Rude Awakening Read Online Free PDF Page A

know what to say or what to do, so she kept holding her breath until she saw stars.
    He touched her stomach and asked her very gently to breathe. Harry assisted her while she came down from her terror, and she released her breath in one long, slow exhalation.
    “Someone hurt you badly,” he said.
    She remembered her situation—that he thought she’d lost her memory. She could use the lie from earlier to help her now. “I don’t know.” With all of her might, she wished she really didn’t know.
    “Keep your secrets for now.” Harry opened the door to her left. “There is your bathroom. Towels, toiletries—everything you’ll need to get clean and feel like a woman is in there.”
    Ruby nodded and moved past him. She wrapped the blanket closer around her, trying to create a layer of insulation to stop her showing how terrified she really was.
    “I’ll get some of my old clothes for you to wear. I won’t have anything for a lady, though.”
    Ruby noted the word lady used instead of woman. Who was this man? Had he stepped out of some old-fashioned movie?
    She was so out of place in the whole house.
    When Ruby was sure he’d left, she went into the bathroom and closed the door. She sighed in exasperation. There was no lock.
    Resting her head against the wood, she closed her eyes for a moment then opened them as she turned to look at the room. More mirrors. The guy—Harry—was obsessed with them. She didn’t want to look at herself. She no longer wished to see the pitiful excuse of a woman she’d turned into. After all of her mother’s work to make her independent and hard-working, to fight for her right to an opinion and everything else her mother thought she needed in her adult life, here she was. At the mercy of a man she didn’t know, surrounded by the most beautiful artwork ever seen, and running from a Master who thought he could use her in the most callous of ways. No getting away from it. Her mother would be embarrassed.
    Shaking her head of the awful negativity claiming her, filling her, Ruby walked to the tub which stood in the centre of the room like a glorious statue. It looked as though it could hold three people easily, twice the size of a normal bath and God knew how much it had cost…and this was just a guest room?
    The more she thought about her surroundings, the more uncomfortable she became. Before her life had turned to shit, she’d rented a simple little flat…no, apartment. A one-bedroom, second-floor apartment in an up-and-coming area—a far cry from the place where she’d been brought up. Once he had entered the equation, the freedom and the apartment went, along with her job at the local library. The more time she dwelled on the changes in her life back then, she saw a new aspect and level to the changes. He’d made her completely, one-hundred per cent dependant on him, and now she was fleeing like some criminal instead of the victim she’d become.
    Ruby pushed the plug into the hole and ran the water, testing the heat. She found some salts and soap and placed them around the edge for easy reach. The salts were lavender and the scent made her drowsy. Pulling off the blanket, she climbed into the hot water and allowed herself the luxury to relax. Bath time had become a chore where Master inflicted other untold evils on her body, and it was nice to be left to lie back and enjoy the scents.
    You did it, Ruby. You got away and you no longer have to worry.
    The name Ruby stuck more than her birth name, and she liked it. A fitting name for her new life. Placing a hand to the collar—it seemed to be an action she couldn’t stop—she wondered how long it would be before she removed it. The collar was a symbol of possession and an honour not only for the submissive to wear but an honour for her Dominant in the fact she’d chosen him to be her protector and Master. But the collar around her neck was ownership and had a different meaning intended than the development of increased