by Sophia Reed
She had no way of knowing the man who was her contact when she was deep cover was a deeply flawed, very sick human being in need of some fast cash. Always in need of fast cash.
I'd done a lot of work with Samuels.
He sold Annie Knox to me. When you're rich - Things like that can just happen.
When you're rich, things like that handler getting fired and discredited can also happen. And if you're rich enough – and I am – that handler learned if he started fighting back, he might just up and disappear.
So he up and disappeared on his own.
Leaving me with the lovely Annie for my latest experiment.
The rainforest opiate cure was working on her. The addiction was loosening its grip, but a recent test run into Vegas was proof it hadn't let go, because the second I gave her enough rope to hang herself, she did. Annie bought, Annie used, and Annie paid the price.
And came back with me to my very rural enclave where she went back to the daily routine: Long run or hike in the desert, healthy breakfast, sometimes with things she liked to eat and sometimes with things she needed to eat; weights workout, yoga, meditation, massage, shower - and the rest of the day?
At my disposal.
I had so many delightful ways to dispose of her time.
Thing was, as Annie's addiction loosened, mine tightened. I loved punishing her. I loved exposing her to the world of a sadist and what I could do to her body that would cause no lasting physical harm. I loved watching her fight. I loved watching her submit. And I loved watching the fight build back up again. I'd told her that if she remained with me for the year and a day, eventually we'd have sex and she'd have no say in the matter, but so far, we'd only had a handful of encounters, and they were mostly consensual.
While we ran I watched her every time she surged ahead. I'd purposefully taken our run in the direction of the city, because only a month ago she'd tried to escape from my custody, taking off across the desert and asking for help from other police officers in Vegas. The power of the badge held, even though she's from Seattle, and the boys and girls in blue gave her bus fare to get her back to Washington. Only she got as far as Portland, and turned back on her own. I'd found her the next morning trying to retrace her steps to the very private, isolated compound. She was lost, and she was cold, wet, and crying in the mud.
It's easy to look like the hero when you swoop down in your private helicopter and rescue her.
We hadn't had any in-depth "discussions" about that yet. Not as many as we would.
There were so many more delights for me to wring from her. The sadist in me rubbed its hands together and feasted on her lithe and lean form as it ran. She could handle so much more pain than she already knew she could, and even more pleasure than she dreamed possible.
Especially once she really embraced the fact that the two, in her little masochist mind, were interchangeable.
I wasn't in a huge hurry for that. It would mark the beginning of a different part of our relationship. For now I loved that she fought every invasion, every humiliation, every new and frightening and painful experience.
I loved making her come and I loved making her cry.
When her addiction was cured I'd probably have to let her go. My addiction, on the other hand, was to her. What was I supposed to do once she was healed?
2
Annie
He was watching me again. Ever since I came back from Portland, he'd been watching me. It was enough to make a nun feel like she'd done something terribly wrong.
When a man as intense and smoldering and dangerous as Cole St. Martin watches you with close attention, your every move is double and triple-checked before you make it.
When I first fell into his care, it was after Jesse had been killed in a gang shootout. I hadn't even been there, in my Lily persona, because my father had been hospitalized after a series of heart attacks for what turned out to be the beginning of several hospitalizations and procedures and much complaining from him, freaking out from my mother, and bitchiness from my three sisters.
My father's the only one in my family who understands me, and only because he's a career cop. He was never undercover, but he worked narcotics and vice a lot. He was my hero and my inspiration for becoming a cop.
So he needed me to help defray the smothering care of my mother and three sisters, all of whom are frilly and lacy and child-producing even if they have to go through multiple starter marriages before getting to that point.
I needed a 12-step program for my family. Hi. I'm Annie Knox. I don't belong in my family.
I didn't really belong with my fiancé Mark Tomlin anymore either, not by the time Jesse was killed, because I'd been fucking Jesse for months and telling myself it was part of the job.
Now I was here, kicking a fentanyl problem and trying to make sense of Cole St. Martin, billionaire, philanthropist, sadist. The last time I'd tried to run from him it was because he sold me in an auction at a dinner party he’d hosted for five other super rich men and their wives or slaves.
One minute I was thinking I was getting the hang of being under his control. The next he was selling me to a man with dead, scary eyes, for 5.5 million dollars and the irony was the money was going to charities to combat human trafficking.
I'm not big on irony.
"Ready to turn back?"
Cole's voice cut through the cold desert air behind me. My shoulders tensed up because this was a test. Everything was a test. Most of the tests were rigged. I could feel myself getting wet just at the random thought of what he might do to me if it was a test and I failed that test.
I'd never let him know it.
If I said keep running, he might take that to mean I didn't want to go "home" to the compound.
If I said I wanted to keep running it might mean that I was experiencing body issues and he'd feed me fish for breakfast because no way was I developing an eating disorder on his watch.
