Unmeasured (Unmatched Book 1) Read online

  “It’s better to be safe than sorry, yes?”

  Now that was where he was wrong. Samantha slowly shook her head.

  Henri smiled. “Non? You disagree?” The finger he’d wielded in explicit direction now grazed softly over her cheek. Then his hand was on top of her head, pushing her even lower until that same cheek was acquainted with the hardwood floor. She remained in a sinuous heap, her body folded into an S at his feet. He was rising up again when she instinctively reached for his ankles, holding on, her forearms draped over his expensive designer shoes. It seemed to surprise him, and the way he flinched surprised her as well.

  “That is not how it is done, sub,” he said on a growl. His hand moved swiftly through the air above her and landed on the roundest part of her upturned ass. Her grip on him tightened involuntarily upon impact, and as the pain of his heavy hand radiated outward, she slowly relaxed again. It should have been humiliating and not exhilarating, but it stung so good, like the burn of silk on her skin when she was learning a new aerial move. The sting told her she was getting closer to the best part, the part when she’d master what once seemed impossible. Samantha knew that she’d learn his rules, even if she’d have to make some new ones along the way.

  “Yes, Master,” she said and began to withdraw her hands. He remained crouched in front of her and stilled her wrist. “We’re not finished,” he said.

  She regained purchase on him, wrapping her fingers around as much of his ankle as she could. Five more fierce swats, and he seemed satisfied. No, that was most certainly the wrong word. Five more swats, and he seemed as turned on as she was.

  He stood up then and smoothed his pants. His alabaster skin was a bit flushed, and though he turned away from her, she didn’t miss the way he adjusted himself. “I expect to find you in that position every time I enter this room. Understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. She most certainly did.

  “Fine,” he said and left.

  *

  Oleg stepped into the grand foyer just as Henri descended the last few steps. He recognized the look on his face. “I told you that we needed to talk before we did anything else with her.”

  Henri waved a hand up in the air. “I only brought her the corset Maurice made from one of her designs.”

  “You didn’t give it to her, did you?”

  “Am I the fucking novice here? I left it in a garment bag in her closet as a test. She hasn’t been given permission to touch it, let alone look at it. It’s going to drive her crazy. And if she thinks she doesn’t need permission, then that will be lesson number two.”

  Oleg glared at him, “And lesson number one?”

  “Since when do I need to explain every little detail to you? Hmm?”

  “Since I told you that she was special.”

  “I think the word you used was ‘different’, but I’m glad to see that you are coming around.”

  Oleg ignored that statement, but he knew Henri would likely revive the topic later.

  Marjorie appeared in the foyer to take Oleg’s coat. “Mr. Balashov, Dr. Gérard, you will find Mr. Signorino and Mr. Galois in the drawing room. I have prepared roasted duck and a root-vegetable cassoulet for when you are ready to eat dinner.”

  “Thank you, Marjorie. That will be all tonight. Have a lovely evening.”

  She bowed her head and disappeared down a narrow breezeway that led to the servant’s apartment adjacent to the home.

  Henri walked with him to the drawing room.

  Paolo stood and greeted them, as did Ivan. The four always afforded one another that respect. A big hug and kisses cheek to cheek was a continual reaffirmation of the bond they would always share. At one point or another, each of them had been lost to pain, and not the kind that leaves scars that can be seen on the outside. Their friendship was fortified with the understanding of that pain, and a code of support that would never falter.

  The Devil had walked on each of their souls early in life. If he was honest, these men who he considered brothers were the only people on Earth he trusted, save for Alexander. He also knew that the same held true in reverse. Paolo sucked on a hookah pipe and rested it down on the table. While his parents had gallivanted across the world, Paolo had been abandoned for years with cold and vindictive servants who enjoyed treating a young, sensitive boy like a pauper inside his own ancestral estate. When Paolo had finally found the courage to reveal his suffering, the solution had been to enroll him in boarding school. The neglect he’d suffered, all those years ago, was responsible for the focused artist and ardent collector of things and experiences he’d become, despite the deceivingly relaxed smile he wore most of his days.

