Unraveled Together (2 page)

When he picks up the phone, I get straight to the point, without offering any explanation for what I'm about to say, simply, “Peterson, I want a tail on Miranda, 24/7. I want to know where she goes, what she does, and, above all, who she sees.”

How soon will it be before she betrays me with the next man? The next Master? Unless, of course, there has always been another Master waiting in the wings.

Don't think of Miranda with another man, not yet.

Besides, right now it doesn't really matter.

All that matters is that I was wrong to let my guard down with her, wrong to love her, wrong to trust her. And—unless I get evidence to the contrary—I'll never make that mistake again.

I survived before you, Miranda Stone, and I'll survive again without you.

Chapter Two

Robert, before Miranda

Hartwell Castle, Long Island, New York, September 15, 2014

“FOR MR. ROBERT HARTWELL'S EYES ONLY.” The words on the large, brown paper–wrapped package written with a thick purple felt pen by someone whose handwriting suggested the intelligence of a nine-year-old child didn't inspire me to open it.

Nor did the fact that the second Jerry, my security guard, set eyes on the little blonde in the Playboy Bunny outfit who delivered it to the castle gatehouse, he broke my cardinal rule about not using mobile phones at work and snapped her on his. He then texted that photograph to Mary Ellen, my PA and the only person in my employ to whom the rule didn't apply, as I had relaxed it on compassionate grounds in case her elderly father needed to reach her in an emergency.

She handed me the cell phone, with a giggle. “She's adorable, Mr. Hartwell, and I thought you'd be amused that she went to so much trouble to deliver this to you,” she said.

A preposterously pretty girl in a bunny outfit. Large blue eyes, an enchanting little heart-shaped face framed in cascades of shimmering blonde curls. Perfect bow lips, painted a pearlized pink, flawless teeth, and an hourglass figure. But however cute she might be, I still went on high alert. A pert and pretty pocket Venus bearing gifts to my gates all in innocence. But was she, or her mission, really innocent? A long-lost daughter, armed with a paternity suit? A Trojan horse of a terrorist, delivering a neatly packaged bomb?

On second thought, no on both counts. First of all, she looked nothing like me. Besides, before I discovered that dominance was my true vocation, during my years of fucking every beautiful woman who came my way, I was ruthless in taking precautions.

As for a bomb . . .

“You did subject the package to the usual security measures, I assume, Mary Ellen?” I said, sounding more severe than I usually was with her, but I had to be sure.

“Oh, Mr. Hartwell, I'd die before exposing you to any danger,” she said, her eyes flashing with sincerity, and I knew that she meant it. Not like that prize bitch, Tamara Hatch, that termite of a woman who only worked here on sufferance because of everything she knew and what she could have done to damage me, and who would have been only too glad to expose me to danger at the drop of a hat.

At the thought of Mrs. Hatch (as she preferred to be called just to differentiate between her duties here and her life outside of here, the life in which she was known as Tamara and lived quite another existence), I felt the familiar black mood descending on me.

Tamara Hatch. Murray. Pamela. Georgiana . . .

On reflex, I looked out the window, at the lake and at the island. It was that time of year again, not many weeks before the anniversary of Georgiana's death. Although the world still believed in the legend of our great love, the real truth was that she had tried to blackmail me and rob me of everything I owned.

At first, it seemed that she held all the cards: a video of me ostensibly strangling her, which she threatened to release on the Internet to blacken my name and my reputation. She'd set me up, of course, by begging me to act out a mock strangulation scene, and—as it was her honeymoon night—I obliged, not knowing that one of her cohorts was secretly filming it.

The footage, she later triumphantly informed me, was now in the possession of her attorneys in Switzerland. Then she made the mistake of naming them. After that, it was easy. I simply bought the company and, in particular, the attorney, Theo Cooper, who was happy to hand me every single copy of the movie in existence. Game, set, and match.

Even in defeat, though, Georgiana remained unbowed and refused to give me a divorce. “I enjoy being Lady Georgiana Hartwell, my darling,” she declared, and for a second, I wanted to strangle her for real. But then I came up with a plan of my own. I told her that if she didn't divorce me, I would leak to the press that she'd embezzled money from her foundation, and I'd substantiate my story so well that they'd believe me.

Rather than capitulating and giving me the divorce I demanded, she balked at becoming the ex–Mrs. Robert Hartwell, just another penniless divorcée (I would make sure of that). Instead, Georgiana drowned in Hartwell Lake, thus becoming an icon, virtually a saint. And I had no alternative but to play the part of the grieving widower, just as she had intended.

Mary Ellen cut into my melancholy thoughts with the kind of soothing voice a mother might use with a small, sobbing boy she wanted to distract from his misery. “I thought it might amuse you to open the package and find out exactly what our little blonde bunny rabbit has sent you, Mr. Hartwell.”

Like it or not, she was right . . . Whatever was inside the package might perhaps amuse me, given the pretty girl who delivered it. And as the concept of amusement had been foreign to me for more than half a decade, I decided to go for it. I ripped open the package.

A manuscript.

Unraveled
, by Miranda Stone.

I opened it at a random page, read a few lines, and as the explicit words hit me, the room started to spin, and I gripped the desk to steady myself.

“Thank you, Mary Ellen, that will be all,” I said, my cock harder than it had been for ages, and my heart thumping so loudly that it was all I could do not to let my composure slip completely and betray the red-hot excitement surging through me.

The second Mary Ellen left the room, I started at the beginning of the manuscript—the story of a headstrong submissive who had countless lurid BDSM adventures—and read on, mesmerized, without stopping until the very end.

Then I picked up the phone.

“Peterson, drop everything you are doing and get me every last bit of information you can find me on a writer named Miranda Stone.”

