by Sophia Reed
Pause.
She swallowed.
Deadly quiet, I said, "Don't you?"
39
Cole
In the end, the Seattle trip was like one long, very strange date. Maybe a blind date. With a very rich and very eccentric guy met over the internet and not properly vetted.
After he half stripped me in the car and spanked me until I could feel the heat coming off my own ass, there was no way to ask what the whole trip was about. Maybe the secret to being a billionaire is that you can take a private jet from Southern Nevada to Washington State just to prove a point.
Whatever points Cole wanted to make on the trip, my takeaway was confusing and twofold. On the one hand, I wasn't ready to be out in the world yet or if I was, I was looking for a different world. The idea of going back to my old life, the one that had fit like a glove before it fell apart, was exhausting and disheartening. Probably I could do it and probably I'd be successful at parts of it. I'd return to PD and go back to being undercover for at least a couple more years before I either had to change my role in the drug culture, or pick something else to do.
It didn't appeal. The idea of starting something new did. I wasn't sure where that left me and Mark. Part of me wanted to contact him and babble at full speed about all the choices we could make and how we could go forward together because there weren't any hospitals in Seattle he was desperate to work at, so one hospital and one community was probably as good as another for him. Mark's family was scattered around the country. None of them liked me and half of them didn't seem to like Mark or each other. There was nothing much keeping him in Washington.
The rest of me acknowledged that I could take Mark with me. Or I could head out into this new life that felt like a promise rather than a threat and I could go alone. Because I missed the idea of me and Mark a lot more than I missed the reality and when I was nursing a cropped behind or my breasts ached from a switching Cole had inflicted, the real life I longed to return to was more the ordered life in PD or the disordered, chaotic but useful life undercover.
Not the one I shared with Mark.
Probably that meant I needed to acknowledge it to myself and free both of us.
But it wouldn't be easy.
The second part of my takeaway from the Seattle trip was, while I might not be ready for real life, I had to watch that I didn't get too comfortable hiding from that life. When Cole had offered me a visit with my father, I'd resisted. The idea of a cover story as to how and why I was on a day pass from "rehab" was too uncomfortable. I didn't want to lie to my dad and I didn't want to tell him any version of the truth.
My mother and sisters had never even entered my considerations.
We flew back to Southern Nevada very quietly. Cole worked on some project for his pharmaceuticals company and I played with various computer games until we landed.
For a billionaire, Cole traveled light. I'd worked enough security to understand that a show of force isn't always necessary. Sometimes it just draws attention. Cole wasn't as recognizable as Bezos or the Tesla guy and he wasn't a rock star or movie star. He was a very attractive guy but he kept a low profile in the world as a whole. So we flew in and he paid his pilots an absurd amount of cash that I thought was a tip then took my elbow and walked me from the plane.
The backseat of the limo was specially equipped so that once we were on the freeway, he simply tinted the glass until there was no way for me to see out. The compound would remain a mystery. The only thing I knew for certain was it was south of Vegas and I'd already known that.
He escorted me back to the holding cell. Jason was back, I saw him as we passed. He held his body stiffly, as if he'd like to dissociate himself from it. I knew that pain and I forced myself to meet his eyes, judging how bad the situation was.
Answer to that question: If I had to be alone around him, I'd be a lot more comfortable if I had my Glock with me.
Cole came with me into the holding cell and waited while I went and showered off the impromptu trip and changed into clean sweatpants and a t-shirt.
"I ordered some food," he said when I came out and I suppressed a sigh. Cole's idea of acceptable food was always going to be different than mine. He surprised me with a wicked grin. "Just consider it part of your submission."
I bit my lip and tried to look grave. Truth was I still felt half like laughing out of embarrassment when he said things like that. It still sounded like a bad dirty joke or someone's filthy imagination running overtime.
"Am I hungry, sir?" Sometimes he'd allow light sarcasm like that to go by. He'd had the cook bring a salad, some yogurt, some salmon which was, at least, one of the less disgusting fish. There were multigrain bagels, cut up apple, slices of cheese, and two boxes of protein drink. If he thought I could eat all that he was seriously overestimating me.
"You might want to put a dent in it," he said and glanced at his watch. "You're fasting after this until tomorrow morning."
I'd been about to bite into a bagel when he said that and I stopped, letting a frisson of fear tingle its way down my spine. Alone in the holding cell I'd had time to investigate every corner of it. There had been no casual cruelty from Cole in the entire time I'd been with him, and no reason to expect him to go crazy and decide to starve me to death. If anything, he wanted me to eat far more and more often than I had any interest in.
But this was creepy.
And then in the next instant, he explained, and it was creepier.
"Tomorrow morning I'm going to do a full physical workup on you."
I stopped with the bagel halfway to my lips. Doctors and exams give me the creeps and I avoid them like the plague. Cole St. Martin had studied to be a doctor but he was the billionaire CEO of a pharmaceutical company. I didn't want him playing doctor on me.
"The fast is so I can run a bloodwork panel on you," he said and I reminded myself I was a police officer and had done a lot worse than have blood drawn.