  Henri sat next to him and took a drag of his own from the pipe. Now in his last year of residency, the once scholarship recipient was a surgeon with the power to hold the most precious commodity on Earth in his steady and capable hands. Ivan declined. Oleg recognized that he was worried about keeping all his wits sharp. A prize fighter with dulled inhibitions and his sadistic demons off-leash wasn’t part of this equation. He’d once suffered unspeakable evil at the hands of a teacher and the taste of revenge still wet his appetite. Ivan folded his hands over his chest and sat back in his chair.

  There was no mysterious reason why none of them had settled down with a dedicated submissive. Alexander had tried with Marielle and look at how that had turned out. They were both miserable, couldn’t survive together and can’t live with being apart. He and his brothers had an unspoken pact. No woman would ever penetrate their circle, because most likely no woman could ever survive the journey. Yet, here he was opening himself to the possibility, and the timing couldn’t have been worse.

  “Before we bring her down for dinner, I wanted to speak with all of you,” Oleg said, taking his favorite seat at the far side of the room. He too would pass on the hookah this evening.

  “Have you decided to take her on at the end of all this?” Henri asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “We’ve all experienced the power of Samantha.”

  Henri scoffed.

  Oleg raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you are immune? I highly doubt she let you slip in and out without incident.”

  “Let me?” Henri challenged.

  Oleg nodded. “If you were truly unaffected, then you would be the only one of us who hasn’t been.”

  Henri inhaled and exhaled with a modicum of humility. “Like you said, she’s special.”

  He’d take that as an affirmative regarding the Samantha effect. “So here is what I propose.” He made a point of looking each of them in the eye. “Since we now know we have a masochist on our hands—”

  “She’s not a masochist,” Paolo said.

  Oleg scoffed. “Oh, no? What do you call a girl so open to danger, so solicitous of our darkest impulses?”

  “I’d call her mine if I could.” Paolo’s jaw locked as he swallowed hard and reached again for the pipe. “But that’s not what she needs.”

  “She can’t be yours. She can’t be mine or Henri’s or Ivan’s, because none of us can tell her no, or tell ourselves no. A Dom needs to be able to say no.”

  Paolo nodded. “Or someone else needs to do it for him.”

  “And she won’t be the one that does it. She’s too daring, too audacious to use her safeword. It’s not that she gets off on pain or humiliation per se. She gets off on seeing if she can endure the pain and turn the humiliation into triumph. She turns all the rules upside down. She makes you weak with her submission, makes you a slave to your own urges.”

  Henri smirked. “Don’t you think you are exaggerating a bit?”

  “Am I?” Oleg pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the combination for the lock on Samantha’s door. Then he dialed the phone in her room.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded uncertain. There was no caller ID on the classic chrome 1950s replica.

  “I’ve unlocked the door. Come down to the drawing room.”

  He detected the excitement in her voice when she re
plied, “Yes, Master.”

  A smirk played at his lips as he ended the call with his gaze steadily directed at Henri. This was a dare. He knew it. Henri knew it. He suspected that his kitten knew it as well.

  It didn’t take long for her to come bounding down the stairs and into the drawing room, barefoot of course, because the only stitch of clothing in her quarters was the corset she now wore. And what a vision she was.

  Now it was Henri’s turn to sport a smirking smile, but his was directed at Samantha. He clapped his hands slowly, mockingly.

  “I know, I know. I wasn’t supposed to look at it because you didn’t give me permission, but I just had to see if it was what I thought it was, and then I just had to put it on. It’s so exquisite!” She pressed her hands against the bodice, smoothing them over the blush satin fabric from her breasts on down, following the inlays of pale blue that seemed to fall over her like a fountain of water. Her excitement lit up the room. Breathlessly, she continued. “And I was up there all by myself, just wishing I could show someone.”

  Oleg stared at her, as did everyone else, at the spill of her trussed-up cleavage, the cinch of her waist and the soft rise of her hip bone at the edge of the boning. She was still nude beneath, her bare cunt of no shame to her. For him, the sight of her was transportive, back to their cozy Italian lunch, but she was far more splendid that Botticelli’s Venus would ever be.

  Henri cocked his head to the side. “Someone?” he challenged.

  “You, I wanted to show you because you brought it to me. I’ll take it off now…and I’ll take whatever punishment you have planned, because I’m sure I failed the test you set up when you brought it into my room in the first place.” Samantha said all of this in a clambering matter-of-fact tone. She smiled sheepishly then, the joy returning to her voice. “But it is pretty, isn’t it?”

