Masters of the Shadowlands 7 - This is who I am Read Free

have something to keep the bed warm.” But no pet would solve her problems.
    “Well, maybe that guy you were dating last fall will want to heat up your sheets.”
    The thought made her skin crawl. “Not going to happen.”
    “Yeah, I’m not surprised. I felt like that too. Did you get counseling in California?”
    “Um-hmm. It helped.” At least at first. But now the ice encased her more each day, no matter what she did. Over the past few weeks, she’d tried journaling, talking. Screaming.
    Needing something to do with her hands, she pulled some grasses up, weaving them together in patterns she’d learned as a teen. Basketry had given her an escape from rigid, fanatical parents, given her a world she could control and a way to make beauty. Later, in college, she’d discovered running and how the throbbing of exhausted muscles could break through her stress and help her reconnect with her own feelings.
    She’d needed that help then. Occasionally since.
    Because I’m a masochist . What an ugly label, though, with its implication of perversion. Last fall, when she’d realized she needed something more in her life, she’d wanted to experiment. Why not? She was a widow. Her children grown. No real partner.
    But she should never have taken that first step, never have visited a downtown kink club to learn if her fantasies and needs had any basis in reality. They did; they did . She stared down at her hands, remembering the wonder of that discovery. Even as part of her was horrified that she’d actually asked to be flogged, she’d embraced the pain. Had flown with it, and for a brief period she’d felt…whole. Alive.
    Her throat tightened. Then she’d walked out of the club. Night air, so clean and salty, so quiet after the sounds of the club. In the parking lot, a low cry. Racing over. A woman, unconscious, being tossed into a van . Linda had run, screaming, and everything had gone black.
    She’d been kidnapped herself. Right into slavery, rape, and abuse.
    Now she wanted to feel whole again. To feel alive. She knew one way to accomplish that, but no matter how wonderful that brief experience of pain had been in the BDSM club, how could she let anyone hurt her again? She’d panic…wouldn’t she?
    Yet how could she go home like this? So different from who she really was, with as much emotion in her as a wooden post. Her children would be horrified. And Lee, the man she’d dated off and on? What would he think?
    Every day was growing worse. Recently, she had trouble even laughing. She couldn’t continue like this. With a shuddering breath, she rubbed her hands over her face. She knew what she had to do.
    That night at the slave auction, she’d been more closed off than now, yet Sam had blown her walls wide open, as if his cruel whip had cut fissures to relieve the pressure.
    Maybe if I…if I could get help one more time, then I’d be all right. Back home, with life returned to normal, I’d never need it again.
    She couldn’t allow herself to need it again. When she returned to Foggy Shores, she would need to go back to being normal. To pick up her life and habits and keep everything quiet. Sane.
    But she wasn’t home yet.
    If she could just find someone to…hurt her. Just one time. If she could endure it. Her stomach turned over as she thought of returning to the Tampa club, the one where she’d been kidnapped.
    She realized her hands had clenched into tight balls. Finger by finger, she opened them. Earlier, Kim had mentioned that she and Raoul belonged to a BDSM club. A private one.
    No one would know her there. And she wouldn’t be alone. If Kim was there—and Raoul—maybe she’d feel secure enough to…do something.
    Slowly she turned to face Kim. To meet her compassionate eyes. To force out the request. “Would you and Raoul take me to the Shadowlands?”

Chapter Two
    Flanked by Raoul and Kim, Linda walked into the exclusive BDSM club known as the Shadowlands. Light from wrought-iron sconces