One breath at a time, p.1
One Breath at a Time, page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Copyright
About the Book
‘Soon I was kissing him back, all thoughts of protest forgotten. The sweep of Tom’s tongue against mine was maddening. I slid my hands up his arms, memorizing every muscle. His hand tightened in my hair and I wondered what it would feel like to hold onto his shoulders while his hand was sliding all over my body . . .
Kelley is a woman with a broken heart. She doesn’t need another complication in her life, and certainly not another man. But when she stumbles across Tom, the things she thought she didn’t want are exactly what she needs. As they fall for each other and engage on a compelling journey through dominance and submission, both lovers strive to shake away their dark pasts. But is blinding passion enough to prevent them being ripped apart?
About the Author
Gwen Master’s work has been published in numerous anthologies, magazines and online venues. Her novels have met with wide critical acclaim. She lives near Nashville with her husband and two children.
One Breath at a Time
Tom turned sideways in the seat and kissed me. His mouth was warm and he smelled like sweat and leaves and gun oil. I remembered our first kiss. The memory would always be marked with that peculiar smell of oil on steel. How hesitant I was then, how uncertain – and what a difference a few days could make.
I kissed Tom hard, holding him by the hair to keep him from moving so I could delve deeper. He moaned low in his throat. Already I knew the difference in his reactions, and I knew what he wanted. If I decided to take this any farther, I would be the one in charge.
‘Is this why you brought me out here?’ I murmured against his lips.
‘That’s part of it,’ he admitted.
‘You’re insatiable.’
One Breath at a Time
Gwen Masters
1
The old gate clanged against the post as I climbed into the truck and dropped it into drive. Gravel crunched under the wheels and dust rose up around my tailgate. This was an old utility road, one the government first forgot and then sold for more than it was worth. A casual driver on a lazy weekend afternoon would never believe that at the end of this dirt and gravel road sat a grand three-storey house looking out over the Tennessee River.
I took in a deep breath of dust as I closed the gate. A coughing fit ensued. I leaned over the tailgate and looked up at the trees as the dust settled around me. The leaves were almost full, growing into another spring. How could I have possibly missed that?
The answer was crystal clear, like a little voice in my consciousness keeping me up-to-date on my love life: perhaps because you’ve been heartbroken for the last six months. The man needs you and sometimes he wants you, but he damn sure doesn’t love you. What was that old song? Two out of three ain’t bad, baby.
I got into the truck and slammed the door behind me. I rolled up the window and gunned the engine, hit the gas hard, and tore down the driveway before the dust caught up with me. I didn’t want to breathe that shit in, and I damn sure didn’t want to think.
The extra set of keys jangled on the seat. My friend Ronnie was out of town for a family emergency and I was checking on the house for him. When I got to the end of the quarter-mile road, I came to a stop in the wide driveway and looked up at the mansion. Covered in fine cedar siding, the house tried desperately to look like a rustic cabin, but the sheer size of it belied the wealth of the man who had built it to his every specification. From the wide hardwood floors to the intricate ceiling fans and carefully chosen furniture, it was a home built for comfort and style.
I made my way around the wide porch, pausing once to move a pot of flowers closer to the protective railing – storms were forecast and that pot would tip over with the first strong wind. The dogs romped onto the porch, happy to see me and eager to be fed. I tried my key in the lock of the front door while I batted a Labrador away with my other hand.
The door swung open – it was already unlocked.
Unlocked?
A creepy feeling of fear and unease struck me. I swung around to look back at the driveway. My truck was the only vehicle there. The garage was closed up tight. Both bays were empty. Nothing seemed out of place.
I pushed the door open wider and let the dogs scramble into the house. I watched them as they made themselves at home. There was no sense of danger in their intelligent eyes. They were comfortable. No one here but us, their wagging tails said.
Satisfied, I made my way through the house. The floors were a mellow pine, covered haphazardly with rugs in every color imaginable. The kitchen was modern, filled with stainless steel appliances and slate countertops. I walked through it to the utility room, where the dog food waited in old-fashioned liquor barrels.
The dogs pranced happily at my feet. I set down bowls for each of them and then put more in the corner of the back porch, under the protective eaves. No matter how much it rained, they would have dry food for the evening if they chose to venture out of their backyard houses.
I listened to their low growls of satisfaction as I prowled through the house. I studied each window and each door, making certain everything was locked. The house was neat and clean, but in the bedroom the covers had been thrown to the floor, and the pillows were everywhere. I pushed one aside with my foot and smiled. Somebody had had plenty of fun before they left the house.
I pulled the covers back up and threw pillows on the center of the bed. I looked out the wide picture window at the blue water below. Boats kicked up wakes and, in those wakes, men and women rode on skis. Kids splashed near the shore. Gulls flew every which way, hoping for fish churned up to the surface by the boats.
