Chapter 5: Don’t Break the Toys

Saturday, September 7th, 8:03 am

“You’re awake.”

I pressed my fingers to my eyes and massaged them through my eyelids. “I don’t wanna be.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” came the response.

It took a moment for my vision to clear once I pulled my fingers away from my eyes and opened them back up so I could look at the woman lying next to me. “It’s okay. I’m happy to be here.”

I’d received a knock on the door in the early morning hours. It turned out to be Chloe telling me someone was crying in Emily and Natashya’s room. I extracted myself from Erin’s arms and left my naked assistant sleeping peacefully as I left my room to go see what was going on. It turned out to be another bout of night terrors that left my sister’s girlfriend unable to sleep. She was sobbing quietly in Emily’s arms when I slipped into the room. Even in the dark, I could see Emily’s large eyes looking up at me pitifully as Natashya clung to her. I’d spent the next hour and a half hugging on the poor girl until she finally fell asleep between us, with me falling asleep not long after her.

Now that I was awake, it was just Emily. Natashya was nowhere to be seen.

Lying in bed with Emily wasn’t that strange. She was a morning person, and I wasn’t, so I’d often wake up to see her lying in my bed, reading a book and waiting for me to wake up when we were younger. When she returned from her stint in Los Angeles and rehab, I was the one lying in her bed until she woke up, often with cold donuts or bagels and a smile to remind her that she wasn’t alone. Waking to see her lying in bed a few feet from me wasn’t abnormal at all ... in fact, there was something comforting in it.

So why the hell did it feel weird?

“Where’s Natashya?” I asked as I looked at the empty spot between us.

“She’s in the shower,” Emily said, folding her arms over her pillow and laying her head back down on them. Her hair was a tangled mess of brown layered through with subtle highlights of lighter shades that obfuscated most of the pillow and mattress under her and contrasted beautifully with her creamy complexion. Her eyes were tired, but as she looked at me, I could see the gratitude and joy in them. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do much,” I said around a yawn, covering my mouth to avoid my morning breath from assaulting her senses. “I just hugged her and made sure she knew we were here for her.”

“It’s different coming from you. She responds better.” A shadow passed over her face briefly—gone before I even registered it was there, but I knew my sister well enough to know what it meant.

“I doubt it,” I said, trying to settle Emily’s unease. “I mean, even if it—”

Emily shook her head. “It’s because you both went through the Vegas thing together. I think she feels some kind of connection with you because of it.”

I fell silent while digesting this new bit of information. “I didn’t know that.”

“She’s been keeping her distance,” Emily said. “To spare my feelings. I can tell she doesn’t want to, though. She might even want to open up to you about it. I don’t know. All I know is that she won’t talk to me about it. I don’t even really know what happened to her.”

“Em, you know what happened to her,” I said, casting Emily a disbelieving look.

“Yeah,” my sister said. “I just wish she would tell me ... or I wish there was something more I could do for her.”

“Maybe we should send her back to the States for therapy,” I suggested.

Emily shook her head. “No ... I suggested it, but she won’t let me even finish the sentence. She says traveling like this is a rare opportunity, and we can’t let it go to waste.”

“I can literally send you guys wherever you want, whenever you want,” I pointed out.

“I know,” Emily said, casting her eyes down. We lay in silence for a moment, and then she looked back up at me. “Do you ever feel like I stole Natashya from you?”

My brows knitted as I wondered where the hell that question had come from. Of course, Natashya and I had a connection early on in my career as a wealthy man, but it was clear that she and my sister were good for each other, so I backed off to give them a chance to grow their relationship. Even though they’d come with me on this European excursion, I hadn’t spent much time around them with the intent of giving them space to work on their relationship. Even though everything seemed okay, something felt a little off between the three of us.

“She was never mine for you to steal,” I said. “Natashya can make up her own mind on who she wants, Em.”

“She gave up a lot for me,” Emily said.

“She realized you were worth settling down for,” I corrected. “You took care of her after Vegas. I can tell how much you care for each other.”

One corner of Emily’s mouth twitched, tightening against her cheek. It was a blatant tell that she was going to start crying soon. “I’m just afraid you guys resent me for asking her to be exclusive and that I’m driving a wedge between the two of you when you could actually really help her heal.”

“Hey!” I said, scooting across the mattress to wrap an arm around her. I pulled my sister close to me and hugged her tight. She didn’t resist and buried her face in my shoulder as she wrapped an arm around me. I kissed the top of her head, inhaling her strong morning scent as I held her close. “You’re not. I’ve been keeping my distance from you guys out of respect for your relationship.”

