Epilogue
GRAYSON
The thwop of the rotors above were a constant reminder of the last time I’d flown in a helicopter. At the end of that trip, I’d found Emme in the worst ever situation, witnessed a murder, and discovered Axl’s sins ran a lot deeper underground than mine. Or undersea, as it were.
Emme’s new kitten outfit had fluffy black ears and a long-sleeved black bodysuit with zippers and strategically placed cutaway sections.
When she walked in front of me, hand in hand with Axl, the upper swell and divide of her rear was exposed.
I’d had to grab her there earlier, just to be sure her peach-like ass felt as good as it looked.
She wore no tail, yet, and a blindfold, but wasn’t tied.
“You nervous about the chopper?” Axl leaned in from her other side to ask me.
“These things don’t have enough wings.”
“Note taken. I’ll fix that next time.”
Tonight was the night, Axl planned more kink, edgier kink, riskier kink. We hoped to make her trust us to take her anywhere we chose to.
CNC was a knife-edge sort of kink play. If she was like me, this was the life in her veins. It would revive her, like a suck of air to someone suffocating in the darkness of a void, and it would wreak havoc on her…but in the best ever way.
My one big problem?
Unlike every other kink encounter, I’d ever had, this time I was afraid. If we went too far, too soon, tonight could destroy her.
I held Emme’s hand where she sat beside me.
I’d become addicted to this, her hand in mine.
Every time I had done so since we brought her home, I’d found the subtle ins and outs, the shape of her fingers, the sheer femininity of them wrecked me a little.
It gave rise to aches that, for once, were not purely sexual.
I wasn’t sure why I’d never had this desire to protect someone before.
Maybe it was because she was completely ours—completely reliant on us? Or maybe it was because she was the only person who had fallen apart before my eyes, yet despite our treacherous, perverted past, she had relied on me to help her put back together the jigsaw pieces of her soul?
That. I think it was that.
She relied on me and on Axl. He had done his share of picking up a lot of the pieces.
It had surprised me. It was why I was giving up the reins tonight. I was letting Axl direct the show. I hoped I wouldn’t regret this.
EMME
Trepidation—not a word I’d ever used much but this was it, tonight.
I’d learned over the past month that these two men could be almost normal. If that was the right word? Normal for me, anyway. Even so, I occasionally feared them.
Love, hate, fear—such intimately connected emotions.
I needed fear. I knew it. They knew it.
My weakness over the past month embarrassed me, but having a complete and utter breakdown over Charity’s violent death couldn’t be held against me.
Her final screams echoed in my ears during the day, and at night I relived all of it, as though it was happening again.
I could never free myself—never reach her in time, and yet I replayed those moments again and again, wondering if I could have done something different.
If I’d never asked her to set me up with her Dom friend I never would have taken the path that led to her death, but there was no way anyone could have foreseen what would happen. I’d understood the danger to myself, but in a sensible world Charity should have been safe.
But still, if it hadn’t been for me, she’d be alive.
Grayson would not show me the photos.
I guess I couldn’t blame him.
It was my fault, though, even if he insisted it was his.
Axl? He remained a conundrum. Another big word.
I’d had him pinned and sorted as a mean, ruthless man, and he was, except for when he wasn’t.
Liking the two of them should be a crime in and of itself. I had shed tears and suffered nightmares. Some nights I’d ended trembling in Grayson’s arms, or Axl’s, or both.
My biggest shock—that they hadn’t tried to take me until weeks had gone by. These two men showing so much restraint, it was as startling as an apocalypse happening and the delivery guy still turning up with pizza.
The helicopter landed and we exited.
Our ride chugged to a halt behind us.
Once more I was guided away from the landing area.
Even before Axl removed the blindfold, I knew where we were—at the mansion where the CNC party had happened.
The base of the stone front stairs stretched before me, leading up to the patio and the doors.
“Be good for us, Emme. Behave for once. This first thing I’m having done to you is not something I am asking.
From what Grayson has told me, you prefer it this way.
” Axl cradled my jaw in his hand as Grayson clipped a leash to my black leather collar with the silver studs.
“This may not be what either of you expect.” He glanced to Grayson.
“But it’s what I think we all need.” His hair wafted over his eye.
I resisted raising a hand to help sweep his unruly brown hair into place.
Behave was anathema to me, wasn’t it? It had been. I was testing the kinky waters with my toes again. I twisted my mouth, then I nodded.
“Let’s go!” He thrust his hand up like some warrior king. “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of hell? Sound right, Grayson?”
