by Sophia Reed
But I'd done nothing wrong! I'd called the son of a bitch sir until my teeth wanted to fall out from it. I'd groveled. I'd fucked him, once more since the disastrous party and auction. I'd waited until he told me I could call my family.
What more did he want?
I realized I'd said it aloud when he answered. "Your compliance. Your obedience. Your submission. Freely given."
I can't.
"Yes, sir."
He laughed. I didn't know him. I couldn't read him. The laugh might mean he believed he had won. The laugh might mean he found my attempts to connive amusing. I wasn't convinced he didn't know this submission was only a sham. "Count," he said.
Oh, fuck, please don't….
The displacement of air. The scream of cane through space. The bright, brilliant pain that leaped through me. My grunt of anger, shock and hurt, every time. Every single time. And then the secondary screaming, red raw agony that echoed up from the slice, the cut, the strike..
"One. Sir."
Vegas was as much an explosion and shock, of color and noise and movement, as the cane strikes that came before the journey. I'd been to Vegas two times before, once with Mark, the two of us making the obligatory remarks about how easy it would be to just get married, do away with the engagement and all the planning, spend the money on a long holiday rather than a one day wedding. Looking back, we were both instantly backing away, neither one of us more than the other.
So I was a typical tourist, staring up at the casinos on the strip, wandering through the theme hotels staring at the amazing things Southern Nevada had done in the pursuit of hospitality and gaming income. Staring as well at the difference between the desert compound where I was being held with its white walls and desert vistas, and this world of bright lights, color, movement, noise, music, and slot machines.
There were people here. Cole St. Martin might be a billionaire, but there had to be enough people in this city that I could find someone not on his payroll who would help me if I decided to run.
That was something I would have to think through. Because failing could be a major problem.
I found someone to help me, actually, but not the way I'd intended.
Cole traveled with an entourage. Whatever they looked like on the surface, one big group of smiling men, all tall and buff, traveling together, in reality every one of his "friends" on this trip were bodyguards and enforcers. They were armed, with legal concealed carry licenses. Nevada is an open carry state, but Cole's huge friends carrying handguns on their hips would have been a bit much. There's drawing attention as in Look at the big, beautiful men, what would that be like? And Look at the big, scary men with muscles and guns? Let's get the frack out of here.
They might be big and armed and with us all the time, one room over in the hotel suite, but they weren't ladies. Which meant the ladies room was a definite retreat. Pleading menstrual distress, I went into one of the shining bathrooms full of marble and gleaming brass fixtures and threw myself down into one of the weirdly placed conversation pit armchairs between the entrance and the bathrooms proper.
Blessed silence, despite the sounds from the casino, the piped-in music, and the sounds of women's voices.
Then there was the sound of a voice speaking directly to me. I hadn't realized I'd closed my eyes until the voice came from the other side of my closed lids. I almost smiled to myself, the kind of You're kidding me, right? smile, because it seemed like of course Cole had found someone who could come in and roust me out. You think you're safe in there? Think again. And even though the bathroom was only yards away from where he and his men were, it would feel that way – that there were no safe refuges.
I knew that wasn't true.
It was only a question of whether I could distance myself from him or not.
"You okay?"
The girl was brown-skinned, pretty, with sharp features and long glossy hair. Her nails were done in the new fashion I didn't understand so they looked like insanely sharp claws. I'd once asked a waitress about hers and said they looked like something I'd hurt myself with. She'd grinned and told me that while making her bed her hand had slipped off the sheet she was pulling taut and the tension made her snap back. It struck the wall beside the bed and the nail had embedded itself. It didn't break off, either, she'd said; she had to tug her hand free.
I looked from her nails to her eyes and I was positive Cole hadn't sent her.
The warm syrupy feeling of the fet crawled through my bones. The pain of the last caning was numbed and warmed and cotton padded and wrapped away from me in soft blankets. My thoughts finally calmed. The pleasure seeped through me.
There was more for later.
There was peace, as if a bell had just stopped ringing in my brain.
There was a contact number in case we stayed in Vegas longer than I expected.
There was joy. As if this was the thing I had been missing rather than the thing I had gone to Cole St. Martin to overcome.
The joy lasted a few more minutes.
And then there was Cole, right there in the ladies room where I had been so sure he couldn't come. Cole and his minions.
And my new friend who had sold me the fet.
I watched as he paid her. I watched as he kissed her and sent her on her way with a swat on the ass that made her laugh.
I watched as he came toward me, his bodyguards following, his hands up to explain to the startled ladies in the ladies room that, all apologies, ma'am, we'll be out of here in just a second but he had to take care of his girl.
His girl.
His girl.
I wanted to tell everybody who I really was. Who I really wasn't. But my mouth wouldn't work and neither would my limbs. I was leaden and trapped inside my body in a way I never had been before when I used.
In a way that allowed them to scoop me up and carry me tenderly to the waiting wheelchair.
And take me up to the room.
And dismiss the wheelchair and all offers of medics, ambulances. Help.
And Cole St. Martin and I were alone together again.