Emily pulled her face out of my shoulder and looked up at me, and I could see the slight irritation around her eyelids from where she was fighting tears. Her eyes were overly bright pools of startling gray as she met my gaze. “You wouldn’t have distanced yourself from her if it wasn’t for me, though.”

“Yeah, but this is the situation we’re in, and because I love you so much, I’ll keep doing whatever you need me to do.”

She compressed her lips and swallowed hard. “Maybe ... maybe you can talk to her? Get her to open up a little?”

“If you’d like,” I said.

“Just ... maybe do it over dinner or something ... around other people. She told me about Amsterdam, and I know how she can be ... I just don’t want to give her more temptation than she can bear ... especially while she’s so vulnerable.” She chuckled and blinked away the potential tears. “She already confessed that she misses dick, and I think if I gave her permission, she’d be on you pretty quickly.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information. It was strange to have this kind of conversation about my sister’s girlfriend as we held onto each other like this.

Emily sighed, her eyes wandering over my face, and then quirked a corner of her mouth up at me. Her tongue darted across her full lips, and she said, “I guess I can’t blame her. Being with a girl has been remarkable, but there are some things women can’t do for you ... you know?”

I stared back at her, suddenly feeling even more weird about the situation. It wasn’t so much the frankness of our conversation alone—we’d discussed sex openly in the past. It was all the other things happening in the moment. How close we were to each other ... the way she was looking up at me with her big blue-gray eyes, looking all vulnerable. I suddenly became very aware of her formidable chest pressed against mine and the fact that I had a rapidly-growing erection.

We stared at each other for a few moments in silence, and I was acutely aware of just how close our faces were to each other. I remembered the morning I’d walked in on her completely nude; the image of her slender form hunched over Natashya ... those large, milky-white tits on her chest...

Fuck. Did I want to kiss Emily?

The bedroom door opened, and we both jumped like we’d been hit by a cattle prod. A foot of mattress magically apparated between the two of us.

Bobbi opened the door just enough to slip through, and I immediately did a double take. Her hair fell over one side of her face, hiding a prominent darkening splotch on her cheek below her eye. She was nursing a split lip as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it. A cream-colored silk shift draped off her body, with a matching shawl falling over her shoulders. It hugged her perfectly while concealing most of her from my eyes.

“What the fuck?” I asked, sitting up and twisting so my feet hit the floor. I stood up. “What happened?”

Bobbi didn’t speak. She simply stood there against the door, watching me, and I saw a complete lack of hatred or rebellion in her eyes. For the first time, I saw ... relief?

“What happened?” I repeated, taking a couple of steps toward her. I heard movement and saw my sister slip out of the other side of the bed. She was fixing the sleep shirt she’d been wearing and let out a gasp as she took in my submissive’s injuries.

“Bobbi!” I snapped, using her real name for the first time in over a month. She jumped slightly at the tone in my voice—or possibly hearing her name come from my lips. It might have sounded like a parent using a child’s middle name. That’s when you knew you were in trouble.

“Marcus!” Emily chided me.

I ignored my sister. “Come here,” I ordered, my words hard as iron.

She obeyed and left the door, slowly approaching me. As soon as she got within arm’s length, I took her by one shoulder and pulled her closer, brushing her hair away from the left side of her face. The bruise on her cheek looked pretty fresh but was already darkening; my thumb grazed it, and my submissive winced at my touch with a pained expression.

“What happened?” I asked for a third time.

When she cut her eyes up at me this time, I saw a flash of disgust in them as if my even asking the question was a disappointment to her. You should already know what happened, her gaze told me. That disgust would have normally enraged me, but now it reassured me that the woman I’d taken all those weeks ago was still there. Her spirit remained intact.

“What happened?” Emily insisted, coming to a halt a couple feet behind Bobbi.

“I ... loaned Bobbi to Astrid last night,” I admitted to my sister, bracing myself for the onslaught I would likely receive. As I spoke, I slid the shawl off Bobbi’s shoulders; it fell away and took the entire thing with it, puddling around my submissive’s feet and exposing her arms. Angry raised lines crossed each other up and down Bobbi’s arms, marring her perfect complexion.

Emily gasped as she stared at Bobbi’s back and said, “Oh my god...”

