by Kitty Thomas
He'd long given up on the idea of finding what he really wanted by accident. Or at a kink club. Because every sub he'd encountered told him what he wanted to hear until the moment they could start manipulating and using him. He was done with that scene because in the end all the risks were the same whether it was kinks or vanilla. Someone was always using him for his wealth, and he lost the power the second they'd become blended into his life.
But Shannon was different. She was real property. She wasn't one of these girls looking for a cheap thrill who would be out of his life as quickly as she'd entered it.
What would it be like to truly own someone—someone who couldn't leave but deep down didn't want to get away? Damian had an opportunity a few years back. Lindsay had made a second and more specific offer a little later, a girl from the house named Mina—very damaged, scars... didn't do intercourse.
Admittedly that one threw him, but he could have worked around that parameter. After all, there were plenty of sexual activities that resulted in pleasure for both parties that weren't so prosaic as standard sex. And he didn't mind the scars. Things like that didn't bug him, nor was he the type of person who saw these imperfections as terrible flaws that made someone unworthy of love or somehow ugly.
It was just a piece of your life that had stuck to you in a visible way. Everybody had those things... scars. Most of them just weren't physical. In the end, Damian had turned Lindsay's offer down and had spent years kicking himself for it.
So when the offer for Shannon came around, Damian wasn't so quick to dismiss it. He knew her history, the things she'd been through at the house, the attempt on her own life. He was sure she'd hate him knowing that, but if he and Lindsay were to truly share her, Damian had to know everything, and he couldn't count on her to willingly give up the information to a man she barely knew.
She was only a couple of years younger than him, but she seemed so much younger than that, so lost. Usually trauma aged a person, but it had done the reverse to Shannon.
Lindsay planned to ease her into a dual-master situation where she would submit equally to both of them—then at some point in the future when their age difference became too large to ignore, Lindsay would hand her off to Damian completely. It was like a timeshare with the option to buy out the other party. Shannon had not yet been enlightened to this plan.
At thirty-three, Damian already had more wealth than he knew what to do with. He'd inherited a lot, but he hadn't squandered the opportunity to make the money he'd been given grow exponentially. He had a gift for investing—knowing just where to put money and the exact moment to move it somewhere else. He'd been labeled a massive success story to be so young and had been featured in several business and investing magazines since he was twenty-three. He wasn't sure if having good intuition about where to put money counted as a success the world needed to know about or worship.
And though his success continued to be impressive for one so young, now past thirty, the Boy Money Wonder thing was starting to thankfully die off as he was able to blend with the rest of the upper class around him.
He didn't have a career or a business of his own. He just knew how to take advantage of a situation, and he'd started out with a lot to begin with. Maybe it was why he gave so much of this bounty to charity. It felt like more of an accomplishment, and it softened the edges of his reputation. Given the way he made his money, if he didn't give so much of it away, he'd come off like an opportunistic asshole. Maybe that was also true, but Damian's name was known in circles of wealth for his philanthropy more than his wolfish ability to stalk the misfortune of those who had built businesses only to lose them in the end.
The one thing he didn't have—and couldn't seem to acquire with his skill set—was someone special to share all this wealth with. He wanted someone to spoil.
And here she was. Damian turned when he heard her enter the room. She hovered near the kitchen island, appearing vulnerable and uncertain. The black silk wrap from the previous night was wrapped around her body. He knew she wasn't doing it to be sexy, though it was... sexy.
“Good morning,” he said, flipping the omelets.
“Good morning,” she replied, clearly unsure of how to be with him the morning after that party. He would love to be a fly on the wall of her mind right now. What could she possibly be thinking?
They hadn't had sex the previous night. She'd been so tired. He'd simply changed the sheets on the giant bed down there and tucked her in, going back up to his own room and leaving her to rest. He had the whole weekend with her. But that gesture of kindness seemed to have made her even more shy and unsure around him.
Damian pointed with the spatula toward the stairs. If you go upstairs, the third door on the right...the guest room... there are clothes for you in the closet.
“Lindsay sent clothes for me?”
Yeah, she might figure out what was going on well before Lindsay could break the arrangement to her. She was smart, and the sudden shrewd look in her eyes like she was putting together a very complex puzzle made it laughable that the doctor really thought he could keep this a secret until he was ready to lay it all out for her.
The shrink better figure out how to tell her. And soon.
“No,” Damian said. “I bought the clothes for you. Go put on whatever you like, but be quick. The food's almost ready.”
He watched her move up the stairs, anything but quick. She seemed scared of them. It was a pretty normal reaction, they were glass and see-through after all. But there were rubber grips on the stairs and solid backs behind them, and a wall on one side and a railing on the other. It was perfectly safe.
Shannon tried to reassure herself the stairs were safe. It wasn't as though they were slippery. And the little rubber grips felt comforting against her bare feet as she climbed to the second floor. She definitely wouldn't slip. But she could see through them. It was disconcerting.
