Unraveled Together Read online

  If I could, I’d close my eyes and will the world to turn black, but as the flogger lashes into me with far more force than I imagined the husband had at his disposal—he brandishes it from side to side so that it wraps around my hips, hits my waist, then the vulnerable flesh of my thighs in turn—I can’t stop myself from staring into the mirror in front of me with terrifying intensity, monitoring what the Master is doing to the blonde.

  He has spread-eagled her to the St. Andrew’s Cross against the wall face forward, and then strapped her tight around the waist, making sure that her wrists and ankles are equally tightly attached to the cross.

  Then he stands back from her, and I’m glad that I can’t see the expression in his eyes, as I have no doubt at all that he is gazing with great pleasure at the willowy blonde offered up to him, and the thought makes me gag.

  Even worse, she juts out her large, round, firm, perfectly shaped ass at him enticingly, as if to say, “Punish me now, Master, please, Master, punish me now.”

  And then he uses the crop on her ass, over and over, while she wiggles her ass constantly but remains stoically silent, and I’m glad, because knowing the Master, he’d prefer to hear her shrieks and moans.

  Which reminds me. “Harder, please, and more,” I whisper to the husband, who has momentarily stopped whipping me so that he can admire his wife being administered to by the Master. That gets the husband’s attention, and he starts back in again, and laces into me with such force that I let out an almighty scream.

  Whereupon, just as I hoped, the Master stops working on the blonde, throws down the crop, and strides over toward me.

  He’s going to untie me now, kiss me, hug me, stroke me all over tenderly, and tell me how much he loves me, I know he is.

  “Don’t take any notice of her screams,” he tells the husband.

  Then he unties the blonde and, to my relief, comes back to me again, and watches while the husband carries on whipping me.

  Then he places his large hand on the small of my back and rests it there, making it clear that if I was considering attempting to escape the lash, he has no intention of letting me. Yet as the husband lashes me, and the pain intensifies, the weight of the Master’s hand on the small of my back somehow makes me feel safe, protected, even loved.

  “Oh, and I’ll give you a reward if you make her cry,” he tells the husband.

  His words slice through me and down into the very heart of me, and his sadism makes me wetter than I think I’ve ever been in my life. Our eyes meet, and I know that he knows it and is pleased.

  The husband doesn’t make me cry, but he tries, and inflames my ass with every stroke, and makes me moan, and scream, and writhe in pain, this time for real. And while I do, my eyes lock with the Master’s, and I love how much he is loving it, and how each lash I receive, each moan I make, deepens our erotic bond, and unites us in a darkness—strong, burning, and impenetrable.

  Before I lose my nerve, I press print, stuff the pages into an envelope, and address it to Mr. Robert Hartwell, Hartwell Castle.

  Chapter Seven

  Miranda, the Present

  The thought of waiting for days and days until Robert responds to the erotica I’ve written for him—if, indeed, he does at all—is unbearable. So I gulp, dig deep into my pockets, and hire a messenger to deliver it to Hartwell Castle, so that it gets there in a matter of hours.

  Now all I can do is hope and pray that he will read what I wrote, and that it will inflame him to such a degree that he’ll want me back. Then, when his passion for me is at its height again, I’ll finally be able to explain everything to him. And maybe then he’ll forgive me.

  In the meantime, to ease the waiting, I’ve called Lindy, given her some idea of what I’m currently going through, and now—as I hoped—she’s on her way here. I’m relieved.

  A couple of hours later, she still hasn’t arrived, so I toy with passing the time by calling Mom.

  Then I realize that I can’t face the idea of breaking the news to her and to my stepfather that Robert and I are over. Not when my mother was so enthralled by him, not when both of them are over the moon that he is marrying me, and we all celebrated my engagement to him so very recently.

  I can’t tell them yet, I can’t.

  The only person I can tell right now is Lindy.

  But not everything. After all, Lindy always worshipped Georgiana from afar, so I can’t tell her everything, can I?

  Can I?

  I’m still not sure, when the doorbell rings.

  The moment I see Lindy’s little face, the concern for me in her eyes, I burst into tears and hug her as if my heart was breaking—which, of course, it is.

  “Oh, Miranda, I can’t bear it! If he’s hurt you, I’ll kill him,” she says, and the level of vehemence coming from my little sister makes me smile.

  So does the giant Godiva box she hands to me.

  “I just wish I’d never put on that fucking bunny-girl costume in the first place. I just wish I’d never done it, then you’d never have met him, and none of this would ever have happened,” she says.

  I shake my head.

  “Lindy, sweetheart, I wouldn’t have swapped the experience of knowing him for all the world. He’s the only man who has ever made me feel safe, made me feel loved . . .” I say, before I start crying again and my words are drowned by my sobs.

  Lindy hugs me close.

  “So what did he do to you, Miranda? What did the bastard do?”

  “It’s not what he did to me. It’s what I did to him,” I say, taking a candy and wolfing it down.

  “But you love him so much, I know you do, and you never do anything mean or cruel to anyone, so what the fuck did you do to Robert when you love him so much?” she says.

  I swallow hard.

