by Sophia Reed
"There are 29 now."
"Sir…"
"That's 220, Annie."
"Sir, please." I was dizzy, the blood going to my head. Hanging on to the chair legs was almost impossible.
"Don't make a sound," he said.
The hairbrush came down for the first time.
I counted to 11 before I screamed.
2
Cole
There was a little bit of blood. Not much. Just enough that I knew I'd broken the skin.
It only made me hotter for her.
I'd told Annie when she came here – when she was brought here, sold to me by a bad cop out of Seattle who I turned in not long after – that she didn't have to sleep with me.
That was true. She didn't. I wanted her to, though. Wanted it bad. I wanted to make her cry for me, saying my name, screaming it. I wanted to hurt her, to bend her to my will until she begged for the pain, and then I'd withhold it.
I wanted her to be mine.
But standing in the shower, Annie left behind and duct taped to the bed, thinking about what she'd done, or more likely seething against me, I knew I wanted more than just for her to want me and want what I doled out to her. I wanted more than for her to crave the pain I could give if I chose and not if it suited me.
I wanted her well.
If that sounds altruistic, so be it.
I went into pharmaceuticals because of my grandfather. Best man I ever knew, he raised me after my father took off. After my mother died. When there was only me. My grandmother was in the picture, a sweet woman now in her nineties living across the country in Florida as if retirement there were a law and not a choice.
When my grandfather died, in his late eighties and sane as he ever was, he was in terrible pain that even opiates couldn't touch and by then, to his shame, he was addicted.
I swore to find something better. To help those people humbled and harmed by drugs.
And when he died, my grandfather made me promise he wouldn't let anything bad ever happen to my grandmother.
She tried to shush him but it was an easy promise to make. I'd already put myself through med school, already chosen a path that could help those people who were aching and grinding their way through terminal illnesses to do so with a modicum of grace and a lack of pain that ensured their last days with family weren't cruel.
Cruel was what I was. That was my pleasure.
Helping was my profession.
The drugs Annie was taking were natural, rainforest derivatives that I'd seen more than once take down an opiate addiction and render it a memory. She was one of the test subjects, carefully chosen because she was between a rock and a hard place.
Right now, that was my hard place. Leaning a shoulder against the smooth stone of the shower, standing in the warm wet darkness with only the light coming in from a small high window, I reached down and wrapped one fist around my cock, stroking while I thought of her white cheeks shaking under the onslaught of the hairbrush.
She bore it poorly.
I smiled as I ran my hand out, stroking slowly for now, prolonging the self pleasure. Annie was a take charge cop. She was in command whenever possible and ceded the position unwillingly. When her life fell apart around her and circumstances were beyond her control, she crumbled.
I was here to un-crumble her. After that I might return her to her regularly scheduled life. And I might not.
For this afternoon, I had something else in mind. My hand moved faster of its own accord as I thought about what I meant to do to her.
For now, that involved letting her go. Or letting her think that I would. I was going to offer her a choice. Stay here and continue the cure, continue the remedy for the toxins ruining her life. That meant stay every bit as hidden away as she would for an undercover operation. No contact with her boyfriend. No contact with her father. I had already made inquiries. He was out of the hospital and out of the rehab center and ready to face the charges mounted against him. If she broke cover to testify, she'd ruin the operation that she so desperately wanted to finish: taking down at least one of the fet suppliers on the streets of her hometown.
It had to be up to her.
So her choice: If she stayed, she submitted to me. I'd put her on a daily training regime, food and vitamins and water, exercise and punishment when she needed it, correction when she needed it. Or simply when I wanted to be entertained.
She still didn't have to have sex with me. My back arched as my cock hardened and my balls drew up, the pulsation starting before everything sprayed across the shower, washed away in the flood of hot water. I could take care of that myself.
But she'd be collared. A silver collar, made by top of the line fetish jewelers. The kind of collar that locked on and only I would have the key. If she left, she'd have to be cut out of it.
Wrapped around the collar - the shock collar dog owners use as "invisible fencing." I'd have the remote.
It was that, or she could head back into the world and try to make her way free of fet for the next 20 days, until her leave was up and after that decide what she wanted to do. She'd be out on the street, free to return to Mark and her father, free to break her cover and testify or contact the police and testify in some other way. She didn't even know that Samuels had been fired. She'd have to navigate all of that on her own.
She was crying in her room when I left the shower. That was music to my ears. She had to be beaten down before she could be built back up. That's the problem with strength. It can get in the way.
I could tell by where the sound was coming from in her room that she'd freed herself from the duct tape. Also good. She was still fighting. She needed to fight. Me. Herself. Her addiction.
I walked into her room still naked and wet from the shower, pulling on a robe as I entered but leaving it hanging open, framing my cock, which was getting hard again just looking at her. There were tracks of tears on her face. If I ordered her to pull off the sweats she'd put back on, I'd see the hot, angry red of her ass.
I didn't order it.
I ordered her to sit down on the hard-back hard-seat chair I'd used to punish her.
She winced when she did it but she did it.
"I have an offer to make you. Clearly there are some problems with your recovery."
