by Sophia Reed
He wore black motorcycle boots and blue jeans. Past that I had no more information.
His voice came from above me. "That's a good start."
My voice almost sub-audible, I said, "Thank you, sir."
He wasn't laughing when he said, "Why are you still dressed?"
Crap. I was still dressed because I fought every time I was told to not be. Because I'd been dressed when I'd been eating and no one had told me to change that. Because I didn't want to be naked. Because I was afraid of him and my clothes felt like armor even though they were just jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, nothing I could even wear to run across the desert in.
Not that I was going to try to escape again.
"Do you want me to undress, sir?"
It seemed he did. When I stood, he stopped me from doing so, though, and took my chin in his hands, raising my face so I looked at him.
"You need to understand."
He could have stopped right there. The look on his lean, long, serious face, no sign of the triangular, mischievous smile, was more than enough. He knew. What's more, he knew that I did.
That didn't stop him.
"I know that you were on the phone in my office in your suite almost as soon as I left it yesterday," he told me and I melted a little. I almost wished he'd let me kneel at his feet again. For the first time, I honestly felt that I'd done something wrong, something to actually disappoint him rather than something that was part of an elaborate game with all the traps in place so he'd be able to discipline me with – reason?
There didn't need to be a reason. For the first time I understood that, too. He could do whatever he wanted to me, as long as it didn't cause permanent damage. As long as he stuck with that one requirement of the contract between us.
That meant this – this punishment, this humiliation, whatever this was going to be – was something he had put together to help me. Because he cared. Like a parent correcting a child who is in danger of fucking up enough to get hurt.
And instantly I rethought that. There was nothing about children that went with this. This was all about consenting adults and I had to be of age, I had to be able to consent. If he were caught, if there were some form of law enforcement that came through the door and demand he explain and release me, there would be massive attention paid to my ID because I did look underage.
The idea of consent crashed over me, too. That it wasn't a game from my side, either. I had consented to this because I wanted my life back and then I spent so much time fighting it.
That probably wouldn't change. I hated the humiliation, I hated the pain, I hated not being in control. Like someone following an onerous diet routine or endless workout regimen, I understood it was good for me on an intellectual level.
The human part of me was still going to rebel.
The human part of me was already rebelling, dashing back into my own mind, trying to avoid the situation that was already happening.
"Are you present?" Cole snapped.
He'd asked me that before. During a scene, during a beating, a lecture, I could disappear into my head. I'd perfected the ability when my mother used to lecture me when I was in high school. That was her form of discipline – basically talking her victim to death. Because of that, I'd learned to disappear into a fantasy the minute she started. If it looked like being twenty minutes of Why did you think X was a good idea? What were you THINKING? I'd vanish into planning my wedding. Doing my math homework. Making a Christmas list, either to gift or to receive. I would make massive to-do lists, most of which I could remember when she finally, finally finished.
I could disappear anywhere.
Cole knew that. And Cole stopped it.
"I'm present, sir."
He nodded. His blue eyes were very dark, with anger, I thought, but also with some arousal. "Who did you call and why did you feel it was imperative to make the call?"
Now I wanted to look away from him and down at the floor. "I called Tad Charles, sir."
That stopped him because he obviously didn't know who Tad was. "Who is that?"
"He's my contact in PD now that Samuels is gone." Did you have Samuels fired? I didn't ask that.
I think he expected that I'd called my father or even called Mark about my father, those awkward conversations where I tried to pretend I'd called to talk to Mark himself until I could get the information on my Dad. Only because of his health issues. I wasn't unnaturally attached to him. In the past when my assignments had dragged on for months I still went without communication with my family. I wasn't dependent like that.
I was just scared.
Seemed like I was scared all the time now, and that thought left me wishing for the warm, safe place fentanyl formed in my brain and allowed me to hide.
"The job." His voice was flat with anger held in check.
When I'd been making my way through San Francisco sex shops and dungeons, searching for Cole after I left him the first time, I'd picked up information as I went. I'd talked to people as well as searched for him, I'd showed his photo, instantly recognizable as the billionaire CEO of St. Martin Pharma.
But I'd also played. I'd also learned. I'd had an experience that reduced me to tears in the arms of a stranger, when neither strangers nor tears were normal in my life.
And I'd Googled, searched, read and learned. About the types of alternative sexualities, about the scene, as some people called it, about masochism and sadism and about domestic discipline, something as foreign to me as anything I could not quite imagine.
One of the things I couldn't make sense of was domestic discipline. The idea of consigning my life to my husband's – or wife's, whoever's – will was insane. To say yes all the time to whoever it was, a continuation of what I had with Cole, something that wouldn't end. To act as if I couldn't make my own decisions.
Maybe I couldn't. But I'd rather find out by trying. It wasn't anything I wanted to explore.
