NoBounds (2 page)

A year later, on the planet Obsidion

Everything was shaping up for the grand
opening two weeks from next Tuesday of the club he’d named No Bounds. Workmen
had finished installing the last pieces of shiny new equipment in the dungeon
rooms. The place was looking good, if he said so himself.

Cole stood in his office, still damp from a
quick shower as he pulled a fresh T-shirt over his head. It had felt good to
sweat, this time from sexual play instead of backbreaking labor. Now that all
the equipment had been installed, he and the dozen men and women he’d hired to
serve as club Doms and subs had spent the last couple of days putting the
equipment through its paces.

Fuck, but that hot Domme from Warsaw—Magda
with the unpronounceable last name—knew how to give a damn fine blowjob. Cole’s
cock still gave an occasional twitch, and it had been half an hour since she’d
gone down on him. While Magda was a natural Domme, she had filled in whenever a
sub was needed at her former place of employment. She had demonstrated this
afternoon how a Dom could tie her up to the shiny rotating St. Andrew’s cross
and she could still make him come and come and come.

Yeah, Magda would be a prime attraction for
all the male subs who would be flocking to the club. She’d be a hit with some
of the other Doms as well, he imagined.

But even after a year away from Earth, Cole
still couldn’t look down at the crown of Magda’s head and not fantasize about
Amber. He visualized her soft blonde hair curling around her angel face, her
delicate ears and slender throat. He couldn’t help imagining how silky her skin
would feel if he grazed his fingertips over her shoulders and arms while she
serviced him, a scene he’d never experienced except in his wildest fantasies.

Since he’d come to Obsidion, he’d dreamed
about a lot of things he wished he could do with Amber. And he’d worried about
her. It made Cole’s gut tighten, thinking about her being in a place like the
one where they’d all been caught. Unfortunately, he had no doubt that his
sister had taken Amber right back into that dangerous environment.

He’d known Amber since they’d been kids.
She had moved into his neighborhood to live with elderly relatives after her
parents’ deaths. Although she was Cole’s age, Amber had let the older, more
sophisticated Ciel take her under her wing. Many a time Cole had lusted after
Amber but quashed his feelings because of his sister’s obvious prior claim.

Truth was, as his attraction toward Amber
had grown, he had distanced himself from Ciel’s social pursuits, and not only
because he’d tried to keep his lifestyle under wraps once BDSM had been
outlawed, though that was what he’d told himself. He had avoided Ciel because
seeing Amber with her had fueled feelings he’d convinced himself were wrong.

Now it seemed that Ciel was avoiding him.

His father had looked worried yesterday
when they’d had their weekly conversation on the video phone.

“Ciel is just as uncontrolled as ever but
she still refuses to join you on Obsidion,” Alan had told him after they’d
exhausted the topic of the progress Cole was making on No Bounds.

Ciel’s decision made Cole uneasy, because
he knew that whatever trouble his sister got into back on Earth, Amber would be
right there with her.

The video phone’s com link lit up just
then, and Cole pushed the connect button when he saw his father’s ID on the
screen. “Is something wrong?” Since he’d talked to Alan only yesterday, he
hadn’t expected to hear from him again so soon. Interplanetary calls weren’t
cheap.

“Your sister was caught in a raid last
night with her friend Amber. She has no choice now but to accept exile. I’m
putting them both onto the next transporter leaving for Obsidion. It is due to
leave here the day after tomorrow.”

Cole wanted to strangle Ciel for having put
Amber at risk again. He couldn’t deny the part of him that wanted to hug her
too, because now Amber would be coming to Obsidion.

He was finished with staying away from
Amber. Ciel had done nothing to deserve that consideration.

* * * * *

Finally. Cole had practically finished
training his staff. Only one of his most recent hires had not worked out—a
burly Dom whose tactics reminded him of a Dax-in-training. No problem, because
Cole could fill in as the fourth club Dom until he could find a suitable
replacement. If he had been into black leather and all-over tattoos, he could
have picked as many as a dozen Doms from the applicants he’d turned away, but
he wanted to keep the atmosphere here more upscale, so as not to scare away the
women who wanted to dabble in the world of BDSM while on vacation but who weren’t
deeply into the lifestyle.