  “Oh, Lindy, I don’t want to burst your bubble, that’s the problem . . .”

  “I don’t care what you did to him—nothing you could do, nothing you could tell me, would ever make me think less of you,” she says.

  I take another candy, then look deep into her eyes, which right now are big with bewilderment.

  “I guess that you of all people will understand why I did what I did. It’s just that I know how you feel about her. About Georgiana,” I say, silently still weighing her potential reaction, and asking myself whether I’m being cruel in telling her the truth about the icon whom she and so many others continue to have on a pedestal.

  “I know that when we watched that documentary about her, I went on and on about how wonderful she was and that she was a saint. But that was years ago; I was just a child, and these days, all Lady Georgiana Hartwell is to me is just a beautiful face on a magazine cover, a distant memory. All I care about is you, Mandy,” she says, touchingly using our father’s nickname for me.

  I have to trust that she means what she’s saying, because if I don’t tell someone—and she’s the only one I can tell—I think I’ll go crazy.

  “I guess I’d better tell you the whole story, Lindy. After all, as you said, none of it would ever have happened if it weren’t for you. In fact, I owe Robert to you, so I owe you everything.”

  I flash back to Palm Beach. “To Lindy, our serendipity,” my toast to her for having been responsible for my good luck in meeting Robert, and, I guess, his in meeting me.

  “Lindy will make a beautiful bridesmaid,” was his prelude to proposing to me that evening, before a thousand fireworks exploded above us forming the words “Marry Me Miranda,” and I said, “Yes, Robert, I will!”

  My love, my happy ending, I thought at the time, and although my fairy tale with Robert has now turned to ashes, it still holds true that I owe all the previous happiness to Lindy.

  And so I start to tell her the entire saga, and she listens, her eyes wide and full of wonder. When I tell her the first part of the story, the story of my arrival at Ha
rtwell Castle, of my first meeting with Robert, the lake, the Double Eagle, she is obviously awestruck but remains silent. But when I tell her about our first lunch at Violetta, how Robert closed the restaurant for us, she can’t manage to contain her excitement. “It sounds so beautiful, so glamorous! I’d give anything to go there one day,” she says.

  “I’ll take you there for your birthday treat,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Oh, Miranda, that would be amazing!” she says, her eyes alight with pleasure.

  Her birthday is just around the corner, and I don’t know how I’ll ever survive going back to the restaurant where Robert leaned across the table, took my hand, and gripped it so hard; I didn’t flinch but—as he told me later—my pupils dilated with desire. And then he knew the truth that I was a submissive, just as his crushing grip told me that he was a dominant, a dominant who was testing my willingness to submit to him, to take pain.

  To Lindy, I guess my romance with Robert—my ex-romance, if you can call it that—is the stuff of which fairy tales are made. Of course I don’t—and never will—give her even a hint of the darker side of the fairy tale upon which I embarked with so much relish and in which I experienced so much ecstasy.

  I may be a free spirit, I may be liberated, but although Unraveled was a thinly disguised story of my adventures in BDSM, and Lindy got the manuscript by mistake and must have read it, I never admitted to her that anything in the book was autobiographical.

  The truth is that—particularly when it comes to my family—my BDSM passions have always been and always will remain private, my secret and Robert’s. Nor would I ever tell Lindy about the night, decades ago, when our grandfather did the unthinkable to me. But I do tell her in every detail how Georgiana and Tamara, the housekeeper (as I characterize her, without revealing her dark past), kidnapped me; my rescue; and, finally, about my failure to tell Robert that Georgiana was still alive.

  “And now he’ll never forgive me for what I did. He’ll never take me back!” I finished, but feel guilty that I haven’t told her about the new piece of erotica I’ve sent Robert. After all, who knows whether it will have any effect on him. Or whether he’ll even read it, never mind take me back.

  “Robert has to take you back. He has to forgive you, he has to!” she says, then jumps up. “There’s only one person who can help you get him back,” she says, and then—before I can stop her—she turns on her cell phone and calls our grandfather.

  I sit there and listen to her detail the entire story to him. I can’t hear his words, or his reaction, but I can hear the tone of his voice, and throughout the conversation, even when she tells him that Georgiana is still alive, he keeps it even. The horrifying thought strikes me: He must have known, he must have known!

  So does that mean that he was the evil genius who made it all happen for Georgiana, or at least who aided and abetted her in her death and subsequent resurrection?

  I don’t know, and, to echo Lindy, I don’t care. All I care about is Robert, getting him to forgive me and take me back and love me once more.

  So I sit there helpless, while Lindy, all big eyes and determination to ride to my rescue, tells our grandfather how much I love Robert, how much he loves me, and how Robert has to forgive me and take me back, he just has to.

  “Can you consult the stars and see how she can get him back, Grandpa, can you?” Lindy begs, and my stomach turns over at the thought of what he did to me.

  There is a long silence, during which I can hear him talk, and Lindy listens, as rapt as if the Oracle has come to life and is advising her here, now, in person.

