Cardinal's Rule

Chapter Five

Landry didn’t look at his slave as he drove away from Mistress Cardinal’s house. “So? What happened?”

The slave studied his hands.

“Twenty-five with a cane for not answering immediately. I asked you a question. Answer it now, or you’ll get fifty.”

“She was very upset.”

He laughed. “Duh. I figured that much. Who did I save you from out there? What was his name, Bob?”

“I don’t know. He was the man we saw with her at the club.”

“Ah. Maybe the information I received at the club was wrong and she has a boyfriend after all.”

Dammit. That would put a kink in his plans.

“I don’t think so, Master. I get the impression they haven’t been seeing each other long.”

A little relief and hope crept in. “Good. Now tell me what happened.”

As slave related how she’d reacted, Landry nodded, trying not to speak or comment during the story. His heart broke for the woman, for the pain she’d gone through at his expense.

He never wanted to hurt someone. Well, not like that, at least. He was a sadist, not an asshole.

Slave gave him as verbatim a recollection as he could. Landry contemplated what she’d said.

“You took her Master from her. That’s an interesting comment for her to make, considering what she did to you and how she formally withdrew her submission.”

Slave shrugged.

“Do you think she still loves you?”

Slave looked out his window. “I doubt it,” he softly replied. “Not as badly as I hurt her. I think what she said was probably more out of pain, over what she went through then, not what she really feels now.”

Landry wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment, but he let it go. He didn’t know the woman beyond what slave told him and his own brief interactions with her.

But he intended to get closer to her.

Much closer.

Back at their room, he made slave strip and bend over the end of the bed. He delivered twenty-five vicious strikes with a rattan cane, not breaking the flesh but immediately raising welts on his skin, crossing the existing bruises from their previous nights at the clubs.

Slave took his punishment without complaint.

After their pizza arrived, he allowed slave to sit, naked, at the small table to eat before ordering him back to the floor again where he could work on his laptop. Then he settled on the bed, still dressed, to watch TV.

Occasionally glancing at his phone, Landry wondered if she’d call. He didn’t miss that she snatched the card with the hotel room info on it from him and pocketed it before Bob could take it.

He also hadn’t missed the brief longing that crossed her expression before slave got in the car at her house.

He suspected a little tiny piece of her didn’t want to see him go.

Landry glanced at his phone when it buzzed on the table between the beds around a quarter after eleven. Pleasantly surprised, a smile creased his face as he read the caller ID. Honestly? He’d almost given up on hearing from her that night. He answered. “Hello.”

He listened for a moment and then said, “Not at all, I was still awake. I’ll be right there.” He hung up and stood. Slave remained kneeling on the floor. “You’d better be right there when I get back.

Do not move. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Could be a few minutes, could be a few hours. Could be all fucking night.”

He slipped on his shoes, grabbed his room key, patted his pocket to make sure he had the ring, and walked outside. In the dark he quickly scanned the parking lot and saw her parked next to his rental. She drove a brand new Lexus SUV.

The passenger window slid down. “Get in.”

He reached for the door handle. “I’m glad to see you. I’ll admit this is rather unexpected.”

She drove without speaking to a nearby park overlooking Sarasota Bay. He waited her out as she stared at the water.

“What the fuck is your game, Landry?” she finally asked.

“No game, I assure you.” He didn’t miss the fact that she used his first name.

“Why not leave everything to Cris? He’s your…partner, right?”

“Because he has lost the right to own anything after this. Before I found out about his transgression, yes, I considered him more than just my slave. He was my partner in every way. My lover. My love.” He took a deep breath. Why hold on to his pride when he had nothing left to lose? “I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me shit.”

“You’re wrong. No, it’s not technically my fault what happened, but I still feel responsible. For example, take your boy today. If he got into a fight at a club—”

“He’s not my boy.”

Landry successfully suppressed his smile. “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought from what I saw—”

“He’s a client. And…a friend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“That is none of your fucking business.”

“I’m asking you to marry me, therefore yes, it is my business.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No,” he said, settling back in the seat. “I’m tired. Honestly? I don’t know if I’m going to get through this or not. They say I probably will, but there are no guarantees. I need this cleared off my plate one way or another as soon as possible.”

“Doesn’t Cris love you? Why not forgive him and move on? He didn’t hurt you.”

Landry dropped his voice. “He told me about your step-father.”

He watched her hands clench into fists. Her voice trembled. “That’s still not your fault.”

