Sweet Sinclair (Masters of the Castle) (8 page)

Jackson leaned in.

“I-I can’t—” she stammered, suddenly, inexplicably on the verge of tears. Of all the things she had to cry over, this had to be the most ridiculous reason ever. And yet, Jackson took one look at her fumbling hands and, without cracking a smile, reached in to help.

“Give it to me,” he said, his deep voice soft and soothing. “No, I’ve got it. Turn around, give me your back and hold up your hair. No, all the way up. There’s a good girl.”

Good girl. There it was, that same silly, practically juvenile endearment Parker had used last night. She didn’t know if it was his tone or the words themselves, but funny how something that misogynistic could hold the power to calm her down like this.

“There you go,” Jackson declared after only a second or two. When she shifted back around on the seat, he held out his hand to help her down out of the van. “Come along, little submissive. Master Parker is waiting for you.”

From the very first day that Parker had moved into his suite on the third floor of the Castle, he’d hated the view. Some Masters had fabulous views: Marshall, for instance, had private rooms overlooking the gardens, while Jackson had gorgeous sunrises over the fields every morning and Kade, the lucky bastard, lived right smack over the Roman baths where suits were always optional and the slave assistants were ready, willing and eager to please. Every window Parker owned looked straight down over the kitchen receiving area, a nice concrete slab where the smokers hung out on their breaks and the food trucks unloaded their wares, usually at some ungodly hour while he was trying to sleep. Those windows that did not overlook the kitchen had prime views of the employee parking lot. Yeah, up until this very moment, Parker hated his view.

Running his hands through his light brown locks, he shoved his hair back, smoothing it down again and again, trusting repetition and gel to tame the
beast. He wasn’t nervous, per se, but this felt like nerves. He was in full-on Dom mode and had been practically from the moment he’d rolled out of bed, looked at the clock and set that instant mental countdown of how many minutes separated him from getting his hands on his sweet, sexy Sinclair all over again. His body hummed, every inch of him so damned aware of her. The next town over was at once too far and yet the distance so easily closed. All he had to do was get in his car and go, but unfortunately, he had a day job too. He took a shift in the dungeon with a wallflower submissive who had whisperingly asked if he was familiar with rope bondage. The hours he had spent with her, painstakingly binding her into a corset of ropework was time spent wishing it was Sinclair that he could feel trembling with excitement and pleasure while he wrapped, cinched, tightened and wove those two-tone ropes into a tightly constricting work of art.

“Thank you, M
aster,” the wallflower had whispered as the dungeon photographer came to take pictures of the final effect, a memento of the experience she could later take home with her.

“Not at all, little one,” Parker had replied. He’d even given her hair a seemingly fond stroke, but at the same time, all he could think about was how the dark strands running through his fingers should have been
red and the quivering young woman waiting for him to undo the ropes should have been Sinclair.

Would she come to the Castle wearing his collar tonight? His cock was so damned hard just thinking about how she had lain on that table, her knees drawn up close to her chest and her legs spread wide apart, opening herself to the strokes of his fingers and the lash of his tongue. Sweet Sinclair, and she honestly had been. Salty and sweet, a heavenly combination that had literally haunted him all day long.

The sun was setting but the sky not yet dark when he finally spied the Castle’s unmarked van coming up the winding unpaved road. A near-electric jolt shivered him. So, so near and yet so far out of his reach. She’d be wearing his collar, he assured himself. She had to be. The wait was nothing shy of sheer agony.

The van parked, and a line of kitchen submissives trailed out with dollies to help unpack bin after plastic storage bin. He had no idea what Sinclair had planned to accomplish tonight, and although he had every intention of meeting whatever working needs she had, he had plans of his own. Not all of which involved work, by any means. Some would very pleasurable indeed.

He saw Jackson, but not Sinclair. Not for a long time. Where was she?

He didn’t realize how tensely he was holding himself—Christ, he was even holding his breath—until, with the van finally unloaded, Jackson shut the back doors. He waved the kitchen staff to start on back without him and vanished around the side of the vehicle to the front passenger door. He watched the van jostle. What, did he have Sinclair tied up on the front seat? It was a totally ridiculous thought and even more absurd that he should feel such a stab of jealousy. If Sinclair was going to be tied up for anyone, it was definitely going to be for him, not Jackson, who was already emotionally attached to a submissive of his own, Parker knew, and who had shown absolutely no interest in straying from Sara’s affections.

