by Sophia Reed
What I was worried about was that at Dr. Andrew's home, Dr. Andrew's rules were upheld. A master still held ultimate control over his slave and his rules were followed by the girl. But if she did something out of line, if there was a problem, Dr. Andrew reserved the right to correct the problem – and the girl – himself.
That would be difficult with Annie.
The other problem was that Vincent would be there. I didn't trust the man. He was more than a sexual sadist. I didn't believe he'd ever killed anyone. It didn't seem to be that sort of a situation. But his cruelty went beyond what my comfort level allowed.
Making my girls scream. Fucking them hard. Fucking them up. I loved to leave marks. I loved to elicit screams. I loved to change the direction of lives. I loved to see the hurt in their eyes and mouths and the fear there, too.
There was something about Vincent that I didn't trust. His extreme cruelty. His ability to hone in on the newest girl and bid to make her his. In the fall at the annual auction and dinner party a group of us had in the valley, to raise money to fight sexual trafficking, he had bid for and won Annie.
I had refused to let him walk away with her. She'd been bound naked to a post, tied lewdly to it, her terror so complete I couldn't let her leave with him. I didn't want her hurt by anyone else. I didn't want him to have her.
He still had a claim.
And he would be at the dinner party, the last of the couples, now with a new woman, a gorgeous Italian woman I'd met at an event only a month or two before.
I'd told Vincent later. Or not at all. I'd told him she wasn't ready and that he was a junior member of our group and that if he fought me on this, I wouldn't let him have her at all.
I'd meant it. But at Dr. Andrew's, it might be harder to stop him from taking her.
The Valentine's Day party wasn't an auction. It was fancy dress, elegant food, good conversation between men who shared the best of things. The women were there to be seen, dressed beautifully, quiet, demure, and at the end of the meal, after a cool down period of movies and talk, there was an orgy.
Old fashioned, honest to god orgy.
I was both appalled at the idea of how Annie would handle such a thing - And eager to see her try.
"Dr. Andrew's residence, this is Cecile."
"Cece."
Her voice was warm at once. "Cole St. Martin. Where have you been hiding, sir? It's been much too long since we saw you."
"I've been in Rio, for a while, and then running numbers and scams."
She laughed. "Right. Your cons are well known. The charities tremble when you come near."
"Well, I'm glad someone is trembling." It was hard to believe it wasn't Cecile. One of the last times I saw her Dr. Andrew had allowed me to switch her with bundles of flexible branches that had been soaking in brine. That she even wanted to talk to me showed how very well Dr. Andrew had chosen.
Her giggle was girlish. "You're on the phone, sir. I'm safe from you. And I've learned to run very fast in the last several months."
"Yes, but in heels and a gown? Our St. V's party is fast approaching."
"I hear you've got your own slave, sir. I'm hoping she can distract you." Definitely laughter in her voice.
"She can. Very well. But all men like a bit of variety."
I imagined I could hear her shiver over the phone. In due course I got the particulars for the night from her, then spoke with Andrew, asking him for a few favors for Annie, ways we could perhaps both stretch her and protect her.
"I imagine you're concerned that Vincent will be present."
I sighed. "I wanted to speak with you about that in particular. I won't let Annie go with him. Is that going to be a problem?"
"Not from me. Maybe from Vincent. Or even Kie."
Kie was Vincent's newest conquest. She was dark haired and ivory skinned and about twenty-three, slim, lean and hard with high, tight breasts I longed to whip. But not if it brought Annie to their attention.
Shit, who was I kidding? Just having her there would make them aware of her. I couldn't go on hiding and protecting her forever. There were so many games I wanted to play with her.
This was just one more.
24
Annie
Morning routine behind me, run, weights, oh-so-boring yoga, massage, back on track, and Cole's adherence to the new schedule of cleaning me out and then filling me up with the cure. Apparently there wasn't going to come a time that I didn't feel my heart pounding in the base of my skull and my skin turning red in humiliation.
Today he kept me over his lap, his hands stroking my ass and making it all that much more obvious I was naked. His voice, musing, came to me where I hung over his lap, the blood rushing to my head.
"How long have you been on the cure now?" he asked and thinking back, I came up with somewhere around eight or nine months.
He walked me through the symptoms of withdrawal, which obviously I didn't have by now but many of which I had never experienced. I was more than ready to thank him for everything he'd done, but I also really wanted off his lap. I wanted my clothes on and my dignity back and if we were really going to discuss it, I wanted to be back in Seattle and back on the job.
Without warning he gave me a hard smack where my butt cheeks met my thighs and said, "Sit up. Get dressed. I need to talk to you."
"Yes, sir." I stood, tottered a little, drew my thong and my sweats back up my legs and knelt on the floor in front of him.
"There's going to be a formal dinner party very soon. Valentine's day, in fact."
Undoubtedly he'd seen my face fall.
"Relax. There's no auction to this one. Just very rich men with very beautiful women."
