Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 67966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“I know.”
“I need him too,” Casey confessed.
“I know.”
Thorn felt that truth like a stone in his chest.
Casey wasn’t just speaking of loneliness—there was a void only a certain kind of love could fill in him.
The same void Thorn had long ago stopped believing could be filled for himself.
He tightened his arms around Casey, not because he thought it would satisfy his need, but because it was all he could give at the moment.
That was the deal he’d made with his heart nine years ago.
He’d hold and comfort his gentlemen, protect them, guide them back into the light so they could heal others.
And never let them see how much of that light he’d lost in himself.
Thorn would find Casey’s Sir. He swore it.
There was always a broken heart somewhere, and Thorn made it his priority to find it, even on the days when it felt impossible. Because the moment he stopped looking, Belladonna would become nothing more than a beautiful mansion by the sea.
Thorn dressed in a black Ralph Lauren suit, foregoing a tie since he didn’t have any face-to-face meetings today.
He descended the grand twin staircase and took the scenic route through his home.
Belladonna wasn’t just walls and windows—every archway and room possessed memories.
The public believed Belladonna to be a high-class escort service. The police had made that mistake too—more than once. But Belladonna wasn’t about sex, though sometimes it happened. It was about restoration. About gathering fractured souls, bleeding hearts, and shattered men, and giving them belief in love again.
The foyer, living room, and conservatory were empty, but Thorn could hear hushed voices near the patio doors.
Thorn followed the sound and stopped short, taking in the scene instead of intruding.
He watched as Axel lowered his head and placed a tender kiss on the temple of the man whose heart he was mending.
Their arrangement was brand-new, still in its wonderment phase.
Thorn remembered the extensive interview he’d had with federal prosecutor Robert McIntyre before he’d allowed him to come to Belladonna to meet his gentleman, Axel.
Robert accepted the soothing touches as he leaned into Axel’s broad chest, drinking in the warmth as if it were oxygen.
The deep indentation along Robert’s jaw caught the bright sunlight, shining on the cruel reminder of the shattered bone that had never set right after his ex-husband’s brutality.
Axel didn’t shy away from it, didn’t treat it as an imperfection—he kissed closer, whispering against that broken edge as though it were sacred.
“Wow. Look at that, handsome?” Axel whispered, turning him in his arms until he was facing the magnificent view through the floor-to-ceiling glass doors.
The storm had left behind a bruised sky, streaked with pale shades of green, blue, and violet.
“To be blessed with something so beautiful after such a terrible storm.”
Robert blinked before a hesitant, slow smile tilted one side of his mouth.
“After the tempest in the sky, how sweet yon rainbow to the eye,” Axel said in a voice that melted away fragments of Thorn’s own iciness. “Charles Lamb said that. And you’re just as stunning as that rainbow, y’know.”
Robert gazed into Axel’s rich brown eyes, a faint smile tugging at his lips, tentative as if he was relearning how.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Axel reached over and took Robert’s heavy sweater off the back of the chair and eased it over his shoulders.
“Why don’t you walk down to the surf for a little while and enjoy it, and I’ll come join you after my brunch with Thorn, okay?”
“Don’t be long.”
The plea in Robert’s voice was heartbreaking.
“Absolutely not,” Axel answered him, caressing Robert’s cheek with the pad of his thumb.
Thorn waited until Axel closed the patio doors before he approached him.
“Good morning.”
Axel continued to stare at his fragile heart as he made his way past the lawn.
When Robert turned toward the path to the beach, he slowed by the sand, careful of his limp—the result of a shattered femur after one of his husband’s “lessons.”
Each uneven shift was a reminder of the trauma he’d survived—and why Belladonna was the place that would embrace his scars and teach him they were to be honored as a part of his story, his beauty…and his strength.
“Morning, Thorn. How’d you rest?”
“A bit fitful, but enough to function for today,” he said around a tired smile.
“Casey come into your room this morning?”
“Yes. I know he would’ve been in yours if you didn’t have a new soul to mend. I have a very good prospect for him.” Thorn kneaded the knot at the base of his neck. “But Casey’s the first sub I’ve allowed to live here. I have to be extremely careful choosing his Sir.”
“I know.” Axel nodded, still not looking in Thorn’s direction.
“Last night must’ve gone well with Robert. He looks nothing like the man I followed to and from his job for two weeks. He’s holding his head up a bit more.”