40
Annie
I thought he couldn't hurt me that much in a hotel. I thought there were a limited amount of things he could do to me when there were more than a thousand people in the same structure we were in.
Clearly I hadn't been paying attention.
Before the fet had a chance to wear off he had me back in the hotel room, his bodyguards sent away, protesting because they thought someone should stay with him.
For his protection, of course. But I saw the way their eyes lingered on my skin. I wore a mini dress, tight across the hips and ass, and it was riding up now that Cole had thrown me to the bed. One of my stiletto sandals lay on the floor. The other was still strapped on. My hair had grown down to my collarbone and my curls were everywhere. I had to look like an ad for a semi-hardcore porno movie.
Cole didn't bother with their protestations of keeping him safe. He handed out stacks of money and told them to go get whatever their version of lucky was. As he closed the door behind them, I leapt from the bed and flew to the bathroom, shutting the door and locking it behind me.
Pointless. Pointless! We were on the twenty-fifth floor of a posh hotel. What was I going to do, jump? But there was a phone in the bathroom, a luxury I couldn't quite wrap my mind around. For the executive too busy to take a dump without calling someone? Or so arrogant he figured even his bathroom time was valuable?
I could call for help. Cole would tell me no one would come, but he didn't control all of Metro PD, if he controlled any of it. Las Vegas police was beyond my jurisdiction and even if Cole lived in the county, it was beyond his control, too.
Only, then what? I had fet in my system. If Cole produced documents that said he was my guardian, my power of attorney designee, my keeper, my doctor, my fiancé, I had no recourse. I had opiates in my system and no prescription anywhere for their use.
And I was Seattle PD. Even on extended leave, e
ven with Cole's influence, I'd be gone. My record would be such that I'd be lucky to find work as a security guard in McDonald's.
Did McDonald's even have security guards? Even in the very worst cities?
His voice on the other side of the door was calm. "You can come out on your own or I can come in there and bring you out and you will not like the consequences."
It's locked. It's locked, it's locked, it's locked.
As if I myself hadn't broken down a door or two in my time.
"You realize the lock on that door is only for privacy, don't you? It won't take me more than a minute. And we're too high for you to jump. Annie. Come out. Face the consequences."
He didn't say he'd go easy on me. He didn't say it was for my own good.
He didn't say he wouldn't hurt me.
He didn't say anything that would convince a sane person not to pick up the phone and call someone anyway. The Brotherhood. They had chapters in Nevada. I could call as the girl who was with Jesse at the time of his death and the soldiers of this chapter would come. All I'd have to do is tell them who had me and where and where he could probably be found if they didn't come in time and they'd come, probably in time.
Or my father. I could call my father. Short of admitting to murder, I could tell my father anything and he'd understand and he'd come save me. He knew the job. He knew the pressures. I didn't know for certain there hadn't been a time he hadn't supported his own habit.
But there'd be disappointment. Of course he wanted better for me.
And I knew he was proud of me and I couldn't give that up.
I wanted a time to come around again when I would be proud of me.
I opened the door and looked up into Cole's dark, furious eyes.
He threw me down on the bed and followed me. The dress pretty much shredded under his hands and under it I wore only garter belt and stockings. He tore the other stiletto off my food. They did make weapons.
He didn't speak. All the other times he'd taken me, he'd talked, either talking me through something that was pseudo-therapeutic or growling out what he meant to do and how I would feel and all the way along I never was afraid of permanent damage, only of the pain and suffering he could make me feel in the present.
He didn't talk. He grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back at the same time he straddled my hips and plunged into me, fucking me harder than Jesse had ever dreamed of, than Mark would even know was possible. When I grunted, sharp sounds of pain, with every thrust, he buried my face in the pillow.
It didn't last. He did but the fucking didn't. I was on the verge of something that felt like coming when he pulled out of me and moved to take hold of something behind me.
I didn't move. I didn't need him to tell me not to move. I only shifted enough to get full breaths around the cheap foam pillow the luxury hotel room provided.
Whatever it was he brought down on my ass, my hips, my lower back, my upper back, my legs, it stung like a motherfucker. It snapped against me and made virtually no sound coming down.
I screamed into the pillow, burying my face again, then dug my teeth into it, biting hard enough that, had it been down, there'd have been a room full of feathers.
"Beg me," he breathed, his mouth closer to my ear than I had dreamed possible.
I hadn't felt him move.
I didn't know what he meant.
I told myself I didn't know what he meant.
He might mean beg him to stop, but that had never once made him stop.
Or he might mean beg him not to.
I didn't know. But the pain was overwhelming, my brain was offline, my thoughts disordered, and all my attention stretched between the horrific pain radiating through my entire body –
And the amazing pleasure beginning to radiate after it. Pools of hot, almost painful want, almost unendurable pleasure. Maybe it was endorphins, like the most ultimate runner's high ever.
Maybe it was the fet, magically kicking in to handle pain, the very thing it had been created for.
