The Drake Unwound Complete Collection (The Drake Series Book 9)(9)

She stopped in the center of the room and glanced around before her gaze came to rest on me. Then, she came to me and slipped her arms around my waist, leaning her head against my chest. She caught me by surprise once more. I was unused to being shown affection by my subs. I didn’t have that kind of relationship with them and was used to being the one to initiate everything. Still, I enjoyed her show of affection and embraced her back. She snuggled against my body, her arms slipping under my coat.

"I like this Drake Morgan," she said, looking me in the eye. "I'm seeing him a bit more clearly now."

"Oh?" I said, my eyebrows raised. "And what have you seen?"

"You seem so self-contained."

I sighed and squeezed her more tightly. "My mother had me after my brother died, so I was an only child."

She pulled back. "I never knew you had a brother who died."

I nodded and ran my fingers through her hair. "We've never talked much about personal things."

"Tell me."

I exhaled, for I didn’t talk much about Liam – to anyone. He was this mythic creature who died before I was born. I was just the replacement. Not the original. "He died before I was born from a very rare and aggressive form of leukemia. My mother never recovered, even after she had me. I had to be independent after she left. I think I was a little too independent for married life and that's one reason why Maureen and I split. I was also reluctant to have children because of the chance of passing on the mutation that caused my brother's leukemia, and that was a sore point between us. As soon as she left me, she had a child with her new boyfriend."

"Oh, Drake, that’s so sad." She squeezed me and I knew she was feeling sorry for me. It was a sentiment I did not want to cultivate. Pity. "What was your brother’s name?"

"Liam, after my father."

"How old was he when he died?"

"Five."

I thought about my dead brother, who I never knew, but who loomed so large in my life as a child. My mother had a shrine to him in the spare bedroom. A collection of his baby pictures, his pictures in pre-school, of him as a sickly little boy, his head bald from chemo, an IV in his scalp.

I sighed and ran my hands over her hair. "I don’t want to think about the past," I said gently. "Right now, I only want to think of me inside of you."

"I thought you had a patient..."

"I'll go later," I said and picked her up once more, carrying her into the bedroom at the back of the apartment, flicking on the light switch as we entered. I let her slide back out of my arms and took off her coat, leaving her standing beside the bed in my room while I went to the closet in the entry.

After I hung up our coats, I went to the server in the dining room and removed two shot glasses, then went to my refrigerator for the bottle of chilled Anisovaya. I returned to the bedroom with them, coming to an abrupt halt just inside the door to the bedroom.

Kate was standing by the closet doors, flipping through my photo album, which contained a variety of photographs of my subs in various bondage poses.

"Oh," I said, shocked. "I see you've found my book."





CHAPTER FOUR





She didn’t say a word, and kept turning page after page. I came to her side and looked over her shoulder, wondering what she thought of the pictures. They were artistic images taken by a friend who was a professional photographer.

In one photo that was taken from the side of the bed, I straddled Leah, one of my subs from a few years back. A blindfold covered her eyes and her hands and feet were tied to the bed frame. She sucked my cock while I leaned against the wall, my hands spread wide.

The photos depicted several of my former subs. I’d had the photos taken as a gift for them and provided each with their own personal album. None of them revealed my identity.

She closed the book when she came to a photo of me f*cking Nikki, one of my wilder subs, who had sleeve tattoos and several piercings, my cock up her ass. I knew anal was a sore point with Kate. She was afraid of it. I put the vodka down on the table and turned her to face me, taking her chin in my hand, forcing her to look in my eyes.

"Are you OK?" I said, my voice soft. "That's quite… personal."

"They're beautiful," she said, her voice cracking a bit. "The pictures are gorgeous and erotic at the same time. I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have opened it. I feel like a voyeur."

I smiled. "I wanted them beautiful rather than pornographic. To me, D/s is an art. Photographs should convey that."

"Do you use them to, you know," she said, shrugging one shoulder. "Get off when you don't have a partner?"


"No," I said, and smiled. "I mean, I have before. I'm not going to lie. But they're meant more as a tribute to my former submissives. I don't want to have any photos out there that directly identify me. I gave them all copies of their photographs in a special book."

I handed her one of the shot glasses. She sniffed it, probably wanting to see if it was Anisovaya.

"You've hardly done anything with me, have you?" she said and glanced up at me.

I shook my head. "Don't want to go too fast with you. Besides," I said and held up my glass to her. "All this messy love stuff got in the way."