Unmeasured (Unmatched Book 1) Read online

  Oleg was still asking himself that question. He’d watched her turn Paolo’s dominance against him, watched her siphon his power with each stroke he took from her mouth. She took him to a place where all that mattered was having her. Oleg knew this, because it had also happened to him. If only she’d been trying to top them, a clear and swift correction would have been an easy reaction. But the most intoxicating part was that she had only given herself, without fear or limitation. He’d watched her reduce Paolo to mere desire, and she hadn’t even tried. It was the hottest thing he’d ever witnessed.

  Paolo poured a drink for himself. “She’s more than a handful, and the kind of sub that requires a lot of attention. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  Oleg didn’t argue. Paolo wasn’t exaggerating. He wasn’t elaborating either, and neither did Oleg. What had happened? She’d blown their fucking minds, that’s what.

  Henri chuckled. “If she’s such a handful, then maybe she needs more than one hand. I’ll be there by seven. Promise you won’t start without me.”

  Chapter 17

  Samantha knew she should have waited in the kitchen for one of them to return. But she hadn’t been able to open the jar of salad dressing for her life. When her name floated from Oleg’s lips, she definitely knew she shouldn’t freeze in place with her hand on the knob of the barely cracked door, listening to their conversation. But there she remained, starved for every word whether they were meant for her ears or not. Then Ivan stood up.

  “Open the door,” he said, his deep rumbling voice dropping even lower.

  She released the knob with a flick of her fingers. The heavy wooden door moved slowly on its hinges. “I…couldn’t…” She held out the mason jar of homemade dressing as if it offered the best explanation.

  Ivan curled his finger at her. “Bring it here,” he said, but when she took a step, he held up his hand. “Come to me on your knees.”

  “Or don’t come at all,” she said with a nervous chirp, and then a giggle escaped her lips. “Ha! You see what I did there?”

  Ivan sat back down in his chair. “Don’t fuck with me, sub. You’ll find my patience is as thin as the skin on your tender ass.”

  She didn’t doubt it. Ivan’s cloak of humanity barely disguised the beast beneath. That icy stare from far-away eyes held a secret that seemed would never be told. But she had a problem. She couldn’t both crawl to him and bring the jar to him without pushing it along the floor, and something about that just seemed so clumsy. Samantha didn’t want to be clumsy today.

  So she moved on hands and knees, crawling to him. Her eyes wandered only momentarily to Oleg and Paolo as she passed them by. They watched with rapt attention as she channeled the feline grace of a lioness. She needed the promotion, because she was certain Ivan would eat a kitten alive. She’d left the jar of dressing back in the doorway.

  When she reached him, she only pressed her face to the floor and placed her ass high in the air directly in front of him.

  Ivan rounded her, and bent his entire body over hers. His voice tore through the small space between his lips and her ear. “I will hurt you, and unlike my friends here, I will enjoy it.”

  That definitely should not have made her clench. Her ass swayed just the tiniest bit, and how could he fault her? It wasn’t exactly her choice.

  He flipped her onto her back, his gaze raking over her nudity. “Have we ever had a novice who was so eager to meet her demise?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I always was an overachiever.”

  Ivan’s hand was at her throat then, calloused fingers wrapping nearly fully around. Samantha tried to pair the sensation of his trembling fingers tightening ever so slightly around her airway with fear instead of infatuation. How could she want to see this go any further? She couldn’t be afraid even when she knew that she should. But she could be ashamed about it. That part of her brain worked perfectly well as her hand found its way between her legs. Even as his thumb pressed a measure harder against her windpipe, she tried to soothe her throbbing clit. She closed her eyes, her body relaxing as her shame gave way to hunger. In her mind, the horizon beckoned, and she floated toward the edge, wondering what was on the other side. She tucked her safeword neatly away, a solace she needn’t concern herself with now. Something warm and rigid nudged her busy fingers, and she gave way to it, needing it instinctively to be there. She spread her legs, choking and deluded with lust.

