Saving Sara (Masters of the Castle) (17 page)

Sara watched him put the phone back into his pocket. He was still smiling, but it had changed somehow. “Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Smile like that when you don’t mean it.”

Jackson looked at her. “What makes you think I don’t mean it?”

“Your mouth is smiling but your eyes aren’t.”

His head tipped slightly. His eyes narrowed, a calculating stare that she was coming to recognize. Once upon a time, she remembered loving that look back when she used to watch him scene with the other girls at the Shadowbrook Den. It was an unconscious expression, one that meant he was trying to figure out what to do next to whomever he was partnered to—how to treat her, what level to take things to, how hard and fast he should push. Her stomach tightened with the most delicious trepidation, until he smiled again but only with his lips. His eyes remained detached.

“I’m the head of Castle security, Sara. I’m the first to arrive when a scene goes wrong and I’m the last to leave. I’m the shoulder battered submissives cry on when they relate what went wrong. I’m the one who listens and counsels when a Dom spills his or her frustrations because they didn’t achieve the results they expected. This is real life BDSM in a fantasy setting. Nothing we do here can exist in the world outside these walls, and yet all the same rules apply. You can’t just throw two strangers together and expect everything to fall into place if they can’t communicate what they want and need. So when communication fails and catastrophe follows, someone has to be there to pat the shoulders, soothe the feathers, and speak those tender words of comfort. I have to smile, Sara. I have to be friendly and approachable, because it’s my job.”

A sudden slam of dishes and shouting from the kitchen startled them both. Jackson jerked around in his chair. “And there’s the break,” he said, just before launching to his feet and hurrying for the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Sara jumped up, too. She would have followed, but he pointed back at her. That was it, just a sit-and-stay gesture of his finger, and then he disappeared into the kitchen after Connie.

Sara didn’t sit back down, but she did hesitate. She hovered between their two chairs, listening to the sounds of silence interspersed with muffled conversation that periodically escalated into teary-sounding female shouting: “This is my place…I don’t have to calm down. You calm down! Better yet, get out!...I said,
get out
!...I don’t care how big you are, little man! You lay one hand on me, I’ll bust your head wide open!”

Another crash of pots and scattering utensils startled Sara all over again. She was still considering whether or not she ought to venture into the kitchen and see if Jackson needed help when the door to the main dining hall swung open. An older butler swept into the room. Back stiff, shoulders back, hands clasped upon the length of a lithesome switch, he strode swiftly toward the kitchen.

“Excuse me,” he said as he passed her, but that was all. He’d barely even looked at her.

Though she knew she ought to stay put, when she heard another crash, her train-wreck-in-progress curiosity got the best of her and Sara ran to follow. The butler blew through the swinging door, never once glancing back at her over his dark shoulder, but she caught the door on the backswing and stopped, frozen in wide-eyed surprise at the sight that greeted her.

There had to be at least fifteen workers at various food stations all around the massive old-stone and stainless steel kitchen. Most were women, but there were three men, all dressed as servants, with Cook Connie slamming her hands against the counters, crying and yelling at Jackson and occasionally grabbing the nearest available pot or utensil to throw at him.

For his part, Jackson sat calmly in a chair in the middle of the floor, blocking or catching what she threw, and talking quietly back at her. “You know what this is, Connie. You know you’ll feel better once it’s done.”

“Get out!”

“If you really wanted to get rid of me, you know what to say. You’ve said everything but the Castle safeword. Ergo, you don’t really want to be rid of me.”

“You think I don’t?” Connie’s eyes got huge and, if possible, even more wild, angry and desperate, too. “You think I won’t?”

She grabbed a metal ladle and drew back her arm to throw that
, too, but it was the elderly butler who stopped everything. “This,” he stated, his tone carrying like thunder through the disheveled kitchen, “is not acceptable!”

Cook Connie actually jumped. She also dropped the ladle, backing up two steps before she bumped into another counter and stopped. Chest heaving from her exertions, she looked at the butler. Her face crumpled and she began to shake her head. “No!”