I pulled Bobbi toward me, allowing me to look over her shoulder to see similar welts crossing at random points on her upper back and shoulders. A few of them looked like they’d bled a little.

“Hey,” I said, pulling back to look down at my submissive. “Who did this to you?”

As if I didn’t already know the answer.

Eyes narrowed to slits, Bobbi looked up at me and said, “Who do you think?”

At that moment, the door to the adjoining bathroom opened, and Natashya walked out, wearing a towel around her midsection. Her hair looked relatively dry as it hung loose around her shoulders. She was starting to say something cheeky, based on the smile she wore, but it faded as quickly as the words on her tongue as she took in the sight of Bobbi’s abuse. She said something in a language I didn’t understand, but it sounded like a curse.

“You... ‘loaned’ her out?” Emily asked.

Yeah ... this was going to be bad.

“Hey,” I said, looking back at Bobbi. I gently grasped her shoulders in my hands, careful to avoid touching any marks on her skin. “Are you okay?”

“Does she look okay!?” Emily said, her temper clearly rising.

“Yes,” Bobbi said so quietly that I might have missed it had I not looked directly at her. “Sir,” she added near the end. I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

“Marcus! Look at her!” Emily continued. “She needs a doctor!”

Still ignoring my sister, I kept my eyes on Bobbi, trying to discern what the hell she was thinking. I placed my fingers on her chin and tilted her head up to look at me, and she met my gaze ... that moment of disgust was gone, but the defiance remained. I didn’t feel like it was directed at me. It was more like she was letting me know that she still wasn’t broken.

“How could you do this!?” Emily asked.

“Shut the fuck up, Emily!” I hadn’t said the words. Bobbi had. She’d wrenched her chin free of my grasp to look directly at the closest thing she probably had to a friend and spat the words with as much venom as anything I’d ever heard from her. I was dumbstruck.

Emily was dumbstruck.

“Hah!” Natashya bellowed and immediately slapped a hand over her mouth. She was brash and unapologetic, but she wasn’t stupid. This obviously wasn’t the place for whatever off-color joke she was about to make.

I sighed, grabbed my socks and shoes from beside the bed, and began slipping them on. “I’ll be back,” I growled.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Emily called out as I headed toward the door.

“To have a talk with Astrid!” I called out just before disappearing through the door.

The sauna was easy enough to find—a building sitting on the edge of the fjord near their house. It was a large structure that hung off the shore and was supported by pilings that peaked just above the water’s surface. As I walked across the yard toward it, I couldn’t help but notice once again how green and rich everything looked. Too bad I was so upset that I couldn’t properly appreciate my first morning in Norway.

Reaching the building, I opened the door and walked in. It was well furnished with walls lined in light wood paneling. Comfortable tapestries and carpets hung on the walls and across the floor, and a television was playing. Astrid’s bodyguard was sitting on the brown leather couch in the middle of the room, watching a soccer match. He looked over his shoulder as I walked in and immediately returned to his game without giving me a second glance.

“Astrid in here?” I asked.

The bodyguard pointed toward a door to my right without looking back at me, and I followed his directions. Through the door was a short hallway ending with another door. A small stained-glass window was worked into the door, which looked dimly lit on the other side. I made my way towards it.

Entering, I was immediately assaulted by a wall of damp heat that rolled over me, threatening to suffocate me immediately. That wasn’t the only hot thing that assaulted my senses, though.

Astrid sat on a bench along one wall, once again wearing almost nothing. She was perched with one knee raised and her hands clasped on it. Her white-blonde hair was a shade darker and plastered to her scalp.

She wasn’t alone.

Equally as nude and even more beautiful than the heiress was my personal trainer. Tara was sitting on another bench with both feet on the floor. Her arms were stretched across the bench behind her, tightening her firm tits across her chest and showing off her sleek musculature. Her hair was much darker and also hung limply over one shoulder.

Like Astrid, Tara didn’t seem too bothered by my entrance and didn’t move to cover herself, and I got my first look at her entire nude body. Her golden tan was even across her entire body, meaning it was either natural or she tanned in the nude. Her areola were only a few shades darker than her skin—a light brown slightly larger than a quarter that surrounded a couple of small nipples that stood out only a fraction of an inch. As I suspected, every goddamn inch of that woman was perfectly in place and tight. It just wasn’t fucking fair that she was only interested in women.

I glanced back and forth between them and asked, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” Astrid said, looking me up and down. “I ran into Miss Gellar on my way to the sauna and invited her to join me.”

