by Sophia Reed
"Please, sir," I panted after the third time he made me cry out.
That made him grab me by the hair and drag me over his lap, tearing the dress as he exposed my ass and slapped me until I screamed.
I had never known that spanking with just a human hand could hurt so bad.
Then he sat me back up, told me to pull the top of the dress down, and went back to hurting my nipples.
Then we reached the house and he'd had medical treatment waiting for me.
I was going to kill him.
I was going to kill him and I was going to kill Kie and I was going to kill anyone who got in the way.
But Vincent was happy. Once the scene in the car was over, he was back to smiling, humming, looking around at the city we were passing through.
Paris had never been on my bucket list. Actually, as an undercover narc, I was too superstitious to have a bucket list and I hated the concept anyway. But Paris wasn't on my list of places to see. It seemed too obvious.
But it was beautiful. And old. At least where we were. The idea that Vincent had screwed restraints into a historic house was appalling.
Sometime deep in the night I got up again.
Dressed in my sweats, the night's foot-crippling stilettos carefully stored away, I was training. The room I was in was more than big enough. Moving through the kata, I was building up a sweat, working hard and fast and with precision.
Thinking about what I'd need in order to kill Vincent.
Block. Strike. Kick. Block. Back up. Block. Back up. Strike, strike, strike, kick.
There was no kindness in Vincent. There were no moments when I accidentally caught him in a smile. There were no touches to my face that weren’t a slap.
But there had been the medic tonight. And that I didn't understand. It was almost worse than if there hadn't been. Because it was out of character. In my experience, psychopaths didn't act out of character unless something was in it for them.
I ran through the katas twice, from white belt to black belt, until I was sweating in the cool night and pulled off the sweatshirt. The house shift would be enough for a top. I went back to my workout, starting with side kicks, my least favorite technique and my worst for form. All the way across the suite and back again, changing legs halfway through. Then again. Then slow kicks, those perfecters of form, standing on one leg and painstakingly extending the opposite, watching the strike of the foot with the knife edge, the toes angled back toward the body, fists up in defensive position.
Slow. Graceful. Giving me too much time to think.
I could find my way back to Cole this time. Probably I could find someone who could contact him, possibly among the freakshow dinner guests.
Or Kie. Almost impossible to believe they hadn't been together at some point. Given the hatred the two men had for each other and Cole's tendency to pick his victims from women he wanted to see get on their feet and cast him off, I thought it was possible he'd fucked Kie more than once, possibly one or two times without even tacit permission from Vincent.
Two-thirty rolled around and I thought I was physically tired enough to sleep. I did some basic kata again, and another couple of lengths of suite of punches. If someone wanted to attack me now, I wouldn't have the energy to kick them.
That was good. After the events of the night behind us, after the clubbing Vincent dragged me to after, the only reason I was working out was to exhaust the body enough to sleep.
Now the mind.
I drank a glass of water. I pulled the sweatshirt back on because now I wasn't moving, the wind coming in the window was chilling the sweat on my skin.
I knelt and formed a loose triangle of my fingers, nothing more than a point to focus on. My instructors had never told us what to focus on when meditating. I thought it likely they didn't know. So I worked on what I wanted to work on and most of the time when I was in classes, that was how I could improve. What I needed to ask for help on. How I had fought or done the combinations.
Tonight, I considered everything I knew about the house I was in and the neighborhood outside of it. I concentrated on everything I had watched while trying to seem like I was paying attention to Vincent or to whatever he was doing to my body at the time. It was hard through the overly tinted limo windows, but I built up a cohesive image of the world around the house. It was all residential. It'd be hard in a residential neighborhood not far from the center of town to find someone to take me in and let me hide.
That meant making Vincent dead and taking my shot at getting out at a time when Vincent was expected to be with me and when I assumed the orders were always, "If you hear screaming, don't interfere."
That was about to pay off for me. I'd work through the house, one more time, playing off everything I knew about it and everyone inside it. Where security was stationed at night. The cameras I knew about. Where Kie slept through the fact that she was chained to her bed at night made her less than threatening.
Still, I didn't trust her.
How I would kill Vincent.
I was deep into the meditation, head bent and hands loosely forming that triangle, eyes mostly closed, when the shadow moved from behind me and there was screaming, tearing pain in my scalp.
He wrapped my hair around his fist and yanked my head back, exposing my throat and my breasts under the silly little shift.
His free hand went down the front of my shift and this time even his usual brute force and painful grip paled in comparison. It felt like he was going to crush my breast.
Caught in the instant between a scream of horrified surprise and one of pain and fear, I sucked in a breath.
I had a heartbeat or two while he was still surprised I hadn't screamed. I had that long before he remembered whatever it was he was going to do to make me scream.
I didn't bother with regrets –
--not being able to initiate the attack on my own terms—
--not seeing Cole again---
--never seeing my father again, or anyone in my family—
--never figuring out what to tell Mark –
I used the time to find the best way to get him out of my hair and away from knife's range if that's what he had.
What worked in my favor: He wanted to brag.
