At His Mercy (Masters Club 1)

A small voice, growing fainter by the second, was shouting inside his head. What the hell do you think you’re doing? Danger. Danger. Danger.

He ignored the voice and gathered her closer, never wanting the kiss to end. His cock was throbbing, hard as a bar of iron between them. He wanted to throw her down on the couch and plunge into her, all the while their mouths still locked in a kiss.

The voice, fainter now, sounded feeble and unsure. Why should he always deny himself? Why was he always so fucking careful all the time? No, he didn’t do love, but he did do lust. Why not give in to his lust, just this once? He’d seen the longing in her eyes. She wanted this too…

What had Grayson said? The heart wants what it wants…

Then, all at once, Jess wriggled out of his embrace, tearing herself away from his kiss. She was breathing hard, her eyes bright.

“I can’t…” she said breathlessly, wrapping her arms protectively around herself. “We mustn’t…”

“We can,” he urged, though the warning voice in his head was growing louder again. Quashing it, he reached for her, eager to pull her back into his arms. He desperately wanted to finish what he’d started, no longer caring what the consequences might be.

“No,” she cried, stepping back and whirling away from him. Before he fully understood what was happening, she rushed from the room.

Stunned, Cameron staggered to the couch and plopped down. He touched his lips, which still burned from their passionate kiss.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ. What had he just done?

~*~

Jess arrived at the office early Monday morning, briefcase in hand, a bland, professional smile on her face as she greeted the few coworkers who’d already arrived. After making her Cinderella-like escape Saturday night, she spent the rest of the weekend brooding, not even going into the office for her usual Sunday catch-up.

She’d toyed with the idea of returning to the club to scene with yet another skilled stranger the following night. Someone who would help her move past this apparent impasse inside her. Because the truth was, however much she tried to ignore or downplay the undeniable attraction she felt for Cameron Lord, she could no longer deny it.

Before coming to the Masters Club, Jess’s connection with any particular Dom was often intense during the actual scene. But the moment the scene ended and she came down from her subspace high, the link was broken. She was free to move on to the next experience—the next guy.

But the connection with Master Cameron had shattered the boundaries she’d so painstakingly erected to keep her personal and professional lives separate. It was that kiss—that damn fairy-tale kiss—that had awoken the sleeping princess inside her—the one who didn’t want the neat compartmentalization that had always worked so well for her in the past.

The public clubs she had been used to only scratched the surface—satisfying her kink needs without the messy complication of emotions to distract or confuse her. Now that she’d experienced something deeper and more authentic at the Masters Club, she doubted she’d be able to go back.

From the moment she’d seen Master Cameron on the other side of that two-way mirror, she’d been a goner, however much she tried to tell herself otherwise.

If she’d gone back to the Masters Club that weekend, it wouldn’t have been to scene with someone else. It would have been to find him again.

To kiss those soft, inviting lips once more…

She wished she had someone to talk it through with. But she wasn’t yet ready to confide in her new friend, Cleo. Her work friends and vanilla girlfriends were obviously out of the question.

Instead, she gave in to obsessive over-analysis, taking apart every second of the evening with the meticulous care she brought to case preparation. She dissected her motives in accepting the invitation to the Masters Club in the first place. She relentlessly cross-examined herself about how much of it was the delicious promise of a ready-made, serious BDSM venue, and how much was her, until recently unadmitted, attraction to the office hunk who had extended the invitation.

In the end, the jury was hung, no satisfactory verdict rendered.

She kept coming back to that kiss.

Until that moment when he’d taken her face in his hands, pressing his lips against hers as his arms came around her, she’d been able to convince herself she was maintaining the boundaries she had always employed during a scene. Before Master Cameron had burst into her life, she’d been able to keep her two personas firmly apart, with no messy emotions complicating the issue.

There was reserved, quietly confident, fiercely ambitious Jessica Cooper, attorney-at-law. Then there was the nighttime sub who got her masochistic itch scratched with like-minded souls who were, as cold as it sounded even in her own mind, not much more than faceless Doms wielding an impact toy, already forgotten as soon she came down from her high.