Her lips started to frame a word. Her eyes were so big and dark, the lashes wet with the remnants of her tears. She was going to say It was only Advil.
I didn't give her a chance. "You have some options. Which you choose has everything to do with how much you want to go back to your life, your job, your father, your fiancé." I said that last deliberately, pretty sure already that she didn't want to go back to him. She just wasn't ready to admit it.
The way I was standing, her eyes kept straying to my tumescent dick. There was a hunger there, one I had no intention of feeding yet. I had other ways of taking care of that. If she wanted my cock, she'd have to work for it, and when I gave it to her, I'd hurt her.
I knew what she'd been through. I knew what Jesse Baylor had done to her. I knew what she'd gone back for. I knew she mourned him despite what he'd done.
I knew she wanted her life back, that she was devastated by her own slide into the addiction she was fighting on the streets, and more so, almost definitely, by her growing need to be hurt, to be fucked hard, to be dominated, kept, punished.
For her growing attraction to me.
So I was going to set her free. Or as free as she would think she was. And watch her come back to me of her own accord. Ready to become a sweet submissive.
"Here are your choices," I said, and stated it bluntly.
Submit.
Or go home.
3
Annie
Beside me, Mark snored softly.
It used to bother me, the way he snored at night. I've always been a light sleeper, something of paranoia even before the job made me officially and properly paranoid. When Mark did anything but a rhythmic in and out breath it would wake me and I'd li
e there wondering how I was going to live my entire life with him doing that.
Since Cole had sent me away, since coming home to Seattle, it didn't matter anymore if Mark snored or not. I wasn't sleeping. Now it only bothered me because I was jealous.
Ten days in Cole's "care" and once during that time he moved me from one location to another. Now I was starting to wonder if he really had. I'd been blindfolded again, given anti-nausea drugs and driven for long enough the sun went down. When we reached our destination, he'd had the car drive inside and I'd been carried into the house still blindfolded.
The more I thought about it, the more I figure a lot of the sounds had been the same, the birds and the distant air traffic patterns. The air had felt the same, dry as dust and warm, and then too, there'd been the same sound of a mockingbird outside.
The why of it was harder to figure out, though it kept me off balance and maybe that was the entire point. Plus I couldn't say exactly where I was.
Not that it mattered. Cole St. Martin. He's so well known. Billionaire with a heart of gold, always giving to charities, booking cruises for the disabled, taking small children with serious diseases to the pro-sports games in Las Vegas. Even if I told somebody it would sound like the delusional ramblings of a madwoman.
Or the delusional ramblings of someone who'd not yet kicked her habit.
I hadn't. But I hadn't used. Out from under Cole's supervision I was using other things – alcohol, I was smoking again, and I was taking a lot of Advil. But I hadn't gone looking and I hadn't made a buy.
Mark welcomed me back with mostly open arms. He had to be an idiot not to be suspicious. On the other hand, he had never once asked where I’d been and it seemed far-fetched that I had gone from strung out and drooling, giggling on the couch to an undercover assignment during which I got clean.
He'd never said another word about that afternoon when he basically turned his back and told me I'd better get myself cleaned up.
I had to wonder that the man I was going to marry tacitly believed with no proof that I'd gone somewhere to clean myself up and kept even that a secret. I've always been closed mouthed but that was too much, wasn't it?
Mark turned over and his eyes opened. I'd been thinking so hard about him, wondering if I was doing the right thing to stay here, that it felt for a second like I'd wakened him with my thoughts alone.
Then he blinked against what I realized was sunlight coming into the bedroom. "Morning," he said. His voice was husky with sleep and when he turned toward me, warm and with that curious heaviness that seems to come with a cozy bed and deep sleep, I remembered a lot of the things I loved about him.
He was kind, mostly. He'd make a good doctor because he cared, though I thought he'd find himself on the wrong end of an addiction before retirement because he did care so much. Unless he picked a specialty where people didn't die too much. Podiatry, maybe. So far that didn't seem likely.
"You sleep at all?" he asked, moving under the covers like a swimmer so he ended up on his side, forehead to forehead with me.
"A little." I leaned forward and brushed my lips over his.
"Liar."
"A very little," I modified.
His kiss was a little longer than mine. "What's got you most worried?"
I smiled into his neck, loving the musty warmth of his sleep smell. "You want me to prioritize?"
"Yes, please."
I laughed and it sounded rusty. "My dad, my dad, my dad, and probably another my dad, because it's –"
"Logical? Likely? Lucky?"
"Mm, not that last." He was biting my shoulder, very lightly, but it was still sending warm thoughts south. "Let's go with probable."
"M'kay. What else is bothering you?"
It wasn't really a question.
I said, "Well, there's something … under the covers … poking me. It's very hard and it seems to need somewhere to go."
Mark pulled back and smiled before he licked my upper lip. "I've got just the place," he said.
It was so warm, so easy and familiar, so what I wanted. And still I was grateful when he pulled back and took the time to break open a foil packet and slip on a rubber.
