Her Master's Hand Read online

  Her Master’s Hand

  By

  Korey Mae Johnson

  Copyright © 2015 by Stormy Night Publications and Korey Mae Johnson

  Copyright © 2015 by Stormy Night Publications and Korey Mae Johnson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Johnson, Korey Mae

  Her Master’s Hand

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by Bigstock/Aliaksei Prachkaila and 123RF/Виталий Башкатов

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  More Stormy Night Books by Korey Mae Johnson

  Korey Mae Johnson Links

  Chapter One

  “You will never escape my evil clutches! I have you exactly where I want you!” Maili gave a very evil and very theatrical cackle as she knocked the king away from the board with her queen and set it in its place. With a smug expression, Maili sat back down on her chair, folding her arms across her chest. “I’ve conquered you again, papa. Now, reap the consequences.” She pulled the giant slice of cake away from Hoel’s elbow as Hoel looked at the king she had thrown to the floor with an angry, disappointed look.

  “I’m going to stop playing with you,” he decreed, standing up before he could watch Maili eat his dessert with too many more yummy-in-my-tummy noises. “You’re a poor winner.”

  “Then you better stop playing with her before she becomes too fat on cake, my love,” Hoel’s wife, Anwen, hummed from the corner before giving him a playful grin.

  “You make it sound like I couldn’t beat her if I wanted to,” Hoel said, making a ‘harrumph!’ noise as he plopped down in the chair next to the fireplace.

  “That is how I made it sound, isn’t it?” Anwen replied, stifling a laugh. She watched Hoel pout for a moment before she put down her sewing on her lap. “That’s what you get for teaching her. She’s not the first student who’s become the master, you know.”

  A servant walked in before Hoel could properly protest. “Your mail, sir,” he said with a bow, placing the letters carefully down on the side-table next to Hoel’s chair.

  Hoel grumbled some more as he eyed the stack of work, then divided his wife’s correspondences from his own before reaching over to hand the letters to her.

  Maili came and sat next to Anwen with her piece of cake. “I need to get a pen-pal,” Maili said decisively. “It’s not fair that I’m the only person every night with nothing to read! I feel left out. I’m going to get a complex.”

  “When you go to live with your husband, you’ll have correspondence coming out of your ears,” Anwen assured, but of course Maili’s face immediately broke into a frown. Every time her ‘husband’ was mentioned, her mood took a great change.

  Maili hated her ‘husband’—although she never met him more than once, and that was the day he’d chosen her for his bride. They had been married by proxy, since her husband was in the middle of fighting a war, which had gone on for two years already.

  The warlord, King Damen Vanguard, was a brute and a villain; she knew this when she first set eyes on him, though Hoel seemed to refuse to see it. Every night, she hoped that Hoel’s letters would give notice to Damen’s death, and every night she was disappointed.

  She put her cake down on the coffee table in front of her and pushed it away with disgust. “I’m suddenly not hungry,” she grumbled.

  Hoel, who knew better than to fuel her oncoming temper, merely reached over and took the rest of the cake she hadn’t yet consumed, saying, “Oh, good.”

  Anwen passed Maili’s needlework to her in the next moment, issuing an unspoken demand to work on it. Maili took it with a scowl on her face.

  Hoel began to flip through his correspondence, organizing it as he went to make sure the most important letters were on top. He grunted. “Maili, your husband wrote,” he said casually, as if he’d forgotten that every letter she received only filled her with dread.

  Maili went pale. “Did… Did he write? Or did someone write on his behalf?” she asked, her tone sounding so hopeful.

  Hoel looked up, his expression darkening. “His personal seal is on the letter, so I imagine he’s still alive and well,” Hoel informed her sternly. “Lass, this has got to stop. Damen is everything that you need in a husband, and he’s the first man I’ve trusted to tell what you are.”

  Maili winced with shame, knowing that Hoel meant that she was a witch and not his true daughter, and that it was the most reprehensible secret he had. Telling anyone what she was had been a thing, indeed!

  But Damen wasn’t worth divulging such things to. He was cruel; his servants feared him, although Hoel misinterpreted that fear as respect, and Damen was mean to her, although Hoel misinterpreted that, as well. When Damen threatened her or had firmly clasped her elbow enough for it to bruise, Hoel decided that Damen was merely demonstrating to her that he would be the head of their household.

  When Maili heard that she was even promised to Damen, she had begged and pleaded on her hands and knees for Hoel to break the agreement. It hadn’t worked; it only got Hoel upset with her, and he had spanked her like some naughty child for acting ‘spoiled.’ Her marriage to Damen, even though it was by proxy, was heart-wrenching enough for her that she spent weeks in her room, crying into her pillows. It was now so definite, there was no going back on it. The only hope for her was that her husband would die in battle somehow before he could consummate their marriage.