It didn't take. I hate needles. Even the opioids I'd been using didn't get me used to needles. The only reason I could do it at all was – well, two reasons. I was the one controlling it.
And addiction.
I put the bagel down. Whether or not I had a 12 hour fast coming up, my appetite had just fled. "What will it – I mean, what are you going to do?"
And will I allow it? Or is this where I fight you to a standstill? I finished the question in my head.
Cole saw it in my eyes.
Whatever he said about whether this was a game or not, Master/slave or sadomasochism was still a made-up system. It might have people living the lifestyle around the world and it might have conventions and morals and belief systems and entire books written about it. But it was still a game. It was still a complicated system of rules put into place and if those participants refused to follow them, the game dissolved into what pretty much everything everywhere was: The agreement of those involved to treat something as if it existed.
A philosophical thought designed to make me want to crawl back into the safety of fet. It came perilously close to solipsism that states nothing exists outside the mind.
My mind could be pretty fucked up.
Cole's mind was definitely fucked up.
But the game, the one we were agreeing however tacitly about the rules of, was directly impacting my life. I followed the rules for the same reason I applied for a driver's license or followed procedure in my job when I wasn't actively undercover. Because that's how the system was set up to function.
I followed things here in the compound in Southern Nevada because I wanted what he had to offer. The cure. A map back to my own life and forgiveness once I got there.
The rules of the game I had been playing said I arrested people who did the things I had done, I didn't emulate them. I didn't act like that. I didn't hide myself away and deal with the broken in my life with drugs.
So I followed Cole's rules.
What scared me was the deepening darkness I sensed in myself. The way I
had waited for him to punish me in the wake of the dinner party. I told myself with every fiber of my stubborn being that I did not want that punishment and he had no right and that if I wanted to put it in such terms, I was the victim in that situation and Jason being beaten for laughing instead of protecting was only one step in putting me back where I deserved to be.
Which was, Annie? Or Lily? Or whoever the fuck you are today? Where you were was under Cole St. Martin's thumb.
And I thought I was starting to like it there.
So when he threatened me with something new – blood draws and an exam? Who said he could do that? I hated physicals that weren't invasive, the old pee in a cup, listen to your heart, why is your blood pressure a million over a million and trying to explain that white coat syndrome is a real thing because while real people believe it, doctors don't.
The fact of being engaged to a resident who was going to be a doctor and looking forward to a life of ignoring him when he said "You should go get that checked out" and I thought "Nuh uh."
So would I permit Cole to do what he was thinking of doing tomorrow? Or was this where I drew the line.
"You're thinking very hard," Cole observed.
"I am."
He closed his eyes slowly. When he opened them he reached over and almost casually grabbed a handful of boob through my shirt and twisted until I slid from my chair onto my knees, teeth sunk into lip and eyes on the floor, rigidly submitting.
"You know," he said conversationally, not relaxing his grip even a tiny bit. "There are some things that are non-negotiable. This drug I've made, it's of the most natural ingredients in the world – quite literally." He gave a little laugh, having amused at least one of us. "But the combination of them and in conjunction with the very work they're doing – combating opioid addiction - I want to be certain they're not causing harm along with the good. I can look at you and see the changes. Not just that you're putting on weight, that you look less sick, that you have the energy to brat back which is just." Squeeze. "Fucking." Squeeze.
I whimpered.
"Stupid."
He let go of my breast and the blood started to flood back in and I gasped and bit down on my lip hard enough to taste blood.
"So this is not a request. Eat your food. Then you fast. I'll see you tomorrow at six a.m."
He got up and left the cell without looking back. A little before six, a guard I didn't know came in and took the tray, caffeine and cheese and bagels and everything. He left a pitcher of water and a glass, and he bolted the door behind him.
I spent the evening pacing in my suite, finding my communication with the outside world had been locked down again. I performed the forms for Taekwon-Do, from white belt through black, doing each three times. I was dripping sweat when I finished. I showered. I dreaded. I tried to read. I tried to study. I worked out again, this time with weights. I showered again.
And finally I gave in to the fear and to the need to self determine. I may want to stay here long enough to complete whatever course of cure was outlined so as to make me safe to return to whatever normal life – Real Life® – I chose. But I wasn't what Cole thought. I wasn't a masochist. I was my own person. I was taking a stand.
I stood on a chair and hung t-shirts over the cameras I could see, the ones mounted in corners. I then quickly dragged the chair over and wedged it under one of the two doors. Then the other chair from the table where Cole and I had eaten went under the other door.
I then walked through my cell, searching for hidden cameras by taking everything off every shelf and stacking it on the floor, investigating every imperfection of flat surface, everything that could be an eye.
I found one old nanny cam that appeared to have died back in the days when nanny cameras were a thing.
Listening devices I couldn't do anything about. Unless I found them. Which was unlikely. Bugs and trackers got smaller with every iteration and iterations seem to come about daily.
After securing my cell – and obviously trapping myself in it – I started going over it again for any exits. I'd done this, of course. Over and over. But this time I took special care, going over the doors, all of which opened out so the hinges weren't on my side. On the off chance, I tried the doors.