If I said turn back it might mean I was a quitter and needed to be brought back into line, to be whipped into shape, sometimes literally, so I'd work toward my own cure.
Make a decision!
Too late. Cole's arms went around my waist from behind. It only felt like I could race ahead and lead him. He's six-four to my five-six. He will always run faster than I do.
He pulled me kicking and screaming under his arm, my head and shoulders facing behind him. His left arm was wrapped around my waist, keeping me from moving, and his right hand yanked down my tights so hard they tore.
He didn't believe in warmups which was really bad when the day was cold and my ass was cold despite the tights.
"Please, sir!" I yelped. "Let's keep running!" Way, way too late.
He gave a chuckle that chilled my heart. "Oh, you will," he said. "But first let's talk about making decisions." His hand slammed down on my ass with the first statement. "You're a police officer, Miss Knox." Slam. "If you hesitate too long on a simple decision." Slam. "What might you do on something truly important and life or death?" Slam! Slam! Slam!
I was already making promises I'd never be able to remember, let alone keep. I thought as I got started with Cole that I'd build up some kind of immunity to the pain side of things but his hard hand hurt almost as much now as it had when I was first sold to him.
Damn Samuels. If I ever found him, I'd sell him to something.
We ran an extra two miles before Cole thought it was a good idea to head back to the compound for the rest of the morning routine. Thirty minutes of weights, twenty excruciatingly boring minutes of yoga, meditation during which I usually reviewed my choices – find a lawyer who could tell me if Cole's contract giving myself to him in addition to Samuels selling me to him was valid – made more difficult by my never leaving the compound alone. Or at all.
Once free of Cole's control, then what? I had probably six months before Seattle PD would come looking for me, and my family and semi-ex-fiancé were convinced I was back on the job. Before everything blew up, I was so de
ep undercover they wouldn't hear from me for months.
That was good. Because I still loved Mark Tomlin and every time I was with him I wanted to marry him. Probably. And have some version of a normal life.
I thought.
And then again, every time I was with him for more than a couple weeks we started fighting again. Then something would happen – deaths of children using China white that gangs were dealing in schoolyards. Meth in the schools or in some industry where people were vulnerable.
In the past I'd just disappeared on Mark, there one day, gone the next. He was an intern at a local hospital, doing his rotations as he learned to be a doctor. Probably some of the times I'd disappeared it had taken him a day or two to even understand I was gone.
We kept hanging on to the shreds of our relationship. Stupid or not, that convinced me it was real.
So if I ran away again, maybe the smart thing to do would be to keep running. I still looked about seventeen in the mirror. The amount of fet I'd done over the last months hadn't yet played havoc with my twenty-four-year-old self.
If Samuels were still around I could probably have blackmailed him into giving me a kickass recommendation with another PD. Portland, maybe. I'd be closer to my father.
And right in the line of fire of my three married-with-children sisters.
Shudder. There were worse things in the world than Cole St. Martin and his whips and crops and paddles and hairbrushes.
3
Cole
She was in for a surprise this morning. As we ran back to the compound, I thought of the two new things I'd be introducing into her morning routines. She'd be fighting soon enough.
That was good. She'd only been back less than a month and already I could see the signs of restlessness in her. She might be thinking of running again.
Being a billionaire and a philanthropist protects a reputation from a lot of things. There's always someone popping up in the media to insist they've been abused by or threatened by or fucked by someone who has money and position, especially if that person also does good works.
Fact was, some of those people weren't lying. They were earlier experiments that didn't work. People I'd taken in before I learned what I was looking for, the perfect mix of defiance and submission, of fear and confidence.
Like Annie. She thought she could make it on the outside. She had for some time after all. But if she was released now, with her inner appetites only just aroused and the opiate just under control, she'd be addicted and using again within a month.
The reason she fought so hard was that she liked what I did to her. Not all of it, of course. A good amount of what I did to her was meant to hurt. To punish. Or just to hurt because I wanted to hurt her. Nothing was permanent but it probably felt infinite at the time.
I wouldn't know. I didn't have a single masochistic bone in my body. Anyone doing to me what I doled out to others would die.
So Annie – even being back in my "care" and the two of us resuming our work - there were changes coming soon. I had to be gone for a while and she'd be under the thumb of another minder, a babysitter of sorts who'd brook no nonsense from her and would send me reports. That would be one test. How would Annie respond to a woman she could undoubtedly overpower even if she knew good and damned well she couldn't overpower my guards?
And then too, I'd told her I wanted some baseline medical information because the trials I was doing with the rainforest compounds, while illegal, were still highly important in producing a drug that could help turn the tide with the opiate epidemic in the U.S.
She colored so prettily when I stripped her and exposed her. The examinations would be delightful.
But there was still the altered morning routine to introduce her to and for now she was showing off, running faster than I was, so I doubled my speed and caught up, grabbing her ponytail to slow her.
