Unraveled Together (4 page)

A purple wreath, delivered to our hotel suite in the dead of night, emblazoned with the words
Plus ça change, plus c'est la m
ême chose . . .
the more things change, the more they remain the same.

I was so shocked, so filled with a sense of impending doom, that I didn't even stop to ask myself why the color purple, Georgiana's signature color?

Nor did I bother to wonder who had sent the wreath, or why.

All I knew was that the message it contained was loud and clear; I had been deceived and betrayed before by a conniving woman who, motivated only by her desire to get her greedy hands on my fortune, had trapped me by pretending to be submissive when she was not, and now another woman was making exactly the same attempt.

My immediate reaction that night was to demand that Miranda pack up and leave the hotel suite immediately.

Along with that, I also threw a multitude of accusations at her, all culminating in the accusation that she was a fraud, a fake submissive, a blackmailer. Just like Georgiana, I told myself, but didn't voice my thoughts to Miranda, not then.

She sat there, bewildered, shocked, but—and this is to her credit—not giving an inch, but fighting back and defending herself. Instead of crumbling, the way most women would do when faced by a roaring bull of a dominant man, she stood up to me with all her might.

And when I challenged her to prove her submissiveness to me, she didn't bat an eyelid; she agreed then and there to take five rigorous tests of her submissiveness in five of my dungeons in Hartwell Castle.

I was impressed by her guts, by her willingness to submit to me in such a formal, rigorous framework, but that still didn't completely quell the doubts about her that the wreath had planted within me so effectively. So rather than let her see that her stock had skyrocketed in my eyes because of her bravery in accepting my challenge, I blazed out of the suite in anger.

As soon as I was downstairs in the hotel bar, it struck me that by the time I returned, she might have changed her mind, reneged on our deal, and moved out of the hotel altogether.

And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wasn't going to wait around and allow any of that to happen.

But when I got back to the suite again, to my relief she was in bed, fast asleep and looking angelic and adorable. Moreover, she had left an envelope for me on the desk.

It was a hastily scrawled contract in handwriting so illegible that I felt like calling in a forensic expert to interpret it for me. Nonetheless, my urgency to discover what the hell she had written spurred me on, and after quite a struggle, I finally managed to decipher her words.

And when I did, I couldn't believe how they sent a thrill coursing through me. She made it crystal clear that she was more than prepared to submit to my demand that she undergo five rigorous tests of her submission in my Hartwell Castle dungeons.

As I watched her sleeping so serenely, a half smile on her face despite the drama and destruction of the evening, for a moment, the desire to take her in my arms, to fondle and kiss her passionately was almost overwhelming. But I knew that I mustn't weaken, I mustn't give in until she had passed my tests to my satisfaction and proved that she wasn't a fraud, that she was the real thing, and that I could trust her once more and for always.

Chapter Four

Robert, the Past and the Present

Two days after the sinister purple wreath was delivered and all my dreams and hopes for Miranda were shattered, as she and I boarded the plane in Geneva, I had to clench my fists to stop myself from taking her upstairs to my suite there. I knew that if we traveled back to America in the same cabin together, I'd make hot and throbbing love to her then and there, luxuriate in being with her, and ignore all my misgivings about her; I might even cancel the five BDSM tests ahead of her and instead just play for her pleasure and mine.

So I forced myself to keep the purple wreath and the deadly message that it conveyed at the forefront of my mind, and told her to take her seat downstairs alongside Mary Ellen. When I saw her blink back her tears, I felt like an ice-cold bastard, but I believed that I had no alternative.

Consequently, I remained alone in my cabin, wishing to God that Miranda was nestled close to me, but I distracted myself by fixating on her upcoming stay at the castle. Finally, I came to the decision that I wouldn't just test her in the dungeons but would also put her in a number of challenging social situations (the kind my wife needed to handle with confidence and aplomb) and test her ability to negotiate them successfully.
My wife?
Even after receiving that sinister wreath, I was still considering making Miranda my wife. Looking back, I can't believe that I was prepared to risk marrying yet another devious, untrustworthy woman. But such was—is—the level of Miranda's allure, her power over me, that I still considered it to be a serious possibility.

Before the first test began in Dungeon 1 of Hartwell Castle, I spent hours making sure that the dungeon was set up in exactly the same way that Miranda had described the luxurious Carlyle hotel suite in the pages of her book
.

