Assumed Master (24 page)

"Gulfport."

"Your accent."
Julie twirled one pointed finger around her
lips. "It’s not that heavy most of the time."

"We moved around a lot. But Mississippi
is where my roots are."

"I see."

"Where are you from?" Keegan asked, moving
his elbows from the table so the woman that never uttered another word could
set down two piping hot bowls of soup.

"The Carolinas."

"Your whole life?"

"Yep.
Pretty boring, huh?"
Julie said, stirring her soup as steam continued to rise from the shallow dish.

"Not boring at all," he said, not
waiting for his to cool, instead scooping a spoonful up and blowing then
slurping it off.
"Was probably easier than the life of a
military brat.
Moving so much so young was hard."

From the grimace on his face, Julie was fairly
certain he’d burned the tip of his tongue. It served him right for speaking out
of turn and ordering for her, although she’d been leaning toward the soup.

"Hard is all in the perception of your
circumstances." Her voice was dull as she said it. Hard was all she’d ever
known until Mason. Then that became hard and now she had her current
predicament to contend with.

Before Keegan could grill her further, her
cell phone rang. Setting her spoon to the side, she fished it out of her purse
and looked at the caller ID.
The Oldest.
It was Gavril. She’d successfully avoided two
phone calls from Lucien’s number earlier that morning, but her heart told her
she couldn’t avoid this anymore.

"Hello?" she said, setting the phone
to her ear and holding a finger up at Keegan, hoping he understood.

"Mom, where the hell are you?"
Gav asked, sounding dejected.

"Does Dad know you’re using that
language?" Julie said back, trying to hold some control over this
conversation. A lump rose in her throat. She missed her boys and it hurt
knowing they were hurting.

"No, but it wouldn’t matter. Where are
you and when are you coming home?" Luc piped up. So, they’d double teamed
her and had her on speaker.

"Where are your fathers?"

"In the bedroom having a throw down
fight," Gav answered. "If you don’t come back, I think they might
kill each other."

"Papi isn’t being mean to Dad is he?"
Julie asked, reaching back in her purse, rummaging for a bottle of ibuprofen. A
sharp pain had caught her by surprise and shot from the base of her skull clear
to her forehead.

"Define mean," Luc said.
"If you’re asking if he’s had him tied up in the play room,
no.
But he’s a grouchy bastard and not one kind word has graced his lips
since he discovered you gone yesterday morning."

Julie sat stunned for a second before finding
her tongue again. It was so unlike Luc to curse.

"I’m sorry you have to see and hear all
that, but I…" Julie took a quick breath and tried to fortify herself. "Look,
this has absolutely nothing to do with you two. Please believe that. This is a
problem between Papi and me."

That was a lie. It had everything to do with
the boys. Julie didn’t want to make their lives any harder than they already
were and her presence had ratcheted up the neighbors disdain for the Larson
family ten-fold. Remembering what it was like to be the butt of everyone’s foul
attitudes at school when she was teenager and the resulting black eyes and
bloody lips, she dug deep and fought to hold her ground on this. What she
really wanted to do was run home right then and hug the boys until they
couldn’t breathe. But what she absolutely didn’t want was them to be hurt,
emotionally or physically. Kids these days were way worse than when she was a
girl. Guns were common place. If anything happened to her sons because she’d
not been big enough to leave them in peace, she’d never forgive herself.

"Well, it might not be about us, but
we’re involved. And no one seems to give a shit what we think," Gav said
with a tremble in his voice.
"Sound familiar, Mom?"

"Yes, it does," she admitted.

"We miss you, please come home, soon,"
Luc said right before the line went dead.

"Who was that?"
Keegan
asked, taking a bite of his po’ boy that had arrived during Julie’s call.

"My sons."

"You have kids?"

"We have kids. Actually Blake and Dante
have two boys they adopted together. They’ve taken to calling me mom. They're
what we disagreed about."

"Interesting."

She spent the next hour picking at her food
and watching Keegan devour the damn bread pudding he insisted she needed a bite
of.

"Do you think we could catch a movie or a
pizza together sometime?" Keegan asked as he offered her another bite of
their dessert only to have her curl her nose up and shake her head again.

"You mentioned you moved a lot as a
child," Julie said, waving off the spoon. Her stomach was flipping upside
down and she wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to go to a movie with
Keegan or she didn’t want to go. "You also said you just moved here a year
ago. Why?"

"I’m in the Coast Guard. I’m a rescue
swimmer."

"Oh. That’s pretty dangerous, huh?"
Julie’s heart stopped in paralyzing fear.

"It can be."

"I think I should be going back to the
house now," she said, reaching for her purse. "I’m a little worn from
all the travelling. Can I take a rain check on the grocery store? I doubt I’ll
need anything for a couple of days anyway. I didn’t even have a chance to look
in Allen’s cabinets."

"Do you always ramble when a man makes
you nervous?" Keegan
asked,
standing and helping
her into her jacket.

"Yes.
Always."

"So, that scene was pretty intense the
other night," Keegan said, pulling into the street and heading them back
toward Allen’s house.

Why did he
have to go there?

"Yes, well, you started it. Dante felt
the need to piss on his fence as it were. The worst I ever got from my former
Master was a hand spanking. He wasn’t into pain. He was into psychological
games."

"Edge play without the fire then." Heading
north, back into the country, he set the cruise control and draped his arm
casually between his seat and Julie’s, barely brushing her shoulder.

