Cardinal's Rule (9 page)

She hoped it was a figment of her shattered composure, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized that’s probably exactly what she’d said.

Another round of tears threatened and she held them back. Despite all her claims, deep in her heart it was the truth. As much as she hated Cris for what he did to her, and as much as she never wanted to make herself that vulnerable again, deep down inside part of her missed and craved that connection, that love.

The service.

Sleep wouldn’t be possible, no doubt about it. She spotted Landry’s business card on her

dresser, where she’d laid it after undressing before her shower. Picking it up, she saw he’d scribbled their hotel and room number on it. On U.S. 41, near where Fruitville ended.

She could be there in twenty minutes. Just to talk.

Just to hear his nutty deal. If she took him up on it, she could pay off her house and maybe take some time off, catch up on credits to renew her nursing license.

Quit being Mistress Cardinal forever.

Closing her eyes, she tried to think about Bob’s blue gaze and all she could see now was Cris’

brown eyes.

Or Landry’s intense green stare.

There was no way she’d be able to put this evening behind her, one way or the other, until she got some of her many questions answered.

Swearing, she pulled on a pair of jeans and grabbed her keys.

Chapter Five

Landry didn’t look at his slave as he drove away from Mistress Cardinal’s house. “So? What

happened?”

The slave studied his hands.

“Twenty-five with a cane for not answering immediately. I asked you a question. Answer it

now, or you’ll get fifty.”

“She was very upset.”

He laughed. “Duh. I figured that much. Who did I save you from out there? What was his name, Bob?”

“I don’t know. He was the man we saw with her at the club.”

“Ah. Maybe the information I received at the club was wrong and she has a boyfriend after all.”

Dammit.
That would put a kink in his plans.

“I don’t think so, Master. I get the impression they haven’t been seeing each other long.”

A little relief and hope crept in. “Good. Now tell me what happened.”

As slave related how she’d reacted, Landry nodded, trying not to speak or comment during the story. His heart broke for the woman, for the pain she’d gone through at his expense.

He never wanted to hurt someone. Well, not like
that
, at least. He was a sadist, not an asshole.

Slave gave him as verbatim a recollection as he could. Landry contemplated what she’d said.

“You took her Master from her. That’s an interesting comment for her to make, considering what she did to you and how she formally withdrew her submission.”

Slave shrugged.

“Do you think she still loves you?”

Slave looked out his window. “I doubt it,” he softly replied. “Not as badly as I hurt her. I think what she said was probably more out of pain, over what she went through then, not what she really feels now.”

Landry wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment, but he let it go. He didn’t know the woman beyond what slave told him and his own brief interactions with her.

But he intended to get closer to her.

Much closer.

Back at their room, he made slave strip and bend over the end of the bed. He delivered twenty-five vicious strikes with a rattan cane, not breaking the flesh but immediately raising welts on his skin, crossing the existing bruises from their previous nights at the clubs.

Slave took his punishment without complaint.

After their pizza arrived, he allowed slave to sit, naked, at the small table to eat before ordering him back to the floor again where he could work on his laptop. Then he settled on the bed, still dressed, to watch TV.

Occasionally glancing at his phone, Landry wondered if she’d call. He didn’t miss that she

snatched the card with the hotel room info on it from him and pocketed it before Bob could take it.

He also hadn’t missed the brief longing that crossed her expression before slave got in the car at her house.

He suspected a little tiny piece of her didn’t want to see him go.

* * * *

Landry glanced at his phone when it buzzed on the table between the beds around a quarter

after eleven. Pleasantly surprised, a smile creased his face as he read the caller ID. Honestly? He’d almost given up on hearing from her that night. He answered. “Hello.”

He listened for a moment and then said, “Not at all, I was still awake. I’ll be right there.” He hung up and stood. Slave remained kneeling on the floor. “You’d better be right there when I get back.

Do not move. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Could be a few minutes, could be a few hours. Could be all fucking night.”

He slipped on his shoes, grabbed his room key, patted his pocket to make sure he had the ring, and walked outside. In the dark he quickly scanned the parking lot and saw her parked next to his rental. She drove a brand new Lexus SUV.

The passenger window slid down. “Get in.”

He reached for the door handle. “I’m glad to see you. I’ll admit this is rather unexpected.”

She drove without speaking to a nearby park overlooking Sarasota Bay. He waited her out as

she stared at the water.

“What the fuck is your game, Landry?” she finally asked.

“No game, I assure you.” He didn’t miss the fact that she used his first name.

“Why not leave everything to Cris? He’s your…partner, right?”

“Because he has lost the right to own anything after this. Before I found out about his

transgression, yes, I considered him more than just my slave. He was my partner in every way. My lover. My love.” He took a deep breath. Why hold on to his pride when he had nothing left to lose? “I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me shit.”

“You’re wrong. No, it’s not technically my fault what happened, but I still feel responsible. For example, take your boy today. If he got into a fight at a club—”

“He’s not my boy.”

Landry successfully suppressed his smile. “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought from what I saw—”

“He’s a client. And…a friend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“That is none of your fucking business.”

“I’m asking you to marry me, therefore yes, it is my business.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No,” he said, settling back in the seat. “I’m tired. Honestly? I don’t know if I’m going to get through this or not. They say I probably will, but there are no guarantees. I need this cleared off my plate one way or another as soon as possible.”

“Doesn’t Cris love you? Why not forgive him and move on? He didn’t hurt you.”

Landry dropped his voice. “He told me about your step-father.”

He watched her hands clench into fists. Her voice trembled. “That’s still not your fault.”

