She bit her lip, smoothing down the grass she’d been pulling at. “He reminds me a lot of you, only he’s about 99% less kinky. Maybe 100%. But he’s still a great guy. You would have liked him if you met him. I wish you could have met him.” Her throat tightened as she sat up to look at his name, and those horrible dates. That heart underneath that represented such love but still made her so sad. “I wish I could have shared all this with you while you were alive. I wish you could have been here with me for longer. You know, I still have your collar. I hold it sometimes and I—I miss you so much. I know you loved me, truly loved me, and I’ll always love you.”
It was all she could say. She started bawling—her post-pregnancy hormones still flared up her emotions sometimes. She crawled closer, careful not to crush the delicate flowers they’d just planted. She put her forehead right against his cold granite stone, her fingers tracing over the black etched letters of his name. She didn’t realize how hard she was crying until she felt a warm wall behind her, and her Master pulling her into his arms.
“Oh, Molly,” he said softly. “I miss him too.”
Molly wiped at her tears, embarrassed. God, it had been over a year now. Why did his loss still hurt so bad? She gazed up at her Master, not wanting him to think she was unhappy when she was so content with him, so fulfilled. “It’s not that I don’t love you terribly, I just—”
“Shh. It’s okay. I know you love me, and I know you love him too. I think you can love many people in a lifetime. I think the more people you love, the happier you are, you know?”
Molly nodded, sniffling. She tried to collect herself. It was okay. Everything was okay. “You won’t leave me?” she blurted out. “Master, you won’t die for a long, long time, will you?”
“Not for ages, kitten. I’ll live to be at least a hundred. I can be stubborn that way.”
Jonathan stirred, perhaps roused by the rumble of his papa’s voice. They both looked over at him as his eyes popped open. As soon as he saw them, he gave a crooked smile. Mephisto chuckled, then looked back at her. “We shouldn’t worry about things like that right now. We’ll take it one day at a time.” He picked up her violin case. “Play a little more for me, and then we’d better get back before Jonathan gets too hungry.”
Molly took out her violin and played for love and loss, for change and growth, for the heat of desire, and all the surprises of life. She realized as she played that she didn’t play nearly often enough for her new Master who’d brought so much richness to her life. She would play for him more, she vowed.
But for now she played for both of them—the first Master who made her, and the second Master who saved her. Somehow they both fit in her heart, with room for a beautiful baby too. I think the more people you love, the happier you are, you know?
Yes, Master, I know... Molly drew her bow across the strings, drawing out the last lingering note, staring into her Master’s dark, adoring eyes.
A Final Note
I hope you enjoyed the conclusion to Molly and Mephisto’s saga. If you haven’t read the “prequels” to this book, Club Mephisto and Molly’s Lips: Club Mephisto Retold, perhaps you will. While they are not as romantic as this story, they shed a lot of light on Molly and Mephisto’s past and Molly’s relationship with Clayton Copeland, her first Master.
I have a deep admiration for those who are called to practice intense M/s and power exchange. Molly and Mephisto are an homage to those friends, but also, hopefully, a canvas on which to display the human struggles of that kind of dynamic. I have great respect also for those who love intensely, and this book is an homage to them as well.
To learn more about Club Mephisto, Molly’s Lips, and my other novels, please visit my website at www.annabeljoseph.com. You can also follow me on Twitter (@annabeljoseph) or “like” my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/annabeljosephnovels.
An Excerpt from Command Performance
The fourth and final book in the Comfort Series, coming from Annabel Joseph in the fall of 2012
Mason climbed into the studio car, a luxury he took for granted after ten years headlining movies. He wished he could tell the driver to head to LoveSlave, the elite underground dungeon his friends frequented. He could pick up some horny, starstruck subbie and fuck her senseless through a night of hedonistic play...but that was impossible. The tabloids paid too much for kiss-and-tell stories these days, and after a night with him, the woman would have way too much to tell. He didn’t dare hire a professional call girl for the same reason.
If it wasn’t for one very special friend, he would have lost his mind by now. After the chauffeur shuttled him to his home in Malibu, Mason hopped into his own car and dialed her number. After a few rings, a familiar voice answered. “Hello?”
“Satya, my love.”
“Mason Cooke, do you have any idea how late it is?” Her clipped tones sounded like music in his ear.
“I know it’s late. I had a hard day.”