I got maybe ten more seconds.
I used them. I reached up and put both hands over my head, pressing my hair down hard to my skull, taking the pressure off the roots where they were shrieking in pain.
Then I stood, shoving myself up hard and fast, standing out of a cross-legged seat the way a martial artist comes up with no hands. I slammed into him, my hands protecting my skull, and knocked him back with the suddenness of it.
The second he staggered, I reached with both hands behind me, grabbing for his face, using it as a focal point to swing myself around so I faced him.
I went for his eyes with my thumbs but he brought his arms up between mine and swept them down and away from him. That was an actual technique, and maybe it was luck he’d used it, but it shook out any complacency I might have had.
Instinct took over and I tried to knee him in the groin. He sidestepped easily and pounded one fist into my retreating thigh, making it cramp. It would be harder to kick with now. I was already exhausted. Now one leg was injured, or at least considerably slowed down.
I changed to the other leg, let the cramping leg take my weight, and tried a front kick, one of those techniques that are good in close quarters, good for getting the other person away from you. I knocked him back several feet.
It also partially knocked the wind out of him because I caught him just under the solar plexus.
Vincent flew backward and landed hard on his back, arching it over a shoebox lying there. It was empty and collapsed under his weight, but the seconds it afforded me to get to him was the difference between my reaching him before he caught his breath, and him catching his breath and then catching me.
I got there first.
What my mind's eye saw: Driving punches down in
to his face, his throat, his chest, hitting him and hitting him and hitting him until he splintered and broke and then ramming my hand under his nose to drive the cartilage up into the brain.
What I had time for before security realized something was wrong and came in through the unlocked doors: Smashing his head into the floor.
But there were already footsteps outside the room and I wanted to shout, Not fair! My hands fastened around his throat. There was no way out of this anyway. I was taking him with me.
But the door slammed open, figures surrounded us.
To my horror, Vincent was laughing. It didn't even sound crazy. It sounded like he was having fun.
My breasts ached, and my throat, and my scalp felt like it was on fire. I knelt where I had been, head down, arms dangling, because there was just nothing else to do.
Security was armed. Security was always armed. I suppose if I were a psychopathic billionaire who had kidnapped a deep cover narc and was all but raping her on a regular basis, I'd surround myself with armed men too.
But it was Kie who came into the room, her grin big. "I told you, didn't I?" I wasn't sure who she was talking to.
But of course it was Vincent who answered. "You said she'd try to defend you. You weren't even in here, and you can't prove that, and anyway, she didn't."
Vincent sounded sulky and it took me a second to realize he probably was. For the moment, he wasn't the center of attention. Kie's crazy comment had put her in the limelight.
It was on the tip of my tongue to state the truth: I wouldn't save her if she was the last crazy bitch on earth.
But then self preservation caught up with me and I shut my mouth tight and swallowed several times, head down, eyes unfocused.
Kie was the one who zip-tied my hands together behind my back. That gave me a real bad feeling. The guards lifted me almost gently, which was insane, but true. It was almost as if they knew what was coming for me and were resigned to at the very least, not making it worse.
What was I supposed to have done? I couldn't just let him –
My brain stopped trying to defend its actions. My actions. He already had me. I'd proved to myself as much as I needed to that every repeat violation was a brand new violation, whether it was ego or consciousness or whatever. Every time I was stripped I felt naked and embarrassed. Every time Vincent grabbed me and twisted, it hurt with renewed vigor. The body and mind didn't have a button that said Okay, we've been through this before, just let them get their jollies and it will end.
Probably that was all part and parcel of self preservation. Probably it was a good thing. But it was hard to still be hurting and humiliated this far into the fucked-up game of Vincent Geddes.
It wasn't self preservation that meant I was still daydreaming scenarios, though it would be that Vincent starred in none of them. It was still Cole I dreamed of. Maybe on purpose. Because sometimes in the opening salvos, when Vincent first started whatever he was going to do this time, it still felt like something I wanted. Like somehow we were going to get started and Vincent would turn from someone I hated into someone I desired. And what he did to me would continue to be good.
I'd never had anything that wasn't violent, not since discovering the dark side of sex. Yes, Mark had unwillingly (or if he'd had a few drinks, willingly for the time being) handcuffed me to the bed and had his way with me, a little rough but it was vanilla rough, not real. There was no danger with Mark. He didn't know how to go too far.
What I wondered now was, if someone set the scene – cue scary music, bring on the menacing alpha with his whips and chains – of domination and sadism, and did all the right things right up to the striking, then used something like a tawse on me, something made of butter soft suede that had a tiny, tiny sting to it and only because it was being wielded, not because of any inherent danger from the toy – would that be enough? If the spanking was all by hand, or hand and hairbrush, or belt, with never any danger of even needing a safe word, or going beyond the pinkening of the skin, no furious red, no blistering – would I be satisfied?
If the answer was no, did I belong anywhere other than where I was?