Shit. Life was short. Life was complicated. I needed to go back through the hours and figure out what parts of life mattered the most. What I wanted out of it. What I was willing to give up to get the rest.
Then Mark rolled over me and came up between my legs, sinking deep inside me and starting to stroke gently, rocking into me, pulling out and thrusting in, slow but deep, each stroke seeming to fill me more.
And finally, mercifully, my mind shut down and there was only the pleasure, the racing chills taking my body, the heat building in my core, the throbbing pleasure of him buried deep inside, his lips on my ear, his voice enticing. "Come for me. Let me see you come."
"Hey, pumpkin. How's my girl?"
The fist sized rock of nerves in my chest started to relax for the first time since Mark and I had pulled apart and he'd showered and gone off to the hospital.
"Dad. That's my line."
He laughed at that. "Laughing hurts, you unkind child. Your line is 'How's my girl?'"
"Okay, maybe not that. How's my father?"
"Better."
"The question or the man in question?"
He made a sound like argh and said, "Both."
I didn't call him a liar. That's what I wanted to hear. "What's your ETA on getting out of there?"
"I'm hoping fifth of never. You know what's waiting for me."
I bit my lip, staring out the apartment window into the rain-slicked Seattle day. "I know. I'm sorry, Dad."
"Shit, don't be. You didn't do it. But listen, pumpkin, I need your help."
Everything in me froze up. He wasn't just my father, he was my hero, my motivation, the reason I became a cop. I wanted to help him and if I said no, he'd understand but if I said yes – and I couldn't see saying anything but yes – god. If I said yes, then Mark would get his wish. I wouldn't even be safe as a patrol officer unless we moved to another city. I'd be riding a desk for the rest of my career.
If he needed me to testify on his behalf, I'd do it.
Because my dad would do it for me.
"What do you need?" I asked and was proud that my voice barely wobbled.
"I need someone in my corner," he said. "Your mother and sisters, they're trying to put me into some kind of home."
There was a moment's horrified silence between us on the line. I wanted to tell him not to be silly, he was being paranoid, of course they weren't trying to do any such thing.
But I knew my bitch sisters. They were pretty fucking determined not to let anything come between them and cranking out babies to keep their husbands close. And my mother, it had been at least ten years since she last made a decision on her own without checking with all her daughters, all her girlfriends, and probably my father.
"Are you sure they don't mean a nursing facility?" I asked, realized that was what he was afraid of, and rushed on. "I mean, a rehab place?" God, that was what I needed. "You scared everybody with that pneumonia and you're supposed to be relearning some things, making sure you're not exposed to germs, the like."
There was a derisive snort from the other end of the phone. "There are going to be a lot more germs in a nursing home than in your mother's sterile environment."
I decided not to ask just how he meant that. I didn't want to know.
"And as for breathing, I know how to breathe. I'm doing it now, aren't I? And I'm on my feet again. Damn nurses threw me out of bed the first day."
"Second," I said. "The first day was the day of surgery. They let you sleep."
There was a sudden pause. "You checked?" He sounded like he didn't know whether to be pleased or worried that I'd put myself in danger by making a call.
Neither, actually. By the time he was in surgery, thanks to the pneumonia postponing things, I was at Cole's. Cole had called and found out for me. I didn't ask how he got through
the HIPPA stuff, because he's rich. He's powerful. And because I wasn't supposed to ask questions like that.
I'd just been grateful.
I couldn't say any of that to my father.
"I'm just glad you're all right. Dad, let's find out what it is they want you to do before you wage all out war against it. You taught me to pick my battles."
"And now I'm asking you to pick mine. Are you – safe to come visit?"
"As churches," I said.
I didn't know if I was or not. I just knew I was going.
"It's. A. Re-hab. Facility." Sarah said, loudly and carefully enunciating each word as if Dad were partially deaf and a foreigner. Sarah was the sort who spoke loudly to people who didn't speak English.
"Oh. Kay." I said in return, equally preschool.
Sarah glared. Beside her, Emily looked annoyed, as if we were keeping her from something important, like a mani-pedi, on a day when Dad was afraid they were consigning him to an old folks home. Apparently it was too much to ask if the other Knox women could take the time to explain what was going on. To Dad. Or to me.
It was Jane who leaned forward, her bee stung lips a little too full of collagen. Jane's the oldest of us, at 38, with three kids under the age of five because her first two marriages crumbled and she kept going till she got it right. She's actually the nicest of my sisters.
"You two, just stop." She put her hands out like she was physically separating me and Sarah. Jane is the same height as the rest of us, but none of us are the same weight. I'm in shape and not even the shape I wanted to be in, because of my work. Sarah at 35 is pear shaped and doughy, the result of three little girls. Emily at 30 is planning to be exactly the same. Emily and Sarah are mean, opinionated, feminine and have never wanted to understand me. They just want me to not embarrass them.
It was hard when invited to the occasional, somehow mandatory, family thing – like all of Jane's weddings – not to mention things from work. Like cuffing a vomiting perp in the back of a wagon. Or, I don't know, in the future referencing what it's like to be rage fucked by a gang leader.