by Sophia Reed
Just during the time I was back, the black chick went up over four million dollars.
I felt physically sick, worse than I'd ever felt during withdrawal, and I had no idea if it was from whatever the asshole guard had injected me with, or the situation I found myself in.
Both, probably.
I'd offered to take these women with me. I'd said I was going to go. If they had agreed, if they had chosen to stand with me, what would have happened? The guards were armed but I didn't think they'd kill all of us.
Just you, idiot. Don't close your eyes again.
Oh, but it felt so good to feel consciousness swaying away like the lapping of wavelets at the edge of a lake. I could just be lulled back to sleep, dream away this latest horror.
Need a jolt? Open your eyes and look down.
I almost responded that the stupid dress was old news, but a tendril of cool air brushed against me and my eyes jerked open convulsively, my head straining to look down at my body.
I was completely naked and lewdly bound so my breasts jutted out obscenely and the rope was the only coverage I had on my lower body, the plucked and shaved and shiny bits of me, covered where the rope was bound cruelly tight between my legs.
Nearby someone whimpered. For a horrible moment I thought it was me, then I realized it was the older woman. I tried to meet her eyes, though what I thought I could convey to her – Hey, isn't this wild? But we're all in it together and you must have known your husband is a shit! – I didn't know.
The black girl had been bought for more than five million by her own owner. Fine, if that's how they got their jollies, this whole thing was idiotic. Why not just make their donations? But even as I asked it I understood the control, the power, the game, the humiliation of those of us stuck up here. The dominance and the unwilling, uncontrollable submission.
He'd said he bought me. So now he was going to buy me again? At least the funds this time would go to do some charitable work, a thought that made me want to start laughing hysterically.
And then I stopped. Because the older woman was being auctioned and she did not go with her older, distinguished husband but with one of the younger men, who looked avidly at her while holding a side-of-his-mouth conversation with the man she'd come with. Their eyes didn't leave her.
Cold terror darted through me. I knew Cole St. Martin, at least to some extent. I had been with him long enough that I trusted, mostly, that he truly wouldn't do anything to harm me permanently.
I had no such knowledge about any one of these other men.
Be unworthy, said the voice. I thought maybe the voice was police officer Annie, back from the dead or wherever she'd been hanging out. Be vile. Be disgusting.
It shouldn't be hard. It was what they told women when they were grabbed by a rapist: piss yourself. Shit yourself. Vomit. Spit, drool, whatever, just be so disgusting he doesn't want to touch you. You're already in deep shit.
That's what the voice was saying now. You're already in for it. At least you'd stay with Cole. The known quantity.
Except he wasn't. I hadn't expected him to grab me by the throat.
I'd still rather be here with him than with any of the others, with their greedy eyes and too-big bank accounts.
But I couldn't. Maybe the laws of society had broken down for these people but I couldn't bring myself to do that while bound and trussed naked on a stage before them.
I sobbed when the light turned to me and the bidding started. Lost my cool, lost my edge, lost my detachment. I cried.
At 5.5 million, the blond man with the incredibly cruel eyes smiled up at me.
I don't remember losing consciousness but maybe you never do. All I could remember was waking to hear Cole talking low and earnest with someone who sounded angry but as if he'd already lost whatever battle they were having.
When my vision focused again, I saw him talking with the man who had won the auction for me, shaking his head, clearly looking for agreement and finally he said, "You're a junior here. I can stop you from taking her without giving you anything in return."
The blond's mouth looked like a shark's, predatory and somehow angry.
Cole went on. "She's not ready. I will honor our agreement when she is and deliver her to you personally but for now, she goes nowhere. Not this night, not this week, not this month, and most likely not this year. Are you going to challenge me on this?" His voice alone appended sweeping insults to the end of the statement.
The blond snarled something in return about collecting in January and stalked away, leaving me shivering with relief and cold. It was Cole who climbed up the stairs to the makeshift stage and touched my face. I couldn't have hated him more at that moment but I leaned my head into the touch, my eyes locked with his, my mouth slightly open, lips parted as I breathed through the residual nausea. "I bought you," he said, as if to himself. "You're mine." There was no compassion in his voice.
36
Cole
"You stupid little bitch. You stupid little bitch."
It wasn't her fault.
It was her fault.
All she had to do was as she was told. Wear the dress. Endure what I ordered her to endure. Act like the other women in the room who, offered escape, looked down at their laps and sat still as statues, lest even their hope gave them away.
"You stupid little whore."
The bed where I had taken Marilyn. Inside the playroom. A big four-poster. Perfect for tying.
She sagged in my arms. She was limp and hot and unresponsive.
She wouldn't be for long.
I snapped restraints on her arms while she lay nearly unconscious on the bed, then ripped the dress from her. One of the servants had redressed her in the chaos of the end of the dinner party. There had been raised voices and one girl soundly punished, another had her mouth washed out for daring to say she wished that Annie had made it. She was one of the blonds, the one with the whip marks across her back, new to Paul this year.