  Henri seemed to hesitate. From his place beside him, Oleg could see the scalpel he held at his side. Henri rubbed the metal handle between his fingers and decided to show it to her. He’d planned to ruin her pretty new corset. In ruining it, he meant to hurt her, not with pain, unless he allowed the scalpel to lick her skin, and he might. He planned to cut away her insolence and leave her with a cold reminder of how audacity is treated in his world. He might have done it all, but for the sight of her and the sweet palpable energy that hijacked each of them. Her jubilance was the sneakiest of thieves.

  Oleg found himself rooting for her. He wanted to see her prove him right, and at the same time prove herself to be the queen he knew that she was.

  The white of Henri’s knuckles as he clutched the blade betrayed the calm of his expression. Who was he so furious with? Oleg suspected he was most furious with himself over the reason the scalpel dropped, unused from his hand. He was on her then, all mouth and teeth at her throat. He bit her hard on the neck, his hand immediately diving between her thighs.

  She didn’t scream, though truly, she looked surprised. But Oleg wasn’t surprised in the least by the feral way Henri sunk his teeth into her, the way he marked her. When he pulled away, she merely blinked at him, waiting, hanging at the edge of the blissful unknown for his next move. When he stilled, hovering, deciding, she let her head drop to the side, extending the already bruised flesh toward him with a flagrant invitation.

  A pained growl emerged from the back of Henri’s throat. Yes, maintaining restraint around Samantha proved to be a uniquely pernicious torture. The war between want and compulsion must have mocked every dominant cell in his body. Oleg empathized. It couldn’t be missed how much Henri wanted to bite her again, or that he hated that she compelled him to do it. If there was another choice in the matter, his expression confirmed that he remained at a loss. For a Dom, there was always a choice, and when there wasn’t, there was only desperate, needful submission.

  In the end, Henri stepped back, though it didn’t read as self-control. It read as retreat. Right then, Oleg decided that he would earn the right to own her…or die trying.

  Chapter 19

  “That will be all, Kitten,” Oleg said. “Go back upstairs to your room. Can I trust you to do that?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Paolo stepped forward. “I’ll take her.”

  “No!” Oleg said. “She will obey like the good girl that she is.”

  Samantha grinned and blew him a kiss before turning around. Then she twirled one more time and tossed her chin over her shoulder. “I can be good if I’m not up there alone for too long.”

  Oleg steeled himself, determined not to scoop her up in his arms and take her against the wall next to the doorway where she leaned for a few more heartbeats. He remained in place, but he couldn’t keep his lips from moving. “Not long. I assure you.”

  With that, she seemed satisfied and walked out, her heart-shaped ass swaying enough to hold all of their attention until she was out of sight.

  He turned then and gestured for Henri to sit along with him, joining Ivan and Paolo once more.

  “Are we all in agreement now that we are not dealing with an ordinary submissive?”

  “There was never anything ordinary about her,” Henri said.

  “True.” He’d known that from the start as well. “If we’re going to teach her the rules of engagement as a submissive, then we’ll need some new ones of our own. Samantha cannot be punished by anything we do to her. So far, she’s only become more powerful each time we’ve tried.”

  “Is that so terrible?” Paolo asked.

  Oleg snapped his attention to him, as did Ivan and Henri.

  “Calm down. I’m not saying I want to switch for her. But I can admit she’s fucking addictive.” Paolo smiled. “I agree. That’s power. And it’s sexy as hell.”

  “I just want to hear her beg me to stop,” Ivan said.

  “She won’t,” Oleg said.

  “That doesn’t stop me from wanting to find the one thing that will. I know what Paolo means about her being addictive. I think I’d try forever to find her breaking point and never get tired of it.”

  “Do you realize how irresponsible that would be?” Oleg asked him. It was a rhetorical question. He knew that Ivan had a very clear understanding of how dangerous that would be. Every sadist needed a reason to limit himself, be it a safeword or his own self-control. Having both was preferable. A situation with neither would be disastrous.

  Ivan’s nod was reticent at best.

  “Anyway, Ivan, you don’t really want to break her, because if she’s broken, you can’t hear her begging you to stop.”

