Unmeasured (Unmatched Book 1) Read online

  Oleg came back from the far-off place she’d taken him and grabbed a piece of her ruined leggings to wipe his hand. He’d leave her in the mess she’d made. She deserved it. But something about the grin she still sported told him she wanted it that way.

  He nodded to Paolo. “Yes…I’m ready.”

  She arose from the table. “Are you going to give me something to wear?’

  “No, Kitten,” Oleg said, narrowing his eyes at her. “We’re not.”

  Chapter 16

  Oleg’s car awaited them at the curb. There was little fuss in the early afternoon hour from the smattering of pedestrians on that quiet tree-lined street across from a gated park. Just a few compulsory steps separated the door of Club Duval and the warm interior of Oleg’s black BMW 7 series. A single surprised look from a businessman marked the occasion. She winked at him, her bare flesh flaring with goose bumps for reasons other than the chilled air. A part of her wished it had been a longer walk, because the part of her that always wanted to push things further than she should was on the loose.

  The driver didn’t appear surprised by her nudity. He didn’t appear affected in the least. As Paolo rounded the car and opened the door for himself, the driver held open the opposite door for her to climb through. Oleg settled in next. Flanked on either side by two-hundred pounds of man, she felt particularly small. As they left the city and the scenery became more rustic, she began to feel invisible. Paolo and Oleg spoke of logistics involving the club and the arrangements in place to accommodate all their absences. Their business would be in good hands with their trusted manager in charge. Everyone was perfectly at ease in her midst, and it was driving her crazy.

  “Where are we going anyway?” Samantha asked.

  Paolo smiled softly. “Did you hear something?” he said to Oleg.

  “No, nothing that warrants a response.”

  They resumed their conversation, now discussing the details of the sale of one of Paolo’s paintings. Oleg offered advice. Paolo took it. They seemed wholly uninterested in her. Samantha frowned as something like distress roiled inside her. She was sitting there naked, for fuck’s sake. Didn’t that warrant at least a glance in her direction? Then it occurred to her where she’d gone wrong. She waited until their conversation ebbed, though it was a feat of self-control.

  “Master Paolo, may I know where you are taking me?” She addressed Paolo directly, because she supposed she might have better luck getting an answer from him.

  “Much better, Samantha,” he said and placed his hand on her thigh. “You’re learning some manners.” His shining brown eyes were soft and sincere. “But you don’t yet understand that you haven’t earned an answer to that question.”

  She was feeling indignant about that, and why shouldn’t she? “You’re right. I don’t understand. How can I play this game if I don’t know the rules? It isn’t fair.”

  Oleg chuckled a bit. “Now she wants to play fair,” he said softly.

  It was an inside joke, seemingly meant for himself. But Samantha heard the tinge of sarcasm in his tone, and she knew what inspired it. If she was a kitten, then he was her ball of string, and she intended to pull at the loose ends until the tangled mess just couldn’t be ignored. “Show me how to play…please, I want to know how.”

  Paolo responded, “For me the rules are simple. Give up your power.”

  Now it was Samantha’s turn to chuckle. “With all due respect, Master Paolo, you have me naked in a car going to God knows where. I think I’ve already given up my power and every ounce of my sanity along with it.”

  “And you think you have a right to complain about that?” he asked.

  “You call it complaining, and I say I’m simply stating the facts. You hold all the answers, I’m just asking for you to clue me in.”

  About a mile later, Oleg pressed the intercom button positioned on the arm of the door. Samantha wondered suddenly if the partition was soundproof. “Jean Michel, turn here please,” he said in a calm, even tone.

  The car slowed and rambled off the pavement down a rather bumpy dirt road that seemed to disappear eventually into an overgrown field of tall, scruffy grasses. Oleg flung open the car door and hauled her from her seat. Then he had her by both wrists, yanking her downward to her knees in the tall brush. His grip on her was strong, pinning her wrists to her ass and causing her chest to heave forward. Paolo stalked up in front of her. His belt was already undone.

