with a roundhouse punch of her own that caught the edge of his jaw. With a cry of rage, he made a grab for her, but she dodged his blow.

“This is why I left you, you asshole. Because you don’t want a sub! You want a punching bag! Security!” she yelled at the top of her voice. She turned to the woman standing so meekly by Perry’s side and started talking to her, her voice low and urgent, desperate to get through to her before it was too late.

“
Has he bent you over the kitchen chair and tied you in place and kept you there all day so he could fuck you every time he walks by? Have you noticed he only fucks from behind? That way he doesn’t have to look into your eyes and see the damage he’s inflicting on your soul.”

“Shut your mouth, cunt,” Perry said, his voice a menacing growl, “or I’ll shut it for you.”

He raised his arm as if to strike her again, but Charlie firmed her chin, glaring at him defiantly.

“Go ahead, you bastard,” she taunted. “Hit me. You like hitting women, don’t you?” Her voice was shrill and growing shriller with every word. “You call yourself a Dom, but you’re no Dom. You’re nothing but a coward and a sadistic bully.”

Again, she looked at the young woman, who had finally gathered enough courage to meet her gaze. “You’d better think about this, girl. Do you want to be nothing more than a vessel for his cum? Because if you stay with him that is
all
you will ever be.”

She heard a growing commotion somewhere out in the main room behind her, but she couldn’t stop her tirade. “Do you want to sleep in a box under his bed? Because that’s where he’ll make you sleep. Do you want to be beaten? Whipped? Punished for nothing more than breathing? Do you want to end up looking like this?” Her innate sense of modesty over-ridden by the force of her fury over the terrible injuries Perry Bradford had inflicted on her, Charlie turned and flipped up her skirt, revealing the scabbed-over welts left by the single tail. And the deep purple bruises on her buttocks from the endless paddlings and spankings he’d forced her to endure. “Or this?” Unmindful of the gathering crowd, she grabbed the hem of her tank top and lifted it up, turning to reveal more welts up her back and across her breasts, also scabbed over. “Because that’s what’s in store for you if you step foot inside his house of horrors.”

“You fucking cunt!” Perry yelled. “You should be thanking me! I was training you! God knows you needed it! You’re hopeless as a submissive. You’ll never please a Dom!”

“Training, my ass! You were abusing me, plain and simple! And you’re no Dom. You’re a monster and I’m pressing charges! You belong in prison for what you did to me!”

“God damn you!” He lunged at her. She stumbled backward, swinging her purse blindly in his direction, giving him a resounding smack in the side of his head. With a snarl, he grabbed her purse strap and jerked her toward him so hard her head snapped back. “The cops will laugh you out of the precinct! All I have to do is say you were a willing participant. Who do you think they’ll believe, huh?” His hands flew to her neck and her scream ended abruptly in a gurgle as his fingers tightened around her windpipe.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Perry’s hands were ripped away from her throat. Hard hands grabbed her upper arms and pulled her back against a hard body. She knew without even looking that it was the grizzly bear. “Explain yourself, girl,” he ordered.

Charlie pointed back toward Perry. “That man kidnapped me. He kept me prisoner in his house for three fucking weeks! He kept me naked and tied to a chair to serve as his fuck toy. He made me sleep in a coffin under his bed. He beat me so badly I wound up in the hospital. And I thank God for that, because if it hadn’t been for that I’d still be his prisoner, with no hope of escape. I was just trying to let that girl know what’s in store for her if she stays with him!”

Before Perry Bradford could snarl a reply, two DM’s grabbed his arms and yanked them behind his back. Charlie heard the distinct, metallic snick of handcuffs. Jesse Colter and Adam Sinclair arrived, quickly assessed the situation, and went over to Perry’s submissive, who, by this time, was sobbing softly, her face buried in her hands. Speaking to her in low, soothing voices, they unhooked the leash dangling from her collar. Adam Sinclair put his arm around her shoulders and the two men led her away.

Stunned by the sheer brutality of the unexpected encounter, Charlie closed her eyes, unable to stop the sobs wrenching through her. Every breath was a struggle. Her head was pounding so hard, she couldn’t think what to do next. All she knew was she had to get away. Now. Coming here had been a colossal mistake.

