What Happens After Dark Read Online Free

Year’s, when Bree confessed about her father’s illness, his imminent death . Erin said she wasn’t a terrible person because she didn’t want to go, didn’t want to face it, didn’t want to see it. Erin thought it was a natural reaction for some people.
    And maybe it was. But Bree knew she was a terrible person for hearing her mother’s cries and refusing her.
    Don’t make me. Please don’t make me.
    She was thirty-five years old and praying to God as if she were a little child. God wasn’t going to save her. He wasn’t suddenly going to offer her another alternative. And in the end, she didn’t know how much longer she could live with herself if she didn’t go.
    “All right, Mom,” she finally said, “I’ll come. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.” Saturday. After she’d packed a few things and watered her plants. She couldn’t let her plants die.
    After the disconnecting click of the phone, Bree held the receiver to her chest, breathing, just breathing. She could do this. She could be strong. She could be like Erin.
    But if she had to do it, then she needed something to get her through. She didn’t usually ask for two nights in a row from him, but she needed him so badly.
    Rising from her desk, she closed her office door with a soft snick. Back in her chair, she hit his speed dial and when Luke answered, she whispered the magic words, “Do you want me tonight, Master?”

2
    HELL, YES, LUKE WANTED HER. HE WANTED TO REACH THROUGH the phone lines and touch her, lay claim to her. He sat in the spacious second-floor office of the Silicon Valley company for which he was CEO and dictated to her. “On my terms,” he said.
    “It’s always your terms, Master. I’ll do whatever you want.”
    He’d thought about what he wanted. He’d thought about what she needed. “You must be punished.”
    “Yes, Master.” Excitement lowered her voice to a breathy whisper.
    “You will not scream and you will not struggle, slut.” The kick start of heat and desire swelled in him.
    He could almost feel the quiver of her body as her voice shuddered across the airwaves. “No, Master, I won’t struggle.”
    He would make her beg for release. He would spank her, then he’d put his mouth to her and make her come. He would force the climax out of her.
    “What time shall I be there, Master?”
    “We’re not going to my house. We’re going to do this in yours.” He heard her sharp intake of breath and felt the pause like a black hole that had suddenly opened up in front of him. “Or we’re not doing it at all.”
    “Please don’t make me.” Her whisper had lost all the animation of her excitement.
    She might not want it, but she needed it. He needed it. “It’s time. There’s no other way. I’ll be there at eight.”
    “It has to be earlier,” she said quickly, ending abruptly as if suddenly realizing she was usurping his authority.
    Good. All the more time with her. “Then I will see you at seven.”
    “I don’t have a headboard or anything you can attach handcuffs to,” she told him.
    “We won’t need them. Because you’re going to accept everything without fighting me.”
    She hesitated, then finally said, “Yes, I’ll do everything.”
    Not Yes, Master . He wondered at the difference and whether it boded ill or good. Not that it mattered. He’d already decided the way things would be done.
    “You need to email me your address.” He didn’t know exactly where she lived. But now he would own that secret along with everything else.
    “Yes.” She said it so softly, he almost mistook it for her breath.
    He pondered a long moment after she hung up. Despite the dominance play between them, he gave her an extraordinary amount of control. He never called her; he always let her call him when she needed him. He never pressured, never pushed, always gave her freedom. That was the problem; he gave her too much freedom. It was time to take off the kid gloves. He would enter her home, he would punish