"Edge play?" Julie snorted and
laughed. "Yeah, you could call it that I suppose.
Guided
fantasies.
Terror tactics."
A tremor
overtook her as memories of Mason scaring her witless just before making her
come violently ran through her mind.

"You’ve called him that a few times now
with no name attached. Were you in a twenty-four seven relationship?"

"Basically.
I had a voice, but yes, I was his slave."

"Heavy stuff.
Is that what you’re looking for now?"

"I have no idea what I’m looking for,"
Julie admitted flatly. "I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen with
Dante and Blake yet. So if you’re asking if I’m ready to jump from one fire to
another, the answer is…" What was the answer? Did she even know? Guilt ran
over her heart and she wanted to shrink.

"You’ll figure it out."

They rode the rest of the way with a silence
hanging between them like a wet blanket. Julie was glad when he pulled up to
the house.

"It was nice to see you, Keegan,"
she said, pushing her door open. "Thanks for breakfast. And lunch. I won’t
need checking on again, so tell Allen I’m fine and to stop sending spies."

"Allen didn’t send me, sweetheart."
Keegan draped one arm over the wheel and winked at her. "I check on his
house periodically and this morning when I saw a car here, I called him to make
sure he had a house guest before calling the cops. When he told me who that
guest was, I invited myself to breakfast."

Julie pursed her lips and got out. "Maybe
you are an insufferable ass," she said, not looking back. With that she
turned on her heel, nearly ran up the stairs, and disappeared inside to lean
against the back of the door with her heart in her throat.

Chapter Twenty

"When are you going home?" Allen
asked, clearly annoyed Julie was still occupying his second household. "I
can’t stave off your Master much longer. He’s threatened to tie me up and beat
it out of me. I’m not a switch. I don’t take pain, I give it."

"First of all, right now I’m in limbo,
boasting of no Master. Thank you very much," Julie snapped. "And grow
some balls, Allen. Tell him it’s none of his God damn business. I’m not ready
to talk yet. In fact, I may never be ready. I’ve noticed my phone’s not been
ringing off the hook with him trying to talk to me directly."

"That’s because he’s as fucking stubborn
as you are, my dear," Allen said, aggravation apparently growing.

"And therein
lies
the problem." With that she hung up.

For the last couple of weeks, she’d found she
rather liked Savannah and was considering making it her new home if she decided
to leave Dante permanently. Of course, she had to remind herself that one
Keegan D’Amato wasn’t doing anything but adding to her sway toward drifting
south. He’d not left her alone. In fact, quite the opposite had occurred and it
seemed nearly every day he was finding an excuse to drop by and have a meal
with her or convince her to drive into town and have dinner with him. He’d yet
to talk her into that movie, however.

Julie had no sooner settled back down on the
couch with a big bowl of popcorn and a book than the front door opened.

"Honey, I’m home," Allen called.

"You were outside the whole time, weren’t
you?" Julie tossed her book to the side, tucked her legs up under her, eating
her popcorn with zeal. "I’m not going back yet. You wasted a trip."

"Actually, I didn’t. You see, I’m having
a party. You have three choices. Join in, stay your ass upstairs, or go home."
Tossing his keys on the entry way table, he motioned through the door with one
hand and Nicki appeared. "Oh, it’s a three day event. We’ll be in the
kitchen.
Long drive."

"Hi, Julie," Nicki said, waving with
her head down, hurrying along behind Allen.

"Hi," she
said,
standing and watching them disappear. What the hell had he done to that poor
girl? Bobbing along like…a good little girl should.

Julie sank back to the couch and put her
elbows on her knees, resting her chin in her palms. All those months ago before
she’d come to realize she wanted Dante, she’d been right. Being alone sucked
worse than being with someone even if you didn’t see eye to eye with them. But
she couldn’t figure out if she really missed him or missed being grounded by the
force only a Dom could provide. Could she be with anyone as long as they were
dominant? Or did she want one particular one? Could she possibly resort to
being serviced?

Too late with Allen, he obviously had Nicki
tethered pretty tightly. Keegan still made her feel warm, but that comfortable
old shoe feeling just didn’t apply. She sort of missed comfortable old shoe
status, but she was still burned that Dante wouldn’t listen to reason. How in
the hell could they possibly ever come to some sort of middle ground?

"Knock, knock?" Keegan’s voice rang
through the entryway as he let himself in.

Maybe she really had become too at ease here. She
told him come on in at will and it wasn’t even her house.

"Hi. What are you doing here?" she
said, looking behind her to see if Allen had figured out she’d basically
allowed herself to become almost a permanent fixture and appointed herself
grand dame of Camelia Downs.

"Did you forget dinner tonight?"

She glanced down at her baggy shorts and
t-shirt sans bra then ran a hand up her nape to feel her ponytail. "Yes?"

"That’s okay. We can eat in," Keegan
said, making himself at home beside her.

"Allen’s here," she whispered,
pointing one finger over her shoulder.

"So what."
He laughed that low laugh she’d become
accustomed to hearing and her heart ticked a bit faster.

"So, Dante’s harassing him about where I
am. I don’t want him to know that…or…you know." Know what? It wasn’t like
she was dating another man for piss sake. "I don’t want him to get the
wrong idea."

"About what?
Us?
What would the
wrong idea be exactly? I like you.
A lot in fact."
Keegan ran a finger down her arm and traced a circle around the inside of her
wrist.

"How old are you?" It dawned on
Julie she’d never asked.

"How old are you?" he shot back.

 
"I’m
no spring chicken."