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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Acknowledgments

  Enslaved

  Chapter One

  Sunlight streamed through the large arched windows, casting elongated shadows across the expansive floor of Grand Central Station in the heart of Manhattan. So many feet walking by, so many shoes.

  “Look up, Elisabeth,” Gregory said, his breath warm in her ear. “You’re missing the real view.”

  She obeyed, even after months of separation. Gregory had released her from her collar, and now her neck felt as naked as her soul. Without a collar, without a Dom—even one who couldn’t love her—Elisabeth felt lost. She found herself touching her neck often, the way a recent divorcée touches her newly-bare ring finger.

  That’s how much wearing his collar had meant to her. Their commitment to each other had been severed, in the name of her well-being, and his. He wanted more, but not from her.

  Gregory tilted her chin up higher until she saw what he meant.

  “Oh, wow. It’s beautiful,” she whispered. A mural of the night sky, lit up with LED stars, covered the high ceiling of the main hall at the station. “I haven’t seen stars in a long time.” The bright lights of the city overpowered them, rendering them invisible even on clear nights.

  “You’ve got everything, right?” he asked. “This is your train. Keep your bag with you.”

  “Metro-North. The Hudson Line,” she nodded, repeating his earlier words to her, because if she didn’t hold it together she’d fall apart, right here in the main hall, and she’d be back to where she started.

  Without a Dom, without a collar. A submissive lost in a sea of people, and not all with good intentions like her former Master.

  “I’ve never been upstate before.”

  Gregory laughed. “I’m sending you to Westchester, not the boondocks. You’ll love it, and we can still visit. You’ll only be a train ride away.”

  “Sir, why Trevor Brooks?” All Elisabeth truly knew about this man she was supposed to go live with was that Gregory trusted him with her. That should be enough.

  “He’ll be good for you. I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”

  It was enough. She’d relied on Gregory to make her decisions for years, no reason to stop now, not when she felt so lost.

  “Don’t be scared,” he smiled. In the past, those words and that smile would have deepened her fear even as it dampened her panties. “I released you from my service a long time ago. You’re a free woman, and it is your choice whether or not to go with Trevor.”

  The memory of that click as the lock on her collar opened echoed in her mind. She still felt exposed, naked, after all these months.

  “I don’t want to be free, sir, please. I can’t make a choice like that.”

  “I trust Trevor, and you’ll have to believe in that trust if you’re going to do this.”

  Panic seized her. How could Gregory force such a huge decision on her, when she’d been depending on him to tell her what to do for years now?

  “Breathe,” he ordered.

  In two three, out two three four.

  “Help me,” she said, touching her bare neck. But Trevor wanted her. Did she want him? Memories of meeting Trevor Brooks at the club, of the chemistry spiking between them, left her confused and aroused.

  “Okay,” Gregory said. “I will decide for you, one last time. Go live with Trevor. Consider it probationary. Submit to him. Do as he says. But he won’t own you until you are ready to be owned, just as you were with me. Do you understand?”

  Relief flooded through her. At least now she had a game plan. “Thank you, sir.”

  She didn’t look back when she walked down the ramp, into the bowels of Grand Central, and boarded her train. From now on, she needed to look forward.

  Midday on the train left Elisabeth with a train car to herself, the hard orange plastic seats surprisingly comfortable. Her one bag of possessions, all she’d accumulated during her years in Gregory’s service, sat next to her on its own orange seat.

  Gregory’s final order to go to Trevor and do as he said calmed her more than any anti-anxiety pill ever could, took away her worry, because now there was nothing to worry about. She knew what to do. She would obey.

  But she’d met Trevor only once before. Why would he even want her? He was so handsome, so . . . large. So dominant, at least at their meeting at WhipperSnapper, the club where Gregory often took her to so they could play.

  And, apparently, so Gregory could get closer to Andrew, the lovely twink bartender who served the lemonade and coffee at the club’s non-alcoholic bar. Of course Gregory was gay. It made sense, looking back. They only ever matched each other in terms of his sadism and her masochism. She loved to brat and he loved to punish. A match made in heaven, until her Master recognized that he deserved more, and decided to make a stand to get it.

  So did she. Right? She deserved a chance at finding a Dom to love her too. At least that’s what Gregory had said, and he was always right. So she shouldn’t be frightened of starting over in a new place, with a new Dom. Still, Elisabeth couldn’t quite help the frisson of anxiety building within her once more.

  Breathe, she told herself as she let herself remember.

  The beat of the music pounded through the large BDSM club in Manhattan. WhipperSnapper had long been known for being the place to be for kinky newbies and lifestylers alike. The soundproofed walls, the many twists and turns that led to private dungeons and specialty sets, even the wall of paddles and whips for guests to borrow all lent an air of fun. The main part was a bit like a bar mixed with a haunted house, except the screams were real and no alcohol was served.

  In reality, the rules were strict and always enforced. The bar served only overpriced soda, coffee, lemonade, and on a good day, cookies. Patrons didn’t come to WhipperSnapper to eat.