  “Stop!”

  It was Oleg’s rich voice that stirred the moment. She opened her eyes to find him standing over them, his hand on Ivan’s shoulder.

  Ivan retreated, snatching his hand from her throat, and she withdrew her hand from the nest of heat between her legs. The room tilted just a bit, only a bit. Her focusing eyes made sense of the expression on Oleg’s face. He pulled Ivan away from her, though it didn’t take much effort. Ivan held his own dazed expression, not in disagreement. He stood, and the hand that had been locked at her throat now raked through his thick black hair.

  Oleg scooped her into his arms in one swift, easy motion. “I’m taking her to her room.”

  “Yeah,” Ivan said absently as he stood at the window and stared out to the stream where soft cascades of water fell over ancient boulders. He tucked his hardened cock back into his joggers. “That’s a good idea.”

  Oleg didn’t say anything more, and the tortured look on his face confused her. She touched his cheek. “What is it?”

  They ascended the grand staircase and then another one, narrow and tucked discreetly at the end of the hall. Her room was behind an arched wooden door at the top. He placed her on the four-post bed inside a large octagonal room. The ceiling stretched high into a point with an opulent crystal chandelier, dazzling with rainbow prisms from the apex.

  He hadn’t answered her. She tried another approach. “This is unreal.”

  “It is very real, Samantha.” His tone was sharp, his eyes were sharper. “You almost blacked out.”

  Samantha rolled her shoulder. “Almost.”

  “You are playing a very dangerous game, Kitten.” She’d take that as an endorsement, because isn’t that what she was there for?

  “I think I like it.”

  “You’re fucking insane.”

  Her shoulders curled inward then. Of all people, of all places, of all circumstances, this was the one time she’d thought sanity had no place. “What the fuck do you call this whole thing? Yes, I’m insane, just like everyone else in this house. I thought I wouldn’t need to apologize for what I want.”

  “What you want?” He shook his head. “What you want is going to get you very badly hurt.”

  “I trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t”

  “You’re wrong,” she said as her fingers brushed at his hairline. “All my life, I’ve been bored. And sure, go ahead and say it. I was privileged and spoiled. But I didn’t ask to be born so reckless, and I also didn’t ask to be put in a safe little bubble because of it. I didn’t choose to be primped and pressed so everyone could pretend I was just like every other girl. When I say that I trust you, I mean that I believe you can free that part of me that I was always told was ugly and unclean. I trust that you will know what to do with it, and that you can show me how to make sense of it, how to live with it.” She dipped her head, not liking the look on his face. “You’re not changing your mind, are you?”

  “The darkness you feel has no limit because you haven’t experienced the kind of pleasure that eclipses the darkness. Danger, pain, punishment can lead you there, but pleasure is the goal, Kitten.” He sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this…but if you let someone else own that darkness that lives inside you, I’m afraid it will kill you.”

  “I know what I’m doing. I know there is a safeword.”

  “You should use it! You are reckless, and it makes you dangerous. There is more to this lifestyle than darkness. You need to know how it is to live in the light, Kitten. To feel the sun on your soul and cherish it. When you know
that joy, you will want to move through the darkness to find it again. If not, you will drag yourself and any Dom who is foolish enough to try to own you, down a never-ending spiral to mental and physical destruction. Given a choice, I want you to choose pleasure. In the end, I want you to endure pain for the promise of the pleasure you have earned.”

  She pursed her lips, letting his words sink in. Her fingers walked a path toward him over the bed covers. “You think I’m dangerous?”

  He dropped his large hand over hers. “That’s the part you heard?”

  She smiled. “I heard everything.”

  “But you still don’t have a single clue about what I mean.”

  This turned her cheeks to fire. Samantha had been naked all afternoon. She’d had her mouth fucked in a field, and her neck captured in the vice-like grip of a modern-day gladiator, and this accusation was the only thing that made her truly uncomfortable. “Screw you!”