Looking at the water made me think of Michael, and the pain took my breath away.
I sank down on the edge of the bed. The mountains of Tennessee seemed to be light years away, not just a few hours. If there were only miles between us, I’d be there in a day’s drive – but there was more than that. There was her.
I tried to shake the images in my head, the ones that haunted me every night since he had said he wanted to sleep with her instead of me. Her, the woman who came before me, and the woman he might be seeing again now, for all I knew. He had told me so many things during those long nights while we made love until the sun came up, and soon I learned that the fantasies he weaved with his words weren’t fantasies at all, but memories.
There was one image that never left my mind, no matter how much time had passed. The image of her tied to that weight bench he loved so much, the sordid things he described to me long before I knew it wasn’t a fantasy at all. It was a memory that he held so sacred he let it taint everything about our relationship.
I could hear the voice of the man I loved so much, saying things I couldn’t stand to hear: ‘I fucked her so hard I moved the weight bench across the floor . . .’
Suddenly angry as hell, I kicked a pillow across the room. It bounced off the wall and lay innocently, alone on the carpet. Just as alone as I felt.
One of the dogs came up the stairs and sniffed at the pillow. I stared out the window and thought of other things, anything at all, until the images started to fade. I watched a man on a jet ski. I watched a boy on an inner tube. I watched the gulls pick up fish and then fight over them. I watched a Coast Guard cruiser make its way into the channel. By the time it was out of sight, my tears were gone – this time.
I went down the stairs. The dogs already wanted to go back outside, so I opened the back door and let them go. As I turned to leave, I noticed the basement door was ajar.
I pulled the keys out of my pocket and looked them over, then looked back at the door. The basement housed what was lovingly called the Jungle Room. Filled with mounted animals, pictures of safaris and guns big enough to bring down elephants, the room was definitely a man’s domain, not the kind of place children or most women would go. The walls were lined with gun cabinets filled with every kind of weaponry imaginable, and I knew better than to ask if all of them came with proper permits.
That door was kept double-locked, for good reasons of both safety and security.
And now the door was open.
That creepy feeling hit me again; it was the same mixture of fear and anticipation that had assaulted me at the front door. This time I couldn’t write that open door off as an accident. This time two happy dogs wouldn’t be able to sway me into thinking everything was OK.
I was not alone in the house.
And whoever was there with me was much closer to the guns.
I stepped back into the shadows. The back door was right there, a quick escape route. But the whole backyard was visible from the wide windows of the Jungle Room, and someone with a mind to shoot would be able to pick me off without much effort. There was the phone, there on the kitchen counter. The front door was still open, and I could make a run for that.
So why was I still here?
There was no way I was going to be shot in the back while r etreating. Something in me was determined that would not happen. Perhaps it was the image of Michael that came back to me, the way he had blindsided me on the day he said he would fuck that woman again. Perhaps it was the shock of knowing he had loved her all along.
I would not be blindsided like that again.
There were eight high steps between me and the basement door. I descended them one at a time, careful to keep my feet on the edges and avoid the squeaky centers. The insanity of what I was doing was screaming at me to run. One part of me wanted to listen to reason. And another part of me just didn’t give a damn.
I reached out and pushed the door. It swung open silently on oiled hinges. Sunlight flooded the little space at the bottom of the stairs. It glinted from the metal and steel in the cases, from the leaded glass in the cases themselves. It was almost blinding, and I raised my hand to shield my eyes.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ a deep voice growled. He was there in the corner, standing by an open cabinet, reaching for a rifle with one hand and raising a pistol with the other. The business end was pointed directly at my heart.
I stared at the gun. The realization of what I had done slammed into me, along with a startling kind of peace. This man was going to shoot me. What frightened me was my lack of fear.
This man was going to shoot me, and I wasn’t sure that I cared.
I slowly held out my hand and opened my fingers. The house keys tinkled in my palm. I held them up as if holding an apple up to a skittish horse. I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out. All I could do was stare at the pistol and listen to the shocking mantra in my head.
I don’t care. I don’t care.
He slowly lowered the gun. The shot he hadn’t fired seemed to echo through the house. We both listened to the roll of it in the silence. My eyes left the gun and traveled up a tall body, to a shadowed jaw and wary brown eyes almost hidden under an old battered baseball cap. He moved towards me and swept the keys from my hand. I watched him as he looked at them, then looked back up at me, his eyes still filled with shock.
‘You didn’t flinch,’ he finally said.
We both looked down at the gun in his hand. He knelt and slowly slid it across the polished surface of the long low coffee table. It came to rest beside a mounted quail. His hand shook as he moved it away from the pistol. He stood up to face me.
‘You didn’t flinch,’ he repeated.
‘What good would it have done?’ I asked him. His brown eyes were assessing every word and every expression, as though he could see right through me.
‘None,’ he said softly. ‘I’m a damn good shot.’
