Own Me, My Love Read online

  * * *

  Renaissance E Books

  www.renebooks.com

  Copyright ©2005 by Reese Gabriel

  * * *

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  OWN ME, MY LOVE

  Four Erotic Novellas

  By

  REESE GABRIEL

  A Renaissance E Books publication

  ISBN 1-58873-742-X

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2005 Reese Gabriel

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

  For information:

  Email [email protected]

  A Sizzler/B&D Edition

  PORTRAIT ONE

  CARRIE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The young painter was giving her the eye.

  And Carrie was looking back. Twice already she'd come up to the widow's walk, ostensibly to check the progress of the job, but really she was checking him, his lean, hard body dangerously advertised in tight jeans and tank top. He was like a big cat, his every motion languid and sensually charged as he perched on the ladder, dipping his brush over and over, expertly swathing the seashell pink walls in a fresh coat of storm cloud gray.

  He'd come highly recommended by the real estate agent she was using to sell the beach house, though Carrie wondered exactly what else the woman might have been recommending him for.

  With those haunting blue eyes and expressive, ironic lips, he was no doubt chased after by every woman for miles up and down the coast. He'd arrived in a pickup, loaded with all the right supplies, though she could see him far more easily on a motorcycle, with mirrored shaded, his black hair flying behind him in the wind, his sun bronzed skin glowing with life. All that power between his thighs, his fingers gripping the handlebars of his steel mount.

  It had been an eternity since Carrie Renfrew had thought of a male this way. As an assistant fashion designer, she was around enough of them, many of them drop dead gorgeous, but since her husband's death six months ago, it was as if that part of her had died.

  Her ability to get wet and horny, it seemed, had been buried with Roger, along with her ability to laugh, to love and so much else. Sure, she'd survived. A hectic work schedule insured that. Her boss, the flamboyantly sympathetic Simon Grigio, had allowed her to pour as much of herself into it as she wished.

  Fourteen hour days, seven days a week, no sleep, if possible. Sleep only brought nightmares. A thousand variations of the same theme. She'd be somewhere in public with Roger, in a crowd or at a restaurant and they would somehow become separated. She would try and chase after him, but each time she caught a glimpse of the back of his head or his broad shoulder, he would disappear yet again. Sometimes she would grab hold of some man from behind only to have him turn about and be someone else, her stepfather, or one of the various other men who'd been so terrible to her in her life before Roger came along.

  Always the men would laugh and she would become increasingly desperate. Onward she would run till eventually—and here the dream was always the same—she would end up on the floor of the hospital where Roger had died. Ahead she would see him running, in a hospital gown, his well kept fifty year old body taking easy, loping strides down the hall. She knew he was in trouble, though, that death was chasing him. She'd try and intervene but doctors and nurses would block her way, pushing gurneys in front of her. Corpses would sit and grin at her, or sometimes skeletons.

  Finally she'd arrive at the room where Roger was, but always she'd be too late. Inside on the bed, she'd find him wasted, nearly to nothing, just as he had in real life.

  She still shed tears of anger over that one. Roger was a warrior, damn it, a lion. He shouldn't have had to go out that way. The doctors told her that her feelings were normal. They gave her pills and told her to be patient with the grieving process.

  How could she explain to any of the doctors, though, that Roger was so much more to her than just a spouse, that theirs was a special relationship, one of loving master and devoted slave?

  Carrie gripped the railing of the all too ironically named widow's walk, feeling strangely woozy. Having the beach house painted was proving to be more of an emotional drain than she'd been prepared for. Coming out to the coast at all had been grueling, filled as the place was with memories of Roger. At least in the city she had her life to lead, some semblance of normalcy. Here there was fresh loss at every turn, echoes of every laugh they'd ever shared, all those kisses on the sand, the lovemaking in the surf under silvery moonlight.

  And the endless dreamy discussions on the balcony over bottles of mediocre wine. Giggling, debating, conspiring. The best of friends. And the power games, the secret ones originating in their bedroom combustion and seeping deliciously into every nook and cranny of their relationship. The looks given across a crowded room, letting her know how fucking hard he was and what he intended to do about it. Her eyes lowered shyly, heart racing as she anticipated his wild whims.

  The chains circled round slender limbs. The leather crops and paddles. And even more simply, his hand, seizing lovingly and possessively her auburn hair to position her for a kiss, or on her ass, his palm searing and punishing and mayhem-reeking.

  No one had to know she called him Sir or knelt for him in the quiet of their home. It was no one's business if she found her most glorious fulfillment, her most free sense of self in bowing to kiss the feet of her lover, the one who guided, nurtured and challenged her.

  Without him she'd been lost, in ways no one could understand. Thank god for her boss, who'd been able to keep her busy. Simon the eccentric, ever energetic businessman, the one with the flair, the one whose name went on the label. Carrie liked it in his shadow, she like to see the dresses in her mind and make them real. She liked to turn her work over to others and get a fair price back. She liked parameters and boundaries. She was a submissive woman. At her best performing for a brilliant man.