A few days went by, during which I thought of nothing but the manuscript, and of Miss Miranda Stone. Was her book autobiographical? Was it the real-life story of a genuine submissive's adventures in the kaleidoscopic world of BDSM? Or was it simply the fictionalized and fevered fantasies of a vanilla girl with a vivid imagination?

Peterson completed his background check and, with the additional assistance of some of the private investigators in my employ, assembled an extensive dossier on Miranda Stone, including pictures of her snapped at various stages of her life.

I mulled over every word, every piece of information, obsessively, committing the salient details to memory.

Miranda Veronica Stone, twenty-eight.

Born in Lenox Hill Hospital to Luke Stone, conceptual artist, now deceased, and the former Clare Curtis, a great beauty and once a catwalk model.

Sister, Lindy Rosamond Stone, nineteen.

Education: Sarah Lawrence, majoring in English literature.

Intern at the
Hollywood Reporter.

Freelance journalist specializing in celebrities, after which she became an author. To my surprise and delight, I discovered that she was not a novelist but a ghostwriter. And not just any ghostwriter but a celebrity ghostwriter of some note, a best-selling ghostwriter with three published autobiographies under her belt.

So had Miranda jettisoned ghostwriting in favor of writing erotica to capitalize on a trend? Or was
Unraveled
a confession
,
a declaration of her true sexual orientation—or even a come-on to a prospective Master?

When I discovered that she had perfect credit, $820,000 on deposit at Signature Bank of New York, and lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Hoboken (rental, $3,600 a month), it seemed safe to assume that she was not in any dire financial need and wasn't motivated by money to publish
Unraveled
. I felt hope build within me that her “novel” was actually an autobiographical account of the real Miranda and her sexual exploits as a submissive.

On that score, the next subject covered by the background report: Miss Miranda Stone's boyfriends . . .

According to the dossier, Miranda, an alluring girl if ever I saw one, judging from her photographs, had only ever had one boyfriend, a certain Warren Christopher Courtney, now fifty-two.

So Miss Stone favored much older men, did she? Promising . . .

I phoned Peterson and instructed him to compile a dossier on Warren Courtney forthwith, and in detail.

Two days later, and the dossier on Warren Courtney was in my possession.

I studied it with extreme interest and memorized the salient facts.

Warren Courtney, fifty-two.

Boston-born Realtor.

Harvard educated.

Avid sportsman, in particular winter sports, and three-time Cresta Run champion. Impressive, though I'd achieved that twice myself.

A playboy.

Girlfriends galore.

Never married.

No children.

Warren Courtney, fifty-two to my forty-five. A millionaire, but his money was merely a drop in the ocean next to the assets of Hartwell Global Media. Besides, his dalliance with Miranda Stone took place over ten years ago.

I tore open the envelope marked “Photographs Don't Bend,” and when the image of Mr. Warren Courtney leapt up at me, I felt like ripping up his photographs, never mind not bending them.

Because whether I liked it or not, Mr. Courtney was movie-star material. As tall as I am, with piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders, gleaming white teeth, a strong, muscular body, and charisma rippling from every pore.

Bastard!

But according to the report, they were only together for a month (strange, that—her decision or his?) and she hasn't been with him for over a decade, so put the photographs away, RH, and quit being so fucking competitive.

There was no evidence on record that Warren Courtney was a dom, no sightings at BDSM clubs, no dates with known submissives. Besides, his macho posturing didn't necessarily indicate that he was a dom, as sometimes strident alpha-masculinity is merely a smoke screen cloaking mammoth insecurity and is not the real thing at all . . .

Instead of speculating further on Mr. Warren Courtney, I sifted through the rest of Miranda's pictures once more, studying each one with an almost-forensic intensity. Miranda at three, strawberry blonde, blue-eyed, adorable, a Raggedy Ann clutched in her arms, smiling into the camera. Miranda at five, sweet, winsome, a living doll in every way. And then Miranda at thirteen, a cheerleader, an all-American girl, but exuding something else, something different, something I hadn't yet quite been able to define, to nail down, to understand, but which I hoped fervently meant that she had an innate propensity to do as she was told and to luxuriate in her own obedience.

Miranda at her first prom, already showing signs of becoming beautiful, Miranda graduating college, solemn and sophisticated. Then Miranda in a series of photographs clearly taken by a professional photographer hoping to submit them to a modeling agency; Miranda, her red hair glossy and lustrous, her blue eyes dreamy, her smile sensual, her entire image that of a glamorous pinup, a siren whose photographs graced the walls of American soldiers about to go to war in Europe and whom they worshipped because she was so womanly, so enticing.

Finally (and I would have been lying to myself if I hadn't admitted how much they excited me), photographs of Miranda in a minuscule red bikini. Legs not overly long, but everything, from her voluptuous figure to her translucent skin and her glittering smile, exuding sheer, naked, unadulterated sex.

I knew then that when I finally met her, my biggest challenge would be to mask my mounting passion for her with the veneer of dominance, which might succeed in arousing her as much as she aroused me.

I thought about how to approach her initially; should I be direct, call her and tell her I've got her manuscript and want to publish it right away, but need to meet with her immediately? Maybe a bit too urgent, a bit too desperate for a dom. Better still, call Stuart Carstairs, owner of Blockbuster Books, and tell him I want to sign Miranda up to ghost my autobiography? Hardly likely, but a good opening gambit. Dishonest, though, and not my usual way of operating. Or should I find some other way of meeting her, as if by accident? Not difficult if I got Peterson or one of the others to track her schedule so that I could show up somewhere she was bound to be and then let everything unfold that way. But if I did that, I'd be openly pursuing her, and as a dom, I mustn't be caught by her doing that—if I did, I would appear needy, subservient, everything a submissive woman doesn't want in her dom.