“Relax,
malyutka,
”
a deep, bass voice rumbled in Charlie’s ear. A deep, bass voice that had a lilting cadence and the faint hint of an accent. “You are safe with us. We will not allow any harm to come to you.” It was a second before she realized that the man was talking to
her
. That
she
was
mul-yoot-ka
, whatever
that
meant. And then she let out a yelp as she felt herself being lifted off the floor and cradled against the solid rock wall of a hard, male chest. A male chest that was six feet above the floor!

“Come,
malyutka.
Let us go to a place where you can sit down and be more comfortable while our friends straighten this out.”

While part of Charlie’s mind marveled at the fact that there was someone on this earth who was actually strong enough to
carry
her, the other part of her brain basked in the comfort provided by that deep, almost hypnotic voice, soaking up the soothing sound like a thirsty sponge soaking up water. And all of a sudden, just like that, all the fight and bravado left her. Lifting her arms around the man’s neck, she turned her face against him, sobbing quietly. For the first time since escaping from Perry Bradford’s house four days ago, Charlie actually felt as if Grizzly Bear’s words might even be true. That she truly
was
safe.

CHAPTER FOUR

As Perry Bradford was being restrained and his submissive led away for questioning, Nik carried the beautiful woman into a nearby public exhibition room that was set up like an exam room in a gynecologist’s office. Jay flicked on the light and the two men sat side by side on aleather sofa against one wall. The woman was still sniffling, but as soon as she realized that she was alone in a room with two strange men and sitting on one of their laps, she shot upright and pushed against Nik’s chest, struggling to get up.

“Be still,
lapochka.
I promise we will not hurt you. You are safe here.”

Nik felt her muscles soften, and thought she was going to relax back against him. But then she stole a glance around the room and her body tightened again, a look of utter horror crossing her face. “No!” She pushed even harder against his chest trying to shove her hips off his lap. But he held her fast. “No! Let me go! I can’t stay here! I’m not—I can’t—”Suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath. She clawed at her throat, desperately trying to suck air into her lungs.

Shit, she’s having a panic attack!

Instantly Nik took her head in his hands and directed her gaze to his, while Jay began stroking his hand up and down her back in a slow, soothing motion. “Shhh,
lapochka
,” Nik murmured against her ear. His voice, though deep and rumbling, was astoundingly gentle and she found it strangely compelling. Just as she found
him
strangely compelling. “Shhh,” he said again, stroking the heel of his right hand up and down her cheek. “Relax. Relax. There’s a good girl. Just relax and listen to the sound of my voice, okay?” She nodded. “Good. Very good. Now do exactly as I say. Sigh, as if what I’m saying annoys you. Let your shoulders and upper body sag. That’s it, good girl.

“Now, put your hand on your tummy. Take a deep, slow breath through your nose, letting the air push your tummy out while I count to five. One, two, deep, deep, all the way into the bottom of your lungs, three, that’s it, four, five. Hold, two, three, four, five. Now, breathe out through your mouth, slowly letting your shoulders relax and your tummy compress. One, two, three, four, five. Very, very good,
malyutka.
Again.” With utmost patience, Nik guided her through the deep breathing exercise, while Jay’s steady stroking motion up and down her back gradually eased the cramping of her muscles, the choking tightness of her throat and chest. After just a few minutes, she was once again breathing normally.

With a smile that gentled the fierceness of his aspect, Nik placed a kiss on her forehead and released her cheeks. “That’s a very good girl.” His tone was filled with approval. ‘You are safe here,” he repeated. “Nothing bad will happen to you. You have our word on that.”

Jay slid his hand from her back and picked up one of the hands she was twisting in her lap. She looked up at him, nearly drowning in his sea-green eyes.

“Hi,” he said with a grin that totally disarmed her. ‘I’m Jay Gillespie. And this giant Russian teddy bear is Nik Rostov. We would love to know who you are.”

“Charlotte,” she replied with an answering smile. “Charlotte Fielding.”

There was a knock on the door. It opened to reveal the handsome man who had covered Jay Gillespie with the blanket after his punishment.
Jeez. What’s with this place? It seems to be rife with handsome men. Are they having a Hot Guys Convention or something?
Charlie just stared as he entered, smiling at her and extending his right hand.

“Hi. I’m Dr. Lucas McKay.”