  She wasn't weak, she wasn't stupid and she sure as hell wasn't short changing herself in life. Roger had taught her all these things. To be proud of who she was, to see that everything is relative to the happiness of each person. She could no more be told to give up her desire to live with a collar and the strict regimen of a testosterone filled male than she could tell a woman's libber to put on an apron or a gay man to suddenly start getting off on pussy.

  Submission wasn't about weakness or hiding or any of that other shit that people tried to say it was. It was about being strong and finding what you need in life and not compromising. Roger didn't own her soul—she merely gave him the right to take the reigns.

  For her, this meant the whole kit and kaboodle, down to the tiniest details. What she wore and spending money and if she ought to have her ass whacked for burning the noodles or driving too fast.

  It was how she wanted to live and she was just fine about it. She had her say, she felt fulfilled, free inside as she'd never been in any other situation. That's what made it so special. Consensual slavery was the official term, 24/7 BDSM Master/slave. Though it made her mad to even think in these terms, to make up definitions and labels because it sounded like justification. Fuck anyone she had to explain this to. As if anyone had the right. Her family never understood what she was doing. When they found the hints, the little pieces of evidence, they tried to bury them as something dirty. They were always burying things and so Carrie had grown up a very mixed up young woman wit
h a proclivity for finding all the wrong kinds of men.

  Roger was the first right choice she'd made in that department, and she opted to make it her last. Their public marriage had featured a white dress and a caterer. Their real vows were taken in private, in the home of one of Roger's friends, a long-time master and computer consultant.

  Carrie was naked that time. And on her knees. In place of a ring, she took a collar, made of thin round gold, locking, which she wore whenever they were alone together. Of all the things left to her from their five years together, it was this one thing that was hardest to bear the sight of.

  For weeks she kept it in her dresser, too terrified either to get rid of it or look at it. Putting it back on was out of the question and yet she felt naked without it. Sometimes, even now, she would catch herself, reaching for her throat, by sheer reflex, hoping against all hope she'd find it there, just as she might find him in the bed next to her.

  The doctors told her not to worry. That she'd be normal again one day. Before too much longer.

  What did they know about normal? Grieving for a submissive was an entirely different animal. It isn't just another person, a relationship lost, it was the rhythm of your whole existence.

  How could they understand the desperation that leads you to pour out the contents of a kitchen drawer at three in the morning to find a metal spatula to spank your ass with, praying the momentary pain, the glow of heat as you punish and masturbate yourself simultaneously will buy you one more night, one more hour of sanity?

  How could they possibly know what it meant to stand petrified in the aisle of a supermarket, hand clutched like death itself to a can of soup as you try to simulate the free will exercised with such ease by your fellow shoppers, wagons crammed with colored boxes and bags representing all the latest corporate advertising lures.

  The first time she'd shopped, she'd had a list, but the meaninglessness of it had paralyzed her. A gulf, a black hole opened up. In desperation, she retrieved the discarded list off the floor, purchasing to a tee every item belonging to someone else's life. Cat litter for a cat she didn't have. And cat food. And ten pounds of ground chuck. For a single person. It was all she could do to get home without falling apart.

  From that time forward she learned to feign her independence, masking her broken slave's heart much as an illiterate might cover his or her deficiency by memorizing the shapes of signs or following the movement of crowds.

  When ordering out with friends, she simply repeated the previous person's order. To purchase clothes, she asked the sales girl's opinion and took it as gospel. A few, figuring out her seeming gullibility, took advantage and she did end up with quite a lot of things she didn't want or need.

  Fortunately, this stage lasted only a couple of months. After that she fell into a black pit of willfulness. People stopped wanting to go with her at all then as she would send back item after item, pleased with nothing on the menu.

  Only work went right during all this turmoil. The visions in her head, from whence came her creations that fit so sleekly and marvelously about the toothpick bodies of the latest models, flew fast and furious and Simon could be heard to say (black comedian that he was) that a few more of his proteges could stand to lose their SO's for sake of his profit margin.

  Eventually even the likes of Simon felt a little guilty making money off Carrie's misery so he sent her on forced holiday. This was probably Minerva's idea, actually, or perhaps their flamboyantly transsexual show manager whom everyone called Auntie Mame.

  She'd taken to the idea with all the natural enthusiasm of a cat to a Jacuzzi. As for going to the beach house she and Roger had bought and refurbished, this was a compromise. Technically, it would be time off, but she could also tend to the things that needed doing so she could ready it for sale.

  She knew the value of a beachfront property like this, a split-level contemporary with three bedrooms and two and a half baths. With luck she'd fetch three hundred thousand. Not a bad return for their one hundred thousand dollar investment. The real point, though, was to close a chapter of her past. If she were to have any chance of a life again, slim as the odds might be, she would have to do something about all those open doors backward into the past. A lot were mental, but this one was tangible, and as long as she held the deed to this little slice of paradise, she would always have an excuse to justify his possible return into her life.