“I love him. Yes, I’m upset with him for how he treated you, and yes, I feel guilty, right or wrong. I’m human. There’s another issue, however.” He looked at her. “He still loves you. I’m not a moron. I know he loves me, but he’s still in love with you and always has been. He didn’t leave you because he didn’t love you enough or because he loved me more. He honestly thought I would die. So did I, for a while. He knew you had people who loved you and would help you. I didn’t have anyone. I was completely alone and had alienated almost everyone who gave a damn about me. He made a decision for both of us without asking what we wanted.”

“Why do you feel you have to marry me?”

“Well, I own slave. He’d become community property,” he joked. “Seriously, I wanted to move here anyway. Ironically, Tampa has one of the best cancer centers in the country and it’s not a bad drive from Sarasota. I’d already been looking at relocating to this area because it’s cheaper to live out here and I’m sick of California. Most of my clients are on the east coast, not out on the west coast.

Unfortunately, Florida has a few laws that can make life complicated for same-sex couples.”

She turned to look at him but didn’t speak.

“If you’re my wife, you can make medical decisions for me, automatically step in and take over if the worst happens, without all the horrific red tape slave would have to go through. Not to mention it will further humiliate slave, for me to be married to the woman he loves.”

“Why can’t you say his name?”

“Because I’m still too angry.” He stared at the water again, but his voice gentled. “You can make sure he gets into the hospital to see me, to be with me. To be honest, I don’t want him going through this alone a second time, if you can bring yourself to help him.”

“Who says I want to be anywhere around the son of a bitch?”

He took a gamble. “Because you still love him as much as he loves you. Somewhere, deep inside you, part of you wants him back.”

“I don’t want another Master. Especially him.”

“I didn’t say a Master.” He also noticed she didn’t deny his statement about her loving him.

She went quiet for several minutes. He waited her out. “What do you expect of me?” she softly asked.

He breathed a silent sigh of relief. If she asked a question like that she had already decided to accept his offer, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it quite yet. “We’d be married in name only. You don’t have to have regular contact with us if you don’t want to, except when I’m undergoing treatment and I need you to sign forms or whatever so he can be there with me. You can live your life exactly as you do now. Even have Bob if you want him. Date, whatever. Hell, move in with someone, I don’t care.” He felt no compunction about telling her the lie. If she would just agree to the arrangement, he could then work his way into her life.

But he had to start somewhere.

“What’s going to happen? With your treatment.”

He shrugged. “I’m scheduled for a biopsy this coming Wednesday. Then they’ll go from there, whether surgery or radiation or chemo, I don’t know yet.”

“Have you told Cris?”

“No. I wanted an answer from you first.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re going to tell me no, I’m going to release slave without telling him about my cancer. I’d rather go through this alone than have him tied to me because he feels he has to be here out of pity or duty.”

She stared at him for a moment, apparently stunned. “You are seriously nuts.”

“No, I’m sick of knowing that for all these years someone owned his heart besides me. I thought he loved me as much as I love him. I do love him. I never stopped loving him when we were apart, I told you that.”

Tilly studied Landry as her emotions swirled. This was crazy. Totally nuts. As much as she hated Cris for what he did to her, the part of her that could still feel compassion and empathy, no matter how small it had shrunk, felt sorry for Landry.

Then there was the miniscule, yet annoyingly tenacious particle of her soul which still loved Cris.

And the mercenary part of her soul told her she’d be a moron not to accept his offer. Get out of the pro Domme business and back into nursing.

“If I say yes, and I’m not saying I will, how would this work exactly? We’d sign a pre-nup?”

He nodded. “Exactly. I will also change my will. I would specify that everything you own now is fully yours and I’m not entitled to any of it, and any money you earn while married to me is also yours, not joint assets. But everything I have and earn will be yours.”

“Is this some half-assed attempt to get me and him back together?”

“No. In fact, feel free to beat him as much as you want while we’re together.” He smiled. “He deserves it.”

“You are a fucking sadist, aren’t you?”

He laughed. “Not all of us do it for money, Mistress Cardinal. Some love inflicting pain for the sheer enjoyment of it. Although I never used humiliation on him before all of this.”

“Tilly,” she absently corrected him as her brain still struggled to comprehend the situation.

“What are your chances of surviving this? Seriously.”

He shrugged again. “One doctor said seventy percent, another said eighty, a third said ninety.

Unfortunately, if you add in my previous bout, it can skew the odds against me. I just found about it two weeks ago at my regular check-up. Blood work picked it up, scans confirmed it. I could beat it this time and it could come back a year or a decade from now, or maybe not at all. They all agree that it’s likely I’ll beat it and go into remission. Just how hard I’ll have to work for that remains to be seen.”

“How long did it take you to recover from it the first time?”