A smoke screen, if you like, for my true intentions. An ambience designed to put her at ease the moment she stepped into what I imagined was her first dungeon, but also a red herring—setting the dungeon up as a mirror image of the Carlyle suite would lull her into a false sense of security, as she would assume that I was going to reenact that night at the Carlyle moment by moment. Whereas, in fact, I had no intention of doing that; I planned to throw her off-balance when she realized that I wasn't going to enact the identical scene at all.

Throwing a sub off-balance is crucial if a dominant wants to exercise control over her, to put her fantasies in a whirl and create a scenario that will ultimately sweep her off her feet and transport her into another world.

But as soon as Miranda made her entrance into the dungeon, naked under the white mink, her head held high, her eyes wide with anticipation, and only the red flush all over her chest betraying her fear, I discovered that I didn't have as much control over myself at that moment as I thought I would. The truth was that one look at her, and I might just as well have been a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in the flush of first love, and not a cool and in-control dominant, because my instant impulse was to tear the coat off her, fling it to the ground, and ravage her as hard and as deep as I longed to. But that wasn't the plan I'd formulated, and I knew that I had to stick to it, so that Miranda's expectations of me as a strong, severe, and relentless dom would be fulfilled to the maximum. So although it was more than difficult, I kept my emotions in check and ordered her to kneel, fixed a diamond-studded collar around her neck, and then attached a leash to it.

Sticklers for BDSM protocol (and any would-be Masters who are insecure and not truly their own men) might carp that I should have waited before collaring her, and should only have done so in a solemn, binding ceremony, tantamount to marriage.

But at that point, her collar was merely my way of humbling her, and making it easier for me to move her around the dungeon as I wished. In any case, I don't play by other people's rules, and I never will. If I ever commit to Miranda (and after the way in which she betrayed me so very recently, it's now highly unlikely that I ever will), it will be in a setting and manner of my choosing, and no one else's.

Looking back, though, I shall never forget the first time she fell to her knees in the dungeon, naked, trembling, but oh so brave and beautiful. But however much she made me almost lose my mind for lust of her, I knew that it was crucial for me to remain in control at all times. So that when she forgot to call me Master I did what her lapse demanded: I slapped her face. When I saw the hurt and confusion in her eyes (which made it obvious to me that, unlike some dominants disciplining a submissive, Warren Courtney had never slapped her face), I felt guilty but didn't betray my emotions or show any remorse. If I had, I might have broken the spell of the compelling, ever-present Me Tarzan–You Jane BDSM dynamic, which would have been fatal for Miranda's expectations and her ultimate pleasure.

Then I held out my hand and led her over to the red whipping frame. In front of it, our eyes met, and I could see that she was turned on but afraid. The tension between both diametrically opposed emotions was working its magic on her, and I felt myself harden as I witnessed it. Then I spread-eagled her in the red whipping frame, stretched her to the extreme, so that all of her—her big breasts, her high, round ass, her white skin—were offered up to me and at my mercy.

I applied the whip to her naked body, but with careful restraint. Not for Miranda the hard, biting lashes I administered to the professional submissives in S&M parlors whom I'd paid to take what I dished out to them, but a whipping that stung, yet was not heavy enough to make her really suffer.

She took it all without protest, without resistance, accepting every lash with graceful sensuality and, now and again, an ecstatic moan. Hope started to rise within me that her pleasure at the whipping—and her submission—was completely genuine.

Then I unshackled her and did what I had been longing to do in the first place: I silently called a temporary halt to my role as strict, dominant Master and led her gently, oh so gently, to the bed, placed her on her back, and then prized her beautiful legs apart.

As I did, I stroked her translucent skin tenderly, and she started to moan in ecstasy, just from that—from the touch of my fingers on her skin and nothing else. My mind began to reel from the heaven of being able to pleasure this beautiful and fragile girl with only the tips of my fingers, no fireworks, no whips, no chains, no punishment, just by caressing her skin.

I'd never encountered a more responsive woman in my life, and for these few moments, at least, I intended to luxuriate in the joy of eliciting that response so thoroughly and so easily. At the same time, I knew I needed more, much more.

I slid my tongue between her legs and tasted the pure honey of her, the luscious moisture, the unmistakable evidence of her intense arousal, and as I burrowed deeper and deeper inside of her, I felt as if I could stay there for hours, just feeling her wetness, the way her body opened up like a flower to even the faintest strum of my tongue against her clitoris.