But being dragged through the house by private security for a man I believed would have killed to take me away from his rival, the answer was yes. Yes, I belonged somewhere else. Maybe that place was with Cole rather than Mark, or with a Jesse of sorts. Maybe I was meant for that kind of treatment. Certainly hearts and flowers had never intrigued me.
But I belonged somewhere safe. Nothing I had done in my life warranted the intrusion into it by a Vincent or a Kie. If I had deviant desires, so what? Even I recognized that they were strange, not mainstream. Even I realized that most of it was fantasy. Because reality fucking hurt.
Maybe that was the answer. Fantasizing. If I had my way with you right now, do you know what I'd do to you? Asked the fantasy voice in my mind.
Its owner was armed with nothing more than his big, hard hand.
But the introspection was over because we'd arrived.
The guards deposited me in a room I hadn't seen before. If it was Vincent's, he seriously traveled light. There was nothing any more personal about it than my room. There was a bed, very big and beautifully appointed. There were windows, spacious with views that weren't the same as mine, but that didn't help me figure out how my room was situated and that really didn't matter until I could get out of it.
There was a couch, a pile of blankets, a walk-in closet, a bathroom, a locked door behind me.
There was Vincent. Probably not more than an hour after I was deposited on my knees and told to stay there. Though one of the guards gave me a long drink from a water bottle. I hadn't taken as much as he thought I did, for fear of being drugged.
Or needing to pee.
The things one worries about.
They'd left me on my knees in the middle of the room facing the door, but that got old about ten minutes into the waiting, so I shifted around until I was sitting cross-legged again and then shoved myself up from the floor without using my hands, this time because they were pinned behind me.
Then I went over to the couch and sat down and waited.
Vincent just looked at me when he walked in. I hadn't been going for a reaction. I just didn't want to be on the floor anymore, being on my knees hurt them, and being on my knees in front of Vincent hurt my pride.
"I see you've made yourself at home." He walked to the credenza on the far side of the room and poured himself a drink. "Drink?"
"No." I expected him to fly across the room and grab me and insist it was no, thank you, sir, that's very kind, sir, or the like but he just nodded.
"I'm not sure you understand how this works," he said.
He was standing with his back to me, pouring a drink over at the tall wooden case, ice in the glass, the sound of it ringing like a chime. The gurgle of bourbon poured into a glass. It was all so civilized. If someone were filming it, there wouldn't even be any particular interest right now. Medium height man pouring a drink. Girl on sofa sitting a trifle strangely but so what about that?
Then the camera would pan closer, showing the bruises she had, the split lip, the look of panic in her eyes, the way her clothes barely covered her. The fact that her arms were bound behind her.
About then, I'd turn off whatever show it was and if Mark had the remote, I'd make the statement that either he found something else to watch or I went and did something else. Drugs and prostitution like to go hand in hand. When you have absolutely nothing but you have to be able to buy something, you sell what you have. I'd seen enough degradation and assault in real life and didn't want to watch it during the strange, short times that I was home.
There were so many things I could say in response to what Vincent had just said – I'm not sure you understand how this works – that I opted to keep quiet. See if he said anything else.
Vincent walked back to the couch and sat down beside me. Without speaking, he looked at me with his small, stony eyes, the drink h
eld at chest level.
I breathed out, wishing I could wake up. Even if the dream meant I was in some dim alley strung out on opiates, it would be an improvement. Even if every improvement I'd made with Cole had been part of the dream, it would be worth waking from this.
If everything I'd gone through with Cole was a dream, I'd write it down on waking and use it as a blueprint. And I'd follow it. Scared Straight. Just dreaming there was someone in the world like Vincent Geddes might be enough.
"You're essentially a pawn," Vincent said, and his voice was thready with false sympathy. "You're a stand-in between Cole St. Martin and me, the one we both hurt in order to – "
"Cole doesn't hurt me." Now that was a lie.
He didn't even bother to pretend. "Come now."
I shook my head, as much to shake free of the tears of fury gathering there. "He doesn't hurt me like you do. He doesn't hurt me as some stupid message to you."
I saw the muscle jump in his jaw and knew I'd made contact.
"How do you know?"
For a horrible minute, I couldn't breathe, let alone think or answer. I didn't know. That was the truth. I thought every single thing Cole had done had been predicated on Cole being Cole. Until the auction where this living, breathing asshole paid $5.5 million for the chance to hurt me, I didn't think anything Cole did had anything to do with Vincent Geddes.
I also thought he was trying to help me. Yes, his sick fascination with pain played out during that help, but I thought the biggest part of everything was curing opiate addictions with his rainforest drug.
I was used to the long game when I went undercover. I stayed under for months at a time, the payoff of whatever operation it was occurring without me because otherwise it would be too risky to go back under. Some people only did one stint undercover and that was enough for them. They didn't want to risk their real life being subsumed by it. I understood that. I couldn't imagine not going back under, though. Not while I could still pass for young enough to fit in with the people I was trying to help. It occurred to me that maybe living undercover, living a life that wasn't mine, a fantasy, and going back to it time after time despite having already done good - Maybe that was a form of addiction too.