“Over a year before they knew I’d turned the corner, but that time, I was already at a much more advanced stage. Much of that time I was too weak to even get out of bed, between healing from my injuries and the cancer treatments.”

“Tell me about your wreck.”

He looked away. “I’d rather not.”

That’s when her bullshit alarm went off. “You’d better.”

He took a long, ragged breath. “I never told anyone this, and I would appreciate you not saying anything about it either, but I was trying to kill myself. Actually surprised the hell out of me when I woke up.” He laughed, but it sounded harsh. “What does it say about me that I could fuck up my own suicide? I forgot to take off my seatbelt before the crash. They said it’s the only thing that saved me.”

They talked for over two hours, mostly Landry talking while Tilly asked him questions. She hated that she actually liked the guy. It’d be a lot easier to tell him to go fuck himself if he was an asshole. Still, her anger at Cris burned, seethed. Her pain. Her memories of what she’d gone through.

As for Landry, he was a nice guy, smart, funny, witty. Handsome. If he wasn’t gay she might have dated him. They had a lot of common interests.

Then there was his Master and sadist side, which she knew lay dark and deep. Definitely a lifestyle Dominant, not just a weekend slap-and-tickle player.

He also felt very scared, even though he didn’t admit how deeply in so many words. She knew from listening to him, how he talked, how his body language changed. It humanized him and gave her insight beneath his thin veneer of bravado.

He worried he’d have to release Cris, and then he would be alone. His personal honor code wouldn’t allow him to keep Cris if she wouldn’t agree to this insanity.

“What if the cancer hadn’t come back?” she asked. “Would you still be here?”

“Yes. I hadn’t expected it to be like this, though. I considered taking him to a club where everyone had once known him and let anyone who wanted a turn to take a swing at him. I also seriously considered releasing him in front of everyone. The ultimate humiliation for what he did. I would have ordered him to take whatever punishment I deemed to mete out, and he would have.”

She shuddered. She remembered how Cris had stood there as Bob threatened him. The old

Cristo would have defended himself. With a black belt in karate, he could have easily kicked Bob’s ass.

But Cristo the slave would have let Bob beat the crap out of him. The only time he defended himself was when she went for his eyes, and even then after she’d calmed a little he let her take more whacks at him.

As upset as she felt at Cris, she felt a little sorry for him. “You don’t have to release him if I don’t agree to this. I told you, I don’t hold you responsible. Don’t feel guilty on my account.”

“Yes, I do have to release him. Because I would rather be alone. It’s the principle of the matter.”

“This is your life you’re talking about. Time to shelve the principles, don’t you think?”

“I disagree. It’s even more important now. I would hate to die knowing I didn’t do what I felt necessary to make amends.”

“You just said the odds are in your favor. And you don’t need to make amends. Jesus, you’re fucking dense. I don’t hold you responsible.”

“I hold myself responsible.”

She looked out over the bay again. A few sailboats anchored nearby bobbed on inky black chop.

While lights shone in a few, most lay dark, tied to mooring buoys. “Three years?”

“Yes. After that, if you want to stay married, we can re-negotiate the annual salary if you’d like.

But everything I own will be yours if you stay with me, if that’s what you want.”

So much pain. So much anger. Could she ever look at Cris and not want to pound him in the nuts?

Then the irresistible pull. She did like Landry. Frankly, she liked him as much as she liked Bob, in many ways. Different ways.

Dominant ways.

The fact that they had their anger at Cris in common only made her feel closer to him. Not that she wanted to admit it, but it did touch her that he felt so upset on her account despite not knowing her.

That spoke volumes about his character.

She also felt sorry for him. Obviously, Cris had loved him very much to do what he did, right or wrong. It wasn’t hard for her to see why Cris loved him.

A damn good guaranteed paycheck, a chance to use her nursing skills, and a break from being a Domme. She could hang Mistress Cardinal in the closet with her corsets and stiletto heels and just be Tilly again.

She would have someone to take care of, in a way she hadn’t since Cris left. Despite what she did, she had her own needs that had gone unmet for far too long.

Wanting to serve.

Not wanting to be alone, even if it meant being tied to the man who had broke her heart and crushed her soul.

The man Landry claimed still loved her.

What did she have to lose? Well, other than her sanity. Hell, if she could survive what she went through, this should be a cakewalk. And it would mean getting her life back, not having to be a pro-Domme anymore.

“If I’m marrying you,” she said, “I need a few concessions.”

“Of course.”

“You’re not my Master, my Dom, or my Top. If you try to pull any bullshit like that, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Of course not.”

