Tied to the Billionaire(80)

She took another step back from him, tugging her arm from his grip. He wasn’t her Master anymore. Now he was just a man. A man with a really stupid idea.

She headed towards the door, barrelling forwards, not allowing herself a backward glance. She couldn’t look back. She couldn’t see the disappointment and pain on his face. It was too hard to know she’d disappointed him, denied him.

She wasn’t beautiful and graceful like the women she’d seen him bring to charity events and parties. And she’d seen them all. Every photo, every woman he’d taken to an event since the first night he’d mastered her. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from looking for them. Scouring the Internet to find every picture.

In each photo he’d looked dashing and handsome, in a perfectly tailored suit and dazzling smile. She’d only look funny beside him, out of place. Maybe he didn’t realise it today. Maybe he wouldn’t see it for years. But one day, he’d wake up and realise just how inadequate she was. Then he’d toss her out, leave her with nothing. It was better that she leave now.

She wasn’t the type of woman he should be connected with, let alone married to. She might have ditched the Coke-bottle glasses a few years ago for Lasik and learned to walk in heels, but deep down she was still a nerd. Even now she kept a calculator in her purse, just in case. If that didn’t scream nerd, she didn’t know what did. She liked who she was, geekiness and all, and she couldn’t give that up. Not even for him.

But as the door slid shut behind her, without any attempt from him to stop her, all logic vanished from her system. Her heart broke into a million pieces and tears flowed down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around her chest, keeping what was left of her tucked inside, where it was safe. She hobbled towards the elevator, leaving the rest behind with her Master.



Chapter Four





“How’s our plan going to show your traditional side? Should I expect the deal completed any minute?” Dante sipped his coffee, presiding over their books for their regular morning meeting.

Richard shrugged his shoulders. It had been a long night after Serena had left. A long night filled with regret and confusion and very little sleep. His stomach was still too twisted up in knots to eat any of the breakfast pastries laid out before them. Even the smell of coffee made him sick.

“Not well.” Richard grabbed a nearby earnings report and folded it in half, turning the two top corners down into a point. “We may have to give up on the merger. At least for now.” It just didn’t seem as important as it had yesterday.

“Ms Carter rejected you? I can’t believe it.”

Richard looked up at his best friend from his folded masterpiece in shock. “You knew?” He hadn’t told Dante about his plan to ask Serena to marry him, or about their long-term arrangement. He’d always considered the matter private. Yet somehow his best friend had known.

Dante shook his head. “Of course I knew. Why do you think I mentioned Neil keeping Patrick out of the business? I was hoping you’d take the bait and ask your little engineer. I’ve seen the way you talk to her at every meeting. You’ve been dominating that woman for years.” Richard only stared at his friend open-mouthed, and Dante smiled bigger. “She didn’t exactly keep your relationship a secret either. The way her head bowed and shoulders slumped every time you even looked at her. I know what a woman submitting to her Master looks like.”

Richard nodded. Dante knew better than any that look of submission on a woman’s face. He’d trained more than enough subs in his day to see the need and desperation from miles away.

“I’m surprised she turned you down. I don’t know if I’ve seen a woman so desperate to be claimed by her Master as that sweetheart.”

Richard curled his hands into his thighs, fighting back the rage firing his blood at the easy nickname Dante had given Serena. He was her Master, whether she realised it or not. He could call her anything he wanted, but no one else held that right.

“Don’t worry, lover boy,” his friend joked with a smile that would be so satisfying to smack off his face. “I have no intention of touching your kitten. I’m not interested in already claimed women. You know that.”

That was true. Dante was an honourable man. In all the years they’d been friends, which stretched out more than two decades, he’d never seen Dante chase after a claimed woman. But when it came to Serena, Richard wasn’t rational. He never had been.

He’d spent more time than he would admit hating the other men who had touched Serena. He despised the man who had trained her in the lifestyle, almost as much as he thrilled at finding such a perfect, already trained submissive under his control.

“So how’d you screw up your proposal to Little Miss Numbers down there, to force her to say no?”

Richard shook his head and took a gulp of his coffee. Given how little he’d slept last night, replaying all that had happened, trying to determine where he’d gone wrong, he should just be injecting the caffeine right into his veins. “I don’t know.”

“You must have done something. What did you say to her?”

Richard took another long pull of coffee, enjoying the punishing burn down his throat. “I talked about the Argonaut deal and how they were holding up the contract because of some puritanical ideas about my recreational habits, and that if we got married it might be enough to loosen their reins and complete the merger.”