Damian's home was beautiful, but it was a cold, naked beauty. Nothing was hidden. Everything could be seen. She could see into his bedroom from the main floor because the floor of his room—the ceiling of the main floor—was made of the same thick glass.
The house was an open floor plan where one large room flowed into another on the main level without any walls between anything. The house felt like an art gallery, or maybe the art itself. It had been an appropriate place for an art show's private after party.
Shannon was sure the only reason the floor on the main level wasn't that same see-through glass was because the entire basement level was a dungeon/kinky play area. Damian obviously wouldn't want just anyone to see what was underground—unless they were into the same things he was.
She found the guest room easily. Once inside, she happened to catch Damian's gaze as he glanced up at her from the kitchen. He flipped the omelet again.
Seeing through the floor was unnerving. Even more unnerving was the way the room she was in looked like it might fall into the sea at any moment. His enormous home seemed perched precariously on rocky ground, and when she moved to the far wall to look out the clear glass panes, she could again see the waves crashing on rocks below.
There were actual moveable windows set into these larger glass panes, and she opened one, letting in the crisp salt air and the sounds of the waves and seagulls screeching overhead. The windows each had tightly woven screens to keep bugs and birds out of the house.
In spite of everything, that cool salty breeze and the ocean sounds felt soothing.
Shannon went to the closet and found a pair of jeans in her size and a soft gray T-shirt. The shirt was brand new but it was made in that stone-washed rumpled worn way as if it were a favorite shirt, decades old. It was soft, and the large scoop neck would hang off her shoulder. She opened a drawer in the main room and found comfortable-looking white panties and an equally comfortable-looking bra. Sporty, casual. Not slutty.
The last thing she wanted after last night was slutty. She wanted to feel and look like a normal person, not the kind of pers
on who'd participated in last night's party among strangers. Even though that was exactly the kind of person she was.
She wondered how many of Damian's guests had paused in their fucking and kink games to watch her under the spotlight. She'd been too wrapped up in the moment to be able to pay attention to them, only noticing them again when all the porn movie sounds had stopped and she'd been engulfed in the silence of her own experience.
Somehow Damian's watchful gaze on her at the after party had been more unnerving than Lindsay's because she didn't know Damian in the way she knew her master. She didn't know if Damian would judge her or start treating her like a whore.
She felt the blush creep into her face. She was about to drop the wrap to get dressed, but caught Damian's rapt gaze on her again as if he were waiting for the show. She kept the wrap in place tight around her body, gathered up the clothes, and went into the hall bathroom. The bathroom broke the pattern of glass beneath her feet with a gray granite floor. The bathroom walls were mottled glass all the way around, like shower glass.
It was enough privacy to make her comfortable enough to change clothes. Shannon locked the door behind her. The bathroom was an elegant little sanctuary—a place she felt safe and unexposed for the first time since she'd arrived at the glass house.
She carefully folded the wrap and laid it on the counter. She wanted a shower, but she didn't want to keep Damian waiting, so she quickly put on the clothes and finger-combed her hair until it looked a little less like she'd just rolled out of bed. Though he, like most men, probably found that look appealing.
She was right about the neckline of the top she'd chosen. It strayed off her shoulder, hanging halfway down one arm. A few of her scars were visible, but Damian had already seen them. He'd gotten an up-close-and-personal look at them last night under the spotlight in the dungeon. Was that why he hadn't touched her after the party?
Shannon had been so tired, but when Lindsay had left her with Damian she was sure that meant he was about to fuck her. Alone. Without the safety Lindsay provided. Once Lindsay had left, she'd been so scared she'd almost dropped to her knees to beg him, but Damian had told her she needed rest, cutting her off before she could embarrass herself. She wasn't even sure what she would have begged for him to do or not do. She just knew he was still so much a stranger.
Shannon pushed away those thoughts and looked in the mirror, her fingers straying to the collar at her throat. Somehow the thin glittering collar really did go with everything.
Her feet were still bare when she emerged from the bathroom and went back down the stairs. Once again she gripped the railing as if for her life even as the rubber grips under her feet steadied her and reassured her of her safety.
Damian had already set the table when she joined him. He didn't comment on her hiding in the bathroom. It was ridiculous. She knew it. He'd seen everything. But it was different when Lindsay was with her.
“Lindsay loaned you to me for the weekend. I'll take you to his office Monday morning. He'll have the clothes he wants you to wear waiting for you there,” Damian said when she joined him at the table.
“Why?” She'd understood she was staying overnight, but three nights?
Damian raised a brow. “Is my company that offensive?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I, I just don't understand why he would give me to you for the weekend.”
It hurt a little. Didn't the doctor want her anymore? Was he bored already? Did he want to spend time with other women at the house instead? Maybe she was cramping his style and he was rethinking having a girl all his own. Her fingertips strayed again to her collar. In less than a day it had already become an absent-minded nervous habit.
“No, Sir,” he corrected.
“I'm sorry, I'm confused,” Shannon said, still not giving him a title. Of course she'd called him Sir in Lindsay's office that day, but it felt wrong without the doctor here, like she was giving up pieces of herself—little bits of submission—to another man. Like she was betraying Lindsay even though he'd abandoned her here.