Unpredictable as ever, she laughed, her head going back, and we passed together into the compound and out of the rainy, cold December morning.
It was good to have my property back.
4
Annie
My knuckles were sore from working on the heavy bag and the meditation had given me time to review my latest escape fantasy.
It didn't matter if I didn't try it. The point was to keep from screaming in boredom during the meditation, and if anything happened with Cole, to know I had a plan in mind.
The latest plan included getting out through the fire exit in the holding cell that was my suite of rooms. I'd managed to get one of the keys during a long, long session of yoga when there'd been a visiting instructor. If she'd made a fuss about the key being gone, I'd have been busted and punished, possibly with the teacher joining in, depending on her proclivities.
The longer I was with Cole, the more I started to believe the entire world was made up of kinky fucks who lived to dominate and punish.
I still had my badge, too. When I ran before I took it with me and used it to convince some Vegas PD officers to loan me the money to get to the bus station and from there, theoretically to Seattle. Only I'd turned around in Portland, because the real life I was heading back to seemed like it should be capitalized and trademarked – Real Life™ - it no longer quite felt like it would fit me.
I blamed that on the drugs still echoing through my system and told myself I'd try again. I was still waiting for Cole to come down on me all the harder for it but he hadn't. I'd been cold and terrified and lost when he found me and he'd taken me back and put me in a hot tub and warmed me up and slept wrapped around me.
It was after that we started having sex but that had only been a handful of times.
He was remarkably respectful for a sadist who lived to humiliate me.
That thought alone was enough to make me want the fet.
I'd run that time because he'd pushed me. Looking back at it, the whole experience had a dreamlike quality. Nightmarish, actually. I'd only been back with Cole a few weeks after having insisted I was healed and capable of making my way in the world and then failing utterly.
He'd thrown a dinner party, inviting five other couples, and the whole thing had been elaborate from the start. A seamstress had basically sewn me into a dress with a sheer top that highlighted my naked boobs more than clothed them, and a long skirt that draped elegantly. A makeup artist and hairdresser had gotten me ready, and before that a masseuse had "relaxed me" as best a huge man could relax a totally naked me, and another woman had given me a humiliatingly thorough bath.
But the dinner party itself, complete with the wives being auctioned off between the men to the highest bidder, had horrified me and I'd risen from the table, not caring about the guard or the thunderstorm outside and asked if any of the women wanted to go with me, because I was out of there.
Of course they didn't. They were sold to their masters or they were true submissives or they were terrified and stuck and had no choice.
And of course I didn't get out. A guard shot me up with something and I went down for the count, never totally out, but out of body in the sense I couldn't use it myself for much of anything.
A hateful man with dead eyes bought me for 5.5 million and later I heard Cole fighting with him, refusing to give me up. I was too new to it, he said. I wasn't ready. Not that day, not that week, not that month.
Maybe not even that year.
On reflection, that might have been what scared me most. That my "treatment" for my addiction might extend beyond a year. I had a fiancé, a family, a career to get back to. I wasn't in love with Cole St. Martin. Most of the time I didn't even like him.
So I ran. And I came back.
And here I was.
The shower after the bag workout and yoga was hot, steamy and short. Cole went away and took his own shower while I had mine. I noticed during my time with him that he kept from me the little things in life that would make him seem human.
His bathroom was separate from mine, of course. He was in the main house and I was in a suite of room
s that was basically a prison. But there was no evidence of him brushing his teeth or doing anything human and when he showered in my suite, he did so in a separate stall where I didn't see or hear him.
At the end of my shower I reported to a large and thorough woman who massaged the living daylights out of me.
It was both relaxing and somewhat fearsome. Today she’d had a running commentary as I climbed naked onto the table. Cole refused to let me have a sheet or robe during massage. The stupid thing was I never quite adjusted. Every time was as if it were the first – undressing in front of strangers or appearing naked. I couldn't handle it.
After the massage I showered again then dressed to be escorted over to the main house to have whatever meal he'd dreamed up for breakfast. If I was making him happy, there might be strawberries and salted mixed nuts along with the oatmeal or scrambled eggs.
If he was angry, it was fish of some sort and a great leafy thing that was good for me and tasted like I supposed old newspapers would.
Today he surprised me. When I got back from my shower, he was waiting for me, already showered himself, his hair wet. It’s a dark blond, nearly not blond in certain light, and he often combs it straight back. He's a tall, lean man with more developed muscles than most long-limbed men have. His face is intense, long and sharp and very handsome but with a cruelty to it.
Then he smiles, the inverted pyramid smile of Loki from the movies and he's a mischievous sprite.
That never lasts.
"Sir?" I asked.
"I'm changing some things in the morning routine," he said.
Instantly I had goosebumps. Still dressed, my first instinct was to run. The sick notion of punishment rose up, making me hot and cold all over, but I'd done nothing wrong. Or if I had, I was unaware of it.