I had a feeling she wouldn't be with him much longer and despite the money he'd just paid for a night with another wife, he'd soon be selling her somewhere else and if he remained angry enough, then hopefully some of the money we raised would go to freeing her.
The men I dealt with were what Annie should be afraid of. The money I raised was going fully to fight human trafficking and sexual slavery.
What Annie was, was something else. She wouldn't understand and I couldn't explain it. When the time came, I'd give her over to Brad. But not now, and not on his demand.
"You stupid little bitch." I pulled my hand back before it stroked her hair where it had fallen free of the creation the salon worker had designed. It looked better free, Annie's dark curls wild around her face.
Her face was too white, the lipstick on her geisha like.
I pulled her body up against mine and snapped one cuff to the carabiner at the end of the rope, then leaned her against me in the other direction, attaching that wrist.
She came to as I was tying her legs to the legs of the bed and panicked. Her entire body went rigid and she threw her head around, searching for whatever she could, then striking out with her head, hoping to make contact when she realized someone was behind her.
I snarled my fist in her curls again and jerked her head back savagely. "All you had to do was play along," I snarled and bit the side of her neck hard enough to leave indents.
She screamed, short and sharp, and tried to head butt me. I dodged easily.
"That was no game," she said. Her voice was furious and nowhere near scared enough.
That would change.
"It is a game, you stupid whore. It's a game and it raises money for – "
"I heard," she said and then stopped, going still, when I put both hands around her throat and squeezed.
"You are my property. You will speak when spoken to. You will call me sir. And right now, you will scream."
"Fuck you."
"We'll see." I crossed the room in giant strides a
nd inserted a key into one of the armoire units that stood there. I heard her intake of breath, impossible to stifle, when the doors opened and she saw the variety of canes hanging from their hooks, swinging with the opening of the door.
I chose one of the less flexible ones. It wasn't what I would have chosen to start her with but things were different now. Thick, hard, long.
The same way I felt, just anticipating the use of it on her virgin bottom.
She was babbling when I made my way back to her. Please and I won't, not ever again and Sign anything you want, as if she hadn't already. As if she wouldn't when we were finished.
"Shhh," I said, almost gently. "It's too late for that. Kiss the cane." I held it up in front of her and she jerked her head back, shaking it from side to side. As if her refusal could change anything. "Annie. This is going to happen."
She didn't break. She didn't sag. She didn't give in. She shook herself from side to side, tearing at the restrains, screaming for help she had to know wasn't coming in this house.
She fought. I was glad to see it.
It wasn't going to do her any good.
37
Annie
The restraints cut into my wrists. Because they were ropes, it felt like if I could just twist far enough, pull hard enough, the give in the rope would be enough for me to get free – somehow!
And it was too late. Cole moved to the front of the bed, looked at me, and said something about it would be better for me if I lay forward over the bed.
I screamed at him. I called him every name I could think of. I begged again.
He watched. He waited. He tapped the cane against his free hand and walked behind me.
"Shhh, Annie," he said. "This is going to happen."
I heard the sound of the thing being pulled back and I screamed.
I heard the sound of the thing whistling down at me and I couldn't breathe. I held my breath, my eyes screwed shut tight.
And the world lit up again, pain like I'd never felt slicing through me, the cut and the thud and then, even as my heart rate sped into crazy speeds, I felt the secondary explosion as the pain from the cut and thud spread into something white hot and unbelievable.
I couldn't stop screaming.
"That was one," Cole said and leaned over me. The ball gag went easily into my wide open mouth. He fastened it behind my head with no problem. My legs fought to kick him. My arms to free myself. My head whipped around uselessly my hair tangling in the snot and tears.
I heard the cane rise again and heard it come whistling down and then there was pain, a second time, a third, a fourth, a tenth, a twelfth and then I couldn't count, I couldn't think, there was nothing but pain that just kept coming until I fell forward onto the bed, my arms jacked up hard behind me, my shoulders screaming in pain from the ropes, my ass and legs a fiery mass of so much pain.
Something starting inside me. Something that had just survived. Something that understood there had been three dozen blows with a thick hard cane and that something else thick and hard was pressing against me and the ball gag was slipping from my mouth, pulled out in a fall of spit and blood where I'd bitten my lip.
"Say yes," Cole's voice breathed.
Not that consent meant a fucking thing.
"Say yes," he said.
"Or you'll do more."
"No."
"…yes."
He slid inside me. He was hot and thick and hard and enormous and I screamed with that as well, screamed as his body pressed up against my ass, rubbing the stripes the cane had left on me. I screamed as pleasure and pain warred inside me.
I heard him make a sound, heard him moan as he pressed hard into me, then he was fucking me, so hard my legs bounced off the low rail that went across the end of the bed, my clit grinding against the wood. He reached around and fingered me there, making me suck in breath again. I couldn't stop crying, couldn't seem to catch my breath, and still the heat was building inside me, heat starting to radiate out through my body.