  Kneeling behind her, his hardening rod pressing at her back, Oleg reached around and drew her jaw open with a pinch of his strong fingers acting like a vice. Then Paolo’s mostly erect cock painted her lips.

  Oleg spoke to her finally. “If you don’t know how to give up your power, you should get accustomed to having it taken from you.”

  Paolo took her head between his palms. His voice had taken a less gentle tone, though it wasn’t exactly menacing. His easy demeanor had given way to a deadly serious stance. “Close your eyes, Samantha, and only open them when you are ready to be at peace. When you look at me again, I only want to see your submission.”

  Oleg held her chin firmly and kept her mouth open for Paolo, yet the fingers on his other hand slipped away from her wrists. He balled one of her hands into a fist and raised up her arm. “You can’t say your safeword with his cock in your mouth, Kitten. Raise your fist in the air like this if you want out of this scene.” He pressed his lips to her ear. “Even incorrigible teases like you need a safety net.”

  Samantha wasn’t concerning herself with needs, she only knew what she wanted. She returned her hands behind her back. She couldn’t speak because he held her jaw open as wide as it could bear. But it didn’t seem that she needed to utter a thing. Oleg clutched her wrists again in his large grasp without a single protest. She didn’t want a goddamn safety net. Until then, Samantha had only flirted with real danger, had merely toyed at the edges of predictability, never pressing further into the unknown. In a field littered with last summer’s overgrown tufts of wild brush, she succumbed to allure of the unknown and reveled in the release of her control.

  She opened her eyes.

  Paolo’s hands pressed the sides of her head even more firmly when her gaze rested upon him again. She watched his brow furrow and his eyes flutter shut in the moment he slid his cock to the back of her throat. Only the first stroke had been slow and smooth. The second was more rushed, as if the withdrawal from the soft warmth of her mouth had been a mistake that he wanted to correct. He pumped inside her again and shivered this time. Their eyes met, and though Samantha was at peace, floating it seemed on the freedom of her total submission, she also saw a measure of his control unravel with each stroke of his cock into her welcoming mouth.

  Samantha realized that in her total submission, she held power. She didn’t need to demand anything, because it was her submission that held the threat of obliteration. Paolo’s grip eased into her hair, and his roman features contorted in exertion or disbelief or demise, she wasn’t sure. She only knew that as he lost control, she absorbed it, devoured it. He was moaning then, shuttling his cock in fluid motions that seemed like a force of nature with no end in sight. He didn’t look at her anymore, his head was pinned to his shoulder, his eyes shut and creased with torture.

  Samantha fought the urge to suck him harder. She resisted the instinct to use all the oral tricks she’d learned along her clumsy sexual journey to adulthood. It was suddenly clear to her that those acrobatics hadn’t been an instinct at all, but rather learned behavior of what she thought she should be doing. Paolo had surely expected that, but her mouth encased him softly, her tongue remained flat. She was a portal for him, and so it seemed the abyss was real for him too, because she was certain he felt betrayed by how right it all felt. He took her mouth, and she took a piece of his dominance as payment. It shouldn’t work that way, and yet that is what happened. With his seed now dripping from the corner of her mouth, she couldn’t discard the pleased little smirk that had also settled there on her lips.
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  Paolo didn’t say a word.

  Oleg let go of her wrists, and she felt a dull ache and a hot burn settle in as the blood flow returned to her fingers.

  “Let’s go,” he said simply.

  The rest of the ride was silent. No more chatter about bar logistics or football or paintings. They sat in silence, and though neither of them spoke to her, she was far from feeling ignored.

  *

  The peaks of the stone roof of Oleg’s childhood home were visible among the budding trees that surrounded it. While living in London, he’d visited the house only a few times a year, though it was located merely an hour from the center of Paris. It rarely sat empty, however. Paolo often traded the city for the peace and clarity of the babbling stream on endless pursuit alongside his studio. Ivan enjoyed weeks of training in the fully appointed gym beneath its hallowed halls. Ending a stretch of long shifts at the hospital, Henri fancied nightcaps and some solitary time with his hookah pipe on his bedroom balcony. He shared this home with the men he considered family.

