Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88350 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88350 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Hell, she’d even stopped biting her nails. True, there wasn’t yet enough to actually file or polish, but at least her cuticles were healing, no bloody, ragged edges begging to be chewed.
She reached for a second donut, this one maple bacon. As she bit into the salty sweet confection, she opened her personal email account. Hidden among the spam and bill reminders was an email from none other than Master Pain, the last asshole to break her heart.
No. Not her heart. Her ego.
The subject line of this new email read: Meet me at Alt.com. I’m a free man now, and ready to claim you properly.
Three months of her life she’d wasted on that bastard. Three months of being his online slave, given real life assignments until she “earned the right” to meet her Master in person. He’d been so darkly sexy, so utterly masterful online that she’d fallen for him, hook, line and sinker.
Finally, he’d decreed it was time for them to meet. She’d nearly died with anticipation, so happy to finally connect with the man who’d created such a compelling Master/slave world for her online. But each time they’d scheduled it, some crisis on his end had forced him to cancel—a sudden out of town business trip, an ill parent in need of his attention, a family function he couldn’t get out of.
She’d decided to take things into her own hands. They didn’t have to plan some fancy meeting. She would just show up at his place and fall into his waiting arms. On a whim, she punched his cell phone number into Google and, lo and behold—it listed the owner as Daniel Williams. A scroll through the tax rolls gave her his exact address, not ten miles from hers!
It took a while, but eventually she gathered her courage and drove to his house, the slave collar he’d sent her around her neck, her heart beating high in her throat. Parking in front of the house, she’d hooked her helmet over the handlebars and made her way up a neat path to his front door.
She rang the bell and then quickly lowered herself to a kneeling position, heart thumping, panties moistening in anticipation.
At the sound of the lock turning, she forgot how to breathe. After months of intensive online interaction, she was finally going to meet her Master in the flesh.
Then the door had opened, revealing a woman with a baby on her hip, a toddler clinging to her leg. She stared down in confusion at Lia, still kneeling like an idiot on the stoop.
“Can I help you?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
Lia had leaped to her feet, heat flaming into her face as she tried to understand what was happening. Was this a relative? A roommate? Had Google been misinformed?
“No,” she stammered, trying to gather her wits. “I was looking for Daniel? Daniel Williams?”
“I’m Jenna Williams, his wife.” She’d frowned, her face darkening with sudden suspicion. “And you are?”
She’d been too stunned at the time to think of anything clever to say. “I’m, uh, just a friend. An online friend.”
Then the import of what Daniel had done hit her like a punch in the gut. All this time, she’d believed he was genuine, when he’d been lying through his teeth. He wasn’t just with someone else, he was married with children! Why the hell should she cover for the bastard? Let him pay for what he’d done to her, and to his wife.
“You might want to check out his Alt.com profile online. His moniker is Master Pain and he’s a lying sack of shit.”
Now, with a flick of her finger, she deleted the asshole’s message unread.
She had a real Master to pine over.
“No,” she said aloud, pushing the laptop from her knees and getting to her feet. “You will not moon over someone who’s made it clear he wants nothing to do with you. You will take the good stuff you learned from him and leave the rest. Who needs him? Not me.”
Then, to her horror, she burst into tears.
Chapter 23
Beau busied himself over the weekend with errands and tasks he’d neglected the past week, having been fully occupied with training Lia. Saturday evening, he considered going over to The Garden to check out the action but decided it was too risky. He might run into Lia and, until some time had passed, that might be awkward. Instead, he met up with some vanilla friends for pizza and a movie. He spent most of Sunday binge-watching the old series Justified.
Monday morning Beau entered the Whitesides Hall Building on the Asheville campus and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, his messenger bag over his shoulder. He loitered for a few minutes near the reception desk, making small talk with some of the support staff and a couple of grad students.