Shrugged out of his black coat, the butler dropped it on the nearest surface and began rolling up his sleeves. “You,” he said, gesturing with his switch to every other servant in the room. “All of you, find something to fix, clean or whatever on the buffet in the dining hall. Right now!” He gestured to Jackson as he stalked past him, heading unerringly straight for the sobbing Connie. “You may be excused as well. I have this.”

“In your capable hands, then.” Jackson lightly slapped his knees as he stood, vacating his chair.

Poor Connie stood frozen where she was, shaking her head again and again as she watched the butler come. “N-no!”

Sara tried to sidestep when Jackson neared her. “Wait…”

Cook Connie didn’t seem to want any part of the scene unfolding before them, and Sara was reluctant to just leave her, particularly not when the butler tapped the side of her hip with the end of his switch and said, “Skirt up and knickers down, girl. You know how I want you.”

“Wait,” Sara said again, but Jackson caught her arm and was pushing her back through the door into the breakroom.

“Come on,” he told her, pushing her along. “Unless you want an audience for your next spanking, let’s give them some privacy.”

“Why did you do that?” She stared up at him in shock and then back at the swinging doors. “Why are you smiling, Jackson? Why would you—” The kitchen door barely muffled the hiss and snick of the falling switch and it certainly didn’t muffle Connie’s shrill yelp. It was an awful sound, one that dissolved instantly into sobbing wails as the switch began a swift and steady rhythm.

“Yeah, I know. I’m awful.” He gestured to the table, “Sit down, honey. Let me explain what just happened.”

“I don’t think you can!” Sara tried to pull out of his grip, but when he sat and drew her to him, she lowered herself to perch on his knee with little more than a censuring look. Poor Connie sounded as if she were being skinned alive.

Jackson turned the chair, making it harder for her to see the kitchen door. He looked at her, still smiling, still calculating. “Were you there that night in the Shadowbrook when Donna asked to be ‘forced’?”

What did that have to do with what had just happened here?

Sara shook her head. “No.” She twisted on his knee, trying to see around him to the now motionless door, but stopped with a stifled sigh when Jackson caught the tip of her chin between his fingers and redirected her gaze back to his.

“Look at me,” he coaxed. “Were you?”

“No, sir,” she amended. And she hadn’t been, but she did remember hearing about it at the next munch. Donna had still had bruises then, and she’d shown them off as if they were medals to be proud of.

“She had two men lined up to share that scene with her. They waited until the last hour of the night when the club was almost empty, took it into the very back where they’d have the most privacy, and warned everyone that it was about to get very intense but that it was at Donna’s request, carefully choreographed and entirely consensual. It made a lot of people uncomfortable, but it was what Donna needed, and do you know why?”

“No.” The striking cadence of the switch had fallen silent, but Sara could still hear Connie, crying now as if she were completely broken.

“She was exorcising demons,” Jackson told her. “She chose men she trusted, men who were strong enough to let her fight back but who wouldn’t let her win, because she didn’t want to win. If you take every submissive in the world and you break them down to their most basic, primal level, disregard all the subtle nuances that make each one—man or woman—unique, then you’ll find there are three different kinds: the one who loves and embraces his or her submissive side; the closet submissive, who hasn’t yet come to grips with what
her inner self wants or needs; and the one who, for whatever reason, despises that part of themselves. Connie identifies most strongly with her dominant self. You haven’t seen her at her best, but she is a marvelous Domme—gruff and hard on the exterior, smart and funny once you get to know her. She rules her kitchen fiefdom with a razor tongue, busts balls and ovaries with equal delight, and whips ass with a fervor that will have you praying long before it’s done. But she also has a submissive side, one she hates. She crushes it down deep inside, stuffs it into a little box, locks it away as tight as she can and pretends it doesn’t exist. Until something happens that eventually causes all her fortifications to fail. Connie fights her demon. She doesn’t let it out but maybe once or twice a year when her sub-frenzy is at its worst, and she still won’t give in readily or gracefully. There are only three people that she’ll allow to see what she considers to be the weak side of herself: Master Sam is one; Master Grimsley,” Jackson nodded toward the kitchen, “is another.”

