To Have and to Master (Masters Unleashed 3)

Varushka’s eyes were round. “So it’s a room full of women getting spankings and yelling stop?”

He managed not to laugh, but the visual her words had given him was funny. Like a spanking factory.

“Most of them wouldn’t use their safeword for a regular spanking.” Would she safeword the first time he spanked her, or would she submit to him? “A lot of the time safewords are different words than no or stop, because sometimes the people being punished want to be able to yell no and stop and have their partner not listen to them. Instead, their safeword might be rutabaga or carousel—something they wouldn’t normally say during something like that. And it’s not always girls being spanked. Sometimes it’s men.”

“So if I let you spank me, then you’d want me to spank you?”

At first he thought she was bratting, then he realized she was just confused.

“In some relationships it works that way, but with me it never will. It would always be you getting spanked. Or . . . whatever.” It probably wasn’t the best time to start listing all the depraved things he had in mind.

“If it hurt too much and I asked you to stop—or to rutabaga—would you be mad at me?”

He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “No, little bird. I’d be happy you told me the truth.”

“Okay. Then that’s my word. If you do something I don’t like, I’ll say rutabaga if I want you to stop.” Her smile was innocently seductive.

He sighed, trying to bolster his self-control. Just because she had a safeword didn’t mean he should rush her.

* * *

Varushka insisted he show her what other girls wore to The Catacombs. After the first few clothing websites he showed her, she threw up her hands in dismay.

“I have nothing like this!” The girl ran out of the room and he followed her to her bedroom. Frantically, she went through her closet, pulling out anything black and throwing it onto her pretty eyelet bedspread. “These things cover too much of my body. If I go in clothes like this, everyone will stare at me and think I don’t know what’s appropriate.” She slumped onto her bed and sorted glumly through her options.

“I didn’t think you’d like to wear something that showed a lot of your body.” He should have thought of buying things she could wear to The Catacombs, but at the time she’d seemed too easily shocked. Apparently jumping to the conclusion that she’d rather be covered up than fit in was wrong. Between this and making out with her earlier, it was clear she was more ballsy than he’d thought.

Her mouth turned down at the corners. “I know. I don’t have a pretty body like the girls you showed me.”

“You do have a pretty body, Varushka. If you want clothes like that, I’ll take you shopping now.”

She stood watching him, nibbling the end of her thumb.

“What?”

“You buy me too much.” She shook her head, as though she was determined to make the best of things. “These are good. I’ll think of something.” She lifted one black dress and studied it. “Maybe I can hem it shorter.”

He left her with her thoughts, but dialed Everly from the hallway. An hour later Everly and Kate were on his doorstep with shopping bags full of possibilities.

They evicted him from Varushka’s room, and in no time a lot of talking and giggling came from behind the closed door. It sounded like a stereotypical preteen slumber party. He was pacing the floor like a disapproving father by the time Ambrose and Banner arrived after work.

“Are you going to be okay, buddy?” Banner asked, urging him out of the hall and into the living room. “If you stand around outside the door while a woman gets ready, it takes longer.”

Ambrose nodded sagely. “And it takes even longer than that if you take the locks off all the doors, because then you’ll be tempted to muss her up again.”

He couldn’t even joke around with them. Taking her to The Catacombs was probably a bad idea. She was young and impressionable, and didn’t have enough life experience to know what vanilla things she was into, let alone go to a kink club.

“Nothing like throwing her in the deep end to see if she can swim.” Ambrose sprawled on one of the couches.

Banner, always more dignified than their other friend, took the one by the window, probably trying to avoid the wrestling matches that often broke out when they were together.

“If they dress her in black leather or other fetish stuff she’s going to look silly,” Kon said. “You remember how young she looked in her picture? She looks younger in person.” He ran his hand through his unruly hair and it caught at his fingers as though it wanted to keep them. “And if they dress her in a schoolgirl uniform or something, no one is ever going to believe she’s legal. And we might have to keep you blindfolded all night, Ambrose.”

“That’s hot.” Ambrose winked.

“Shut up. And don’t think I’ll be sharing her with you, you fucking pervert, because it’s not going to happen.”

Ambrose’s laugh boomed through the