“Dogs of war,” he corrected. “Let slip the dogs of war.”
“Shakespeare?” I vaguely recalled the saying.
The leash in Grayson’s hand had become familiar and comforting. It said they wanted me, here, with them. On my knees and sucking cock, or whatever. Their bed had become mine. Grayson’s kitchen, mine. Everything tonight seemed almost normal kink.
I wasn’t into normal much, was I? I thought that through. Things had changed.
“Yes, Shakespeare,” Grayson said.
I eyed him, then Axl, who strode ahead of us, one step higher.
Yes, I was into this—being collared, leashed, obeying them when it suited me. There were all sorts of reasons. I’d been to the darkest of the dark side of humanity, and now I quite liked this, the medium-gray side of kink.
A thrill struck me whenever I contemplated the leash in either man’s hand.
“What dogs?” Axl’s quote seemed out of place.
“You,” he tossed over his shoulder.
“Emme, a dog of hell? Seems a bit of an exaggeration, Axl.”
“It suits her better than war? Dog…bitch? Okay. I admit it makes no sense. I just wanted to say it. We’re tattooing Satan in text, and a pair of horns on her ass tonight. The other cheek is your choice.”
We reached the patio where other guests trickled past us through the doorway.
So this was his idea.
“I like that.” Grayson laid a hand on my back, slipping it down to cup my ass. “Let me think…”
A tattoo was a permanent sign of ownership. I turned it over in my mind. Tattoos hurt, and being hurt to show they owned me, complying with that direction, it triggered my needs.
“Any ideas for his tattoo on you, Emme?” Axl asked as we passed through into the internal hallway. “Suggestions considered?”
Grayson nodded.
A cool breeze riffled my hair. Their eyes were on me, expectant and curious.
My stomach swam with a weird mix of confusion and joy. I swallowed. We would be coming here again, and Grayson’s symbol would be apt. “A dragon?”
“Yeah. A dragon on the other side to Satan. Both like playing with fire.” He studied my mouth, stroked beside it. “So do you.”
He encircled the front of my neck above the collar, squeezing there as he smiled. “You’re ours, aren’t you?”
Fuck. My toes curled at the press of his fingers. My mouth fell open as arousal soared into being. “Yes.”
Axl moved in closer. “What was that?”
“She likes being tattooed with ownership symbols. Likes being ours. I’d do a brand on her butt if it wouldn’t risk scarring her in the wrong way.”
“Hell, yeah.” Axl raked me with his gaze. “Damn you for giving me worse ideas. Tying her down while she gets branded with my name?” He sighed.
“As compensation for not branding her with fire, I suggest we sew her pussy together tonight, and make her beg for cock.”
Oh. Fucking. My. That was straying into hell no territory. Which kinda meant, hell yes, to me. I swayed, both horrified and enraptured by such dirty sadistic talk.
He chuckled. “Let’s find this tattoo artist. He’s here, Axl?”
“All arranged.”
The walk upstairs to a room where a tattoo artist sat on a stool seemed surreal.
“We could just make her sit still but wouldn’t that be sad?” Axl grinned. “If we hold her and tie her for you, is that okay?’
The tattoo guy, a balding, heavyset man with his own body covered in blue ink, nodded. He indicated the padded bench waiting for me.
They lifted me and manhandled me onto the bench, facedown, whipped a few leather straps over me at back and waist to hold me to the bench, then Axl and Grayson held down my legs.
Not that I was struggling much. It was fun to squeal a little but knocking over the artist’s equipment would end badly, for me. When I twisted and put a hand to the bench, he grabbed my wrists and bound them at my back.
“Fuck,” I said quietly, testing the firmness of his tie and loving it. “Is everyone here as kinky as shit?”
“Yuuup,” avowed the artist. “Quiet before I do something like tattoo your butthole.”
“Hmmm,” I heard Axl say.
“No!” Grayson chortled. “Or not this time.”
“Huh. I’m making a note, though.”
The session was almost calming after that. The sounds of him working, the pain, it all became a calming montage of things I loved—bondage, being fucked around with, sadism, and their mastery of me. I said owie a few times but mostly held it in. It wasn’t even as painful as I thought it would be.
“Done.” The artist pressed on my skin, cleaning the last area he’d tattooed. “Make sure you bring your little bitch back again.”
They agreed, and I was untied and helped down.
“Kneel for us, now.” That was Grayson. “We can’t do much tonight after this. No chases. Nothing too violent, I assume? No upside-down bondage while we do knife play?”
“Ohhh, there are many glorious things I can suggest.” Tattoo guy winked at me.