All's Fair in Love and Mastery (Masters Unleashed 5)

Well, she couldn’t imagine, but she also didn’t want to push him to talk about something sensitive when they’d just decided on a truce. His stepmother sounded like a real jerk.

“Summer camp, however, was actually fun. The counsellors were all hot too.”

“You were already a pig at such a tender age?”

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

She thought about steering the conversation back to his old boarding school, Greystone Academy, then thought better of it.

Deftly, he changed the subject entirely away from his childhood, luring her into talking about her plans for Evil Pixie. What seemed like hours later she dozed off, unable to stay awake despite the imminent threat of moose.

Chapter Eight

“Do you even know how to run this thing?” Arabella asked in a tone that said she knew very well the answer was no. That was the hard part about having a best friend who was female. He still had the urge to impress her with his manliness, even though she knew him well enough to know when he was bullshitting.

He eyed the deck boat—complete with a windshield, and enough seating for about twelve passengers—and knew he couldn’t lie. Swallowing his pride, he said, “I watched a YouTube video. I was too big of a coward to ask for the instruction manual.”

“Typical guy, not stopping to ask for directions.” She laughed, but he knew it was with him rather than at him. “How are we so much alike? I would sit here all day trying to figure it out myself rather than ask for help. At least we don’t have any witnesses. If worse comes to worst I’ll use my Google-fu to get more information.”

“Hopefully none of our guests for the first few months are super outdoorsy. I only know as much as a kid who goes to summer camp is supposed to know. I may be able to fake it in front of other city dwellers but a real outdoorsman will see right through me.”

“We probably should have hired a guide for our first time out. We could have watched everything he did and taken notes,” she mused. “But then the problem would be that he or she would be from the area, so then we’d have to kill them and dispose of the body so they didn’t give away your ignorance to future guests.”

“Obviously.” At least they’d gotten the tarp off of the damn thing. He had no idea it might be held down with snaps so it had taken longer than absolutely necessary. At least Arabella was being supportive instead of mocking him for being an idiot.

The controls seemed intuitive enough, but time would tell. After he got the motor started, he looked back at Dex, who was doing a slow clap that he hadn’t heard over the roar.

“When they said the property came with a passenger boat, I was thinking something more the size of an aluminum boat!” he shouted over the din. “I’m glad I looked up a few different possibilities. Apparently, I’m supposed to have a boating license. I’ll have to figure out how to get one of those so I don’t get my ass thrown in Canadian jail.”

“You’d do just fine in jail!” Arabella shouted back supportively. “You’re pretty. Besides, it’s Canadian jail. You’d probably be rooming with someone who was in for not apologizing profusely enough for cutting someone off in traffic. You’d be the baddest ass in your cellblock.”

He grinned at her. “You think?”

“They’d all be horrified to discover you’ve given a restaurant a one-star Yelp rating.”

He could almost believe it considering all of the polite, friendly people they’d met at service stations and restaurants on the drive up.

“Okay, no more jokes. I have to figure this out so we can actually get there. I’d rather not sleep in the truck.” It was early morning, so hopefully they had plenty of time to find the right island before dark.

“Sleeping in the truck doesn’t sound too bad to me,” Arabella said, casting the lake a doubtful look. The body of water was a lot bigger than he’d thought it would be and he could tell she wasn’t comfortable leaving land without being able to see the island in the distance. Everything was just . . . trees. How was he supposed to tell which trees were his? He had a GPS app on his phone, at least. He’d made sure it worked once they got to the Canadian side of the border and it had seemed fine.

“I honestly thought that if we got lost there would be people around, but I haven’t seen anyone since we turned off the highway, and that was ages ago. No wonder you could afford so many acres of land. No one even knows this place is here! I don’t care if you own it . . .” She said something else, but it was too low for him to hear over the motor.

The controls were more or less the way YouTube had told him they would be. Thank god. “Keep an eye on my phone app. It’ll tell you if I’m going in the wrong direction.”

She nodded, taking the phone from him and holding it with white-knuckled fingers. She looked small and nervous in the bright red life jacket she’d zipped on, and guilt assailed him.

Maybe he should have left her at home.

He felt bad for bringing her into a situation she obviously wasn’t comfortable with—not that he was comfortable with it either. The protective instincts he felt for her had flared out of control ever since they’d slept together. It was hard to turn those feelings off. His urge to protect her would make more sense if he got like this with every submissive he played with or slept with a few times, but this ferocious need to shield Arabella were exclusive to her.

He hadn’t felt this way about her back in the day, but then, he’d always sort of considered her a guy. But she was so small and soft under her boyish clothes, and the way she whimpered and begged for cock . . . and her vulnerability in subspace . . . He never would have expected any of it, but now that he knew her so intimately, he couldn’t erase those moments from his memory or from the way he felt.

He didn’t want to, even if they were only destined to be friends.

Realizing he was getting simultaneously hard and wistful, he cleared his throat and focused on not banging the side of the boat on the dock as he pulled away.