Free Saving Sara (Masters of the Castle) by Maren Smith

her in the confines of his apartment. And then…oh, and then that gorgeous little ass of hers would be all his.
    They were still six steps from the second floor landing when he suddenly noticed she was limping. He settled a hand on her hip, ignoring the way she jumped at first contact, and felt the knots of scarred muscle bunch and tighten under the bib of her tunic skirt. “Does your leg hurt?”
    She tried to brush his hand away. “I’m okay.”
    “Then why are you limping?” Annoyed, he caught her elbow and pulled her around far enough to grab the duffel bag out of her arms.
    “Stop.” This time, she caught his wrist when he tried to touch her, and the look that crawled across her face as she backed up to evade his reach did something that no submissive in the history of all his years at the Castle could lay equal claim to—it pissed him off. What the hell did she have to be embarrassed about? Did she think she was ugly or weak? Did she think he would take one look at that twist of scar tissue and suddenly, magically forget all the times in the last three years that he’d dreamed of having her walk back into his life again? As if he’d never stroked himself to sleep imagining how she had felt when he’d had her laughing, moaning, gasping, confident, sexy, undulating, sighing, pleading, begging, submitting self beneath him. What did she think, that he only saw her skin when he looked at her? That she wasn’t worth his time somehow?
    Who the hell did she think she was? Who did she think he was?
    Jackson stood opposite of her, two steps lower down, and glared, on the verge of the kind of colossal eruption no dominant worth his leathers would ever have surrendered to on a public staircase. He was a Master, in control of himself first and her second. And rather than lose his shit right there in the middle of a steady flow of ascending and descending Castle clientele, he chose to wait from one slow-bleeding second to the next, until she dragged those dream-haunting blue eyes back to him. And then he knocked that look right off her face.
    He didn’t slap her, not really. The backs of two fingers only just made contact with the curve of her cheek. It didn’t sting or pinken her skin. Hell, it barely made a sound and would have qualified better as a caress. Jackson just couldn’t bring himself to hit her any harder than that, not on the face. Some submissives craved that, but he wasn’t sure if Sara did. Some Doms enjoyed it, but he wasn’t one of them. It tasted too much like disrespect, especially when he was angry. And of all the things he felt for Sara right at this moment—anger most certainly included—disrespect wasn’t among them.
    Still, that one touch, soft as it was, startled her. Her eyes widened, her soft mouth fell open, but that look of unhappy embarrassment didn’t go far. It was still there, lurking right under the surface of her surprise, and not trusting himself to slap her again, Jackson did the next best thing. He ducked and hooked his arm across the backs of her knees and this time succeeded in knocking that look off her in the only other way he could think of.
    “No! Jackson!” She probably thought he was going to drop her headfirst down the stairs. He slung her over his shoulder instead, just another unwieldy piece of cumbersome baggage, and then picked up her bag. He continued on to the second floor while her soft hands fluttered across his back, wanting to grab onto something stable, but unsure of what and where.
    There was a third -floor wing above the nursery and schoolgirl dorm for employees, but the Masters had another, private section for their living arrangements and that’s where Jackson took Sara. The staircase was hidden behind a key-card protected doorway, located just off the main hall past the conference rooms and tucked around the corner in a short corridor just out of sight of the passing public. He set her bag down long enough to unlock the door, then propped it open