When I was with Mark, there were times he'd be hard in bed, hard, ruthless, fucking me with no concern about whatever position I was in or whether I was comeing, whether I needed it faster or slower or –
Those times were rare. The further I drifted from him the more rare they felt. When he'd pull my hands above my head and pin them to the mattress, or when he'd start tearing my clothes off in the living room and carry me, impaled on his cock, into the bedroom to hold me down on the bed and shove himself into me -Those were the times when I came and came and came, orgasms rolling through me like waves of heat and electricity.
Most of the time Mark was respectful and loving.
So all right, then. I had learned something about myself. I like it rough. I like an element of danger. Not a huge surprise, given what I'd chosen to do with my life.
But Cole St. Martin - He made danger sound like an understatement. Cole was actual danger. Cole had so much money he had to be safe from anyone who might try and hold him accountable for something he'd done to someone.
He was rich enough for a compound in the desert where no one knew I was kept. He was rich enough to pay for my father's care, without batting an eye, making me more indebted to him. He was rich enough –
To make someone disappear.
Someone like Samuels, maybe? I eyed him carefully. Moments earlier, all I'd been thinking was that he was scaring me… and that a small corner of me that I wouldn't ever admit to found it exciting.
Suddenly that had changed. Suddenly I understood the amount of power he held over me.
Life and death, for one. He had the only access to the rainforest opiate cure. No one else had it. Placebo or not, it was changing my life and only Cole St. Martin could get it for me.
He had bought me from a Seattle police officer who had since vanished.
He had bought me and for now, there was little I could do about it. I could say he didn't own my ass. That didn't make it true. I was here. I had nowhere else to go. I was reliant on him for my father's wellbeing and my mother's easier mind about having care
for my father, for my own recovery and resumption of my interrupted life.
He'd bought me.
I felt sick.
My eyes met his.
"It's my job," I said, as if all that hadn't just gone through my mind. "It's my job and my life, it's the thing I did and the thing I still want to do. How could I not?" I raised my hands, seeing his eyes flash that I'd do such a thing without permission while he was still holding my chin, forcing my head up. "Look at me! How could I not want to go after the people who are responsible for spreading that shit? To children," I snarled, and spit, just a little, not meaning to but the fury inside me was erupting. "To little kids. Kids in middle school. It's spreading," I said, and started to go on but he put one finger over my mouth.
"And you're the only one who can stop it?" He sounded eerily like Tad.
Of course not. "No, sir. But it's my fight. You – " Have to understand that, you're not stupid – "know I'm more than qualified for it." It came out self aware and more than a little snide and I saw just the corner of his mouth turn up.
He let go of my chin and stepped back. "Who did you speak with?"
I told him about Tad whose name was actually Thomas and who knew more about me than my own lieutenant. I started to tell him more and he reached out and slapped me, not that hard, just enough to get my attention.
"Answer the questions I ask. Nothing more."
So I wouldn't be defending myself, then.
"What did he tell you?"
"About the rate of spread of fentanyl and oxy and meth in neighborhoods I've worked in." He gestured at me to keep going. "He told me the Brotherhood is still riding in our area and there's another gang moving in. They're not an affiliated group and there's been shootings. Children have died in those shootings because those assholes – "
"No," he said quietly.
"They are." My face was heated but I shrugged it off. "Sorry." And that wasn't the right apology, it was more of an I'm sorry, sir; I didn't mean to be disrespectful around you but if he didn't understand how heinous this was and how upsetting for me, my apology would mean shit. "They're spreading out. There are of course undercover narcs and I'm sure with all the activity that there are DEA agents but – "
"But you want to be there."
I nodded. Mouthed a silent sir.
"Noble sentiment."
"Thank you, sir."
"You're not ready." He had paced away from me and now he stalked back and grabbed a handful of my curls and dragged me with him into the room. "You're not ready to take responsibility for something like that because what your hometown needs is not a vigilante and not someone equally as childish as those being harmed. Do you think I don't see it on you? You want revenge!" He spat the word. "You want more than simply doing your job." His face was up close to mine, his eyes terrifying and intense. "You want to get revenge for what was done to you and to that whoremonger you were fucking before someone killed him. It never occurred to you he was as vile a piece of filth as the rest of them?"
"Of course it did!" I snarled back at him. "But I was doing my job."
His hand tightened and both of mine went up to my hair, afraid he was going to pull it out by the roots. "Killing yourself won't change anything and if you go back unready, unprepared, that's all you'll be doing. Killing them, taking them down, making the charges stick, getting them off the street – those things will make a difference." His face was inches from mine. "And you'll still be alive."
I'd never heard that word sound like a curse before.
"What does that matter?" I was crying now, sobbing, tears being wrenched from me, and Cole, if possible, leaned in even closer to me.
"Because. You. MATTER." He roared the last word and then there was no more talk.
One of the things I'd learned reading about domestic discipline was that partners didn't punish each other during anger. They waited so they wouldn't accidentally seriously hurt the person they loved.
But Cole St. Martin wasn't in love with me and I wasn't his partner and this wasn't a domestic discipline relationship. He was furious and he wasn't going to wait to calm down.