  Anet was a peaceful town, sparsely populated with most of the small community consisting of generational families. The hamlet had seen wars and famines and countless other tragedies over the eons. Oleg knew that the events of that house eighteen years ago had only added to the lore of this renaissance era city. The visits were his therapy. The students he brought here were like a sacrificial offering to his demons. He would train a willing submissive, and he’d feel redeemed. He’d place her with a suitable Dom so that she could continue her journey. He would do all of it with his closest friends, and he wouldn’t feel alone. It had been that way since they were eighteen and Club Duval had provided a resource on both ends of the equation. Samantha would be only the sixth pupil among a countless number of casual playmates he’d dominated over the years. After so many, Oleg was far removed from the novice he’d once been, in awe of his own power. In every instance of his dominance, he hadn’t once felt out of control, hadn’t ever lost himself in the moment.

  They turned onto the winding wooded drive ascending the hilltop on which his family estate sat in solitude. He couldn’t wait to get out of the car. At this point, a new pupil was usually trembling with anticipation, afraid of the unknown and wholly reliant upon her Masters to guide her through the lessons that awaited her. Samantha neither trembled nor looked afraid. She looked excited, the grinning joy of a kid arriving at Disney Land. Paolo flashed him an incredulous smirk. Oleg knew exactly what he was thinking. They needed a new lesson plan.

  Ivan greeted them at the door.

  “I’m taking her upstairs to her room,” Oleg said after their familial embrace. “Get Henri on speaker phone. The four of us need to talk.”

  “Isn’t she hungry?” Ivan asked. “A meal is prepared.”

  “She can eat later,” Oleg said, not liking the roughness in his own tone.

  “But I am hungry,” she said. “All I had today was coffee with Henri.”

  Oleg was ashamed of himself then. “Forgive me, of course you should eat.” It wasn’t right to withhold her meals. Samantha had done every single thing asked of her. She didn’t deserve to be punished for her obedience. Oh, but he wanted to. Obedient or not, she’d taken something without his permission that afternoon. Like a pickpocket, she’d stolen a piece of him. In fact, he suspected she’d been stealing pieces of him all along, and only today had he begun to recognize that his coffers of power were just a tiniest bit poorer. He wanted to turn her ass purple, but a teacher doesn’t discard the rules just because the pupil has challenged them. He wasn’t a sadist, though he suspected she might turn him into one. He took her hand, and she placed her other hand on his wrist, tracing the links of his watch.

  “What’s for lunch?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Onion soup with a spinach and brie salad,” Ivan said as they walked and popped one of those absinthe candies he’d developed a habit for into his mouth. He pulled a chair out for her at the large farm table in the newly remodeled rustic kitchen.

  Oleg released Samantha’s hand and didn’t resist the urge to kiss her atop her head once she was seated. “Eat, Kitten,” he said in a lighter tone than he’d managed all day. Then he signaled to Ivan and Paolo to follow him into the library.

  The books surrounding them had remained untouched since his mother filled the shelves so many years ago. One day, he’d have the courage and mental strength to rid the home of the last of her presence. Perhaps he’d never want to. Both concepts made his head hurt, and so they remained intact, ignored if not forgotten. He’d changed the furniture though. Paolo took a seat in one of the four leather wing chairs positioned in a circle around a large glass coffee table. He poured a glass of vodka on reflex. Paolo happily accepted the offer for his own. Ivan declined.

  “Henri’s phone went to voicemail. What is it?” Ivan asked, sounding concerned, looking suspicious.

  That was a good question. He frowned. How could he define this intangible problem? “She…” he started.

  “She’s beyond words,” Paolo said for him. “Ivan, it’s like she has no boundaries, no limit to pursue. It makes you want to…”

  “To consume her,” Oleg said and took a long, round-mouth drink of vodka.

  “What are you talking about?” Ivan asked with a dismissive tone that Oleg resented. Then his phone rang, and he held it up for Oleg to see that it was Henri.