  They didn’t come to fuck, either, because fucking wasn’t allowed. No sexual penetration. It was all about pain and pleasure. The bondage, domination, submission, and sadomasochism that went along with being into BDSM.

  There were booths for couples and friends to sit in and chat, and cages that hung overhead where, more often than not, someone hung in little more than a costume and a collar.

  WhipperSnapper had been particularly busy that night she met Trevor, with a long line of kinksters and wannabe kinksters standing outside on the New York City sidewalk behind a velvet rope barring the entrance to the plainly marked door. Those folks waited for a chance to be let in to play, but not her, not when she was with Gregory. He was one of the old-timers there, and despite the well-known dissolution of their bond as Dom and collared sub, he was now, for all intents and purposes, her only true friend. She didn’t go to the club without him.

  It had been weeks ago but the memory burned inside her like a flame, hot and dangerous. All Gregory wanted to do was sit and drink lemonade and flirt with Andrew, and she wouldn’t stop bugging him, hoping to get the punishment she craved.

  “I’ll be back,
” he said to Andrew, tossing a five onto the bar. “Save my seat.”

  Andrew pocketed the five and winked. The twink who winked. Ahh, she could never compete with that.

  “I’m going to introduce you to someone,” Gregory told her. “You’ve caught his eye, and he’s been kind enough to ask for the introduction.”

  Elisabeth nodded. This wouldn’t be the first time Gregory let some other Dom borrow her for the evening. No, wait. Not borrow, because she was no longer his to lend. Tonight, she was an uncollared submissive, but more importantly—as would be the case at any New York nightclub—a single woman. The freedom should have been exhilarating, instead it terrified her.

  It’s not like they were going to have sex or anything, that wasn’t allowed per NYC regulations. That sort of thing happened at private parties, like the ones the BAD Boys threw.

  They were there that night—the Billionaire Arrogant Doms, or the BAD Boys as everyone called them presumably behind their backs, because the three men really were rich enough to buy WhipperSnapper and close it down in a second if they wanted to. Instead they came a few nights a week and always sat together in the same dark booth in the corner.

  Every once in a while, they came out to play. And when they did, the whole club wanted to watch. They were celebrities in their own way. Paparazzi didn’t follow them, but they should have.

  God knew Elisabeth would read any tabloid exploits of the BAD Boys if she could. She’d heard stories, whispers of private islands and secret dungeons and airplanes with bedrooms on them. To a girl like her who’d grown up in the projects with no food in the pantry unless she got to the welfare check before her mother did, the rumors seemed impossibly outlandish.

  Sometimes Mistress Lauren joined them, laughing and smoothing her red hair. She was neither a billionaire nor a boy, but she and Marc Wilde—the brains behind the hedge fund the men ran—were attached at the hip when they weren’t off beating submissives for fun.

  Doms stuck together, Elisabeth supposed. Marc, with his shaved head and tattoos, didn’t seem to match Mistress Lauren’s easy elegance, but they bantered and teased each other mercilessly, like brother and sister, and once in a while a sub was lucky enough to get dominated by them both at the same time.

  Not her, though. Elisabeth would pay good money—if she had any, which she didn’t—to be a fly on the wall in one of their sessions.

  “Wrong way,” she whispered to Gregory as he steered her directly toward their table.

  Gregory slapped her miniskirt-covered ass and didn’t reply, so she kept following him.

  Was he really going to introduce her to the BAD Boys? She peered over at the booth, trying to make out who sat there. Trevor Brooks, Marc Wilde, and Roman Chase.

  As in the Brooks Wilde Chase Fund. Aptly named, and apparently the hedge fund made a lot of other people rich too. Rich to the point that these guys could do anything they wanted and get away with it. There were rumors about that, as well. But who knew what was true and what wasn’t, when she could barely hear the whispered gossip in the loud club?

  “Please tell me you’re joking,” she hissed. Elisabeth had no pretentions, she knew she wasn’t worthy to meet these guys. “They pick you, you don’t pick them,” she reminded Gregory, stumbling on her stilettos as he pushed her forward.

  “He did pick you.”

  “What?” No. Big mistake. But also awesome. “Who?”

  “Mr. Trevor Brooks. Be nice to him, he requested the opportunity to play with you tonight, and I’ve already agreed on your behalf.”

  “Oh my God. Yes. No. Holy shit,” she muttered, quickly running her fingers through her long black hair. “Is my lipstick okay?”

  Gregory looked at her appraisingly. “You look fine.”

  “That’s helpful. Thank you for that pep talk.”

  “You’re gorgeous, now shut the fuck up and at least pretend to be a good girl.”

  Mistress Lauren wasn’t sitting with the three men. From the sounds of the ecstatic screams coming from one of the dungeon rooms, she was most likely otherwise occupied.