  “I want to almost break her,” he corrected.

  Oleg chuffed and smirked at the bit of humor in his tone.

  “I want to break her.” Henri said. His tone was cold, determined.

  “And yet you didn’t.” Oleg bent down and picked up the scalpel. He held it up. “You couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”

  He smiled the ironic smile of a criminal finally caught after a crime spree. “That corset should be in pieces on the floor, and she should be upstairs in tears over it. Patience, obedience, humility, discipline; she would have learned all these things from this.” Henri took a flat rectangular black box from his pocket. Oleg handed him the knife, and he placed it safely away. “I wanted to break her, because all submissives need to be broken down when they begin this journey.” He looked up at Oleg then, and the glint in his eye was sharper than usual. “But I mistook crystal for glass, and instead of seeing right through her, I was dazzled. So now…”

  Henri paused on his next words as if deciding if he wanted to say them out loud. He scraped his lip with his teeth and shook his head in what looked like a confession of guilt. “Now, I need to break her.”

  Oleg swiped his thumb across his chin. The stubble there was a distant annoyance. “Ivan wants to hurt her, you want to break her, and Paolo wants to own her like one of his rare collectibles. This is nothing new, but she is the boundless embodiment of each of your fetishes, and none of you have proven you can handle her correctly. Quite th
e opposite in fact.”

  “Don’t forget yourself in this,” Paolo said. “You’re not immune. What is she making you want to do?”

  Oleg paused now, weighing his words as Henri had. His confession would be more cathartic, because until that moment, he hadn’t allowed the thought to take hold. In this room, where young Oleg had once played with his new train set, where the warmth of the fire had felt like everything that was good about life, he spoke the truth. “She makes me want to love her.”

  He shook his head, shook off the haze he’d felt overtake him momentarily. Then he picked up the phone. “Let’s have dinner. We’ll take things slowly and keep everything in check. No punishment, no pain, no fear.”

  “What’s left?” Ivan joked. Oleg knew he was only half joking.

  “Pleasure.”

  “She hasn’t earned pleasure yet,” Henri said.

  “Hasn’t she?” Oleg challenged. “She’s crowned herself queen of this castle without even trying.” He pinned Henri with his gaze. “And don’t be fooled. Just because she calls us Master, doesn’t mean that we’ve earned it.”

  “So what do you propose?” Henri asked, sounding exasperated even if he did his best to conceal it.

  “I want to make the distinction between pleasure, punishment and danger very, very clear for her. We should completely restrict her and play every erogenous zone on her body until she sings like a harp. I want her vibrating with pleasure, and then I want to ruin her with it. I want no confusion in her mind about the reason she is being a good girl. Her pleasure should be at our mercy, and not the other way around.”

  “And what will we do to punish her when it’s necessary?”

  “The one thing none of us has been able to do to this point. Ignore her.”

  *

  His directions had been explicit. When Samantha hung up the handset, there was no confusion about what was expected of her. Oleg had told her to take off the corset and join them in the dining room. Not that she’d been confused before, but to disobey this order would just be plain obnoxious. She liked to think she’d outgrown obnoxious. She took one more look in the mirror at the piece of art that Henri had commissioned before unhooking each of the concealed clasps. She’d have to thank Maurice personally for bringing it to life. She ran her hand over her neck and the angry red and purple bite mark just above her shoulder. Henri had already taken his pound of flesh from her neck as his repayment. She circled her finger around and around the mark, her otherwise pristine skin now fully exposed once again and looking mundane in comparison. She’d expected consequences. The moment she’d torn the paper wrapping from the corset, she’d known it had no other purpose other than exposing her transgression. When she’d slipped it on her body, she’d known that Henri would not be pleased. She’d known and she’d weighed the consequences and taken her chances, because nothing could be worse than not showing him how gorgeous it was. Sam shook her head. No, that wasn’t true. Nothing could be worse than missing the look on his face when he saw her wearing it, which he must have wanted, otherwise why commission it? He’d wanted to see her in it, and he’d wanted to punish her for it. She’d wanted to be seen, and she didn’t mind being punished. Now as she studied his bite mark in her skin on one side, and Oleg’s name imprinted on the other, she knew she’d take any punishment if the trade was being truly seen.