“Hi,” she replied shaking his extended hand. “Charlotte Fielding.”

In his left hand, he carried a black leather medical bag, which he set down on the counter beside a sink in the corner. He opened it and removed a pair of latex gloves, which he pulled onto his hands with a snapping sound.

“I witnessed part of your exchange with Mr. Bradford and caught a glimpse of the cuts he left on you. They looked pretty vicious from where I was standing. If I may, I’d like to have a look to make sure they’re not infected.”

When she hesitated, Lucas McKay added quickly, “It won’t take long. And you don’t even have to get up. You look pretty comfortable sitting right there on Master Nik’s lap.”

She
was
comfortable sitting on Master Nik’s lap. “Okay.”

The doctor sat in the empty space on the other side of Nik. He touched her shirt. “Can you raise your top for me, please?”

Charlie raised the back, but held the front scrunched up in a wad in front of her in an effort to keep her large breasts covered. Dr. McKay examined the welts on her back, his touch gentle and impersonal. She should have been distinctly uncomfortable, baring herself like this in front of three strange men. Especially three such big, raw, dominant men. But for reasons which she simply could not fathom at the moment, she wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable. It just felt…right. Powerfully so. And that was a feeling she didn’t want to examine too closely. She didn’t even want to acknowledge its existence. She was through with men. Especially men like these, the aforementioned big, raw, and dominant. She’d had enough of Dominance to last her a lifetime. Holding herself perfectly still, she tried not to hiss as Dr. McKay touched welts that were still painful, even after four days.

“I don’t like the looks of some of these.” He reached into his bag and withdrew a tube of antibiotic cream. He squirted a line of cream out onto his fingertip and started rubbing it into some of the deeper cuts.

“I’ll need to see your breasts, sweetie,” Dr. McKay said when he was done, gently uncurling her fingers from their death grip on the bunched-up knit fabric of her top. “Those marks looked particularly bad.” When she didn’t move, he added, “You’ll need to take this off.” With a resigned sigh, she raised her arms like a child, offering no resistance as he took hold of the scrunched up fabric and pulled it up over her head, baring her completely from the waist up.

Nik and Jay could barely restrain their gasps. Her breasts were gorgeous! Full and shapely with large, brown nipples the size of blackberries and smooth, round areolas that made both their mouths water. Nik could barely restrain himself from closing his hand around one of those nipples and lifting it to his mouth to suckle.

Jay couldn’t take his eyes off of them. They were perfect, with flawless, satin-smooth skin so pale and translucent he could see the fine blue tracery of veins just below the surface. All he wanted to do was bury his face between them and press their fullness against his cheeks, while bathing in her sweet, feminine scent.

And all that smooth, feminine perfection had been desecrated by some of the most vicious-looking welts any of the three men had ever seen. This woman had been beaten so savagely, her body would bear the scars for the rest of her life.

Overcome with an emotion he couldn’t identify, Jay leaned forward and placed his lips gently against one of the worst of the marks.

Charlie just whimpered and closed her eyes, fighting tears. She felt Dr. McKay’s touch, cool against her skin, as he examined the deep welts left by Perry Bradford. “Crop?” he asked. “Or single tail.”

“Both. But the worst ones are from the single tail.”

A couple of them troubled him. They were red and angry looking and hot to the touch, meaning infection had most likely already set in. She was going to need more than just an antibiotic cream for these. “How long ago did this happen?” he asked, careful not to let his troubled thoughts show on his face.

“Four days ago. Friday night.”

“Were they seen by a doctor?”

“Yes. After he beat me, he ordered me to s-suck his cock. When I didn’t do it fast enough to suit him, he backhanded me so hard I banged my head against the granite countertop in the bathroom. It knocked me out cold. When he couldn’t get me to wake up, he took me to the Emergency Room. Of course the doctors asked him how I had received such injuries. He lied and told them that a friend of his had whipped me and that he’d gotten there just in time to rescue me. He also said he’d already reported his friend to the police and they were dealing with it. Another lie. He’s the one who whipped me. And beat me—”Her voice broke and she started crying again. “I was afraid that if I contradicted him and told the truth, he would kill me. When the doctor told him I had a concussion and they’d have to keep me overnight for observation, and that he would have to leave, I thought Perry would pitch a fit. But he finally agreed to come back first thing the next morning. I knew that, concussion or no concussion, I had to get out of there and get as far away as possible before then.”

