by Sophia Reed
I had never been afraid like I was now.
Turning so my back was as much to Kie as I could put it, I addressed Vincent. "Where the hell are you taking me?"
I expected anything. A backhand. A reprimand. A sneering cartoon villain response.
But he just looked at me coldly and said, "Wherever I feel like. You're mine now. Your idiot master, that mewling Cole St. Martin, could have honored the auction. You'd have been gone two weeks and – " he stopped and actually leered at me, as if I were going to enjoy whatever he had to say – "He'd have had you back. Provided you wanted to go back."
His insinuations made no difference. I didn't have some great loyalty to Cole St. Martin beyond his wonder drug. What I had was a desperate need to get out of where I was. "Do you know who I am?" I asked. Outing myself might be the stupidest idea ever but I was already in the vehicle. Every instant I remained there my situation became more dire.
To my left and slightly behind me, Kie snorted. "You're Mr. Boring's personal sex slave." She laughed. If it wasn't such a terrible place I found myself in I might have laughed also. They were like a pair of cartoon villains.
But I couldn't forget how Kie had hurt me. Not just the amazing, searing pain, but that she'd inflicted it with no more thought than I don't like her; this is what I want to do.
From what I'd heard, no permanent damage could be inflicted on me while I was in Vincent's care.
That was what Vincent was bound to.
I had no idea if it was the same for Kie and even if it was, I had no way of knowing if she'd honor it.
"Do you?" I repeated, ignoring her.
Vincent gave me a look of avid delight and said, "You mean the Seattle PD background and undercover work? Yes, Annie Knox, I do know." He paused, seeming to savor his words. "That's what bribes are for."
I swallowed hard. Just as likely as not he was only proceeding because nobody at PD knew where I was. Vincent was banking on whatever I had told PD about my time with Cole to keep himself safe. But what scared me was the thought that someone might - Know where I was.
And be unwilling to act because Vincent's money really was enough to keep their mouths closed. Or because underneath it all, what I thought were gains in acceptance really was just the old boy network operating as usual.
Cole had taken me to Seattle so recently, even without having seen the route before until we got into the city, the way to the airport was familiar. My heart pounded. Being put on a plane and a private one, would make it so much harder for Cole to find me.
That he was already looking, I had no doubt. But whether or not he would find me, I didn't know. It would be a battle between two men with nearly unlimited resources.
By the time Cole found me, it might be way too late.
The SUV stopped near to where we'd exit the vehicle and board the plane. There was a hold up, something going on that didn't give me any hope of rescue. This was some kind of ordinary hold up.
To pass the time, Kie and Vincent moved in close to me. Their hands stroked places I didn't want them to touch. Their breath came warm on my neck.
As if at the same time, through some kind of telepathic agreement, they began to whisper everything they were going to do to me into my ears. At the same time. A litany of pain and degradation. A promise of so much pain. A promise of so much time.
Pain. Payback.
I'd run from him. I'd run to him.
Now, with Vincent and Kie whispering obscenities to me and a plane waiting to take me somewhere unknown into maybe the worst danger I'd ever faced, I prayed for him to run to me.
Cole St. Martin was my only chance.
* * *
End of Book 2
Book 3
Wanted by the Billionaire
Synopsis
Cole's been stripped of his most valuable possession.
And he doesn't like it one bit.
* * *
Annie was losing her addiction to opiates...
And was gaining one to Cole.
It was perfect scenario.
But then He came and took her away.
It may be dark and twisted...
But what Cole and Annie have can't be undone.
He wants her back and he'll get her back.
No matter what.
1
Annie
The plane had landed. Now maybe Kie would take her hand off my breast.
She'd held it there for longer than I thought I could have kept my hand up and my arm extended. She didn't seem to have lost blood and or feeling in the arm. She wasn't doing anything in particular. Just touching me because I didn't want her to. Because she could and I couldn't stop her.
She was doing it because I hated it.
I hated her and that was mutual. Kie Geddes had done something to me during a dinner party that had hurt me so bad she was actually disciplined for it. Disciplined in ways I couldn't imagine. In a circle of crazy billionaires who believe they own the women they share BDSM relationships with, punishing one submissive for hurting another meant that hurt had been extreme.
It had been. But when Kie was punished for it, she became a dangerous enemy in the circle of people I was stuck in.
And the weird thing was, that had become some measure of a normal night in my life.
The plane had landed. Now maybe Vincent would take his hand out from between my legs. He hadn't been doing anything with it anymore than Kie had been doing anything. Not really. It just amused him that I couldn't stop him. They were like a pair of psychopathic eight year olds. If eight year olds could be sexual deviants.
Also, although Vincent wasn't doing anything with that hand, it did hold a straight razor pressed up against the seam of my lightweight, not all that protective, running shorts. I suppose it was some manner of control or even protection. In his mind. Just in case I decided to fight him or Kie.
While strapped into my seat. With my hands cuffed behind me. On an airborne airplane.