  Even now, it felt so close. All those times up there with Roger, watching the faraway ships, cuddled together under a blanket late at night that one day she would live up to its name and be one herself. Ten years younger than him ought to have put their check out dates on earth pretty close to matching. That wasn't so much to ask for was it?

  Apparently, it was.

  Ignoring her feelings for the moment, she watched the progress of the painting. She would not show a pink and white house but a gray and blue one. Let whoever bought it from her get a fresh start. And let her memories be mercifully covered over.

  Hopefully she'd be able to stay objective and not break unexpectedly into tears when showing the house to prospective buyers. Though she was not a real estate agent, she tended to think that hysterical crying did not do much to encourage property purchasing.

  One thing she'd already had to do was to make sure the house was properly vanillified. This meant removing any obvious trappings of their BDSM play. So far she'd taken down the rack of whips and canes on the bedroom wall and hidden the coils of rope and chains in buckets in the hallway and the set of stocks in the living room.

  Roger had also installed eyebolts at various heights all around the house, devil that he was. It was his great joy to be able to chain her at a whim wherever she might be at a given moment in the house. The result of this was a sense of constant sexual charge in Carrie. With every step, she knew she was moving into a potential trap and try as she might over the years she was never able to fully gauge from his voice when he was about to suddenly switch from silly, doting spouse to card carrying happy go lucky sadist.

  That was the thrill. At a word, a look, he could lower her, bring her crawling to his feet or his dick making her so horny she would beg to be taken like an animal, used for his glorious, grunting pleasure.

  But first those words that were good as an orgasm to her ears: Suck me, my sweet. To know she was pleasing him, that at that moment there was nothing more he could ever want, no other woman, no other act—this was the essence, the heart of her slavery. The heart of her love for Roger. Did all this pandering leave her wanting? Hell no. He loved her, too, and gave her all the sex she could dream of, and flavored just how she liked and craved it. Chained down or tied up. Nipples clamped, ass warm from a cropping, and all the right words in her ears.

  You are mine, Pet ... surrender to it ... I love you ... more than life.

  And now his life was gone. Or living on, depending on your beliefs, in heaven or some new body or in her memories. She had to laugh thinking of her eclectic husband up there in white bread heaven. Isolated not only for the chocolate color of his skin but for the seeming lack of any kink whatsoever past the gates of St. Peter's.

  "I'll probably sneak down to the other place,” he used to say. “You have to admit, for all his faults, the devil has style."

  He'd drive the religious fanatics crazy when they came to the door, occupying them for hours with seemingly sincere questions. He had no intent of converting, of course, only of teasing. Sometimes he'd end their sessions by pointing to Carrie and saying he'd have to discuss it with his slave and get back to them.

  It was one of his more irritating habits, but he told her that bogging down enemy troops was a time-honored custom in guerrilla warfare.

  Most people were put off by his humor, if not by his intelligence, education and stunning male beauty. Even in the BDSM community, the other masters wanted little to do with him on account of their jealousy. As for the submissives, male and female alike, they all wanted to be in Carrie's shoes—or lack of them—and so they
hated her. All in all they found themselves an island of two, which suited them just fine.

  Not that things were perfect.

  To simply assume that a master and slave could have a perfect symbiosis, conflict free, is to show one's ignorance. It would be as wrong to say that as to assume, all the way on the other end of the spectrum, that it is abusive or evil for people to live, one subjugated to the other.

  There were places, to put it simply, Roger wanted to go that were too hard for her and sometimes his wanting to go there was magnified by her reluctance. It was a fine line to walk, between the consensuality and the slavery.

  Roger called it a tightrope, the balancing rod being love. He said one could never go wrong following one's heart, that she could never fail him as a slave, but Carrie felt—no, she knew—that she had let him down plenty of times. He didn't have to spell it out. She knew that look in his eyes, she could read his disappointments, sometimes better than he could himself. There were things he'd wanted in a slave, power dynamics, levels of degradation to which she'd never been able to go.

  So many fantasies of his, left unfulfilled. So many possibilities and joys defeated as he was left caring for her in the wake of her breakdowns, forced to modify or abandon so many of his special plans. He'd asked so little for having given her so much. Couldn't she have been a little more forthcoming in those certain areas? Much as he said it didn't matter, it did, if not to him than to her.

  Carrie had obtained Roger's forgiveness at his deathbed, but still the reality haunted her. She should have and could have done better. Plenty of slaves did such things for their masters and plenty more.

  What did he get instead? An early, painful death. Roger was a kind and generous man. If anyone should have gotten sick ... it was her.

  The young painter drew her attention once more as he wiped a fresh layer of sweat from his brow. The movement caused his bicep to clench. He was giving her a show. He was precocious, that was for sure. Most men wouldn't develop such confidence till well past their prime. As for her seniority, it appeared to mean nothing to him. He was regarding her as he would a girl his own age.