Free For His Taking (For His Pleasure, Book 2) (The Submission of Miss Masters, Domination, BDSM) by Kelly Favor

the window.
    It was clear that she’d been dismissed.

    ***
    Outside, it was cold for just a light dress. Also, it was dark, even though the road was still lit and there were beautiful floodlights in the expansive yard that gave everything an ethereal look.
    Nicole crossed her arms, shivering, and walked the grounds, trying to clear her head. She didn’t understand what was happening between them.
    Everything had been fine one minute, and the next his personality had drastically changed. She replayed the last hour or two in her head, rewinding certain scenes and going over the little interactions they’d had, to try and untangle the truth.
    The first strange moment had come when Red had taken that one phone call about Germany. For some reason, whatever transpired during that conversation had put him on edge—she’d immediately sensed it from his body language, his tone of voice.
    However, he’d snapped back to himself when they’d come home and he’d shown her the mansion. It was only when they’d started to get intimate that something had shifted in him. But why this time? She wondered, coming to the edge of the pond and staring out at the small family of ducks swimming nearby.
    In the semi-darkness she heard them paddling and quacking softly.
    Why did he act so differently this time than he had when they’d been intimate in the past?
    Nicole heard Danielle’s voice in her head, imagined her cynically laughing.
    You call having a few dates over the course of a month, a past? Are you seriously delusional?
    And then following quickly on the heels of that, her mother’s voice. Red’s personality hasn’t drastically changed, Nicole. You just didn’t know him well enough to realize how strange and cold he really is.
    Her stomach muscles clenched as she stood by the duck pond, the tears close to the surface now. She tried to fight them off. Relax, she told herself. So you had a weird moment. Red’s a powerful man with huge responsibility resting on his shoulders, and sometimes he gets stressed.
    But when she pictured him calling her a slut, and the way he’d given her those stinging lashes across her bare behind. It made Nicole question whether his feelings for her had changed, especially with how distant he’d become afterwards, as if disgusted by her mere presence.
    She kept hoping to feel Red’s hands on her shoulders, and then hear his voice, soothing her. I’m sorry , he’d say. I’m sorry I acted aloof and cool toward you. I love you so much. I’ll never be that way again.
    It never happened, though.
    After the wind picked up and Nicole started shivering, she walked slowly back inside the house.
    The place felt empty and lonely, much as Red had described it when telling her how it was before she came into his life. This wasn’t supposed to be how it was. Red was supposed to be telling her how happy she made him and they should have been lying together in bed or on the couch by the fire.
    Instead, Nicole wandered the halls of the first floor. There were other grand rooms that he hadn’t yet showed her. There was an entire gym—treadmills, elliptical, stationary bikes, free weights and Nautilus machines.
    He should charge me a membership to work out here. She smiled at this thought, but the smile died on her lips with the next. He still might—you never know with Red.
    After the gym, she saw a full racquetball court and then past that, a home theatre that rivaled most large movie theaters she’d been to recently. It had huge, comfy seats in rows—two levels of them, and a large screen with a projector at the back of the room.
    She wondered what Red watched here, all by himself.
    Nicole sat in one of the seats and curled up, feeling suddenly tired and homesick.
    Homesick for her parents’ simple home, for her college dorm room, even her apartment with Danielle in Brooklyn.
    Nicole drifted off to sleep, comfortable enough for the time being in the soft, warm theatre chair.

    ***
    She woke to the