She kept her face down and didn't say anything derogatory about her looks. Good girl. It wouldn't change what I was going to do to her before I let her leave this little chat.
When she came back in, I picked up where I'd left off. "The men that we were discussing before. The men you were in contact with your friend about."
I thought that might be stretching the meaning of the word friend to apply it to Tad Charles, even if I did like him, but okay. "Yes, sir?"
"They're dead." He said it flatly and afterwards the room was so silent my swallowing sounded huge.
"Sir?"
Because something felt off.
"I didn't have the hit. I mean, I hadn't ordered the hit." Yet hung in the air.
"But then what – " I was too bewildered to add sir to that.
"The easiest way to understand it is that they were killed naturally."
I glanced up at him. He was smiling, predatory. "I don't understand what that means."
"It means," he said, standing and pulling me to my feet, stripping off my sweat pants and telling me exactly how many times I'd left off the sir, "That they were killed by others in the trade. They were killed because they were human pond scum."
So I don't owe him anything!
"But since you agreed to the hit before knowing that, I suggest you remember our agreement is in place and the contract holds. Here, I'll take your sweats. You go pick out a riding crop. I'd like one with a very small tip and one of the newer ones. Hurry now. For every second you're on your task, another swat is added."
Once I would have just stared at him as several seconds ticked by, understanding much too late that Cole St. Martin rarely kidded around.
I ran, feeling absurd without my pants but still wearing my t-shirt and jog bra. I collected a crop so new it didn't have any bend marks, with a small triangular tip that was going to bite like shit. I had it back to Cole in record time.
I had all kinds of questions about the dinner party coming up.
25
Annie
He bought me from a man who had no right to "sell" me.
He's beaten me and had sex with me, he's given me lifesaving cures and he's forced me to eat fish. Not that it's not healthy, but still – fish.
On a less humorous side than food choices, he's bought other wom
en, and he's hurt them at least as much as he's hurt me. Since my arrival in the Southern Nevada compound, he's brought other women here and done things that made them scream. Some of them undoubtedly liked it.
Some of them, I'm convinced, did not.
He's experimented with my psyche and just because, so far, he seems to be right about much of what he's done doesn't excuse a billionaire pharmaceuticals CEO who isn't a psychologist or psychiatrist for playing with my head.
But the thing that bothers me the most is the next time I speak to my father I discover that there have been more deaths from China white in Seattle. A young, promising musician, black and male and incredibly talented.
A young mother who suffered from postpartum depression.
An older man, a teacher who was much adored by his students.
An eleven year old boy.
I don't know what it is I expect him to do. He's done plenty. He's doing plenty. And I no longer expect him to let me out of my contract so I can run off pell-mell thinking I'm going to make change, all by my lonesome.
But something needs to be done.
And he's obsessing about a fancy dress dinner party.
Eventually January drizzled into February, the last of the rainy days dwindling out. As the calendar turned, Cole's obsessions became mine.
It was like getting ready for prom, or something. Or a wedding, which is a thought that makes me feel a little breathless and giddy. Not because I want to marry Cole. He hasn't messed with my head that much. I'm not even sure I want to marry Mark.
But the preparation for such rituals was always awe inspiring. Before she passed out of my life and into a much more girly life than mine, my best friend from high school dragged me through her wedding. I was maid of honor and privy to all the white lace secrets and blue garter adventures. I loved and hated it, all the fittings and buffings, the totally unnecessary weight loss, the spa days, the stress, the wild schedules. It was like planning an invasion, D-Day became W-Day for Wedding. The timing was precision. The level of importance was world-shattering. It was exasperating and it was fun.
My best friend's wedding ended in an event that didn't require me to wear any garments that were see-through. There was no chance of waking to find myself tied naked to a post, being auctioned off. The most I could expect was a hangover the day after the shower when I woke to discover I'd taken the stripper back to my place and that no, it hadn't been the low lighting that made him look perfect.
As January dead-ended into February and the dinner party drew nearer, I found myself looking back at that wedding and wondering how long after Stacey's nuptials my life had diverged so completely from normalcy that I wound up in the dungeon of a mad billionaire philanthropist, counting down with dread the days until a dinner party-slash-orgy.
26
Cole
January became February and the rains stopped. Annie ran outside every morning, with me or without me, though more often than not she ran alone. My business had gone to 24/7, with hardly any time left for anything extracurricular. The connections in Brazil had paid off. I was on my way to owning significant swathes of rainforest. That meant I then had to finish vetting the hire of an army of men who could be trusted to police the forest, have each other's backs but report anyone taking advantage of the absentee owner by reporting them, and be making enough money that they wouldn't turn on me and let in – anyone. Other pharma companies that had the same ideas. Farmers who wanted to slash and burn. Anybody who wanted to build anything.
Meanwhile across the States, there were things I had to take care of in various plants and laboratories. The only billionaire CEO who delegates is the ex-billionaire. Run your own business. Be hands on.