  When she hangs up, her eyes are shining. “Mission accomplished,” she says. “Got to go and see Grandpa. He says he knows exactly what we should do, and that after we do it, it’s just a matter of time before Robert takes you back for real,” she says, her voice full of hope and idealism, and there is no way in the world I am going to rain on her parade by telling her why I don’t want her to involve that man in anything to do with my life.

  If I ever thought that it had happened to her as well, I don’t think I could bear it. If it didn’t—and I really don’t think it did—I refuse to disillusion her about her beloved grandfather, the man she trusts in ways in which neither she nor I ever trusted our father.

  So I let her go, then slump on my couch, eat some more candies, and pray for a miracle.

  My prayers are answered when, much later that night, the phone rings. I pick it up and hear Robert’s voice, and suddenly I’m safe again, and in bliss.

  “I just finished reading it, Miranda . . .” he says, and I hold my breath, not sure whether the emotion in his voice has been ignited by my erotica or is due to something else.

  There is a long silence while I remind myself, When it doubt, say nothing . . . Then—in a much more clipped and commanding voice than he used before, Robert says, “The limo will pick you up at nine tomorrow night. Wear something sexy and elegant,” then hangs up, leaving me dazed, delighted, and terrified, all in equal measure.

  I spend most of the night pondering his few words, asking myself over and over what it meant that he didn’t mention the dreadful thing I did to him, but then reminding myself that when I sent him my erotica, I didn’t mention it either.

  I sleep so fitfully that I finally wake up at midday, and only because I get a text. Still bleary-eyed, I take a look. Robert! A text from Robert. Extraordinary, given his hatred of texts and texting, but a text no less. And not just any text. A text to send a shiver of fear shooting down my spine.

  You have a great deal of explaining to do, Miss Stone. RH

  So stark, so severe, so ominous.

  Almost as bad, “Miss Stone”—formal and remote, as if he’s stopped the clock so that we are now right back where we started, with no intimacy between us, no closeness, and above all, no history.

  I suppose, though, that after what I did, no history might be a good thing.

  By the time the limo pulls up outside my building at the stroke of nine, I’m a complete basket case. And when I sink back into my seat and smell the familiar rich scent of the leather once more, and the driver, one I’ve never met before, opens the compartment and hands me an envelope, I’m well and truly rattled.

  When I read Robert’s handwritten note, I discover that I was on target and should have been.

  Miranda,

  Tonight I intend to temporarily suspend all my anger and disappointment at your betrayal and—this is a tribute to the heat and tone of the erotica you sent me yesterday— instead emulate your scenario with a similar one, one that will both please me and also serve to distract me from my other, more serious concerns about you and your veracity.

  Tonight I shall be hosting a dinner for twelve Masters and their slaves.

  Twelve Masters and their slaves!

  I know exactly what that means, and I’m already shaking in my shoes.

  My erotica—which, as I knew it would, obviously really inflamed him—featured a scene in which I was punished in front of other Masters and their slaves.

  And now Robert plans to do the same, and more, to me!

  The limo is picking up speed, but if it weren’t, I might consider asking the driver to take me home again.

  Only I would never wimp out and do that, no matter how much the prospect of what is ahead of me terrifies me.

  I have to grip the letter with both hands, otherwise I’d drop it, I’m shaking so much.

  It’s almost as if Robert knew ahead of time exactly how I’d react to his note, because it goes on:

  To repeat, tonight I shall be hosting a dinner for twelve Masters and their slaves. The emphasis, Miranda, is on the word “I.” Because tonight, you will not be the hostess. You will be subservient at all times. You will keep your eyes down at all times, and you will not move without being so instructed, nor will you speak without being spoken to. Tonight
, you will have no choice, no options other than to do exactly what I tell you. In short, you will be submissive, obedient, and compliant throughout. —Robert.

  I fold the note, put it back in the envelope, then sit back in the seat and wish that I were anywhere else but en route to Hartwell Castle and destined to be punished in front of strangers.

  Half an hour later, just as I am about to relax, a phone rings, and the driver hands a phone back to me. “Mr. Hartwell, Miss Stone,” he says, and I throw him a bright smile, though inside I’m scared as hell.

  Has Robert changed his mind?

  “A question, my darling,” he says, and I give a sigh of relief.

  Then he goes on.

  “How experienced are you at serving a fellow submissive woman sexually?”

  My heart thumps so loudly that I’m afraid that he can hear it through the phone.

  When in doubt, say nothing . . .

  He steams ahead, so my answer obviously wasn’t important to him, because it’s obvious from what he says next that he knows full well I’m not experienced.

  “You’ll soon learn. And quickly, or you’ll suffer for it. Then, once you’ve finished serving her to my satisfaction, I shall instruct her to dominate you to the full extent of her abilities. No one is better, more sadistic, more enthusiastic in dominating a submissive woman than another submissive woman. Provided, of course, that a dominant man is ordering her exactly how to do it, and commands her every step of the way. Then she’ll throw herself into it wholeheartedly and be more dominant, more cruel than the most professional of dominatrixes. Good-bye, Miranda. Enjoy the rest of your journey,” he says, and hangs up.

  I’m left petrified, forced to struggle with my fear for the rest of the journey until we reach Hartwell Castle, where everything gets worse. Much worse.