Mia's Masters [Locks and Chains 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) (22 page)

“For this to be over, you know the word you have to use, pet.”

“Yes, Master,” she panted. Her ass felt like it was on fire. Her skin felt like it had been ripped apart. The overwhelming need to hold her ass cheeks assaulted her. She wanted to hold her body together. The fear that she was going to fall apart took control of her senses. Again and again, Dylan brought the whip down, and she screamed and sobbed with each blow.

“We both know you can’t do this, pet. Admit it and save us all the hassle. Only one word.”

She couldn’t take it anymore. So, using the last remaining strength she had, she turned to look at Dylan. She could see the disgust in his eyes. He didn’t want her to succeed. He wanted her to fail. Did Dylan ever really want her? Did her ever truly love her? Without love, there could be no future for them. It was hard enough with four people in one relationship, let alone with the difficulties they would all face in the future from society and their unconventional relationship. Even simple, logistical things like transport and vacations would be a challenge for them. There’d be no way for them to make it through the troubled times if they didn’t all love each other.

But was she thinking too far ahead? Was she again letting negativity control her thoughts? There was only one true way to find out if they all loved her enough to accept her, failure and all. They had to accept that she couldn’t live with the direction they wanted her to take. She couldn’t be an unfeeling slave. She couldn’t train herself to want to be whipped and beaten for their enjoyment. She took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs with all the anger and emotion that was coursing through her body, “Purgatory!”
 

Everyone stood frozen in place.

“Say it again, sub,” Dylan ordered.

“Purgatory,” she panted in a whisper. Her mind spun in a panic. She had to save herself, her sanity. If she’d let them continue, there would’ve been nothing left of her. She would have let them mold her into something less than human. Just the thought made her shiver. What would happen now? Would they understand they had pushed her too hard? Or would they send her packing? She dismissed that thought straight away. There was no way they’d send her away. Surely they loved her as much as she loved them. She couldn’t have fantasized the last six months. They had told her they loved her so many times she couldn’t count. It couldn’t have been a lie.

“Mathew, get her down. Peter, pack her bags.”

Dylan’s command froze even the breath in her lungs. She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly and praying this wasn’t about to happen.

“Mia, you have called your safe word, and you have confirmed it. You will get dressed immediately. I’ll call a hotel and make a reservation for you until you have yourself sorted.”

He said it as though he were ordering a sandwich. There was no emotion, no anything in his voice. The monotone statement tore through her heart and left only shreds behind. Did she truly mean so little to him after all this time together? Was she nothing but…what?

As Mathew released her, she
did the one thing she’d promised herself she would never do. She fell to her knees in front of Dylan and took his hand in hers. “Please don’t do this. Please, I love you. I’ll do anything.” The tears streaming down her face matched her desperate tone. In all her life, she’d promised herself she’d never ever beg another person to be with her. She’d accepted a long time ago that everyone left her. But these were her boys. She had believed they would never leave her and never, ever hurt her. Obviously she’d lived in a fantasy world for almost six months now. She’d fooled herself into believing that she could depend on them. That she didn’t have to cope alone and do everything herself. She’d opened her heart and allowed them to be there for her.

“Please, Dylan, please.” She would do anything. She would change anything if only she could stay with them.

“Mia, please get up. Don’t make this any harder than it is.”

The shame she felt at his comment hit her like a ton of bricks. And so, just as her pride had left her, so did her trust in the world. Dropping his hand, she looked down at the floor. She was too ashamed to look at the faces of the men she loved. She didn’t want to see the pity in their eyes. How had she come to this point? How had she let this happen to her? All the memories came flooding back of being a little girl looking for love and acceptance from her parents, only to be rejected over and over again. She felt like the ten-year-old little girl who had hidden under the house and sobbed to God at the unfairness of the way her parents treated her. Why wasn’t she loved like her friends? What was wrong with her that they didn’t love her like the other kids’ parents loved them? It had started out as a game. How long could she hide until they realized she was missing? How long would it take her family to realize she wasn’t around?

She’d struggled for so many years feeling unloved. She’d struggled with the abuse, but through it all she had to believe she was loved. Maybe not in the safe, normal way but in some form. They would notice her gone. Surely they would notice that their child was missing, but the hours passed in her secret place, and the stick men she had drawn in the dirt met their wives, married, and had families while she waited for somebody to come find her. She was shattered when she realized that half the day had gone by and still no one was looking for her. By the afternoon, she was pleading with God. Why she was unlovable? Why was she not good enough? That day, a part of her soul had broken. She would never rely on a single person again in her life. She would never need anyone or anything.

Crawling out from under the house, she’d walked inside. Her father was again working in his den, ignorant to everything around him. She walked toward her mother’s study. She was also working, oblivious to her daughter’s needs. For the first time as she looked at them, she didn’t look with love and amazement. She looked at them with disgust and hatred. It was not she who wasn’t good enough for them. They weren’t good enough for her. From that day forward, in her heart, she no longer had parents. The names Mom and Dad were just that, names. Not titles. Not positions. As she toured through memory lane, she realized that right now she was that ten-year-old girl. She was asking these men to love her and to take care of her. And they were rejecting her. She would no longer beg. She had herself, and that was all that mattered.

She stood on shaking feet and turned toward the door. She didn’t stop to look at them. She felt more naked now than she had ever felt in her life. She ran to the bedroom and grabbed the first clothes she saw, throwing them on before pulling a suitcase from the top of the closet. She began throwing all the clothes and shoes she could see through her tears into it. She left all the expensive lingerie and the club gear. They could burn it for all she cared. Her head snapped up as Peter walked into the room, followed by Mathew.