“Oh, did you?” Her voice dripped derision. He and Satya were long time friends, childhood friends, and their dynamic was...unique. Two years ago he couldn’t have imagined any romance between them. Well, there was no romance between them, but in the dark days after Jessamine left him, and after Satya had been dumped by a long time love, they’d started hooking up in secret. Extreme secret. Even Kai, Mason’s best friend and Satya’s protective older brother, still wasn’t aware it was going on.
It had been by mutual agreement, the subterfuge. Mason and Satya were friends, and both of them knew they could never be anything else. Mason had confessed his kinky proclivities to her, which she did not share, and she was too focused on her human rights work to get caught up in the tabloid storm that was his life. But as long as he was vanilla with her—and discreet—he was welcome in her bed when things got rough.
“So what was so hard about your day?” Satya asked. “Was your martini lunch shaken rather than stirred? They run out of jelly doughnuts on the catering cart?”
“Why are you so mean to me?”
“Oh, I got it. The makeup grunt poked you in the eye while applying your mascara.”
“I had to pretend to rape this girl today. Over and over.”
Satya tsked. “What girl? Is this more of your perverted shit?”
“It was for the movie I’m working on. Revelation.”
“Oh, yeah. Who was the lucky victim of this exploitation?”
“Mireille Donovan.”
Satya made a squicked sound. “You had to rape her? She’s what, fifteen years old?”
“She’s actually in her twenties now. But it was still horrible.”
“When is Hollywood going to get tired of rape-as-entertainment? And I suppose you’re too traumatized to spend the night alone?”
“Please, Sats.” Mason wasn’t above begging. He’d done it before.
“You know,” she sighed, “when I get a boyfriend, all this ends. It has to.”
“I know.”
“You won’t be able to call me at eleven at night with your sob stories. Satya, I’m so horny!”
Her impression was dead on, but he didn’t feel like laughing. “Please let me come over.” Mason lowered his voice to a seductive whisper. “You know I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Okay,” she finally said. “But no sleeping over. I don’t want to wake up next to your ugly mug. I have to go to work in the morning.”
“Fine, no sleeping over. I’ll be there in five minutes.” Mason hung up and relaxed, watching for the turnoff to her little bungalow in the hills. He did a quick sweep for hiding paparazzi before he parked and hurried to her door. She’d already unlocked it for him; he took the stairs to her bedroom two at a time.
“Stop.” She held up a hand as he came toward her bed. “You leave all the rape and whatnot at the doorstep. Understand?”
“I love when you scold me,” Mason murmured, stripping off his clothes. “When you make me feel like a bad little boy.”
He launched himself a
t her, and she fought him, shrieking. “You are a bad little boy!”
“Not a boy anymore,” he grunted. “Want me to show you?”
“Oh, Mason,” she sighed as he slid his pelvis across her mound. “Not little either...”
Satya was fun to have sex with. They played in bed together more than made love. Mason knew Satya was right, that they had no future together as a couple, but he treasured what she allowed him to share. He took his time winding her up, stroking her, teasing her to a frenzy of horniness before he rolled on a condom and slid between her legs.
“Do you want me?” His hands played over her hips, her waist. Her lovely dark-tipped breasts. “Do you want me deep inside you?”
She didn’t answer, only grabbed his ass and drew him into her. They moved together, enjoying one another with leisurely caresses and whispers. Mason urged her on until she came, and then he made her come again. His staying power was legendary, which he believed made him an especially good lover. It gave him more time to focus on his partner. He rarely heard women complain.
Well, Satya complained. As soon as they finished, she pushed him off, as usual, so she could lie solitary and replete in the afterglow. When he tried to kiss her, she swatted him and told him to go away.
So Mason went away. It was an arrangement that worked for them. On the way out to the car he turned his phone back on and found seven messages from his publicist. Make that eight.
Crisis. You need to call me ASAP. Re: your depraved sex life.
With a sinking heart, Mason dialed Shane Greenberg’s number. “Hi, Shane. Did you mean that message as a proposition?”
“This isn’t funny, my friend. My phone’s lighting up, messages from all the tabs and the online gossip sites too. Someone sold a story, not just about you, but about all your kinky Hollywood buddies. Tales about partner swapping, dungeons, bondage, orgies, all kinds of craziness. There are photos too.”
“Orgy photos?” Mason’s heart hammered.
“What the— Really, Mace? There are orgy photos out there somewhere?”
“Uh, no. Well, probably not.”