"Not yet," he growled and I didn't know if he meant him or me but thought neither of us had much control over that tonight. His hands left my clit and went up to my breasts, grabbing hard, squeezing, pinching, pulling and finally slapping as hard as he could with the angle he was at.
Coupled with the pounding it drove me over the edge. I felt everything inside me start to throb. My pussy clenched around him and he gave a strangled Oh, my god! And I felt him go rigid and hard and still before he started pumping again, coming hard even as I came screaming. He came hot and hard, filling me, leaving me hanging limp when he pulled out, my own orgasm only just starting to edge away.
For a second neither of us moved. Something ran down the back of my leg but I didn't know if it was come or blood and I didn't care.
Finally he ran one hand down my back, which was wet and cold and aching. "You stupid little bitch," he said.
And walked away and left me hanging there.
38
Cole
In the days that followed, she turned inward. I didn't care. I had what I wanted and the drug was working on her. The addiction was becoming a thing of the past, and her defiance was breaking down in the light of reality.
But just giving in and letting things stand wouldn't help her. For her sake, and my enjoyment, she needed more challenges.
I started making plans.
"How's your father?"
The day before she'd had a fifteen minute phone call with him. As far as his records would show, if he ever looked, she was calling from within Washington State. There was a good chance he wouldn't look. He understood the concept of undercover. But in case his records came to light, the trail led away from where she really was.
It was safer for her. For the day when she'd go back to her life and her career.
It was safer for her, keeping her out of sight of anyone who might want to kidnap a billionaire's property for ransom, or a competitor who wanted what I already had.
It was safer for me. She was my property.
Annie looked up from loading her pancake with strawberries and whipped cream. There was bacon on her plate, and eggs. Briefly it had looked like she was developing an eating disorder, as if the need to control something was eating at her. But this morning's breakfast proved otherwise.
Her smile was genuine, even if it wasn't meant for me. "He's doing so much better. He's home. I mean, he's still home, there's been no more damage, he hasn't been readmitted to hospital. It's been weeks and he's better and stronger every day. He said a lot of it is because of the nursing staff and trainers and nutritionists that the grant paid for, and – "
She stopped mid-sentence. Eyes narrowed, she looked at me. "I'm an idiot."
I smiled and forked up a mouthful of fish. "You're just hopeful."
She shook her head hard enough to dislodge a strawberry from her fork. "No. That's not it. There's no grant for disabled or ill police. That was made up. It's you – you're the funds for him to have round the clock care and access to all the other extras." Her mouth hadn't properly closed yet.
"And if I am?" I bit into the fish. Annoyingly, her pancake looked better.
She closed her mouth again. "Thank you. That's all."
"I didn't do it."
She just nodded, clearly allowing me my fiction. "All right."
I considered that to be borderline actionable but the morning was full of rain and wind and I wanted out of the rural and into the city. I had business to do in Las Vegas with donors and with the pharmaceuticals company, St. Martin Pharma. Normally the day to day business was run by my people but every so often my presence was needed and I can't keep working from wherever I've holed up with whoever I've holed up with.
It would do her good to get out of the compound for a while.
It would do me better if she encountered some temptation along the way.
She was still talking, about her phone call with her father.
"We're going to Las Vegas," I said into her stream of
words. She stopped chewing and looked at me.
"For – for how long? Sir?" There was an undercurrent of excitement in her voice, but also fear.
Good. She was already off balance.
"For as long as I say. After breakfast, get packed." I told her what to take. Then I told her to take the fourth cane from the left in the first armoire, the door of which was unlocked. To take it with her and lie face down on the bed, her pants below her ass, and to wait for me.
It had been a week. She should be healed.
And there was the change I was waiting for. Annie went completely still all over, her fork poised over her plate, her breakfast clearly forgotten. Her eyes wide, she asked, "Have I done something wrong, sir?"
No, she hadn't. And that was the point. To break her down until she was so angry, so hurt, emotions that the fight built up again. Until she fully accessed the part of Annie that wouldn't run from a fight but that might actually have the courage to try – again -- to run from me.
She wouldn't succeed. But she'd be stronger for the attempt.
39
Annie
He came up behind me. I'd been waiting for so long I'd lost track of the long slow count of minutes in my head. My breathing was muffled by the bedding. It made for shallow, awkward breaths that didn't satisfy and kept me afraid, on edge. Where once even in a situation I'd put myself in I'd have greeted such directions by rewriting them to suit myself – head turned on the pillow because I insisted on comfort and being able to breathe, the cane leaned against the bed because otherwise it rolled against me, for example – I now lay flat on the bed, my face in the pillow, my arms by my sides. The cane had rolled and leaned against me from shoulder to mid thigh.
"Don't move," came his voice from above and behind me.
My arms moved under my head, making room in the pillow so I could grasp at the breath I'd soon need. My hands fisted under my head, but nothing else. Otherwise, I didn't move. As instructed.