  She watched his jaw clench just for a moment, then he leaned in and kissed each of her apple-shaped cheekbones. “When Henri gets here, we will begin your proper training, with boundaries in place.”

  He was so close, his lips so surprisingly soft on her skin. She needed more of him, didn’t he know that? But when she reached for his face, he pulled away. “But why do we have to wait?”

  “Because for your own safety and our own sanity, no one should be alone with you right now.” He stood. “You will stay in this room until we come get you. I’ll have your lunch brought up.”

  “You’re leaving me in here alone?” Samantha surprised herself with the panic in her voice.

  He hesitated at the door for only a moment. “Yes.”

  He closed the door, a few beeps sounded and the lock turned on the other side. Plenty of sun shone through the leaded glass windows, but cut off from her new Masters, without their eyes on her, the room was suddenly full of darkness.

  *

  Downstairs, Oleg entered the kitchen and found Ivan removing a steaming bowl from the microwave.

  “How is she?” he asked, setting the half-eaten bowl of soup on a tray with her salad.

  “She’s fine. But you’re not bringing that up to her.” He pointed to the tray. “Ask Marjorie to do it.”

  Ivan looked very much like he was about to argue. Oleg tilted his head, his eyebrows raised.

  Relenting, Ivan retrieved a clean spoon from the drawer and called out for their housekeeper.

  “Where’s Paolo?” Oleg asked.

  “Out for one of his walks.” When Marjorie had come and gone with the tray of food, Ivan gestured to the door leading to the renovated cellar. “You want to spar with me?”

  Oleg nodded. Yes, everyone could use a way to set loose what Samantha had stirred inside them. Paolo liked to hike and think. Ivan liked to punch his way through almost everything. Oleg, on the other hand, was at a loss for how to stop obsessing about climbing the stairs back to her, against his better judgement. “Sure, let me get changed.”

  He purposely took the servant’s staircase from the kitchen up to his room at the other side of the grand home. The double doors stood open. There weren’t any secrets held in those walls, not anymore. Nothing about his parent’s old room remained as it was when he’d left his childhood home. The house languished empty while Oleg split the seasons between boarding school and his uncle’s Parisian townhouse. But after that time in his last year of secondary school, when Alexander had introduced their first willing submissive, Oleg used a portion of his inheritance to renovate the two-hundred-year-old chateau.

  Empire Construction might have served as contractors, but Oleg had insisted on paying for the costs. He owed his uncle enough already. Besides, this was his home, separate from his life as a Balashov. Ironic, since it was the Balashov name that had gotten his parents both killed in the first place.

  Four of the other six bedrooms now belonged to his closest friends, because though the house remained in his name, the journeys they had all taken here had made it a place that belonged to all of them. Only one room had lost its occupant. Oleg tied the strings of his athletic shoes and wondered what Alexander would have said about the phenomenon tucked away upstairs. He would have told them to be careful.

  Oleg pulled on a sleeveless shirt and basketball shorts. The sneakers were practically brand new. In silence, he’d let Ivan unleash his frustration in a fury of punches directed at Oleg’s mitts. Ivan had never been one to say much more than was absolutely necessary. That stoic quality might be mistaken for shyness, especially in contrast with Paolo’s esoteric nature or Henri’s knack for drama. But Oleg knew that Ivan’s heavy silence was born out of his preference for privacy. Alexander had often been his translator, but with his brother gone, Ivan frequently seemed to struggle for a way to express himself.

  When he entered the custom-built gym, Ivan took a deep breath, like the words clinging to his tongue could be dispensed with a strong gust of air.

  Oleg offered him a reprieve. “She has a talent for coaxing the beast out of its cage.”

  Ivan delivered a solid jab to Oleg’s mitted hand. He wound up and threw another one, harder this time. “I’ve never been that out of control before… It was like she dared me to take it over the line, and I couldn’t fucking help myself.”

  Oleg nodded sympathetically. Nothing was more offensive to a Dom than a loss of control. “I know.”