“And you,” Sara guessed, some of the stiffness melting out of her spine.

“Barely,” he said. “I made it under the Dom wire by the skin of my biceps alone. Apparently, I’m four months younger than she is, and she won’t submit to anyone her junior in any way. But I can also, as she once said, bench-press small buildings. Upon occasion, that grants me a Hail Mary pass. Unfortunately, this was not one of those.”

The door beside them swung open and another butler swept in. It was the Master who lived across the hall from Jackson. Fighting to get his tie on straight, he headed straight for the kitchen, muttering, “I hate cooking. I hate it. Why do I always have to take the kitchen when this happens? Why can’t I ever take over the Little Maids?”

“When we asked, you were the only one who knew the culinary difference between ketchup and spaghetti sauce,” Jackson answered helpfully.

“No!” The butler snapped around and marched back a few steps, pointing at Jackson with an accusatory finger. “No, sir! I was the only one
stupid
enough not to fake it, like the rest of you cock-sucking sons of—” His mouth worked silently, and then snapped shut again. Slapping the swinging door open, he gave Jackson dual-handed, parting one-fingered salutes before he vanished inside.

“Who was that?” Sara asked as she heard the butler bellow through the kitchen, “Where the hell are my damn kitchen bitches?”

“Master Kade,” Jackson supplied and then grinned at her. “Aren’t you glad you got me instead? Ruggedly handsome, laid-back fellow that I am, and I won’t make you spend your last day here in the kitchen as a naughty scullery maid.”

Sara jumped, biting back a squeak of laughter when he pinched her bottom.

“I have an old-fashioned remedy for naughty scullery maids.” His pinching fingers were impossible to evade.

In spite of the seriousness only a moment before, Sara threw back her head, laughing as she slapped at his hand. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you do!”

He redoubled his efforts, and she burst into squirming, squealing giggles, trying in vain to catch his arm, but he neatly evaded her, his fingers nipping in to catch at her from all sides—her bottom, her breasts, the inner curve of her thigh. Her squeals came to a breathless stop, however, when the kitchen door opened one last time and Cook Connie emerged. Grimly followed by the austere butler, Grimsley, her face flushed, Connie walked right past them without a smile or a sideways glance. There wasn’t a tear-track to be seen on her face, but her eyes and nose were both red-rimmed from crying.

As he walked by, Grimsley paused long enough to say, “The Supper and Show will no longer be required.”

Jackson conceded without argument. “I never placed the order.” His hand returned to Sara’s hip as Grimsley guided Connie from the room.

“She doesn’t look very happy,” Sara noted.

“Sometimes what you need isn’t what makes you happy. That doesn’t mean you need it any less, though.” Patting her hip, Jackson caught her chin and turned her eyes back to his. “Does it?”

It sounded more like he was stating a fact rather than asking a question.

“Maybe,” she answered anyway. She loved it when he held her like this, forcing her to look at him. Like holding her hand, it made her feel connected.

“Maybe,” he echoed, a corner of his mouth tilting upward. “What would you say if I told you we’re going back down to the dungeon today?”

Her heart gave a lurch, a sickening ba-thud-thump that slammed against her ribs hard enough to burst right through the bone. “Today?” for a moment, she didn’t think she could breathe. “I-I don’t know…I…”

His hand caressed up and down her back. “I’ll be with you, Sara. Every single second, right by your side. Nothing will hurt you.” He pinched the tip of her chin between thumb and forefinger. “Nothing. I swear it.”

“I know.” And she did, but that didn’t stop the whirlwind of ugly thoughts running through her head. Why the dungeon? What if she panicked? “What are you going to do?”