This had been brewing. Since I ran. Since I came back. Since he found me and brought me back, allowed me to come back and went right back to work getting me well.
I was scared. I was scared and wet and anxious and I wanted it and I wanted to run and I didn't know what to expect and I knew he wouldn't tell me.
He dragged me by my hair, leading me forward and he was slightly ahead of me as we moved so his arm was snaked back behind my head, his fist tight in my hair. I stumbled, desperate to keep up. To not fall.
He didn't tell me to keep my gaze down and as I struggled not to fall, I looked around me wildly. For the first time, I saw some of the room around me. I saw the cross against the wall, straps for restraint hanging from it. I saw a whipping post, and a spanking bench, and another piece of furniture that looked like it would be a face-up spanking chair, one that could be cranked to separate the legs once they were buckled into place.
I saw banks and racks of whips and straps, belts and crops, of canes and paddles and other things I couldn't even identify. I saw hoods that could all but totally zip closed, encasing the head, those with padded ears and padded eyes, those that would never open anywhere but for the smallest opening at the mouth.
I saw dildos and butt plugs and Cole had dragged me to where he wanted me and I slammed my eyes closed again, not wanting to know, wanting to somehow get through whatever was coming.
Wanting strangely to make him proud.
More than that. I wanted absolution. I wanted forgiveness. I wanted to atone for the things I'd done, the things that were part of the lifestyle I was trying to bring down because sometimes the only way to that ending, the part where the bad guys go to jail and off the streets and the kids are – however temporarily – safer, was to play along. To go make buys. To go make sales.
I'd never hit that second part but only because a buy had gone south. Only because I'd been with my father in the hospital, terrified for his life when Jesse lost his.
I wasn't doing enough fast enough, I wasn't deep enough, I'd never taken my cover far enough. My own addiction was nothing, my own life was nothing. I had let Cole down but more than that, I'd let all those people out there at risk of the drugs and the people who developed them and distributed them and dealt them - I'd let those people down.
I'd let my family down.
I'd let myself down.
And still I fought. I fought him when he dragged me to a spanking bench, meaning to put me on my knees, my ass cranked up, my legs strapped down. When he would have reached for something – a cane, maybe, I didn't think I could ever stand to be caned again, the memory of the pain alone was enough to push me close to sickness, wanting to vomit out my fear.
I broke away from him and I tried to run, even knowing there was nowhere to go.
He brought me back. Seemingly patient, but I felt the fury in his hands, in the way he was restrained as he touched me. He stroked my back. He stroked the hair he'd been pulling.
"Annie," he whispered. "This is going to happen."
I went limp. I felt him arranging my body to suit his needs. I felt him strapping my legs down, separate from each other, felt him adjusting the bench so my arms were strapped down and my head hanging, my body in pretty much an inverted seated posture. Blood rushed to my head and my ears started to ring again.
Half my senses were heightened. I felt his hands. I felt the cold of the leather bench against my naked tits, my hips, my belly. I felt the air of the room around me, would never be as comfortable naked as some people were. As the women in the gym where I used to go who strode naked from the shower to their lockers, running a towel through their hair because we all had the same parts and who the fuck would care if theirs were uncovered?
I did. I was the one who never forgot when Jesse was fucking me in the Brotherhood clubhouse that there were men on the other side of a flimsy wall who
could hear every grunt, every slap, every snarl Jesse made, every sound I made of pleasure or pain.
And maybe I liked it in some perverse way.
The same way I craved this in some perverted way I was nowhere near ready to admit to myself.
But not while it was happening. I didn't like the pain when the pain was coursing through me. I was afraid of it, afraid of him, I wanted out of here, I wanted clothes and comfort and –
The first blow jolted me so hard I reared up against the straps holding me and screamed.
He was caning me. He was caning me!
He was caning me and I was trapped, buckled in place, spread open on the spanking bench in the remote desert compound of a crazy billionaire philanthropist who said he was just trying to help me and nobody who really did care about me knew where I was.
I screamed again.
Very quietly, Cole said, "Yes."
The schedule Cole kept for me was very precise. Even when we ran longer than usual the other parts of the schedule fit into place like a jigsaw puzzle. I was here for X amount of minutes and then here for this much time.
I had an idea when he'd taken me into the room.
I had an idea when he'd brought me out again.
I was in there for less than two hours.
I was in there for more than an hour and a half.
There was blood on my ass where he'd broken the skin in half a dozen places. Not, as I would have guessed, with the cane. More likely with a strap.
I hadn't cried at first. Whatever I thought, I hadn't. Always when it started I was determined. This time I would be stoic. This time I would just take it. Because it was meant to help me as much as it hurt me.
This time I would be silent and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
This time.
But I broke. Every time. I broke. Sobbing out my fear and loathing for myself and hatred for the things I wanted to fix and couldn't fix. For the lives ruined, so much bigger than mine, the problem so much more than one person could manage and here I was, miles away from where I was supposed to be and not helping not making a difference just here, for me.
For Cole.