As I licked and sucked, probing her lips, her cunt, and she sighed in ecstasy, I experienced the strange sensation that I was drifting away from myself. I was no longer the man I had been, but had morphed into another, a loving man, a man on the verge of trusting, even surrendering.

Suddenly, the intimacy of the moment overwhelmed me, and just as I began to fear that I would melt into her and lose myself in her utterly and completely, I pulled back from the brink and lowered myself on her, pausing a second to enjoy the softness of her compliant body beneath me.

But as I started to push the head of my cock into her cunt, I met with a shock so startling that for a second, I almost lost my erection; she was as tight as I imagined the most virginal of all virgins to be. Fortunately, her extreme wetness made it easy for me to penetrate her after all.

And then, as her strong muscles gripped my cock tightly, at the very moment when I caught myself surrendering all my emotions to her without holding back, without any reservations because she was just so responsive, so compliant, so sexual, so breathtakingly beautiful, I became myself once more, a dominant man, a conqueror, set on fucking his woman as she'd never been fucked before.

And as I jammed my cock into her, over and over, and she screamed and moaned, and called my name, all my fears about losing myself in her evaporated and I fucked her like the dominant Master that I am and always have been.

Then the sadist came to the fore once more and got the upper hand again. So that in the eleventh hour, just I was about to cum inside her, to give her all of me, I deliberately pulled out and deprived her—and myself—of everything we both wanted so wholeheartedly. My dominance had won, yet at the same time, the real me, the Robert Hartwell I am somewhere inside, somewhere so deep, so secret, so hidden that I have never allowed him free rein, was repressed once more.

But despite that, I was compelled to admit that Miranda was the only woman I'd ever known who had such raw chemistry with me, such allure, that she could well be the only woman with whom I could ever relax and be myself.

Once the rush of emotions had subsided in me, I evaluated her first dungeon test and judged that she had passed with flying colors. Afterward—and after all the tests that were to come—high up in my suite, I rewarded her by confiding in her the truth about my life, starting with my consciousness of my own dominance, the story of how I first came to visit Le Château, and more. Through it all, she listened intently, rarely interrupting or questioning me. And then I reminded myself that she was a best-selling ghostwriter who clearly excelled at the art of listening.

The following day, after I won big at the casino while she watched, I set her a nonsexual test, a test of her jealousy.

In full view of her, I took the briefcase containing all $650,000 of my winnings and delivered it to Georgiana's foundation, then waited to see whether Miranda would question me or show any signs of insecurity that my first wife was apparently still so important to me.

The truth is that my support of the foundation was forged amid my passion for Georgiana, and that after that passion went up in flames, I was determined that no matter what, something pure and good would emerge out of the ashes. And that as a result of the carnage Georgiana had wrought upon me, at least the foundation would endure and prosper and help vulnerable children all over the world.

I didn't explain any of that to Miranda, of course, because at that stage she didn't know what Georgiana was, what she had tried to do to me, or how I really felt about her. It just must have seemed to her that my passion for Georgiana, my commitment to her, was now reflected in my passion for her foundation.

But she didn't question my actions, nor did she give any indication of caring that I had a lifelong commitment to Georgiana, beyond the grave.

That was how I interpreted her reaction, at any rate. Perhaps it was my ego (and doesn't every dom who ever lived have a massive ego?), or perhaps my lust for Miranda had thrown me so off-­balance that I truly believed such was her submission to me, her respect for me, that she didn't allow herself to harbor any jealousy of Georgiana. Little did I know that she did then, and always would.

On the day of her second test in Dungeon 2, Miranda presented herself looking voluptuous and sexy in the red corset I'd selected for her, not just because it was vastly erotic but also because it was at least a size too small. It accentuated every curve, like something straight out of a wet dream.

In Dungeon 2, I tested her capacity to serve me, and she passed effortlessly. Better still, she was immeasurably aroused when I stressed that I was
allowing
her to serve me, and her arousal underscored my hope and belief that she was the kind of submissive who genuinely gloried in her own humility, her subservience, her adoration of her Master. She served me so beautifully, with so much sincerity, so much passion, so much obedience that I was overcome with an impulse to stop her in her tracks right then and there to announce that the tests were over and that she had passed.