Read Unrestrained for Free Online Page A

more vulnerable than if he stripped her on Club Release’s public floor and flogged her.
    That image ran a new shiver up her spine. It wasn’t so much what he’d done to Willow that titillated her. It was
how
he did it. He made all of the trappings—whip, cane, restraints, frame—seem unnecessary, as if he could have held Willow in place with a look alone, taken her to that state of mindless submission by the sheer force of his will.
    She’d commanded Roy, tied him up, punished him, but she was always Athena, his wife, role-playing a Mistress to him. At least that was how it felt to her. Roy could get deep into it, but she didn’t think he’d ever completely lost himself the way Willow had lost herself to Dale.
    Could she have given that to Roy if she’d done something differently? Had she ever noticed him looking longingly at other scenarios, where things became more intense, where the Dommes were more fully in control? Where it was more natural to them?
    Don’t do this to yourself, Athena. He loved you and you loved him.
    She touched the worn cloth of the dark blue T-shirt, and a memory surfaced. Dale’s capable hands moving over her, removing the trim suit blazer she’d worn, the shell blouse, the bra beneath. Had his hands lingered, caressed her breasts, slid down her body, learning what he was going to claim? As she became more awake, her memory was fine-tuning, and that wasn’t part of it, so the vision was apparently her fantasy addition to the scene. A good thing, too, since the line between that particular fantasy and its reality would be a clear demarcation between Good Samaritan and creepy predator.
    She pressed her bare feet into the braided rug. While she waited for the world to stop spinning, she took the aspirin. She needed to go into the bathroom, clean up, put on her clothes—her armor—and go thank her host properly, then head for home. The Garden Club meeting was pretty much out of the question at this point, unfortunately, but she needed to make Junior League in the late afternoon. She was expected to present plans on their spring festival. Their goal was to raise fifty thousand for the local women’s shelter, and she intended to surpass that by at least a fifteen percent margin.
    Going into the bathroom, she took care of the necessities, and was pleasantly surprised by her face. She had a small scrape on one cheek from the concrete, and a red mark on the other one from being hit, but it wasn’t as swollen and blotchy as she’d feared. Probably because of the ice pack.
    It was amazing how the mind could do that, bring back hidden images like a dealer randomly tossing cards down on a green felt table. Now she remembered Dale holding the pack against her cheek, cupping the other side of her face. She’d rested the weight of her head in his hand, as trusting as an infant. He’d murmured to her in his deep voice, soothing as a lullaby.
    She abandoned the idea of putting on the clothes. Instead, she wandered out of the room in the T-shirt. His living quarters were apparently the second level of the junkyard office, an efficiency apartment with a small kitchen and living area with TV. When she saw a neatly folded blanket and pillow at the end of the couch, she realized she’d taken his bed. For a man his size, the couch looked none too comfortable, and mortification spiked again. She owed him breakfast, at the very least.
    Looking out the kitchen window, she saw an ocean of discarded cars and scrap metal covering several acres. Though it should have been an eyesore, the view possessed a creative energy. The cars’ interesting shapes and colors hinted at the stories they could tell, the journeys they’d taken. Dale’s presence only added to the interest factor.
    He was standing in the gravel yard in front of the office, probably a staging area for customers bringing in cars or metal to sell. He was surrounded by over a dozen dogs of various breeds and sizes, from a trio of Jack Russell