“For now you’ll move in with me. I’d rather have you at my house than have to schlep somewhere else to take care of you. You can contribute to household expenses.”

Even in the dark car she saw his eyebrows lift. “What? What about Cris?”

She gritted her teeth. “He can move in too.”

“I can’t ask you to do that. I’m not asking you to take care of me, just to marry me and assure Cris has access to me in the hospital. Why would you want me living with you?”

“Did Cris mention I went to nursing school?”

“No.”

“Yeah. I graduated, worked at it for nearly a year. After I got into doing this I quit doing it and my license lapsed.” She tapped her head. “Knowledge is still there. So if I’m earning that money, I might as well earn it.”

“He’ll still be my slave, though. I’ll be using him when and where I see fit. Is that going to bother you?”

“Nope. Have at him. I don’t want him as a slave but he can clean my damn house and do chores when I tell him.”

“Absolutely. He’s yours to use and abuse however you need him.”

She didn’t miss how he accented that word, however. “I won’t interfere with what you do with him if you don’t interfere with what I do with him,” she said.

He nodded, smiling. “That’ll humiliate him. Good.”

An idea struck her. It would be a particularly painful revenge for Cris. “You ever sleep with a woman before?”

He looked confused. “Tilly, I’m not asking you to do that. I don’t expect anything like that from you.”

“Answer my question.”

He looked even more puzzled as he studied her face for a moment. “I’ve slept with women before, years ago. Before I finally admitted I was gay.”

“How long ago?”

“Before I met Cris.”

“Think you can still get it up for me?”

“Tilly, I said—”

“Answer the damn question, Landry.”

He took a while to mull it over. “I’m sure I could oblige you, but while I’m undergoing cancer treatment you could shoot me full of Viagra and have Adam Lambert go down on me and it wouldn’t raise the dead.”

She smiled. He had a good sense of humor. “I only need you one time. One really good, hard, long time. If I’m going to marry you, you’re going to fuck me on our wedding night.”

That dropped his jaw. Finally, something to shatter that annoyingly unshakable composure of his. “What?”

She turned in her seat to face him. “Yeah. That’s one of my conditions. I want one really big

‘fuck you’ in his face before we get down to the business of taking care of you. I want my pound of flesh. Otherwise, all I’m going to do is hate him more every day. You want to know something? I haven’t slept with a guy since he left. I didn’t have the heart at first, then I finally got to the point where I considered it and Bob comes into my life. Then you bring Cris back the next fucking day. Super sucky timing, dude.”

She took a deep breath. “So here’s what I want. I want a good, long, hard fucking on my wedding night. I want you to make me come so hard the top of my head blows off. Not Master/slave stuff either, just good ole vanilla sex. I want you to spend the night making love to me, and Cris has to sit there and watch and listen to every second of it while he’s tied up and can’t move. Who knows, maybe I’ll make him suck you off after you’ve been inside me. Cuckolding and humiliation aren’t my personal kinks, but I’m willing to get into it for one night if it means I can hurt him. I want my revenge so I can move on with my life once and for all. Otherwise, it’s going to eat me alive and I don’t want to live like that anymore. I want to hurt him as badly as he hurt me. If you’re telling the truth how he feels about me, I can’t think of a better way to do it.”

Landry stared at her for a moment in shock, then he laughed. It rolled out of him, long and hard, until he finally composed himself a minute later. “You haven’t slept with anyone since he left?”

“That’s all you got from what I just said?”

He laughed again. “No, I like that, it’s perfect. Yeah, it’ll humiliate him, all right.” He shook his head. “Jesus, it’s perfect. You’re as big a sadist as I am. I never would have thought of that. I never assumed you’d want to—”

“That’s another thing. No more goddamned assumptions. Ever. You ask me what I want or don’t want. Got it?”

His face turned solemn. “Yeah. I think we’re both in firm agreement on that one.”

“Another rule I have, if I’m your wife and helping with your care, you will listen to me and do what the doctors say you should. Right?”

“Okay.”

This was insane. Why was she even agreeing to this? She took a long, deep breath. “We’ll go get the marriage license tomorrow, you can get the pre-nup drawn up, and we’ll get married at the courthouse on Monday.”

“Why Monday?”

“Florida has a wait period. They won’t let us do it tomorrow. My friend Loren is a Notary and does marriages, that’s how I know.”

“You want her to perform the ceremony?”

“Hell no, she’ll end up in jail when she kills Cris. We’ll do it at the clerk’s office.” She couldn’t believe she was agreeing to this crazy scheme. “If you’re getting a biopsy on Wednesday, we should spend Tuesday night resting. Monday it is.”