After all, it took a good many credits to
hop on a transporter and blast off-planet for a taste of the sexual experiences
Cole would be offering his guests at No Bounds. In his experience, affluence
and conventionality went hand in hand, at least as far as what people expected
Doms and subs to look like.

He’d leave the heavy metal and the leather
to the two clubs that had beaten him into business here on the Pleasure
Planet—and any establishments that might follow. If No Bounds became the hit
with customers that Cole expected, he would soon be able to open the resort
hotel he had commissioned a famous architect to design, where discriminating
customers might indulge their every sexual fantasy in an atmosphere of
sybaritic luxury.

“Master Cole?”

His assistant stood just inside his office
door, gawking at him, apparently enjoying the view as he began to button his
shirt. Not surprising, since she was also one of the subs he’d hired. “Yes,
Kara?”

She held up a note. “Your father just sent
you this message on the secure line. He said it was urgent and I should give it
to you right away.”

Frowning, for drama was not Alan’s forte,
Cole took the message, cursing as he read the first few lines:

Cole, I just learned that Dax Petrone was
shipped out on the same transporter as your sister. Even though she has her
friend Amber with her, I am concerned, as this man has caused Ciel so much
trouble. Please do what you can
.

He dropped the note on his desk and bolted
out the door, not bothering to finish buttoning his shirt, hoping he wasn’t too
late. Apparently the arrangement Dax had made to avoid either prison or
transportation had fallen through, and if so, Dax was going to be furious,
ready to take out his frustration on everyone around him, particularly Ciel and
Amber.

Fuck. The transporter ships that brought
exiles here had nothing in the way of security for anyone but the pilots. Cade
gunned the hovercraft and made for the transporter docks.

* * * * *

Amber lay bound hand and foot on the cold,
hard metal floor of the transporter’s austere rear cabin, alone except for
Master Dax. When she saw the sizzling branding iron, she understood what he
meant to do, why he had dragged her away from the main cabin and the rest of
the exiles. The iron glowed an eerie blue-red before her eyes, held steady by
the smiling satyr who had it in his grasp.

“You will pay with agonizing pain for
having had me sent into exile, slave.”

“No. Please, Master Dax, do not.” Amber
struggled through the haze of a stupor induced by too much pain, too much
fucking. If Ciel had been there, she’d have kept Master Dax from hurting her
this way, but she wasn’t. Her friend had been sleeping in the main cabin when
Dax had dragged her in here. As Dax brought the iron closer, Amber tried to
recall the safe word. Slowly, the iron descended then disappeared from her
range of vision.

“No. God, no.” The stench of her skin
burning practically blotted out the agony of being branded. She barely
recognized the sound of her own flesh sizzling as Dax held the red-hot brand on
her left ass cheek.

He put pressure on the red-hot brand as
though he intended to burn all her flesh away. “This is but the first of many
marks I will give you. Learn to love them. I won’t stop until I’ve marked every
inch of your body for your treachery.”

He raised the branding iron and held it in
the flame once more, watching as it regained the heat it had poured into
Amber’s flesh.

The transporter shuddered, then lurched
forward.

The star commander’s voice crackled over
the intercom. “Take your seats and prepare for landing. We are experiencing
turbulence on our approach.”

Amber screamed, suddenly remembering the
safe word Ciel had given her long ago and shared with Dax. “
Turbulence.”

“You have no safe word now. None. You have,
however, earned a brief reprieve, for it seems we’re about to land on
Obsidion.” He extinguished the flame and set the branding iron in its cradle.

Where was Ciel? Dax had to have done
something to her, knocked her out. Her friend and Mistress would never have
stood still and let him deface her this way. Amber forced her eyes open as soon
as they’d docked, but she could barely see through her tears.

Something crashed into the metal door, the
noise making Amber cringe even before a man burst in, his accompaniment a
string of curses. “You sadistic son of a bitch!” It sounded like Cole, Ciel’s
brother. Amber held her breath, hoping…

“Fuck you, rich boy.” Dax said more, but
the sounds coming from his lips morphed into a scream. Cole’s meaty fist hit
Dax’s open mouth with enough force to make him stagger backward spitting teeth,
blood spurting from his lips.

