Over forty-million pounds in the bank, but the one thing she wants to buy is not for sale.
Freya Stone is a Lottery winner. A Euromillions Lottery winner to be exact. The week she won, hers was the only winning ticket. And it was a rollover, seeing her almost forty-five million pounds richer. But with no taste at all for a wealthy lifestyle, Freya bought herself a flashy car and a fancy apartment, then ran out of ideas and stuck the rest in the bank to be carefully invested by her own private wealth consultant.
One passion her wealth will enable her to indulge, however, is her appetite for submission. Or so she thinks. Following a childhood illness, Freya is unable to speak. She gets by pretty well with a combination of British Sign Language and a notepad, but her lack of speech makes negotiating difficult. She can’t tell a Dom what she needs, and she can’t use safe words. None of the Doms she’s played with so far have been especially interested in training a novice sub who doesn’t even squeal.
So Freya decides to buy tuition from a Master who comes highly recommended. Why not? She has the funds at her disposal, and nothing better she’d like to purchase. Twenty-five thousand pounds for a month with the Dom she’s fantasised about for ages seems like a bargain to her.
But experienced and harsh Dom Nick Hardisty has other ideas. Infuriated at Freya’s attempt to buy his services, he turns her down flat, while also demanding that she pay for her temerity by submitting to a punishment which he will administer personally.
Can Freya accept his discipline? Can she convince him to reconsider and provide the help she needs? And Nick Hardisty drives a hard bargain. If he won’t accept her money, what will his price be?
Reader Advisory: This book contains references to age regression scenes and uncomfortable BDSM encounters. It also includes pain play, spanking, restraints, anal play and nipple clamps.
Publisher's Note: This book is best read in sequence as part of a serial. Some of the characters in this book also appear in Ashe Barker’s other serials. These serials can all standalone, but are best enjoyed in order: The Dark Side, Sure Mastery, The Hardest Word, A Richness of Swallows.
General Release Date: 4th April 2014
“That’s him.” I sign the words to Summer, my closest and dearest friend, who’s managed somehow to bury all her own heartfelt objections to this mad scheme of mine and has come here with me anyway. To provide moral support. Or maybe to try one last time to talk me out of it. And if all else fails, as she puts it, to pick up what’s left of me afterwards and make sure I get home.
“Who? Which one?” She whispers the questions back at me.
Two powerful-looking Doms lean casually against the bar in the far corner of the members’ lounge here at the Collared and Tied club. They’re talking quietly, both their expressions serious, and although this is very much a social club and they’re both nursing drinks, I suspect their discussion is more business than pleasure. Still, that doesn’t concern me. My business with Nicholas Hardisty will definitely have very little to do with pleasure. He’s here. And so am I. It’s to be tonight then.
It’s been over a month now since that disastrous, ill-fated email exchange with the terrifying Mr Hardisty, and I’ve been dreading this face to face encounter. Twice a week for the last four and a half weeks, I’ve been dreading it. Each time I’ve returned here since that awful day when I picked up that voicemail message from the membership secretary telling me that I was considered ‘unsuitable for membership’ and that therefore my pass card had been invalidated. The cultured female voice went on to inform me that I would not be admitted to the premises again, I was no longer a ‘friend’ in the club Facebook group and my log-in details had been removed from the club website. And the remainder of my annual membership fee was non-refundable. The cash was the least of my worries, but I was suddenly cut adrift, an outsider, not welcome. Not that I’ve ever felt especially welcome, more a fish out of water if I’m honest, but I have always felt safe here and that matters to me. I was gutted by what had happened, completely crushed. It never occurred to me that a simple request, however unwanted or uninvited, would result in such harsh and instant retribution.
Mistress Angela spoke up for me, I know I have her to thank. And he relented, commuted my sentence so to speak.
My foster mum always advised me to be careful what I wished for. Well. I certainly wished to attract the attention of the most respected and desirable Dom in the Collared and Tied club, and I’ve got my wish. And now, he’s going to spank me. It’ll be a punishment spanking, so I have no illusions. It’s going to hurt. A lot. He didn’t actually say, didn’t say much at all in fact, but I would think it’s likely he’ll have it in mind to punish me in front of an audience to discourage any other similarly unruly and misguided submissive from breaking the rules and irritating him. Maybe it’ll be in the dungeon, so I get to be publicly humiliated as well as hurt.