“I love him. Yes, I’m upset with him for how he treated you, and yes, I feel guilty, right or wrong. I’m human. There’s another issue, however.” He looked at her. “He still loves you. I’m not a moron. I know he loves me, but he’s still
in
love with you and always has been. He didn’t leave you because he didn’t love you enough or because he loved me more. He honestly thought I would die. So 

did I, for a while. He knew you had people who loved you and would help you. I didn’t have anyone. I was completely alone and had alienated almost everyone who gave a damn about me. He made a

decision for both of us without asking what we wanted.”

“Why do you feel you have to marry me?”

“Well, I own slave. He’d become community property,” he joked. “Seriously, I wanted to move

here anyway. Ironically, Tampa has one of the best cancer centers in the country and it’s not a bad drive from Sarasota. I’d already been looking at relocating to this area because it’s cheaper to live out here and I’m sick of California. Most of my clients are on the east coast, not out on the west coast.

Unfortunately, Florida has a few laws that can make life complicated for same-sex couples.”

She turned to look at him but didn’t speak.

“If you’re my wife, you can make medical decisions for me, automatically step in and take over if the worst happens, without all the horrific red tape slave would have to go through. Not to mention it will further humiliate slave, for me to be married to the woman he loves.”

“Why can’t you say his name?”

“Because I’m still too angry.” He stared at the water again, but his voice gentled. “You can make sure he gets into the hospital to see me, to be with me. To be honest, I don’t want him going through this alone a second time, if you can bring yourself to help him.”

“Who says I want to be anywhere around the son of a bitch?”

He took a gamble. “Because you still love him as much as he loves you. Somewhere, deep

inside you, part of you wants him back.”

“I don’t want another Master. Especially him.”

“I didn’t say a Master.” He also noticed she didn’t deny his statement about her loving him.

She went quiet for several minutes. He waited her out. “What do you expect of me?” she softly asked.

He breathed a silent sigh of relief. If she asked a question like that she had already decided to accept his offer, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it quite yet. “We’d be married in name only. You don’t have to have regular contact with us if you don’t want to, except when I’m undergoing treatment and I need you to sign forms or whatever so he can be there with me. You can live your life exactly as you do now. Even have Bob if you want him. Date, whatever. Hell, move in with someone, I don’t care.” He felt no compunction about telling her the lie. If she would just agree to the arrangement, he 

could then work his way into her life.

But he had to start somewhere.

“What’s going to happen? With your treatment.”

He shrugged. “I’m scheduled for a biopsy this coming Wednesday. Then they’ll go from there,

whether surgery or radiation or chemo, I don’t know yet.”

“Have you told Cris?”

“No. I wanted an answer from you first.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re going to tell me no, I’m going to release slave without telling him about my cancer. I’d rather go through this alone than have him tied to me because he feels he has to be here out of pity or duty.”

She stared at him for a moment, apparently stunned. “You are seriously nuts.”

“No, I’m sick of knowing that for all these years someone owned his heart besides me. I

thought he loved me as much as I love him. I
do
love him. I never stopped loving him when we were apart, I told you that.”

* * * *

Tilly studied Landry as her emotions swirled. This was crazy. Totally nuts. As much as she

hated Cris for what he did to her, the part of her that could still feel compassion and empathy, no matter how small it had shrunk, felt sorry for Landry.

Then there was the miniscule, yet annoyingly tenacious particle of her soul which still loved Cris.

And the mercenary part of her soul told her she’d be a moron not to accept his offer. Get out of the pro Domme business and back into nursing.

“If I say yes, and I’m not saying I will, how would this work exactly? We’d sign a pre-nup?”

He nodded. “Exactly. I will also change my will. I would specify that everything you own now is fully yours and I’m not entitled to any of it, and any money you earn while married to me is also yours, not joint assets. But everything I have and earn will be yours.”

“Is this some half-assed attempt to get me and him back together?”

“No. In fact, feel free to beat him as much as you want while we’re together.” He smiled. “He deserves it.”

“You are a fucking sadist, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “Not all of us do it for money, Mistress Cardinal. Some love inflicting pain for the sheer enjoyment of it. Although I never used humiliation on him before all of this.”

“Tilly,” she absently corrected him as her brain still struggled to comprehend the situation.

“What are your chances of surviving this? Seriously.”

He shrugged again. “One doctor said seventy percent, another said eighty, a third said ninety.

Unfortunately, if you add in my previous bout, it can skew the odds against me. I just found about it two weeks ago at my regular check-up. Blood work picked it up, scans confirmed it. I could beat it this time and it could come back a year or a decade from now, or maybe not at all. They all agree that it’s likely I’ll beat it and go into remission. Just how hard I’ll have to work for that remains to be seen.”

“How long did it take you to recover from it the first time?”

“Over a year before they knew I’d turned the corner, but that time, I was already at a much

more advanced stage. Much of that time I was too weak to even get out of bed, between healing from my injuries and the cancer treatments.”

“Tell me about your wreck.”

He looked away. “I’d rather not.”

That’s when her bullshit alarm went off. “You’d better.”

He took a long, ragged breath. “I never told anyone this, and I would appreciate you not saying anything about it either, but I was trying to kill myself. Actually surprised the hell out of me when I woke up.” He laughed, but it sounded harsh. “What does it say about me that I could fuck up my own suicide? I forgot to take off my seatbelt before the crash. They said it’s the only thing that saved me.”

* * * *

They talked for over two hours, mostly Landry talking while Tilly asked him questions. She

hated that she actually liked the guy. It’d be a lot easier to tell him to go fuck himself if he was an asshole. Still, her anger at Cris burned, seethed. Her pain. Her memories of what she’d gone through.

As for Landry, he was a nice guy, smart, funny, witty. Handsome. If he wasn’t gay she might

have dated him. They had a lot of common interests.

Then there was his Master and sadist side, which she knew lay dark and deep. Definitely a

lifestyle Dominant, not just a weekend slap-and-tickle player.