“Did you report him to the police?”

“Oh, yeah.” Her face turned red again. “They just laughed at me. Said it was my word against his. That he would say that I asked for it—that I wanted it.”

Nik shook his head adamantly. “No one wants this,
malinkaya.
And no Dom worthy of the name ever inflicts this kind of punishment on a sub. Not ever. He assaulted you, pure and simple.”

“Did the hospital take photos of these?” Dr. McKay asked.

“No. I did. With my phone.”

“I’d like to see them, if you don’t mind.”

Charlie stuck her hand in her purse, her eyes widening in shock when her fingers encountered the mangled mess of hors d’oeuvres she’d dumped in there earlier and completely forgotten about. Of course, whacking Perry on the head with it probably hadn’t helped. When she finally pulled out her phone, holding it gingerly with two fingers, both it and her hand were smeared with several kinds of gooey cheese. She just stared at the mess, biting her lip, while hot color flooded her cheeks.

The doctor quirked one black eyebrow and held out his hand. Grimacing, she placed the messy phone in his open palm.

Chuckling to himself, Jay got up and went over to the sink in the corner of the room to get a towel. He handed it to Lucas, who used it to wipe off the phone. “Care to explain why you have a purse full of canapes?” the doctor asked without looking up from his task.

Not on your life. It makes me appear desperate and cheap and needy.

“Not really.”

“Fair enough.” While Lucas McKay was scrolling through her photos, Jay sat back down and picked up Charlie’s hand, lifting it to his mouth. Her fingernails were just as red and shiny as her lips and his heartbeat quickened, wondering if her toenails were the same color. He loved painted toenails on a woman. He lifted his gaze to hers, and she fell into it, floundering to keep from sinking into those green depths.

Robbed of her ability to breathe, she watched him take her index finger into his mouth and swirl his tongue around it, licking off the cheesy goo and other bits of food, lingering on the satin smoothness of her nail. The heat and moisture of his mouth made her shiver. Her skin started tingling everywhere he touched her.

Jay knew exactly the effect he was having on her. Because it was exactly the same effect
she
was having on
him.
His cock was hard as iron, his heart beat was so erratic it felt like it was jumping all around in his chest, searching for a way out. He just grinned as he licked her second finger. “I take it you were hungry.”

You have no idea.
She grimaced. “You must think I’m the worst person in the world.”

Nik Rostov’s hand stroked her upper arm. “No,
malyutka
, just low on options. Tell us what else he did to you.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” she finally asked, unable to contain her curiosity one second longer. “What does it mean, anyway?”

The big Russian chuckled, a sound that came rumbling up out of his cavernous chest, sending goose bumps rippling down her spine.

“It is a Russian endearment, roughly translated as ‘little one’.”

She just stared at him. “Seriously? You think I’m little?”

He grinned. “You are to me.”

She laughed. “Can’t argue with logic like that.”

Dr. McKay looked up from the pictures on her phone. “Tell us more about what brings you here to Club Risqué.”

“Bradford kept me prisoner inside his house for three weeks,” she confessed. “When I finally managed to escape four days ago, I literally had no place to go. He knew where I lived, he knew where I worked. I was terrified he would come after me. So I grabbed all my personal stuff, which wasn’t much, and left everything else behind. I closed out my bank account, which also wasn’t much, and hightailed it out of town. I needed to hang onto as much money as I could because I didn’t know how long I’d have to make it last. I needed at least enough to get me to a new place where I could start over. I discovered that I had accidentally picked up Perry’s invitation to this Open House and thought, okay, maybe I’ll just pop in, grab some food, and leave without anybody noticing.”

All three men laughed. Jay lifted his free hand to stroke her cheek. “Darlin’, you’re six feet tall and one of the most beautiful women we’ve ever seen. Ain’t no way in hell you’re not gonna get noticed, especially in a place like this. Every Dom in here is talkin’ about you, wonderin’ who the hell you are. And why you’re alone.”

“Where are you headed, Charlotte?” Nik asked, her name sounding foreign and exotic on his tongue.

“Charleston, West Virginia. I have an audition Saturday morning at nine. Figured I’d get there a couple of days early and look for a job.”