Not that I’ll get any say in it. And there’s no point at all in delaying the inevitable. Indeed, if he suspects I’ve tried to avoid him or delay matters, he’ll dish out even more retribution. So it’s really got to be now.
Summer finds this fondness of mine for kinky sex more than a little unsettling, but even so she hasn’t tried to talk me out of my regular visits to the club. Well, not much. Until now. Ultimately, she’s all for consenting adults is Summer, and she just wants me to be happy. And safe. But she doesn’t think this latest business with Nicholas Hardisty is even remotely safe, a view she’s shared with me pretty much constantly for the last four and a half weeks. Ever since I confided to her what I’d done, and what the consequences were. And what I intended to do—or more accurately allow this powerful and angry Dom to do—in order to resolve the matter.
“You don’t have to do this. It’s mad. No one can expect you to just walk up to him and, and…”
“Introduce myself as the submissive who pissed him off right royally and who he now gets to spank by way of retribution.” My hands are moving furiously as I respond silently to my best friend’s objections, but she’s been around me for years and can keep track of my signing with no trouble at all.
“Exactly. Let’s just go.”
“No. I need this to be finished. Then I can move on, look for another Dom to train me. Maybe Angela will hear of someone else…”
“God, I hope not. If they’re all as scary as… Which one is he, anyway? They both look deadly.”
“The one nearest us, cream shirt.”
“Pity. The other guy’s better looking. If you’re going to be dropping your pants for a guy, and then let him—whatever—it helps if he’s gorgeous, I suppose. Sort of softens the blow, so to speak. Are you sure yours is the cream shirt?”
“Yes. I’m sure. And mine’s definitely the most gorgeous. Yours is okay I suppose…”
“Mine? No way. I value my hide too much, and these guys—what did you say they were? Doms?”
I nod helpfully.
“Yeah, well, they just terrify me. And if you’d any sense, you’d be running for the hills now, and not even contemplate marching up to him. Please, Freya, you don’t have to do this. If being a member of this weird club is so important to you, why not just buy the place and award yourself life membership?”
“Because that’s not the way we do things.”
We? We submissives that would be. And for a submissive to contemplate buying a BDSM club and taking charge, in direct defiance of the most powerful Dominant in the place, is so unsubmissive as to be laughable. I shake my head, knowing I can’t come close to making Summer understand the complex protocols at play here. Suffice it to say, I have to accept my punishment if I want to move on and be allowed to continue to explore my sexual preferences in the relative security of this safe environment. I turn back to her, and decide to make one last attempt at reassurance.
Until 2010, Ashe was a director of a regeneration company before deciding there had to be more to life and leaving to pursue a lifetime goal of self-employment.
Ashe has been an avid reader of women's fiction for many years—erotic, historical, contemporary, fantasy, romance—you name it, as long as it's written by women, for women. Now, at last in control of her own time and working from her home in rural West Yorkshire, she has been able to realise her dream of writing erotic romance herself.
She draws on settings and anecdotes from her previous and current experience to lend colour, detail and realism to her plots and characters, but her stories of love, challenge, resilience and compassion are the conjurings of her own imagination. She loves to craft strong, enigmatic men and bright, sassy women to give them a hard time—in every sense of the word.
When she's not writing, Ashe's time is divided between her role as resident taxi driver for her teenage daughter, and caring for a menagerie of dogs, cats, rabbits, tortoises and a hamster.
Ashe Barker - Cara Sutra feature
The Hardest Word is a series featuring Freya, a mute submissive who seeks out a powerful , experienced Dom, Nick Hardisty, to train her. It’s fair to say she has no idea what she is letting herself in for. Freya is a strong, resilient and assertive heroine, a woman who knows what she wants, who she wants, and is not afraid to ask for it. She has had some bad luck in her life, and some incredible good fortune too when she wins over forty million pounds in the Euro lottery. But even this can’t buy her the Dom of her dreams.
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