“Eat your breakfast,” Damian said, digging into his own omelets and bacon.
She took a bite of the omelet and then followed it with a sip of juice. “It's very good. You're a good cook.”
He laughed. “It's just an omelet, don't get too impressed yet.”
She was used to Phyllis cooking at the house. It was intriguing and maybe kind of nice having a man cook for her. It felt normal and domestic. It brought into sharp focus just how abnormal so much of her life had been for nearly a decade.
“I wanted you,” Damian said. “I find you... intriguing.”
She startled when he echoed the same word that had just been bouncing around inside her own mind. She took another sip of juice to help push the food down.
Damian didn't comment on her jumpiness. The phone rang. “Yes.” He wasn't answering a question. That was just the way he took a call. “One moment.” He passed the phone to Shannon. “It's Lindsay.”
She took the phone, glancing around, searching for a private place to talk to him—as if there could be any privacy in this house with all the glass and open space.
“You can take your call downstairs,” Damian said pointing at the door to the dungeon as if that wasn't the door she'd emerged from when the tantalizing smell of cooking bacon had drifted down the stairs.
“Okay.” Shannon said, avoiding his gaze, trying not to blush. She got up from the table, quickly eating the last bit of omelet and bacon and took the phone downstairs into the much more private and secluded space. She glanced at the huge rumpled bed at one end and then walked to the other end to look again at the painting Hunter had made.
“How are you doing?” Lindsay asked as she stared into her own haunted eyes on the canvas.
“Why am I here? Why did you leave me with him?” It sounded like an accusation.
“Has he mistreated you?” Lindsay asked.
“No, but... why did you just give me to him like that? Am I really staying here until Monday?”
“Yes, you really are,” Lindsay said, sounding a bit annoyed. “I thought you'd enjoy the time out of the house. And I know you like Damian.”
“Yes, but... why?” She tried to ignore the comment about liking him. Damian Brand was an objectively beautiful man. What woman wouldn't like him? And besides that wasn't the point.
“Would you do whatever I asked of you if it pleased me?” Lindsay asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She still could hardly believe she'd gone so quickly from thinking she hated the doctor to... this devotion that all at once seemed to consume her.
“Well it pleases me to share you on occasion with Mr. Brand. So be a good girl for him, and I'll see you on Monday.”
“Wait.” She wasn't ready to not hear his voice for another two whole days.
“Yes?”
“A-are you mad at me? D-do you not want me anymore?” she asked, hating how insecure and stuttery she sounded.
“Of course I'm not mad at you,” Lindsay scoffed. “You haven't done anything wrong. Damian has taken an interest in you, and he's a good friend. I expect you to please him while you're with him. Disobedience to him is the same as disobedience to me. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good. I'll see you Monday.”
The call ended, and she stood there, staring at the phone, while her bare feet absorbed the cold from the concrete floor. She startled again when Damian's shoes echoed off the steps into the wide open space below as he descended.
His timing was way too convenient. Had he been standing at the top of the stairs with the door cracked open eavesdropping on the call? She tried to recall everything she'd just said. Had she said anything on the phone that might offend Damian when she'd thought she'd been having a private conversation?
He held out his hand, palm up, and she instinctively shrank back.
“My phone,” he said.
“O-oh. Sorry.” She knew it was silly
to act this way. If Damian was a friend and Lindsay trusted him, of course she was safe. But he was still practically a stranger to her, and she didn't have the best track record of safety and security with men.
Shannon had the strong underlying fear that she was a very bad judge of what was safe or good for her. After all she'd let Andrew collar her, assuming they'd be together forever, and he'd just dumped her for some other girl without a second thought about it. Then she'd stupidly gone to the house, where she'd stupidly mouthed off to Brian and nearly died. Now here she was with someone else who wanted to play with her freedom and her life. And though she hadn't chosen this particular man or situation, she still didn't trust herself.
Maybe that was the one good part of this. She hadn't chosen Damian. If he hurt her, it would be Lindsay's fault, not her own. She thought this realization should comfort her, but it didn't.
She edged closer and handed Damian the phone. He slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and simply regarded her for a few moments.
“I think I'm ready to cash in my rain check,” he said, finally.
“What?” Shannon took an involuntary step back, knowing as she did so that there was only a few feet of open space behind her before she'd hit the wall with nowhere left to go.
“Was our time together in Lindsay's office that forgettable? Your seams weren't straight. Lindsay asked if I wanted to punish you, and I decided to take a rain check, to make it... memorable.”
Memorable.
The last man who had wanted to make a punishment memorable had scarred her for life. Shannon held out her hands, placating. “Please,” she whimpered, backing up until she hit that damned wall.
She didn't know what had come over her but she felt the panic rushing in all at once. Starting with begging seemed like the smart move. Don't resist. Don't smart off. Just beg, and... hope. Hope he wasn't like Brian. Hope he wouldn't hurt her. Hope he didn't decide she needed to be fixed and he had just the tools to do it.