The arrogance of the statement and the wry smile that accompanied it broke the dam inside me, but, instead of tears, what came out was a peal of laughter. I sank to the floor and buried my face in my hands, laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.
Soon the man was sitting in the chair closest to me, laughing as hard as I was. The nervous tension in the room was disappearing. By the time we were both done, the dogs had come in through the open front door to inspect the cause of the noise. I wiped tears from my eyes and looked up at the man who had almost shot me.
He was a bit older than me, but not by much. He had the shoulders and build of a well-muscled athlete. His brown eyes were no longer wary. He had removed the cap and his deep-brown hair fell across his forehead, far too long and unkempt. His face could use a shave. But his smile was friendly and open, and I wondered how he ever could have pointed a gun at me.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘House sitting. I was supposed to come here every day and check on the dogs. Just keep an eye on the place. What’s your story?’
‘That is my gun,’ he said, pointing to a rifle he had pulled from the open case. ‘And that pistol is mine, too. Ronnie and me, we go hunting all the time. I have the same set of keys you do.’
‘I didn’t see a vehicle?’
‘I rode the four-wheeler. It’s out in the back by the patio. I live a quarter-mile down the river.’
We looked at each other, unsure of what to say. He went back to the thing that was still occupying his mind. ‘You didn’t flinch when I held the gun on you.’
‘I am utterly without fear,’ I said.
He eyed me suspiciously, unsure whether to take me seriously or laugh out loud. I took a deep breath.
‘I’m hurting over someone,’ I clarified. ‘Let’s just say a bullet to the heart might be easier.’
The man looked directly at me. ‘You would rather be shot than lose him?’ he asked. It was a direct question, blunt and to the point.
‘No,’ I said automatically, then considered my answer. ‘Maybe a few months ago, I would rather have died than be without him. But maybe not today.’
He smiled, and his whole face again had that open gentle look. ‘Of course you don’t want to die today – we already dodged that bullet, so to speak. Besides, how could you possibly die before you get to know me?’
I laughed. ‘First you try to shoot me. Are you hitting on me now?’
‘Depends. Is it working?’
I shook my head, still amazed at the audacity of this man and the circumstances under which we had met. ‘To be honest, I’m not over my ex. Hitting on me might be a lost cause.’
‘Tell me about him.’
I rose to my feet. The man stood up at the same time. He was a good five inches taller than me and much broader than I had first thought. He could have been a very intimidating man, but his attitude was more gentle teddy bear.
‘Don’t you have some place to be? The telling could take a very long time,’ I pointed out.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘A long time with you sounds very good.’
I laughed again, and slowly realized I hadn’t laughed so much in months. Nervous tension, I reminded myself. Nervous tension does that. And being scared to death does that, too.
‘What is your name?’ I said.
‘Tom.’
‘Can I call you Tommy?’
‘No.’
‘OK. I’m Kelley.’
He smiled. He had one dimple in his cheek, which made him look suddenly years younger than he was. ‘You were going to tell me about your ex, so we could get that out of the way. Then you were going to tell me about you. Remember?’
I looked out the window, deciding. The dogs nosed around our feet. The sun still glared from the line of gun cabinets, but my eyes were accustomed to it now. Through the window I could see the sailboats moving like toys across the bay. The gun on the coffee table seemed to wink back at me as I looked at it.
‘I wonder if Ronnie has any beer in the fridge,’ I mused.
‘Let’s find out.’
Sure enough, there were beers in the fridge. We each popped one and sat down at the kitchen table. The dogs romped outside, happy again now that everything seemed to be under control. Tom draped his jacket over the back of his chair. His arms were lined with muscles, bulging under his T-shirt. His chest was like a barrel. It was the body of a man who loved the gym.
The horrible thoughts about Michael’s weight bench and the things he did on it popped into my head again, taking me completely by surprise.
Tom saw me looking at his arms. ‘I probably work out too much,’ he said, almost in apology.
‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘You don’t look like you believe that at all.’
Meeting his eyes was a struggle. I was sure he could see the pain in mine. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘So you said. And I have a long time.’
‘It’s baggage,’ I said. ‘Why do you want to hear all that?’
Tom took a long sip of his beer. ‘What is the first thing you do when you go on a long journey? You pack, right? What’s the first thing you do when you get to where you are going?’
‘You unpack.’
‘That’s right. You unpack, so you can enjoy your time there, however long that might be.’
I had to smile. ‘Well, that’s the most positive spin on baggage I’ve ever heard.’
‘Consider this unpacking,’ he said. ‘That’s what happens before you get to the good stuff.’
I started talking. Tom rose a while later to get more beers from the fridge, but told me not to stop. I told him about Michael and how we broke up, and the reasons why. I told him about the nightmares and the visions in my head. When I explained the dreams about the weight bench, Tom glanced down at his arms and gave me an apologetic smile.