No, of all the Masters, Parker knew Sinclair was safe with Jackson. Still, threads of jealousy laced through him. They seemed to come with a mouthy little devil, who took up firm residence on his shoulder to give obnoxious voice to every doubt Parker couldn’t believe he was harboring. Maybe Sinclair had changed her mind. Maybe he had moved too fast yesterday. Maybe he hadn’t moved fast enough. Towards the end there when she had been so wanton and wild, thrusting her hips up into his mouth, grinding and groaning and clutching at his hair in an effort to keep his mouth there, yes there, oh God yes, right fucking there, the way she had looked at him had screamed, “Take me!”

He almost had, too. If not for that damn vow he’d made, he would have. But he knew, even if in that raw sensual moment she hadn’t, that sex would have been the wrong thing. Yesterday had been, in effect, their first date. He wanted her. He wanted her to come back, to keep coming back. He wanted her to want him as he was, the Master when the job required it, the dominant that he was at all other times, and the simple man who wanted the woman he saw in Sinclair every time he walked into her candy shop and she smiled that shy, sexy smile over the counter at him. He really didn’t want to mess this up.

The van jostled again. His chest began to ache and his head to pound. He was holding his breath again, but he couldn’t stop himself. He stared fixedly through the cool glass pane until his eyes burned he hadn’t blinked in so long. Was she coming? What was delaying her? Maybe she really had changed her mind. Maybe she had put his collar on and now she was taking it off. He couldn’t take this. Every passing second felt like needles, jabbing at him. Maybe he should stop standing here like a love-struck idiot and get his ass down there, talk to her before she could convince Jackson that this was all some horrible mistake and to please just take her—

Everything stopped a half second later when both Jackson and Sinclair came walking around the back of the van, heading together toward the Castle’s kitchen entrance. She had her hands tightly clutched together but she was smiling, and even from here he could see that nervous/excited/apprehensive play of emotions dancing inside her. But that wasn’t all he could see. She was wearing his collar.

She was his tonight.

Parker left his apartment before he quite realized he was moving. He all but charged down the stairs and very nearly ran head-on into Kaylee and Hannah
. The Masters always dined with their ladies during formal dinners, but now they were headed upstairs to change out of their noblewoman costumes and into something—judging by their giggling—slinkier. He dodged them, but did not stop to talk.

“Well,” Hannah said from behind him. “That was a very intense look.”

“Mm,” Kaylee agreed, but then he was through the next door and when the notoriously nosy women tried to follow him, his sharp about-face followed by a single hard smack of his spanking hand across his open palm changed their minds. They dashed back through the door and probably ran all the way to their respective rooms. Apart from one or two steps, Parker did not pursue them. He loved them both dearly—they were like the sisters he’d never had; the better halves of Sam and Marshall, two of his very best friends—but now was not the time. Not when Sinclair was taking her first steps into the Castle, where potentially some four hundred dominant vultures were circling, just waiting to swoop up his unsuspecting innocent and carry her away.

Not if he could help it; not if he could get to her first.

He headed straight for the ballroom. She beat him there, but perhaps by no more than a few minutes. The bins had been lined up along the table and she was just starting to unpack them when he strode in. He didn’t even stop to lock the doors.

“Hi,” she said, glancing up when she heard the doors swing open. The intensity about him captured her attention almost immediately. She blushed, dropping her eyes back to the bags of candy she was pulling out onto the table, but when he just kept coming, rounding the end of the table without an answering greeting, she looked up again. Her eyes widened when she saw whatever look was owning him just then. Her smile faltered. She even took a hesitant step back, her hands coming up to brace against his chest, but he caught her anyway. One partial day apart was sixteen hours too damned many.

He seized her by the rings of her collar, pulling her mouth right up to his. He kissed her like he meant it, as if she were the other half of his soul and he’d sorely missed her.