  Oleg nodded. “We should all agree.” He gestured for Ivan to place the phone on the table.

  Ivan opened the call on speaker.

  “I will be there by seven this evening,” Henri said preemptively. “Has she been behaving herself so far?” There was a hint of eagerness in his tone.

  Oleg placed his glass down. “Before we take this any further, we need to know what we are dealing with and decide what it is we want to accomplish.”

  “Ah, Mr. By The Book.” Henri scoffed. “We’ve done this many times before. She wants to know what the dark side looks like, and we’ve promised to show her. What is so complicated?”

  Paolo spoke up. “This girl is different from the others.”

  Ivan tilted his head. “How?”

  “There are checks and balances within our arrangements with the women we train. We sign a contract that they will place their trust in us, and we are promising to uphold that trust, to set reasonable boundaries while they learn how to submit in a safe and responsible way. There are no misunderstandings about this.” It suddenly all sounded so transactional, but wasn’t that what everything was for him? Give something, get something. Risk something, gain something more. Transactions were clear, precise, exactly how he preferred things. “The goal is to create a perfect sub. The reward is leaving our mark on her for the rest of her life.”

  “Yes, and even after six years, it still gets my cock hard.” Henri took a moment for an amused chuckle. “You’ve had her all day, and let’s not forget that I’m the one who convinced her to sign on to our little journey of discovery. For that, I think I should get the first night with her.”

  Oleg rubbed his hands in front of his pursed lips. He wasn’t in the mood for Henri’s taunts. “Listen to me. There is no balance with her. Earlier at the club, our little kitten earned her first spanking. There was no major infraction. I don’t even fucking remember what she did. I only remember that I wanted to touch her.” He picked up his glass and took another large sip. “I needed to see her come, to bring her orgasm to heal. She deserved a punishment, and I gave her pleasure instead, because I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “So you indulged her. It’s not advisable, but I’m sure she wasn’t damaged beyond repair from it,” Henri said. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic?”

  “There’s something else.” He sighed. “Samantha needs my protection.”

  “From who?”

  “From the Harakian brothers. They tried to send me a message today, and she’s being used as collateral on my engagement.”

  “Oleg, we are brothers, are we n
ot?” Ivan said. He pressed his finger to the table. His weary eyes, forever scared from battles to win the title of champion, were fiery with loyalty. “Hear me when I say that you are not meant for that pit of snakes.”

  “I have debts to pay my uncle for all he has given me, and they come with compound interest.” Oleg sighed. “Once I marry Karina, all will return to normal. The Harakians and the Balashovs will be united, and that’s all they care about.”

  “But not all you care about. Brother, you will need an outlet.”

  He eyed Paolo and then Ivan. “Tell me, who have you arranged to pair Samantha with?”

  Ivan and Paolo were silent.

  “Henri?” Oleg prompted.

  “Isn’t it obvious? You, of course.”

  Oleg laughed. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Don’t try to tell us that you don’t want her.”

  Paolo flashed his eyes at him, and Oleg knew what he was thinking. “By the time we are finished, we are all going to want her. That’s why, if we do this, we are going to take some protective measures.” He paused. “I agree that she should be trained and placed. A girl like that could easily be a danger to herself in the wrong hands.”

  “So why don’t we place her with you, my friend? You don’t actually need to go through with this sham of a marriage. Let your cousin marry that Harakian brat. They sound perfect for each other.”

  “Maybe Samantha won’t want to be placed with him,” Paolo said. “Things are complicated for Oleg. She needs stability.”

  Oleg snapped his gaze in Paolo’s direction. The artist had a softer side than any of them, yet Oleg knew better than to underestimate his subtle demeanor. He raised an eyebrow at him, and Paolo’s warm brown eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

  Paolo didn’t drop his gaze. “We should consider the possibility, no?”

  “What the fuck happened on the way here?” Ivan asked. No one could miss the energy shift in the room, the change in posture, the flare of testosterone.