Amber saw Cole now, standing over Dax’s
prone body like an avenging angel. Spots of blood dotted his fists, and she saw
murder in his dark expression. Amber strained against the cuffs and belts that
held her on her belly, unable to move more than a few inches in any direction.
She took solace despite the burning on her ass cheek, knowing Dax was feeling
pain as well.

Guilt swamped her for feeling that way
about a Dom. A submissive wasn’t supposed to harbor such thoughts.
Instinctively, she knew Master Cole would never ignore her safe word. Ever.

Now, even though she was in excruciating
pain, Amber felt the first sense of real happiness she’d experienced since
learning more than a year earlier that Cole had been exiled. A sense of joy
spread over her as she looked at him, the hard-muscled chest framed by the two
sides of his open shirt, the powerful thighs encased in snug denim that drew
her gaze there and higher, to the outline of his cock and balls.

The furious expression he wore would
soften, she imagined, when his sub was pleasuring him. Amazingly, arousal
stirred in her despite her burning ass cheek, her shock…

Ciel! What had Dax done to her? Amber opened
her mouth, managed to croak out her friend’s name before her throat constricted
and she had to gasp for breath.

“I sent for the medics to take care of
Ciel,” Cole said. “Be thankful I’m a rational man, or I’d also be summoning a
mortician if there were one here on Obsidion. For this piece of shit.”

“But Ciel’s not dead. She can’t be…”

“No. If the bastard had killed her, I would
have ended his worthless life without a second thought. She’s in bad shape
though.” Cole stripped his belt from around his waist and used it to bind Dax’s
limp arms behind his back. Then he came to Amber and removed the handcuffs and
leg shackles, cursing when he saw that they’d cut into her tender flesh. “I’ll
take you home and have the medic see to you too.”

She could tell from his scowl as he
examined her angry wound that it disgusted him. “Did you allow him to do this
to you?” he asked, making an obvious effort to maintain an even tone.

“I told him no. Didn’t want this, didn’t
want to be his slave. I used the safe word.” Amber hated the look of revulsion
on Cole’s handsome face. She’d observed Cole enough to know that he’d always
taken care never to damage the subs he’d played with at the clubs back on
Earth.

“I’ll kill him.” Cole sounded fierce, but
the way he lifted Amber and carried her off the transporter was incredibly
gentle. Mindful of her injury, he settled her on her belly next to Ciel, in the
cargo area of a large hovercraft marked No Bounds.

“Please don’t do anything like that. I
couldn’t bear to see you imprisoned because of me.”

* * * * *

Amber’s concern for Cole moved him. Through
the next stressful hours, the knowledge bolstered him and kept him going. He
brought in Ulrica, one of the most highly recommended Obsidion medics, and had
her give Amber something for pain before going to work on his sister.

For nearly six tense hours, Ulrica worked
on Ciel, purging her systems of the drug Dax had apparently forced on her and
monitoring her closely until it appeared that she would pull through. “Your
sister should survive,” the woman said, “no thanks to the monster who overdosed
her.”

“Will she…” Cole couldn’t voice his fear
that the drug might have left Ciel an empty shell.

Ulrica straightened and met Cole’s gaze. “I
believe there should be little if any lasting damage to her brain or other
vital organs.”

“Thank you.” Though he had left Amber in
the care of one of his staff members, Cole felt drawn now to be with her. As
Ciel had fought for her life, he’d looked in on Amber every few minutes,
reassuring himself that she was in good hands. Seeing her pain subside had
lessened his worry, but it crept back into his mind when on his next visit it
had returned despite frequent doses of pain medication. “Can you give Amber
something stronger for her pain?”

“It would not be wise. I’ve never
understood why some of you Earthling masters insist upon the practice of
branding your slaves.” Ulrica shook her head, her expression disapproving.
“Barbaric, that’s what it is, when lasers will mark flesh just as effectively
without causing so much pain—not to mention the likelihood of infection.”