The plane had landed and I had no idea where we were. Vincent Geddes, billionaire, didn't have to buy tickets and produce boarding passes. He didn't even have to charter a flight. He owned the plane that brought us here.
Wherever here was.
He owned the men in black who came onboard carrying assault rifles. Because it was his plane and they were his men.
And now I was his captive.
I had a raging headache from whatever drug they'd injected me with when they took me. I was so thirsty I wanted to cry for water but I wasn't willing to ask for it.
The people who had kidnapped me weren't going to give me water anyway, not until they were ready and not because I'd asked for it. Even if they did, I probably wouldn't like how they did it. Waterboarding. Or sticking my face into a sink and holding it there. Or using some other less than normal way of getting water into my body. They'd spent the car ride before the flight telling me all the vile things they were going to do to my body while they kept me in their custody. All the sexual things. All the degrading things. All the things that would hurt so bad I'd beg for the first two things again.
The only rule was that nothing that was done to me, no matter how bad it hurt, could be permanent. No permanent harm. No bodies modified forever. But I wasn't sure how far that rule stretched because the people who had me now - They weren't the man I was supposed to be with.
Vincent Geddes was not the man who had auctioned me off at a dinner party – the man was the one who supposedly had bought me from a man I never even considered to have owned me, a bad Seattle PD cop who had been my "handler" when I was undercover. The man who "bought" me – that man was my Master. I was a crap submissive. But he was one hell of a dominant.
Cole St. Martin. He was beautiful and deadly and deviant and sexually inventive in ways I'd never believed existed. He could cause exquisite pain and exquisite pleasure that I didn't want to think about.
Either of them.
I'd been sold to him under the pretense that the cop doing the selli
ng had such a right, and under the belief that Cole was helping me beat my opiate addiction. The CEO of a multinational pharma company, he was working with rainforest products to create drugs that could combat my addiction.
The tradeoff was my submission.
No. The tradeoff was days and nights and weeks and months in his southern Nevada desert compound, surrounded by guards, stripped at his pleasure, beaten for his pleasure, fucked for both our pleasures.
Not that I'd ever tell him that. There were things I couldn't even tell myself. About the first time I ran from his southern Nevada compound, all the way back to Seattle where I found normal life – even as normal a life as a deep cover narcotics cop ever managed to live – untenable. When a return to real life turned out to mean a return to all the stressors that had driven me to try fet – fentanyl – in the first place meant I went back to it again, I started searching for Cole. Because wherever that compound of his was, I had been taken there blindfolded.
He's the billionaire CEO of a pharmaceutical company. He should be easy enough to find. But when the billionaire CEO of a pharmaceutical company decides to disappear and have some privacy - That's exactly what he does. I couldn't find him.
The people in the San Francisco sex clubs where I went looking couldn't find him either. At least that's what they told me, though one of them reported my search and my whereabouts to Cole. They weren't helpful that way, but they were willing to play with me.
I still couldn't admit to the things I'd done. I couldn't even kid myself I'd been trying to get information.
I'd been trying to get off. Afraid that I'd never find Cole, afraid that I'd never again feel his hands on me, I'd gone looking for a substitute. Physically I'd found many of the same things. Emotionally? Not even close. And I so wasn't willing to admit that.
The instant he found me and took me back, all the longing and searching and need for sensation drained out of my head and like a sane person, I realized that pain hurts and sex doesn't save you and I started to fight him again.
That either makes me a good and exciting submissive or an idiot. Or maybe it's normal. I'd found that however much I thought I wanted something, some promised punishment from Cole, like he was going to crop me or take a paddle to my ass or a whip to my back or a cane to the back of my thighs? No matter how wet thinking about it made me, when it was actually happening - It hurt.
That should have reduced the craving. It didn't. Need and want would build up again over the days until something happened and he punished me again. Then I'd hate him. Then I'd plan how to get out of the remote desert compound and back to civilization where maybe I could get myself into an actual rehab program. As if I didn't know how often those failed.
I needed him. I needed his rainforest cure. I needed to get straight and get back to my life in Seattle with Mark. My job. To go back undercover. To make a difference. I needed to be able to face my father, my role model for police work, with my head held high and my opiates behind me. And to get that, I needed Cole.
Life with Cole St. Martin had become some weird form of normal for me. I'd resist. He'd insist. I'd fight. And he'd beat me or fuck me or –
Auction me off to another billionaire, the proceeds of which – this amused the billionaires in their little wife-swapping and submissive-swapping group – going to combat sex trafficking.
Isn't that funny? It certainly cracked them up.
But Cole. He'd auctioned me and that was a fuck up. Because Vincent placed the highest bid, a whopping $5.5 million. All for a good cause.
Cole reneged. Cole said ‘not yet’. She's not ready yet. Cole didn't want the sadistic son of a bitch to get his hands on me and so he said Vincent would have to wait and Vincent didn't like the idea of waiting. Vincent let Kie hurt me and Kie was punished.
Kie already hated me.
Vincent already hated Cole and saw me as a way to get back at him.
