Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Read Online Books/Novels: | Trust Me (Rough Love #3) |
|---|---|
Author/Writer of Book/Novel: | Annabel Joseph |
| Language: | English |
| Book Information: | |
It’s been three years since they first met, and Chere is finally where she wants to be: in Price’s dungeon. Well, she’s in his dungeon part of the time. The rest of the time, she’s living in his home, eating his food, sleeping in his bed, reading his books, wearing his—well, no, he won’t let her wear anything. In fact, there are a lot of things he doesn’t allow, more than she ever imagined in her torrid fantasies. Life under Price’s control is an adjustment, and sometimes a nightmare. It’s not long before she realizes she’s in way over her head… Note: This book is super rough. There’s love, but it’s rough. Hence, Rough Love series. This full-length novel is the final book in a three-part storyline that culminates in Happily Ever After. But, full disclosure, this is the roughest part of the ride. | |
| Books in Series: | Rough Love Series by Annabel Joseph |
| Books by Author: | Annabel Joseph Books |
Chapter One: Owned
Once upon a time, there was a lost, lonely princess, and a rough-edged prince who owned a castle with a dungeon. The dungeon was hidden away behind a secret door, but the princess knew it was there because it had become the center of their relationship. It was okay.
Mostly okay.
In fact, the princess dreamed about the dungeon as much as she dreamed about the prince. She loved and hated both of them, her dreams a peculiar mixture of happiness and dread. Sometimes the prince tormented her, whipped her or choked her while he whispered lurid threats in her ear, but sometimes he gave her poetry, real poetry he’d written only for her.
You lean over your work
Lips pursed, then moving
Whispering unintelligible words of affection
As you bring beauty to the world
I ran my fingers over the paper that lay front and center on my worktable, reading his words when I should have been working. I was the princess, even though most days I didn’t feel like it. I still persisted. I wanted happily ever after with my prince.
That was complicated too.
I folded the poem and put it in a drawer with the others, and refocused on my work, on the two gleaming silver ovals in front of me. My studio was quiet today. Sometimes I listened to an eclectic playlist as I worked with my metals and soldering irons, but today I worked in silence because I was a failure, undeserving of music.
As promised, Price had given me some money to start my jewelry business, and rented a space for me a couple floors below his office. My studio had only two rooms: a front room where I worked and stored my supplies, and a back room done up as a lounge for prospective clients, with large, comfortable chairs and a central table for setting out samples and discussing designs. So far, the only person I’d met with in there was Price. Most of the time the back room sat empty, the light from the single window moving across the carpet and chairs.
It had been a month since I set out on my new career as a boutique jewelry designer. I’d amassed a backlog of beautiful gold and silver pieces, earrings, bracelets, necklaces...but no clients. Starshine, Ltd. had received exactly one order since its inception, and that order came from Price—two bracelets with attachment points for chains, in the style of manacles. On the order form he wrote Must stand up to the frenzied pulling of a one hundred and twenty pound woman in the course of a long and grueling punishment session.
I weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. I’d failed to find my first customer by the end of August.
Yes. I was fabricating a pair of shackles for myself.
I deserved to be punished, because after three years at one of New York’s top art schools, I’d fallen way short in launching my career. I’d lamed out, full stop. I’d been more concerned with being my Master’s slave and obsessing over his poetry than bringing my jewelry designs to the world. The whole reason he’d held me at arm’s length for three years was so this wouldn’t happen.
I frowned and fitted one of the manacles around my wrist. I didn’t want them to be stark metal bonds, but works of art. I wanted these instruments of torture to be pretty and exquisitely fitted. I wanted something good to come out of this. I wanted to please the man I thought of as both my Master and soul mate, but the project was also shadowed by sadness. I wasn’t measuring up to our unspoken agreement, and he was calling me on it. I was scared about what that meant.
I clicked the clasp together and wiggled the manacle on my wrist. The fit was true. The design was pretty.
So why wasn’t I happy?
I took it off and arranged it on the table beside the other manacle with a carefully calculated distance between them, connected by a chain. It was a metaphor for us, because we were connected, but not really together. He said he loved me, but he didn’t love me yet. He didn’t trust me, or perhaps he didn’t trust himself, and earning that trust was going to be a long and complicated process on top of everything else. Clients were the last thing on my mind. My career didn’t seem that important anymore, when our relationship was in this shifting stage of vulnerability.
The door swung open. Only one person came here, and he never knocked. In the big, wide world he was P.T. Eriksen, famous architect, but when I wasn’t calling him Sir, I called him Price. He was tall and strong, with piercing blue eyes and blond hair, and bold, expressive features. At the moment, those features were deliciously intent. He locked the door behind him, then strode toward the back room, not even glancing at the manacles. He was already shrugging off his suit jacket. I jumped to my feet and followed.