Of course they were locked.
Finally, I poked at the ceiling but it was every bit as real as I could imagine. Finally I showered a final time and looked at the time. It was past midnight.
I lay down on the bed to catnap.
And woke to find Cole leaning over the bed, the needle of a hypodermic already lodged in my elbow.
"Annie."
I woke with a violent start. Instantly I tried to kick back across the bed, partly to drive him away, partly to backstroke my way away from him.
He pushed the plunger in and I saw his wicked grin in the seconds before the world floated away from me.
"Fuck you," I whispered just before the darkness took me.
"Fuck you, sir," I heard and I was gone.
When I woke, I was strapped obscenely into some bizarre medical chair. My arms were restrained over my head and my naked body was strapped to some kind of mutated dental chair. My legs were separated widely, pushed up and back toward my chest. I was more spread eagled than being spread eagled.
Cole was moving purposefully around the lab.
"You need to be awake," he said. "So I gave you a relatively light dose that's fast acting. How are you feeling?"
I didn't answer. I didn't look at him. I could feel the cold air on parts of me I never wanted exposed. I was crawling with fury and humiliation.
Cole sighed. "Annie, this is happening. There's not a damned thing you can do to stop me. I don't want to have to hurt you which I can do easily if you don't give me feedback, and I don't want to have to hurt you to get you to give me feedback! Could you just fucking submit?"
"Why are you doing this?"
He leaned in close and I thought again how beautiful he was, the wicked trickster face, the lean, muscled body and that delighted grin like a child getting his way.
"Because I can. And because this is to keep you safe. Did you listen to me at all?"
I turned my face away and didn't answer.
40
Annie
I had my slave bound and trussed even more crudely than I needed her for a simple exam. The fact that I could humiliate her at the same time I gave myself pleasure was nice but I wasn't kidding that I wanted her feedback and I wasn't kidding that I wanted to be certain she was all right. Any new drug needs a trial period.
She was basically that. Didn't mean I wanted anything to happen to her in the process. The very fact of curing her addiction meant she wanted to live and it would be stupid to let her die of some mutation or cancer or blood-borne illness contracted because of taking rainforest drugs without backup exams.
As always, making her squirm was a bonus. She was embarrassed beyond belief. At a doctor's office, there'd be curtains around the table, and plasticky papery gowns and drapes. All to make the woman feel a little more secure.
Secure was the last thing I wanted for her. Yet it was all a bonus because the real intent was to get the information I needed to run the tests I want to run. St. Martin Pharma could take off like anything and do major good in the world if these rainforest cures were legit as I think they are. I know for certain they work to cut the addiction. I want to make sure that a year or two down the line women who are recovering from opioids aren't dying of something exotic or common as cancer.
"If you continue like that, I will gag you," I told her, because she was swearing and red-faced and fighting the restraints. As if I were stupid enough to leave her any room to escape.
If I had, it would only be so I could punish her later for having done so.
There was no reason not to make the exam pleasant at the beginning, though. It would offend Annie all the more if I all but got her purring and coming by running my hands over and over her silky, pink-tipped breasts. I toyed with her
nipples until the position in which Id trapped her left no doubt about her excitement. She's twenty-four and in great shape – her breasts are full and taut and clean of any malignancies I'd be able to feel with a digital exam.
Moving onward, I moved the table to stretch her arms out over head. "I'm going to do the blood draw now," I told her and watched as she shook her head back and forth, violently moving the only thing she could really move. "It's going to hurt a lot more if you don't cooperate and keep still."
It wasn’t my words that got her attention, though. It was the needle harness and the plastic tubing. This was going to be a big draw. I already had her breakfast waiting – protein shake, sugary cream cheese spread for a bagel I'd toast, eggs, spinach, nuts and orange juice. And the biggest mug of coffee she can manage if she's a good girl.
"Please, sir."
That was enough to get her a soft touch of her cheek before I swabbed the inside of her elbow and slid the needle into her vein. She hissed as if I'd just stabbed her. The girl really doesn't like needles. Such an interesting contradiction given, if I’d looked, I could find the scars from her shooting up.
The bloodwork took a couple of minutes, and when I was finished, there was only the main part of the exam left. Rearranging the table, I laid her back flat and brought her legs up high to give me access. She was begging and cursing pretty much simultaneously. Almost like she was speaking in tongues. She'd still get the coffee, but before the day was out, I saw a cropping in her future.
A sub I used to occasionally play with who was very into humiliation and medical play once told me that "you'll feel a little pinch" when the speculum goes in is doctor speak for "grab hold of the table and get ready, ‘cause this is going to hurt." Whatever doctor she was going to, he must have had some sadist in him, because it doesn't have to hurt like that.
But Annie really was going to feel a little pinch. Or a big one. Because along with the medical samples I want, I was placing a tracker she wasn’t going to know about. Ever since the dinner party I'd had a bad feeling that something is about to change, whether from her side or from Vincent's. Even if it turned out I'm completely wrong, eventually honor will compel me to loan her out for the requisite two weeks.