To Have and to Master (Masters Unleashed 3)

“Is that not the act of a true friend?” Konstantin feigned shock. “I didn’t see Banner offering you Kate.” An awkward silence fell. “Oh wait, he did do that before he married her, didn’t he? And how many times did you fuck her, Ambrose?”

“He didn’t fuck her, and I thought we agreed never to talk about that,” Banner grumbled.

“No, you agreed we should never talk about that.” Ambrose smirked. “Konstantin and I agreed we should tease you about it once in a while for the rest of your life. You get really mad and start throwing things. That’s some funny shit.”

Konstantin regretted that he’d have to sit up to drink his beer. They should have brought straws or something. Sitting up sounded like too much of a hassle. “I never should have let Baba find a wife for me. I should have stuck with women who were already perverts, instead of defiling a poor innocent girl.”

There was an evil chuckle. “So when you say you’ve defiled her, exactly how far have you gone?” Fucking Ambrose and his corruption fetish.

“Why would I tell you that?”

“I asked Everly and apparently there’s some sort of girl code that says she’s not allowed to disclose that information, even to her husband.” He made a sound of annoyance. “Are slaves allowed to have codes? We need to have that loophole addressed at some point.” There was a pause as he drank some beer. “So, have you fucked her ass yet?”

Banner choked on a mouthful of beer and spat it on the ground. “Ambrose, you can’t just ask a guy if he’s fucked his submissive’s ass yet.”

“Yes, I can. I just did.”

For a moment, Konstantin managed not to think about Varushka giving herself to him at the swimming hole, but then every mind-blowing detail came back to him—how tight she was, how willing, the way she squealed for him. He tried to banish the thought again but Ambrose had seen his expression.

“You dog!” He thumped him on the shoulder. “Nothing like rushing the poor girl. She’s so tiny I’m surprised you even fit. You’re not exactly a small man.”

“I haven’t taken her ass,” Konstantin lied. It was none of Ambrose’s business, and Varushka deserved more respect than for him to be blabbing about their sex life to other Doms, even if they were his best friends. “I may never.”

“Liar.” Ambrose snorted.

Banner stretched out on the grass next to Konstantin, staring up at the darkening sky. “Whatever you’ve done with Varushka is done. You can’t go back in time and take back the part where you introduced her to our world. The only thing you have to decide now is where to go from here.”

Beda wandered over and stared down into his face with an expression that said if she had opposable thumbs she might knife him in his sleep. He patted her tentatively and was relieved when she wandered off again.

Banner stared after the thing as it went to rub its flank against the fence. “Maybe if Varushka married another man before she met you she wouldn’t have known about kink, but she wouldn’t have stayed innocent about sex unless she decided to become a nun and lived cloistered for the rest of her life. All of us grow up sometime. It isn’t good or bad, it just is.”

Levering himself up onto his elbow, Konstantin sipped at his beer, and then lay back down.

Ambrose stretched out on the other side of him, but propped his head on his hand so he could see Konstantin’s face.

There was no such thing as appropriate personal space with Ambrose anymore. That was what happened when guys shared girls too often back in the day, he supposed.

“From what I’ve seen, and from what Everly’s told me, that girl loves you.” Ambrose gave him a half smile. “It’s not hard to see that she loves submitting to you too. Maybe she didn’t know about kink when she got here, but she’s taken to it faster, and more thoroughly, than most submissives I know who’ve been at this for years. She loves being yours.”

Konstantin waited for Ambrose to say something glib, or try to take a shot at him, but his friend just chewed on his lip and looked thoughtful.

On his other side, Banner snorted. “Can you imagine her trying to go vanilla after having been your slave? After everything you’ve shown her? She’d spend the rest of her life trying to explain to her vanilla husband exactly how to pull her hair properly, and that she equates a good spanking with love. Even if you’d never come along, vanilla may not have satisfied her.”

Maybe, but the fact remained that he was damaged goods.

Other than his relationships with the guys and Baba, he’d never loved anyone. Sometimes he wondered if he’d even loved his parents. He could barely remember them, even though he’d been a teenager when they died. His emotional memory was like a beach that washed smooth with each tide. People came and went from his life, and he never really stayed sad once they were gone. He’d broken up with Anna and Sindee without looking back. Could he be that cold with Varushka? She couldn’t handle that kind of cavalier attitude.

What if he didn’t have the capacity to love Varushka properly? What if he had some sort of clinical detachment that was going to fuck her up? That was an awful thought. She deserved a man who knew how to be a husband, and not just a money-making fucking machine. The thought of letting her go, though, made him feel sick.

Varushka held the promise of him having a family again, even if it was just the two of them and they never had children. He’d dug his claws into her, desperate to taste that feeling of belonging and being loved, but what if he was too fucked up to be part of a family now? He’d be a terrible husband and an even worse father, wouldn’t he?

Stealing her from her family would never replace the one he’d lost. Making her share his fate wasn’t a loving act. Giving her up was. But considering how she made him feel, was he selfless enough to do it?

He drank with the guys and they tried to make him feel better, but there was only so much they could do. Around eleven he poured both Banner and Ambrose into cabs, and sent them home to their women.

After another text and call to Varushka, he gave up. If there had been an emergency, Baba would have found out and called him.

Varushka was just ignoring him.