  “You’ve built him into this giant villain in your mind, but you’ve only met him for a week. I don’t think that’s a great enough sample of him to even form an opinion, my sweet. I’ve known him for a series of decades. You only disservice yourself by judging him,” Hoel continued to lecture as he opened up the envelope.

  Maili had lived with Hoel and his wife for two decades now, and Damen had only appeared once. She was certain that Hoel had only spent at most a few weeks in Damen’s company the last few decades, if even that much, and that surely wasn’t a good measure enough for him to judge Damen in his own favor.

  Maili didn’t say that; she didn’t want to be sent for the strop that night. She merely clenched her teeth down and prepared herself for the worst that Damen might have written.

  Hoel read the letter silently rather than aloud. Maili just watched as he read the letter. She saw that Anwen was watching Hoel, too, with an expectant look on her face. Hoel’s brow eventually wobbled, as if a wave of emotion passed over him, a wave
that he wanted to hide. Eventually, he put the letter down. He reached out his hand to Maili.

  Maili looked at the hand for a moment before she slowly and bravely placed her hand in his. He closed his fingers and rubbed her knuckles tenderly with his thumb. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. Hoel’s eyes were completely black, but she knew him well, and knew a sad expression when she saw one, and there was only one reason Hoel would be sad at all. She felt a lump forming in her throat. “It’s time, Maili.”

  Now the lump in her throat seemed to explode, choking her into a fit of sobs. “No!” she cried, clenching both of her hands onto his. “No, please! Don’t send me away. Don’t!”

  “He’s collecting you himself at the end of the month, sweet one. He’s already on his way,” he told her apologetically. “You’re already his wife.”

  She got up, throwing her sewing aside, and wrapped her arms around Hoel desperately. “Annul it! Please, please annul it!”

  He stood up from his chair, grabbed her arms, and dropped her into his wife’s arms. There, Maili crumpled to the floor, wrapping her arms miserably around Anwen’s lap.

  Hoel kissed his wife’s forehead and then walked out of the rooms toward his gardens.

  Anwen stroked her fingers through Maili’s black hair, comforting her. “Don’t cry, my love. Hoel and I will visit you in the spring. It won’t be as bad as you’re thinking. I remember when my father sent me to Hoel, I thought my heart would break. It’s only looking back on it now that I realize how silly it was… I love Hoel more than life itself now. You’ll feel the same, if you give it time.”

  Maili continued to sob in Anwen’s skirts, not caring if they would visit her in the spring. Soon, her life would be over… There was no happiness in her future.

  * * *

  Weeks later, and miles and miles away…

  “We’ll be back by tomorrow evening at sundown,” Moriarty assured his eldest son. The seventeen-year-old stared back at him with far, far too angelic of an expression. It made him nervous. His son was many things: part nymph, part Huxian, part wizard, but one thing he wasn’t was an angel, not that his mother would believe anything else.

  “I want you to keep a watchful eye on your brother, make sure the livestock’s fed, I want you to clean your room, get your studies done—”

  “My studies are done, father,” Cole assured, helpfully handing Moriarty his coat. “And I’ve already cleaned my room.”

  Moriarty squinted suspiciously, then looked down at the jacket in his hands. “Are you trying to rush us out of the house? Why?”

  “Moriarty, really!” Alice chided, handing the baby off to the housekeeper. “Don’t give him a Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Madame, I was around for the Spanish Inquisition and this is nothing like it!” Moriarty assured his wife and turned back to his son. “But I can make it just as ugly if you’re up to something,” he added.

  “Father, you injure me to the core!” Cole said, putting his hand over his heart, still looking overly innocent. “Have I given you any reason to distrust me?”

  Cole hadn’t, and that’s why Moriarty distrusted him. When Coleby was a boy, he was always getting into trouble—Moriarty had to take the lad back out to the woodshed three times a week! Now that he was too large for corporal discipline, his height nearly equal to his own, Coleby was still causing headaches left and right… but not for the last month. At this point, his eldest not making any trouble made him nervous, as if he was waiting for mounting pressure to blow the head off of a volcano. Alice had assured Moriarty that Cole was only getting more responsible and was becoming a man… but Moriarty had serious doubts about that.

  Moriarty couldn’t help but remember himself at that age, however, and he wasn’t interested in responsibility. He was only interested in a good time. Fourteen was about the age that he was sure he learned how to really dupe his parents and get away with it. Of course, he had his older brothers to train him on the best ways to make his parents’ lives hell, while Cole was just the first-born. Somehow, that didn’t instill any trust in Cole. It just seemed more likely that Cole was going to try to ‘pull one over’ on his parents and royally fuck up.

  “Remember that you need to be here when we get home,” Moriarty finally pleaded. Outside the estate grounds was dangerous—all sorts of evil creatures hunted and lurked in the dark of night. “Promise me that while we’re out, you’ll be safe.”

