Here’s a special sneak peek teaser from MASTER, out March 22nd!

He’s looking at me as if he would kill me, my beautiful Christopher. I have no doubt that he could, if he wanted to. And he breaks my heart all over again, as if leaving the Ranch and taking my lovely, lovely Aimée with him didn’t hurt me enough. There is so much rage in him, as always, but it’s never been directed at me in this pure, raw form. But I also know he still loves me. All of which would be thrilling as hell, if it weren’t so upsetting. If Aimée weren’t sitting up in the bed behind him, clutching the sheets to her, her mouth parted in a small, pink ‘o’.My chest contracts, as if a steel band has closed around it, squeezing me. It’s been there since the day I sent them away from the Training House, but now it makes my breath stutter in my chest.

I take a step forward. “Christopher—”

“No! Just fucking no.” He’s raised his hands in front of him. I don’t think he’s aware that one of them is curled into a tight fist. “There will not be any ordering me back—ordering us back—no cleverly devised punishments for my infractions. I know damn well what I’ve done. But the thing is, Damon, I am done. Done with the slave bullshit.” His golden, feline eyes are gleaming with emotion as he pauses, wiping his lush mouth with the back of his hand. “Fuck. It’s not bullshit. I know that. But I can’t do it anymore.”

“I know,” I tell him quietly.

He stares at me, and like the kind of art direction I always notice in a film, he blurs a little and Aimée comes into focus behind him. There are tears on her cheeks. It cuts me to the core.

“How the fuck did you get into the room?” he demands, every bit the Dominant now. “No, never mind. I know. I know that your money and your power in this world can get you anything you want.” One corner of his mouth quirks. “Almost anything.”

Extending a hand toward him, my heart breaks a little more when I see him flinch. He is perhaps more beautiful to me at this moment than ever, with his golden skin and high cheekbones, the amber lion eyes that are a gift of his combined Japanese, Cherokee and English heritage. With the possibility that I’ve really lost him forever.

I draw a long breath. “Christopher.” Pausing, I smooth my hair back from my forehead. “I came here knowing you are probably gone from me forever. Both of you.” My gaze flicks to Aimée and in that brief second I swear I see something in her eyes. “But I had to try.”

“You’ve never come after me before,” he says. “It’s our little dance, isn’t it? One we’ve been doing for four years. Despite my contracts, I come and go as I please. When I need to. I needed to now.”

“You didn’t have to take her with you.”

“I left because I had to take her with me.”

There is a wall of silence between us, with him glaring, and me trying to keep my features arranged in such a way that I don’t betray the true depths of my emotions. I’ve had years of practice doing this very thing. But nothing has challenged me like this before. I think nothing ever may again.

© Eden Bradley, 2016

Check out MASTER on Eden’s website: http://edenbradley.com/books/master/