He really needed to get a handle on this. Doms weren’t supposed to act this way. Doms were calm, cool, in control of every second.

“Oh wow,” she breathed, sinking back down off her tiptoes when he grudgingly let her go. “Go ahead. Do that again. Curl my toes.”

“I intend to,” he said huskily. His hands had a life all their own. One drifted down to give her bottom a fondling squeeze, followed by a swat. She jumped, her eyes widening all over again. Her knee-jerk reaction might have been to protest, but if that was true, then he distracted her by redirecting her attention back on all the bins. “What’s the plan for tonight?”

“Door gifts,” she said, the high curves of her cheeks a bright pink as she reached back with one hand to caress where he had so lightly struck.

She must have liked the swat. He gave her another, the same cheek, just a little sharper than before and quickly followed by his own soothing rub. “Let’s get to it then.”

He pulled out two chairs and they put themselves to work. The gift bags were easy to assemble. His job was to fold a pink pre-made pouch into a second clear, glittery pouch and pass them to Sinclair, who added Jordon almonds, bright red marzipan lips that both smelled and tasted (he couldn’t help sampling one) like red hot cinnamon candies, and the most darling little spanking paddle he’d ever seen, made out of chocolate with the word “Ouch!” luster-dusted across the top.

“That is the cutest thing I think I’ve ever seen,” Parker said, holding one up. It was small, no bigger than his thumb. He quirked a smile. “Ouch?” he asked.

There went that blush again. She deliberately did not look at him. “According to the internet, paddles are supposed to hurt.”

“Depends on how they’re used. When bottoms have been good, they get good girl spankings that can feel very sexy. When they’re bad…” When she still didn’t look at him, Parker leaned in closer, letting his voice drop to seductive tones as he said, “Have you bee
n a bad bottom, sweetness? Am I going to have to put you across my knee and spank you?”

Missing the opening of the pouch entirely, Sinclair dropped a scoop of Jordan almonds all over the table. Candy bounced and clattered everywhere.

They both laughed. They also got back to work: her, with a muted frenzy and the occasional touch to the collar at her neck; and he, with that feeling of anticipation building in his gut until it felt like a bonfire, hot, crackling through his veins, smoking and smoldering with all the things he would do to her later on.

Slowly but surely, they emptied the raw materials out of the plastic bins and then filled them back up again with the partially completed gift bags. She still had truffles or something at her store that would need to be added in, but that could happen tomorrow. For tonight, the task was simply to make the bags, fill them as much as possible—wash, rinse, and repeat…nine hundred times.

It took hours, before Sinclair said, “Last bag of almonds.” She shook out her scoop-wielding hand, stretched her back and then got back to it.

“How many more bags before we make our goal?” he asked, liking the way her breasts thrust up and out when she moved like that.

“We reached that twenty bags ago. I just want to make a few extras so we can be sure everyone gets one.”

Parker stopped what he was doing. “Good idea. Take a break
for a minute, though. Come here.”

He saw it on her face, that spark of, ‘Is it going to happen now?’ just before she put everything down and stood up. She was only sitting right next to him. It was truly amazing how some subs could make even the smallest journey take the longest time. He grinned, taking advantage of her shyness to roll his shoulders and rock the kinks out of his neck. Pushing his chair back from the table, he held out his hand to help her bridge those last few inches.

When she stood beside him, her chest rising and falling slightly faster than normal, her eyes alight with expectation, he reached up to touch her collar. He checked the fit, liking the snugness, making sure there was no chafing, and reminding her without words of who she wore it for and why.

“Go and lock the doors,” he said, giving her bottom a gentle swat to send her hopping to it.

Sinclair did, making a meek circle to all three doors to ensure their privacy. When she started back toward him again, he stopped her by pointing to the three buffet tables that would be her station the night of the party.

“The bag is on the floor near the legs, hidden by the tablecloth. I want you to get the nipple clamps
, then select your pleasure from the two remaining items and bring them to me.”

Hers was a very pretty blush, dominated by eyes that sparkled apprehension and excitement. She clasped and reclasped her hands. “You know,” she hedged, “I got that one package practically by mistake.”