Maybe it was me, riding the storm of the beating and starting to crave it, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop, please, I'm so close –
"Please, sir! Please, sir! Please – oh, my god!"
He slammed into me with my last cry, my pussy already throbbing around him, contractions tightening on his erection until he felt gigantic, huge enough to fill every empty place inside of me.
The shattering pain and pleasure bonded together and pushed me higher and higher, the last of the opiate in my blood hitting every pleasure center and dulling absolutely nothing of the sensation.
I screamed into the pillow and arched my back, driving my hips up to accept every inch of Cole I could take inside me.
The orgasm crashed over me, pulsing and pulsing and pulsing as I cried out.
In shock. In pain.
In joy.
41
Cole
She didn't talk on the way back from Vegas.
Make that she didn't attempt to talk. The ball gag would have rendered her mute at any rate.
I drove one of the SUVs that had galvanized metal grating between front and back seats. She was in the back, her hands cuffed to the grate. Her eyes blindfolded. Her mouth gagged. She had a simple code to tap out if she was going to be sick. Other than that, or trouble breathing or any other actual physical distress, I didn't want to hear from her.
She thought I was angry. I was fine with her thinking that.
But the little cunt had really performed. I was going to be sore from that session and she'd pay for it.
In due time.
For now I was riding the pleasure of the night as we drove into the dawn. The only fly in the ointment or flaw in the day: My feelings that I might have my own addiction growing.
I might be addicted to her sweet pain.
I might never actually let her go.
42
Annie
Cole had no history for me. He simply existed as a billionaire sadist and someone who somehow owned me. When I thought of all the things I knew about Mark – his family, what his childhood had been like, what he'd wanted to be on his way to deciding to be a doctor – I saw a complete person. There were things he’d told me in the dark of the night, those hurts and boosts to the ego, those things that make you human so you respond to situations in a unique way – I knew those about him. Of course it had taken longer than the time I had known Cole St. Martin, but Cole knew me so intimately, had already disassembled me and put me back together, it felt like a longer and more intimate time than I'd spent with the man I loved and meant to marry.
My history was an open book. Washington State. Born and raised in Olympia and moved to Seattle for school and career.
I was used to rain.
So the one thing I knew about Cole that he didn't know I knew: wherever it was he was from, he was a wuss about cloudy skies and chill temps still in the high forties. When there was actual rain coming down on the Nevada desert, he was apt to threaten me with the treadmill.
"Come on, sir." I was wheedling. I was trying to be cute. I was trying to call him sir. I was trying to make sure I didn't get punished for my attempts to get him outside for our run. Because the treadmill wasn't enough. I'd come to love the smell of the sage and the emptiness of the world around us. The compound was completely isolated. It wasn't even in a tiny western town and the Nevada desert surrounding it was vast, empty, eerie and beautiful.
And with every run I insisted we go another way, wheedling, pleading, calling him sir, promising to give him a workout, a challenge! Though to be honest, his legs were miles longer than mine. I was never going to challenge him with a race.
That's why I wanted to see everything I could of the desert around us as December came down. Because he was watching me like a hawk. Never mind that the fentanyl in Vegas had been his plant, his test, a trap I'd fallen into neat as you please. He was still watching me despite the fact there was no fet for me to fall into here.
So I challenged him to run, I teased him so lightly I could get away with it, pointing out that his sub had a better affinity for running in the rain than he did. Was he going to let her be superior to him in something?
So he'd go out with me on mornings when even on the flat valley floor the sun didn't make an appearance until quarter to seven at best.
Being out at dawn, the glow from the city was obvious. The beam of light that shot from the Luxor and could be seen in space was clearly evident. The desert is like that. The glow from a city can light the night sky for a long distance.
I didn't know how far from Vegas we were. But I was relatively sure I knew which way to run when I went.
The chance came a week after we returned from Las Vegas.
"You've changed," he said, sliding into a light slicker against the rain. Vegas has a rainy season, usually after the holidays in the new year. I was lucky. This year it was early.
"Why do you say that, sir?" My own weather clothes were already on. I was jogging in place, warming up. I had a large water bottle on my arm. I had a couple of the protein bars he left in my room for those lockdown times he didn't see to me for a day or more. Over the past few days I'd moved around in my cell more when he wasn't with me, getting whoever monitored the cameras in my room used to me being on my feet and fiddling with things. More than once I'd checked that my Seattle PD badge was still in the drawer where Cole had put it.
"In the beginning I had to drag you out of bed. Now you're dragging me out in the storm."
Well, yes. But I needed reconnaissance. "This should please you," I said.
He actually smiled at that, a real smile that touched his eyes. "It does, where you're concerned. You should be up and running at the crack of dawn. Me, I could still be under the covers."
Not today, I pleaded silently. This was the last day. From what I'd seen in the forecast, tomorrow's rain was going to be accompanied by thunder and lightning. I thought I'd wake to find a text from Cole in his room reading something to the effect of go back to sleep. Not today. And then I'd go for my run, the same way I sometimes did when he was too busy and convinced that I was too far away from anything to get anywhere on my own.