He eventually nodded. “Monday it is then,” he softly agreed. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a ring. He motioned for her left hand.

At first she didn’t realize what he was doing until he slipped a huge, gorgeous diamond solitaire onto her ring finger. “Matilda Cardinal, will you marry me?”

This isn’t how she pictured her engagement. Frankly, after Cris left, she thought she’d likely never get married. “Yes, but if you ever call me Matilda again, I’ll punch you in the nuts.”

He smiled. “Yes, dear.”

She returned his smile. “And who says Doms can’t be taught to obey?”

She loved the sound of his laugh.

She dropped him back at his hotel. Before he climbed out of the car, he turned to her again.

“Thank you, Tilly. I really appreciate this.”

“Assuaging your guilt?”

He thought about it for a moment. “That’s part of it. I can’t give you back what you lost. I can’t make up for it. You don’t have to move us in with you. I’ve got appointments tomorrow with real estate brokers. We’ll get our own place.”

“No, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it my way.” She thought about it. “I might keep my two best clients. Truth be told, I was getting tired of it anyway.”

“What about Bob?”

Bob. “I don’t know,” she wistfully said. “I thought he might be the one I could finally open up to. I meant it when I said you had horribly sucky timing.”

“Sorry.”

“I have a feeling if he ever sees Cris again he’ll nail him.”

“Let him.”

“You really were going to let Bob pound the shit out of him in my driveway, weren’t you?”

“What part of sadist don’t you understand?” He smiled. “You’re not the only one looking for a pound of flesh.”

“How long do we keep him suffering?”

“I don’t know about you, I think only you can answer that for yourself. Frankly, my pride’s still in the damn toilet. I have a feeling next Wednesday will realign my priorities.”

“When do you tell him about that?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Haven’t decided yet.” He looked at her. “How do you want to do this?”

“Come pick me up tomorrow at ten. I need to call my clients and cancel. Come alone. I don’t want to see him again yet. When do you write my first check? I have bills to pay.”

He chuckled. “I already have a lawyer here in town. How about we go there first, handle that, then I’ll take you to lunch and we’ll go to the clerk’s office from there. How much debt do you have?

I’ll help you out with that, too.”

“I pay my credit cards off every month, and I only owe twenty thousand on my house. Paid cash for my car. My student loans are repaid.”

She felt another jolt of satisfaction when his eyebrows arched. “What?”

“Being a pro Domme in this town pays pretty well. I’m actually taking a pay cut. Lucky for you my house is almost paid off or I would never agree to this.”

Still reeling from her revelation, he watched her drive off. Funny, he’d imagined her to be barely hanging on, even after seeing where she lived, especially after what Cris had told him about her. personality.

What Cris put her through changed her. For the better? Only time would tell.

One thing for certain, she was a woman who went after what she wanted. He couldn’t think of anyone better to have by his side. The fact that she bumped his timetable up by months by insisting they move in with her was a bonus.

That he found himself attracted to her had come as a genuine surprise. He should have known

Cris would never lose his heart to some sniveling, weak-spined trollop. Tilly was unlike any other woman he’d ever met.

He couldn’t wait to get to know her better, this woman who still owned his slave’s heart even when she herself had been his slave.

He unlocked the hotel room door. Slave still knelt on the floor where he’d left him. “Do you have to use the bathroom?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Go do it and get ready for bed.”

Slave slowly stood, then turned and walked to the bedroom. His back was covered with fresh bruises from where Tilly had beat the crap out of him. Looked like she’d used her fists, maybe a crop.

Nice. No slices from a cane. A particularly large bruise on his thigh where Landry suspected she’d kicked him.

Damn. Had to hurt like a son of a bitch.

He stripped and pulled the covers back on his bed before lying down. When slave returned, Landry pointed at his cock. “Get busy.”

Slave knelt between his legs and went down on him. Landry tightly gripped his head, fisting his hair, pulling on him, driving his cock deep into his throat and nearly choking him.

Slave never complained, never fought, never tried to pull away as Landry fucked his mouth.

Slave took it.

After a few minutes, Landry shot a load down his throat. He didn’t even give slave a gentle pat on the head or a “good boy.”

“Go to bed. You can sleep on the other bed tonight. On top of the covers.”

“Thank you, Master.”

Landry turned off the lamp and pulled the covers over himself. He didn’t crank the A/C down like he had the previous nights. He hated sleeping alone, missed the feel of Cris’ taller body stretched out beside him. Maybe now, being able to make reparations for what happened, he’d finally be able to let Cris back in bed with him without feeling guilty or angry about his presence.

Or without feeling like a goddamned pity fuck.