Now I was between them as the plane landed. Between Vincent and Kie physically. Between Vincent and Cole figuratively. And I didn't know where the plane was landing or where they were taking me.
And there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it even if I had.
I am no longer completely certain what normal is.
Normal people don't play sexual games, right? I was raised to believe that. Well, no, I wasn't, I was raised to be vanilla in a household that didn't acknowledge even knowing that vanilla was anything other than a spice to bake with. I was raised by parents who had three other daughters who grew up and got married and started having babies or trying to have babies and cooking and cleaning, and if they accidentally got divorced, they got married again quick as quick can be. They had careers that could be abandoned at a moment's notice, the instant the first inkling of those babies showed up.
I was the daughter who wanted to be what her father was: A police officer, preferably in Seattle. Preferably doing something that utilized the fact that I looked so much younger than I was. Even with a smattering of college behind me and enough time on the force to be allowed to go deep cover into drug cases, I could still pass for seventeen or eighteen and infiltrate high schools and bring down the dealers inside those schools and outside.
When one of the girls who had actually become a friend, a beautiful, smart, college-bound girl who really was seventeen, died in my arms of an overdose of fentanyl, that's when I went deep cover enough to hook up with a biker gang selling fet all over the Pacific Northwest. And when, after months in the bed and on the bike of the leader, Jesse, my hero cop father fell ill with heart attacks, I took the time to go be with him and that didn't break my cover.
Even biker babes have fathers.
While I was gone Jesse was shot and killed. And me? I found out there were charges against my father. Some of his cases had not just toed the line between good cop and bad, not just walked it, but maybe nudged it hard. Maybe even played jump rope with the line.
In spending time with my father, I was staying again in my own apartment, with my fiancé, an intern at a local hospital. Mark and I – we didn't always see eye to eye.
Normal people don't want to be handcuffed to the headboard with their work handcuffs. Do they? Or if they do, it's a game. It's not a real hit me, please, hit me - it's a tease.
It wasn't a tease. When everything with Mark and my father and Jesse's death and more deaths of teenage kids and I hadn't brought down the Brotherhood yet, and not being undercover felt more stressful than being undercover, and my sisters both wanted me to be a normal member of the family and there for them 24/7 - by which they seemed to mean there for them because they all had husbands and families to deal with during Dad's illness, so it wasn't there for my father but for my sisters who didn't usually want me there at all – when everything sped up like that, one thing after another after another and then it all came crashing down on me...
That's when I broke.
That's when I found the glassine baggies of fet in my jeans as I went through the pockets before starting a load of laundry.
That's when I fell.
Normal is not being kidnapped by the billionaire who believes he bought you body and – not soul – for two weeks – and who now intends to keep you because he's angry the billionaire who believes he owns you wouldn't share.
Normal is not Kie, her Asian features pulled into a masque of great beauty and rage. The cuts on her cheeks seep clear fluid. She hurt me badly at the last dinner party, one Cole insanely gave even after the auction had gone so poorly. Kie had been given permission to play with me but she'd used a jalapeno, scraped the skin back and stuck it inside me.
The remembered pain is enough to make me want to panic.
Once, when a deal had gone sour, when he thought he'd been betrayed, Jesse nearly broke my jaw when he hit me during rage sex.
I hadn't been afraid to be with him again. That had been Jesse. That had been one time. He wasn't gentle. It was the anger and violence in his fucking that kept me his for as long as it did. It called to
something restless and if not broken, then bent, inside me. Stupid or not, I'd had feelings for Jesse.
I had feelings about Vincent and Kie. I was terrified of them. And now they owned me.
That – that was normal.
There was a black SUV waiting for us as we left the plane. Of course there was. I'd been taken at gunpoint from in front of Cole's remote compound, heart hammering as I expected the shot to ring out. All my time as a cop and I'd end up shot in some squabble over sexual submissives.
Vincent and Kie walked ahead, assured that what he had ordered was taking place. That the armed men had surrounded me, two of them taking my arms to walk me out.
My body was still limp, reacting to whatever I'd been injected with when they took me. When I tried to put weight on my legs they buckled but not in the usual way when a limb has fallen asleep. Then they hurt and snap and seem to drop out like they have weight. They don't work, but they feel like they at least exist.
Instead, this was like finding a limb had gone to sleep crossed with something that made the limb go rubbery, unable to hold itself up. There was no strength there for me to command. There didn't seem to be any limb there to command.
That scared me. Not that I could have run even if both legs had been in perfect working order. Even if we were at an airport of any size, we were in a private part where things happen that aren't supposed to happen and that no one ever knows about if they're lucky. Those people who do know about those things happening don't talk about them. I'd become all too adept at understanding such places exist. I'd become all too used to being dependent on men I wanted to kill.
The thought jackknifed through me. Everything seized up and I tried to stop moving but there was no way, they propelled me forward, my feet doing some jerky half-assed version of walking, stumbling me in the wake of the two people I least wanted to go anywhere with. Least wanted to be at the mercy of.