  “The look on her face… Goddamn. I don’t even know how long I had her throat in my hand.” Ivan stretched his muscled neck, pulling it to his shoulder. The few cracks told of the tension lodged there. He shook it off and delivered a short fury of punches. Then he stopped, dropped his head and adjusted his sparring glove, though it didn’t appear to need it. “I expected her to struggle a little, you know. Breath play on a novice is usually over in a flash.”

  “That wasn’t playing,” Oleg said.

  “I didn’t mean… But oh, fuck, she wanted it.” Again, he put up his hands, and Oleg braced for the next combination as he continued. “I wanted to give her everything she asked for, and I didn’t think of what was safe or right. I saw her face, and her fucking busy little fingers reaching between her legs, and she took me with her to the fucking edge so fucking fast.”

  That was more than Ivan had said in a whole week, all dumped out in between loaded punches and round breaths.

  Oleg nodded again. He understood everything that Ivan had said, and even what he didn’t say. If for only a few feral moments, she’d stolen his self-control and all of his authority along with it. “For what it’s worth, I don’t actually think she means to top from the bottom.”

  “She fucking rules from the bottom,” Ivan said, switching stances and trying his left hook.

  Oleg had to agree. There was a goddess locked away upstairs in her tower, and she didn’t even know it. The confession between her would-be Masters had the potential to crown her the most dangerous submissive or the most perfect submissive he’d probably ever meet. At the moment, he couldn’t decide which.

  Chapter 18

  It might have been the most opulent prison on the planet. Samantha took stock of the room. The décor teetered on the edge of pretentious. The millwork frames lining the walls were upholstered in silk the shade of rose quartz. The balance of wall space was painted a cool taupe that flirted with being called gray. The carpeted floor was the softest she’d ever felt, and she guessed that it too included the softest fiber known to earth. It was the bed that really took her breath away. To start, a canopy, simple in its structure, but made elaborate with trimmings of all kinds draped around the lacquered white posts like a robe meant for royalty. The headboard stood at over five feet, nearly as tall as she. When the light hit it just right, the most subtle lace pattern appeared etched in the glossy finish. Each piece of art was a study in serenity. Paintings of abstracted land and seascapes hinted of relaxation and empty to-do lists. No television, no radio. It was a room made for a woman meant to forget the outside world.

  There was a land
line connected only to the housekeeper, no matter which number she dialed, and a framed calligraphy message next to it that read “No one here does your bidding.” She supposed the message was meant to be a warning. After what Oleg had said, she took it as a challenge.

  Samantha stared at the exposed trusses radiating above her from the center of the conical roof. They were ashen with age, rough and ancient looking, in romantic contrast with the posh décor. A crisscross support dissecting the diameter of the circular turret design existed beneath the more intricate framework. Halfway along the intersecting beam, a mechanical steel pulley was mounted above a clear area near the bathroom. The industrial nature of it stood out conspicuously in the otherwise well-appointed room.

  She sat up in bed. Three knocks at her door were the epitome of irony, as if she had the power to refuse entry of whoever was on the other side. “Who is it?” she asked, and the door opened without a word uttered.

  “I understand you’ve had quite the first day of school,” Henri said. She eyed him first, his fitted black suit and pale blue shirt, and then noticed the garment bag in his hand as he stepped into the room.

  “It was, until Oleg locked me in here by myself.”

  Henri’s mischievous gaze danced over her skin. She was immediately reenergized. “You don’t like to be alone, chérie?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He nodded his understanding, yet there was no empathy in his expression. He understood what she had said, and she suspected the knowledge would be used against her at some point.

  In a perfunctory move, Henri opened the closet door to his left and placed the bag inside. Then he turned back to her. “I see that you have not yet learned how to greet your Masters when we arrive at your door.” He pointed a finger at her and directed her lower. She understood this to mean that she should kneel, which she did, but not without a word in her defense.

  “How can I know it’s one of you at the door? It could be Marjorie.”