  The three men were mid-conversation in their booth and apparently in a good mood, since they were laughing, and even Roman had a bit of a smile, although he usually seemed to be in a perpetual state of . . . stern. How could such a hottie with that long, shaggy hair be so serious all the time? Roman didn’t even look like a billionaire, he looked like a rock star or something. Although that wristwatch he wore probably cost more than most people’s cars.

  Trevor stayed seated, as did the others, when Gregory brought her to the table.

  “Gentlemen, this is Elisabeth. She’s a pain-slut and, Trevor, as requested, you may use her accordingly for the evening. Have fun.”

  Elisabeth swiveled her head so fast to watch him walk away that she braced herself on the booth’s table. At this, Trevor stood and offered his arm.

  “Somehow I don’t think breaking your ankle is what Gregory intended for you this evening.”

  Breathe. In one two three, out two three four.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’m Trevor, this is Marc, and the sulky one in the corner there is Roman,” he said by way of introduction. The other two men nodded briefly in her direction and resumed talking, something about Japan.

  “I know,” Elisabeth said. “I mean, of course. Everyone here knows the BAD Boys.”

  Now she had their full attention.

  “Um, never mind. Nice to meet you all, sirs.”

  Marc didn’t ask Elisabeth directly, but he turned to Trevor and said, “Are people still calling us that? It makes us sound like a motorcycle gang or something.”

  “Or a frat house,” Trevor offered.

  Elisabeth laughed. “Don’t worry, you have everyone here sufficiently terrified.”

  Trevor stepped out of the booth fully, and she looked up at him. Wow. Tall. And ridiculously good-looking. How could a man be this good-looking?

  “Hi,” she whispered, or maybe she just mouthed it. Or thought it.

  “Are you sufficiently terrified of me, Elisabeth?” His green eyes stared down into hers. Trevor looked so professional, so pulled-together, with his clipped dark hair and chiseled, clean-shaven jaw. And tall, crane-your-neck tall.

  “Not yet,” she replied, even though her insides fluttered with excitement. “But I’m happy to give you your best shot.”

  “Are you really a pain-slut?”

  Hearing those words come from his full lips got her wet. She loved those words. Pain. Slut. Together, they were as dirty as they were beautiful.

  Part of her wanted to reply that yes, she was absolutely a pain-slut, but for some reason she felt like she had to qualify the term.

  “I am a masochist, and pain turns me on. Gets me hot. So in that sense, yes. But just to clarify, I’m not really a slut. I’m newly single and it’s . . . been a while.”

  At this, Marc shook his shaved head and rolled his eyes in her direction. They probably had girls coming over all the time trying to get with them for their money. And now she sounded like some sort of gold-digger, all oh look at me, I’m single and you can have me, take me on your yacht.

  Trevor looked amused. “So you’re basically a virgin.”

  “Forget it,” she said, and turned to walk away. She wasn’t in the mood to banter. Fuck him.

  “I was just teasing,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “I already know all about you from Gregory.”

  No one knew all about her, including Gregory. But Trevor’s pseudo-apology seemed sincere.

  “Okay,” she said. “Yes. I am a pain-slut. What do you want to do about it?”

  Now Trevor’s smile changed from amused to . . . sinister? But hot sinister. “Get on the Saint Andrew’s Cross, back toward me. Red, yellow, green and the implement of my choice. Are you game?”

  The st
oplight colors—red to stop, yellow to slow down, and green meaning the sub was doing great and to keep it up—were the club’s standard safewords. She had her own private safeword, but she had never used it. Not once.

  “Yes, sir.” She grinned and took Trevor’s arm as they walked over to the large X-shaped Saint Andrew’s Cross.

  “Ticket, please.” Elisabeth nearly jumped out of her hard plastic orange seat. She’d drifted off a bit, remembering that night. Now she was back in cold reality as a uniformed man held his hand out.

  “Miss? I need your train ticket.”

  She’d been holding it in her fist this entire time and handed it to the man slightly rumpled. “Do I get it back?”

  “This is a one-way ticket, miss,” he said, stamping it and sliding a small white paper into the top of her seat. “Unless you want it for a souvenir. Next stop is yours. Don’t forget your bag and watch the gap on the way out.”

  “Thank you.” One-way ticket. She sighed. Fucking Gregory. He must really have a lot of faith in Trevor Brooks.

  But that meant he also had faith in her, to make this work. She was a free woman, like he said. She could always get back on the train tomorrow if she had to. But she wouldn’t. Because she got the sense that Trevor was definitely a man worth getting to know a little better.

  Once the train guy walked through the loud metal doors that separated her car from the other, she tried to get back into the memory of her one and only meeting and subsequent un-fucking-believable flogging by Trevor Brooks himself, but the moment was lost.

  It had been good, she remembered that. He kept asking her to update her status. It was always green, until she turned her head and said, “I can take it harder than that. I love it.”

  He flogged her until she accidentally climaxed from grinding her groin against the cross as her back lit up with erotic pain.

  “Thank you, sir,” she had said.

  “No, thank you. You look lovely with my marks on your skin.”