“Leave,” she whispered.

“Pardon?”

She struggled with her desire to look at them. Part of her wanted them to watch her heart breaking and her soul dying. Although the bigger part was terrified they wouldn’t care.

“Just leave,” she hollered near a scream. She needed them to go away before the last tethering twine of her control snapped. She thanked the universe for the small mercy that they listened to her and left. When she was sure they wouldn’t be able to hear her, she let her head fall to the floor and sobbed out the pain that raked through her body. She clutched her hands to her heart, trying desperately to hold the shattered pieces in position in her chest. Over and over, she asked why? Why was this happening to her? Why was she not lovable? Why did everything she loved leave her? Why was she alone again? Why couldn’t they love her?

After what felt like hours but was mere minutes, she stood and wiped the tears from her face. She walked with her head held high toward the front door, carrying her suitcase. She’d texted a cab and knew it would be here any second. She needed to collect herself and find some way to survive this. She’d survived before, and she would survive this as well. All she had to do was find a way to piece together her broken heart and find a reason for living. She walked out of the house without speaking a word to anyone. Within a minute, the cab had arrived.

“Take me to the closest hotel to the city.”

“Sure thing, lady.”

* * * *

Dylan watched through the upstairs window as the cab pulled away from the house, taking Mia and his heart. He had done it. He had let her go, so she could have a better life. Yes, she hurt now, but soon she would thank him. He had nearly thrown the whole plan out the window when she’d begged him on her hands and knees. The pain in her eyes nearly undid him. But the memory of the hospital and the judgment of her from the rest of the vanilla world steeled his thoughts. This was the right thing to do. She deserved better than them. He heard Mathew and Peter enter the room before he saw them. Their thudding footsteps and the door slamming back against the wall announced their arrival.

“What the fuck have you done?” Mathew bellowed. “You’ve been pushing her for days. You’ve been punishing her and tormenting her, and tonight…what the fuck, Dylan. Why? Why did you do it to us all?”

“I don’t have to answer to you. You have no right to question me,” Dylan said, still facing the window.

“You can stick your fucking Master-and-sub shit up your ass, Dylan. Why the fuck did you send the best thing that ever entered our lives away?”

“Because she deserved better than us,” he screamed back. He knew it was time to tell them about what he had overheard the nurses saying about Mia at the hospital. He had to tell them how the vanilla world was going to judge her. Mathew was no slave. He would leave if he didn’t come to the same understanding of the situation that he’d been forced to do. He led them to the dining room and sat them down. He told them about the hospital and what he’d heard. They both looked shocked and then pained. He explained his plan and how hard it had been for him to carry it through, and he saw they now understood.

“So it’s over then.” Peter’s pained statement cut him to the bone.

“Yes, Peter, it is. We still have each other. We’ll get through this together.”

“Okay. I…I’m going to bed.”

He watched Peter stand and abruptly leave. As he passed by, Dylan saw the tears in his eyes and wanted to cry himself.

“This is how it’s got to be. My god, I don’t even know how to deal with this,” Mathew stated as Peter left the room.

Dylan stood and walked out onto the deck. He couldn’t stand seeing the pain in the boys’ faces. Not with the memory of the pain on Mia’s face as well. He felt as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders right now.

As the days passed, life only became harder. He would walk into the office expecting to see Mia’s happy smiling face. Each time he looked toward her desk, he felt the sharp pain of the reminder that she was gone. Each night when he rolled over in his half sleep, expecting to feel the soft curves of Mia’s warm body, he only found an empty space or one of his boys. None of them had had sex since she left. No one felt like it. Peter wept all the time and was losing weight. Mathew was silent and miserable, living in his own world of pain. And he felt like half a man.

It was another night of Peter and Mathew silently sitting on the deck. He knew they were looking out at the city below, wondering where Mia was and if she was okay. The ringing of the front door bell jolted him. He wanted to deal with it before the boys noticed. Opening the door, he was surprised to see Craig.

“Don’t even bother telling me you’re not receiving guests. You haven’t returned my calls, and I’ve been told by Michael and Jason that I must sort this shit out or face death. Apparently Grace is worried about Peter, and with her latest pregnancy, they can’t take the risk of her being under any stress. And Peter’s pain is stressing her.”

He pushed past him and strode toward the living room. He sat down and turned to face him.

“So tell me. What happened with Mia?”

He was so desperate to talk to someone about it that he told Craig everything. Every fear, every event, and everything he’d done. He was prepared for a reprimand for his behavior and treatment of Mia. But he knew Craig would understand why.

“So let me get this straight, in the
Reader’s Digest
version. You punished and pushed Mia away because you thought she deserved better. Because some bigoted idiots are going to judge her choices in life.”

He nodded his head in agreement.

“So because the love of your life and the woman who openly and publicly accepted you all, the one who wanted to love you forever, was going to suffer some snickers and nasty comments by people, you threw her out,” Craig said.

Okay, this didn’t sound like he understood.

“So she took every punishment. Every humiliation you dished out, and she still stayed, only because she loved you all so much. She even begged you to let her stay after she safe-worded out. Which, by the way, safe-wording doesn’t mean the end of a relationship. You used it against her as a means to send her away. That isn’t proper BDSM protocol.”

Craig’s words ran over and over through his mind. Had he made a mistake? Should he have talked about it with the family? Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this was a decision they all should have made or at least discussed. “I made a mistake, didn’t I?”