That meant unfortunately I was hands off with Annie. I'd wanted to leave her with Nina, a daily maintenance spanking to remind her who she belonged to, but I also didn't want to be responsible for Nina's death. She's a freak, but she didn't deserve what I thought would happen if I told her to spank Annie.
Annie's fight was building. That was fine. She'd agreed to the contract and that meant two men were dead. The fact that they were killed because of the company they kept and the business they were in and not by anyone I had hired was beside the point. I knew what Annie had ordered and that was enough to get her locked up and the key thrown away.
Courts frown on police officers ordering hits.
Along with that, the party was coming. She'd be in my care before that and I'd see to it she had an experience during. It might not be an auction, but I wasn't kidding when I told her it was an orgy.
What I hadn't told her was it rarely got that far before everybody started doing everything. And slaves were open season. I licked my lips thinking about it and had a hard time concentrating on work.
One day I flew to Texas and went to the border to meet with men I trusted not at all, making arrangements to bring a handful of immigrants into the country. Everyone would be well compensated and the immigrants would work for my U.S. businesses with green cards that would eventually be the next best thing to legal.
On another day I flew to Atlanta and took part in the mock trial and sentencing of a girl who was so kinky she wanted to undergo a judicial trial and be sentenced to a laundry list of punishments including waterboarding. That scared the crap out of me. I was there because I'd been a doctor for all of five seconds. That scared me more. I didn't like it and I didn't trust it and I hoped like hell she'd stop the fantasy before that happened. I was there in the capacity I was really there: as the doctor on the scene to make sure nothing too permanent happened.
At the last second Emily Jean, tied to a medical exam table in a big, freezing, mostly empty, marble-lined courtroom and being tilted backward, her naked sex slick as any woman's I'd ever seen, safe-worded herself out of the scenario. There wasn't a single masochist or sadist in the room who didn't blow out a sigh of relief.
Kind hands untied her. In the courtroom, an abandoned, condemned courtroom we'd taken for a two-day long trial and sentencing, voices whispered, wondering what her story was, what secret guilt, what trauma.
I knew. It wasn't anyone's business but on the other hand, there were no cruel jokes, no speculations, nothing but concern and warm hands and warmer blankets, coffee and soup and medical attention.
I was the medical attention and that came first. I wrapped a microfleece blanket around her and put a mug of coffee in her freezing cold hands. She was already shaking, her teeth chattering both from actual cold and from stress reaction.
When I told her I was going to examine her, she flinched away from me like any woman who's just been abused, not like one who’d ordered it all herself.
"Not like that," I said quietly, cursing myself for being stupid. She was in flight still, subspace and trauma together along with whatever drove her to this. Most of the time I'm convinced a predilection to BDSM or Master/slave or masochism and sadism is simply that – that's what floats the individual's boat and it's a nice thing when two compatible kinks meet.
But some people come to it to try and work through some history of abuse or trauma. I thought Emily Jean was one of those and I shouldn't have spoken without thinking.
"I want to listen to your heart, and I want to take your blood pressure," I said slowly and distinctly. "And I won't do either if you don't give me permission, unless you look like you're in medical danger."
She met my gaze, held it, and broke into tears. She sobbed so hard the coffee splashed, burning her leg. The mug dropped and shattered. The blanket around her shook.
I sat down on the couch that had been dragged over for that reason and pulled her into my lap, tucking the blanket securely around her and pulling her head down against my chest so she could hear my heartbeat under her ear. I put one arm around her shoulders and the other hand guided her head down and then stroked her hair. I rocked her and she sobbed. She needed more attention than I had given her. The caning had broken the skin in a handful of places and the switching had left her raw
with bleeding stripes. She hadn't eaten in two days, too keyed-up and excited, scared and nauseated, and pretty much out of her head and into subspace even before anyone touched her.
I held her and she cried and around us all the people who came in to make her dark fantasy a reality did what they could to help. They turned up the lights so it no longer felt like a dark tribunal, and turned off completely the blazing lights that had shone down on the table. They turned the heat up and they turned on music, something sunny and light. Crazy or not, it seemed to be The Partridge Family.
Or maybe I was a little out of my head too.
I knew why Emily Jean chose to do what she'd chosen to do.
She was the last person who had seen my little sister Emily after she scored off someone Emily Jean introduced her to.
I held her, and for a little while, I cried with her.
One of the other changes I ordered when I started the busy month and left Annie with Nina and yet mostly on her own, was communication with Tad Charles. She no longer had to sneak it through the YouTube videos because I wanted her to study her marital art. Such disciplines are important.
It wouldn't hurt for her to know what was happening in Seattle. Apparently not knowing hadn't worked. And Annie knew she had to get healthy if she was going to rejoin the fight. Whether she headed into DEA or some other alphabet soup agency, she had to be clean and she had to have cover stories that were unshakable.
I could get her both those things.
At a price.
So I let her have some freedom and hoped that I hadn't just given her rope to hang herself with again. This wasn't supposed to be a trap or a test.