“Got a run in this mornin’,” Tara said. “Everything alright?”

“Tara, I hate to do this,” I said, “But could you give Astrid and me a few minutes to ourselves?”

Tara regarded both of us with her dark blue eyes for a long moment and then shrugged. “No problem. ‘Bout time for a shower anyway. Think I’ll head up to my room and take one. You gonna have time for a workout before you fly out for your meeting?”

“No,” I said, focusing mainly on Astrid so I didn’t have to lament not having access to one of the hottest women I’d ever met.

“Right, then,” Tara said with a nod. “Astrid. Good talking to ya.”

Astrid gave her a smile and a slow nod as if she were a teacher granting a student permission to go to the bathroom. It struck me as odd because Astrid seemed so down to earth when we first met.

As soon as Tara closed the door, I asked, “What happened?”

The Norwegian beauty adjusted her posture, making a show of crossing her legs in front of her. Her entire body was on full display despite the slight haze of steam in the air. “What do you mean?”

“Bobbi. She came back to my room looking pretty messed up. What happened?”

“Your kitten?” Astrid asked. “I just played with her last night just as you said I could.”

I balked. “You were the only one?”

It was her turn to look at me a little confusedly. “Of course. I wouldn’t let someone touch her without clearing it with you first.”

The idea that Astrid could have done all that to her was surprising despite having seen Helen manhandle Bobbi for weeks. I just hadn’t something like this from the woman I met in the board room. “You beat the shit out of her.”

“You didn’t set any limits when you loaned her to me,” Astrid said, sounding almost as if she didn’t understand why I’d crashed her sauna time.

“I didn’t think I needed to,” I pressed.

“I’m confused. What seems to be the issue? Was it that I marked her up without your consent? I assure you ... this isn’t my first time. I’ve left nothing permanent.”

“That’s not the point!” I protested.

“Then what is?”

I ... wasn’t sure how to answer that. Helen and I had definitely put Bobbi through her paces. We’d spanked her, deprived her of pleasure, done breath play, coaxed her into lesbian sex, had her pubic hair removed, and I’d just recently informed her I’d take her off birth control. Granted, I’d tried to make her leave, and she’d attempted homicide over it, but it wasn’t like we’d asked her if she enjoyed the way we treated her. Still, this felt ... wrong.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, deciding that I couldn’t quite answer her question.

Instead of answering my question, she raised her legs and pulled her knees into her chest as she studied me as if I were some great mystery that needed to be resolved.

“Because I can?” she finally said.

“Because you can,” I repeated, unsure what to do with that.

“I’m not particularly fond of women,” Astrid said with a shrug, but I don’t have a submissive quite like Bobbi, so I thought I’d use her to work out some aggression some of my other partners aren’t as capable of dealing with.”

“Aggression?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard of angry sex?”

“Oh,” Astrid said, standing up, “We did that too.”

Despite my anger toward the woman in front of me, the image of Astrid completely dominating and railing the shit out of Bobbi was appealing, and I could feel my cock stirring in my jeans. Jeans, I might add, which were growing damp in that room. I could already feel my shirt begin to cling to me. My hair was sticking to my scalp and forehead, and beads of sweat were already starting to gather. Some were already starting their slow descent down the side of my face and neck.

“I don’t understand,” Astrid said. “You said she was yours. You said she owned her. If it isn’t about marking her up, then why do you care?”

“Because,” I said. “There are lines.”

“You own a person,” Astrid said dryly as she took a single step toward me, closing the distance between us. “You don’t think you already crossed some pretty significant lines?”

“I broke it down to you,” I shot back. Despite being angry with her, I couldn’t help but glance down at her body. Her runner’s build was inviting, and despite having several inches on Erin, she was about as thin as her. I could have easily tossed her around the room. “She wanted to give herself to me.”

“I call bullshit.” Astrid smiled and said, “Even if she did, that wouldn’t excuse the first part of your relationship.”

“You don’t—”

“Darling, shhh,” the Norse beauty said, pressing an index finger to my lips to silence me. She slid the digit down, dragging my bottom lip along with it. Then she stopped when the tip of her finger hung onto my bottom lip and gently moved it back and forth, tracing it before slipping it past my teeth and into my mouth. I reflexively ran my tongue up the length of her slender finger.

“I told you before ... the world is your oyster. It’s your playground. You don’t have to trouble yourself with things like this. You’ll just make yourself sad or indecisive, and we can’t have that, can we?”