Total pages in book: 15
Estimated words: 14237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 14237 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 71(@200wpm)___ 57(@250wpm)___ 47(@300wpm)
This 13,000 word prequel is recommended to be read before RUBY TEARS (Book One of The Jewelry Box Series). It's short but it's spicy.
I’ve fought a curse all my life.
A curse inherited by my sick father.
There is no cure.
No antidote for what I am.
For years, I existed alone. Fighting the urges, doing my best to stay good.
Until Esclave 58 entered my life and I didn’t have to fight so hard.
She makes me better, she makes me human, but then he arrives on my doorstep.
He says he’s my half-brother.
He shares my blood. Our father’s blood.
That makes him dangerous.
That makes him like me.
He wants me for his family?
First he has to prove he has control over his darkness.
If he does…fine.
If he doesn’t?
I’ll kill him.
5 Stars - Get ready for more darkness … Q is back and he’s not the only Mercer man to lavish your attention on. -- Literary Puff5 Stars - This short novella is BLAZING HOT while Q shows just how much of a master he still is. -- Melissa GR5 Stars - Henri is a worse monster than Q and boy I am obsessed. --Daisy Book Attic5 Stars - I can already tell that Henri’s monster is going to be more depraved and harder to suppress than Q’s. -- Melissa GR
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
Q
“MAÎTRE?”
I groaned and squeezed the back of my neck.
Whenever she called me that, bad things happened.
Hot, dark, deliciously bad things.
“Esclave…I told you. Give me thirty minutes and then I’ll fuck you within an inch of your life. Distrais-moi et tu saigneras pour cette erreur.” (Distract me and you’ll be bleeding for the mistake.)
The soft whispers of her bare feet on carpet sounded behind me. “I haven’t come for you to pleasure or punish me, Master.”
“Oh?” I ran my fingers over the figures of the latest building development in Amsterdam. “Why are you here then? Corrupting me like you always do…”
She didn’t reply, creeping up behind me like a girl who wanted to provoke every despicable monster that lived within me.
I shuddered.
I felt the darkness unfurl and get ready to play.
The short leash I kept myself on had ensured I’d lived a lonely, miserable existence before Tess tripped over my doorstep, spat with such intoxicating fury, and ensured I tumbled right into the darkness with her.
She was the only slave I’d ever touched.
The only woman I’d ever loved.
The only mate I wanted, now and forever.
Doing my best to ignore her games, I kept my gaze on the spreadsheet. I’d been offered the deal by a middle-ranking Dutch Mafia member—a bastard who thought he could go behind his bosses and make some coin on the side by enticing me and my overly inflated bank account.
Pity for him, I knew exactly what he was and cast out my line, fishing with bait I knew he wouldn’t be able to refuse.
I’d said I needed a special sort of incentive to work with him.
He’d laughed and told me to meet him in the red-light district.
I’d gone, purely because I’d heard rumours. And rumours always started in truth. He dabbled in slavery. Sold living, breathing girls and boys as if they were coins to buy him power.
It was up to me to see if that was true.
And do something about it if it was.
Despite my wife’s fury, I’d flown to Amsterdam three days ago. I’d allowed the bastard to seduce and flatter me, but the moment he’d closed the hotel suite’s door and paraded a whimpering sixteen-year-old girl shot to hell with heroin toward me, he’d signed his death warrant.
The girl was a gift.
For me.
Like always.
My reputation preceded me in almost every country on this godforsaken planet.
Police knew who I was.
Criminals knew who I was.
Both of them had a different story, truth mixed with lies, and neither of them were the wiser.
I’d swallowed down my rage as the broken, skinny girl stumbled toward me. I’d allowed her to crumple at my feet and pretended to listen to the bastard’s demands.
I would’ve killed him right there but…he wasn’t the only one trying to forge this alliance. Instead of giving into my bloodlust, I kept my smile in place, accepted the girl, and flew her back to my estate in France on my private plane.
His death would come…once I knew how many other girls he had and where I could find them.
Tess hadn’t blinked an eye as I carried yet another slave into our marital home. She merely summoned Suzette, told Mrs Sucre to get cooking, and Franco pushed open a door to one of the fifty guest rooms for this purpose as I strode through opulence and tucked the drugged-up girl into safety.
The doctor had come.
Two days into the girl’s detox and she’d finally stopped screaming. She’d now turned catatonic instead.
“You haven’t touched me since you returned from Amsterdam,” Tess murmured as she pushed me back in my chair and deliberately sat her pretty ass on my desk, squashing my paperwork. “You went without my permission. You put yourself in danger. You made me mad, Q Mercer, and you know what happens when you do that.”
I smirked and reclined. “Remind me, wife…what happens when I make you mad?”
“I make you lose your mind.”
My blood heated. “And what is your plan tonight, esclave? How are you planning on making me come undone?” My hand dropped between my legs, fisting the hard-on she caused every time I caught her scent. “Because I will be coming…whether you will too is a matter of discussion.”
“Oh, you’ll make me come, husband. You won’t have a choice.”
I chuckled and stroked myself. “Bold, Tess. Very bold.”
“You left me.” Her hands went to the belt holding her satiny, sexy dressing gown closed. The faint lilac gown had looked stunning on its hanger in the lingerie shop in Amsterdam, but on her?
She made it fucking sinful.
“You brought home another woman.” She unthreaded the bow, letting the material slip like water from her delectable skin. Skin I’d marked, bit, branded, and whipped. Skin that bloomed a perfect shade of red. Skin that always healed so I could do it all over again.
A tremor ran through me as my cock hit full mast, growing painful in my slacks. With steady hands, I reached for my belt.