  “I will, father. I promise, I’ll be safe,” Cole said, putting up his hand in an oath. This time, Moriarty believed him. One thing the boy never messed around with, and that was going outside at night.

  Moriarty heard a sob and a tight squeeze under his knee. “Something’s got my leg!” he informed his wife with dramatic exclamation before looking down. Of course, his five-year-old was wrapped around his calf, sitting on his boot, and crying.

  “I don’t want you to go!” he cried, sniffling wetly. “Take me with you, daddy! Please?”

  “Sam, you would be so insanely bored, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. You’d be whining by the time we got to the opera,” Moriarty assured knowingly, then started the arduous process of prying the toddler off his leg. He pointed to Cole. “Son, lend me your boot.”

  Cole groaned and looked upward as if he had just been asked to dig the Panama Canal. “Father, I just want to go upstairs and watch the football game! Why are you punishing me?” he complained as Moriarty finished prying Samuel off his leg and then he dropped the child onto Cole’s own foot. Samuel immediately wrapped his chubby arms around his brother’s leg and soaked Cole’s pant leg with tears.

  “I’m not punishing you. I’ve giving you quality time with Samuel. He’s old enough for you to explain to him why football is far less silly than American hand-egg,” Moriarty assured lightly, then slapped his eldest playfully on his shoulder. Finally, Moriarty took his wife’s wrap from its hook on the wall. “My goddess,” he coaxed. “Naomi fully knows how to watch a baby. She’s had God-knows-how-many grandchildren. She and her husband must have bred like rabbits…”

  “I only had two children. I only have seven grandchildren. The way you’re at it, Mr. Miles, you’ll have little wizards wreaking havoc every inch of the realm in another decade,” Naomi responded crisply, rocking the baby, which was only Moriarty’s third-born in the twenty years he and his wife had been married. When it came to Moriarty and the house servants, exaggerations and snark thrived. “And don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing on these little excursions to the Earthside.”

  “An opera?” Alice said hopefully, trying to keep the truth from her sons. She slipped into the wrap her husband offered her.

  “Maybe you’re doing that, too,” Naomi replied with a roll of her eyes. “But I can’t help but recall that Samuel was born exactly nine months to the day after one of these opera trips.”

  “We’re going to London, not to Sodom and Gomorrah, Naomi, so put your fears to rest,” Moriarty assured the old woman. He then brought his wife’s knuckles to his lips and shared a secretive grin with her. Alice blushed and averted her eyes.

  Naomi made an unhappy hum. “One more child, one more, Moriarty, and you’ll hire yourself a nanny. I’m to be keeping the house, not to incessantly coddle these—!”

  “Have a great time, Naomi,” Moriarty interrupted with a gentlemanly bow of his head. He began to lead Alice out. “Don’t let the boys tear down the place.”

  Alice stopped just to cup Cole’s face in her hands and kiss his cheek. “I love you,” she told him. She bent down and kissed the still-sobbing toddler’s head. “Be good, Samuel,” she told him, and then finally began to abide by Moriarty’s gentle pushes toward the door.

  Moriarty was nearly at the door, when he was suddenly stopped by a bad feeling. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on what it was, but since his son was born, most of Moriarty’s bad feelings were caused by Cole, so he looked at him again and narrowed his eyes. “No shenanigans of any sort. I do not wa
nt to be called, and I do not want something to happen to anyone. Try to find something useful to do. Don’t loaf about and get into trouble because you’re bored.”

  “Father,” Cole replied loftily, turning his body and feet, despite the considerable extra weight he still had on one of his boots, “loafing about is the last thing I plan to do, I assure you.” He saluted him by pinching the brim of his cap, bowed his head slightly, and then limped out of the room, Samuel still sobbing noisily on his leg.

  Naomi frowned and looked accusingly at Moriarty, glancing at the direction that Cole had left the room. “What do you think he meant by that?” she demanded.

  “Have fun finding out,” Moriarty said, finally pushing that ill feeling outside of himself. He had no time for it—he was going to shag his wife for the next two days straight and nothing and no one was going to stop him. He added thoughtfully, “Now pretend my cellular is off,” he said by means of ‘goodbye,’ and ducked out of the doorway, happily forgetting all of his troubles.

  * * *

  It was last time Maili would be standing in the gardens. The last time she’d smell that gentle perfume all around her… Probably even the last time she’d feel the sea breeze on her skin…

  She felt like she was going to her own funeral. She even wanted to wear her black dress that day, but Anwen wouldn’t let her. Her adoptive mother had picked out a turquoise dress, the same color as her eyes, which was mostly made of veil-like fabric and flowed in the breeze. Anwen had claimed that Maili looked like the queen she was. Maili, however, felt like the dress made her feel like the slut Damen had paid for.

  “What if I had a husband before?” she asked Hoel, her last attempt at an argument. She had made it before, but she was hoping that the time that had passed would cause a different response than last time. “I’m not a virgin, you know.”