by Sophia Reed
From that safe I took a secure phone and called a billionaire who went by the name of Red and who I thought just might make a home for Kie.
By the time I finished, it was minutes to the hour. I shut down everything in my office and went to find Annie.
10
Annie
He left me with a countdown.
But he left me. I had time to myself to think. I hadn't realized what a luxury that was until I started to have it again. I hadn't in recent years. There was always something. If I wasn't undercover with an assignment then I was being asked to decide whether or not to go under on the next. If I was undercover, then 24/7 I was considering who I was supposed to be and how I was supposed to act. There was never a time it came so naturally that I didn't have to think about it.
With Mark, it was on and off. Sometimes he talked non-stop and others he was deep into his studies, so far into his own deep cover world it was like he wasn't even there.
The hospital had been a whole other world, one in which no one ever shut up.
But when Cole left me in solitude, he left me with less than an hour to decide.
What I had with Mark was over. My career with PD honestly couldn't have gone on that much longer. If I hadn't gotten hooked on fentanyl it might have been another year, another 18 months at the outside before somebody figured out who I was.
It wouldn't even take a mistake. All it would take was one too many times a deal went belly up and I was present. Or everybody went down but one person on the street saw me walking around loose too soon after. Yeah, I spent my nights in jail, but face it, I didn't spend anywhere near as much time as everybody else.
There are perks to not really being a bad guy.
The sex I had with Mark was middle class and middle of the road. If we stayed together, we'd have to spice things up, but the few times he'd tried tying me up I'd been iffy about it. Sometimes I was all for it and other times I nearly bit his head off.
Which meant to me that it was him and not the act. Or at least how I reacted to him on any given day.
There should never be a day when I wanted to bite his head off.
The sex I'd had with Jesse had usually been fast, loud, painful and dangerous and I'd loved it. I might have loved him. Damn, my father would have skipped the mental hospital and sent me straight to an old-fashioned, honest to God (pun intended) convent if he ever knew about Jesse.
And Cole?
Best not to think about that while I was trying to make a somewhat less well informed decision.
Or maybe that was exactly what I needed to consider.
There were all the other details. I'd chafed under Vincent's control but that was Vincent – he was violent, stupid, dangerous, horrible, and another list of words that wouldn't go far enough to stating how much I hated him.
But Cole. Cole –
Wasn't different at all, I admitted, nearly laughing at myself in surprise. Cole was controlling. He was a sexual sadist. The way he played his games, he always won. But then, he was the billionaire. Of course he always won.
There had only been a few times we’d had sex. Mostly it was him disciplining me, correcting me, punishing me … the words were causing a chain reaction in me as one part of my body after the next lit up and started to burn.
He was physically attractive, his hair usually long and swept back, his cheekbones and jaw prominent. His eyes were deep and very dark, his nose a straight arrow, and his mouth – it wasn't just that smile, the one that said Oh, I could fuck you up and you'd love it – wanna see? It was also the muscle, the chest, the intellect, the mouth on him, not the kissing one but the way he talked.
He was hot and he fucked like a dream and there was no time, not even once, not even after the first time he did a double ladder on my ass and thighs, going up to a count of fifty and back down again with two canes. I hadn't thought it possible to take so much pain and I had hated him the entire time it happened.
But.
But I'd stayed.
My father thought I was insane, if he didn't simply see the hospital as a great dumping ground for the daughter who no longer made him proud.
But my father didn't matter. My father had sold me out. Back up and look at me for a change, outside all the males in my life: Jesse, Mark, my father, Cole.
Cole hurt me and I stayed. He humiliated me and I stayed.
He opened the door to let me out and I stayed.
That meant something. Right? And the first time I'd been there, back when I "Had a choice" (I still had a choice, I wasn't the one who thought I didn't).
I'd fought him every step of the way on the Master/slave, Dominant/sub stuff. I hadn't signed up for that. I hadn't signed up for anything, that asshole Samuels had sold me. But I didn't leave when he beat me for disobeying. Sometimes I even knelt when told and didn't go where he said I couldn't.
Without knowing it, without setting out to do it, I'd made my decision.
I'd been sitting on the edge of my bed and when I finally emerged out of my own thoughts I realized I was staring directly across the cell at the door to the main house.
It was open. Not just unlocked but physically open. Cole had left it open when he went through. It was an invitation or a tease.
Or it was simply to allow me to make the decision without being coerced in any way.
It was also the way to get to him. No way of knowing where he'd gone but the hour was running out. Probably he was in the main house. He didn't play the kind of games where he'd go for a run or leave the compound after giving me an hour to get back to him with an answer.
I started for the door, nothing more in mind than finding him, when he came through it himself. He was backlit by the bright Nevada sun and for a minute I was dazzled at the black of his silhouette and the bright of the outside sun, and then I saw he had stopped moving.
He'd said I had to come to him and yet he'd come to me. It looked like that had just hit him.
He stood utterly still, watching me.
I started toward him. This was my thing. My part to play, my decision to relay. Halfway across the cell I realized this was wrong. There needed to be a gesture. There had to be some way he wouldn't mistake what I was saying. What my decision had been.
I stopped and now I was closer, I could see his eyes, watching me from where he stood. Deliberately I tilted my chin down, meeting his eyes for a long, long, wordless second.
Then I dropped my gaze. I unsnapped and unzipped the cheap jeans, stepped out of them. I wore no panties – there had been limits to what my EMT driver friend could provide on short notice – and I hadn't been able to shave in the hospital. I hated how I looked and felt the flush moving over me along with Cole's eyes. He hadn't moved or spoken yet and I doubt very much he knew for certain my answer.
I pulled my shirt off, and my bra, and threw them on top of my jeans before I walked forward toward him. The sun shone in through the doorway on the south side of the cell, lighting the white tile. My feet warmed with every step. When I reached Cole, I looked at him for a long time.
He held out one hand, as if not knowing what I was choosing. His hand was at my shoulder height and palm up. I put my hand into his and allowed him to help me kneel.
I heard his intake of breath then, and no exhale. He was holding his breath. That made me smile but he couldn't see it because I kept my gaze down. Slowly, without looking at him, neither of us speaking, I took one of the most strenuous poses: my fingers laced behind my head, my elbows held well back and open so my breasts jutted out. I sat back on my heels, my toes turned all the way under so I knelt on my heels. My knees rested on the tile, spread wide.
He whispered my name. "Annie. Are you sure?"
I wavered. I had expected him to react. I was offering myself which I hadn't done before, though I made no promises that I'd be any more tractable than I had ever been. For me the desire to be dominated, the longing for something kinky or for discipline, the idea of asking Mark on a birthday or anniversary
would he like me to play some role that left me his to control and fuck as he chose, that always, always faded out after enough orgasms. Most of the time I didn't even tell him. When I did tell him, nothing ever came of it.
That wasn't what made me waver. There was the specter of him punishing me when I wanted it, and hurting me for the hell of it whether I wanted it or not, and punishing me when I didn't want him to touch me. There was the fact that my own will would be put away somewhere and there would only be Cole and what Cole wanted and would be his.
What made me pause was Cole himself. Because when he asked if I was sure, there was something wrong. Something that almost told me to run. Something that wavered as if he were going down for a third time, drowning or losing or somehow succumbing to something and he didn't want me to know it.
I didn't know what was going on but if I stayed with him, safe from Mark and my father and hospitals and next steps, I'd learn.
I was making my decision.
11
Cole
She was beautiful. Kneeling. Submitting. Promising.
There were lies there. I could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes. Because even now she couldn't keep her tone respectful, couldn't cut out all the sarcasm and anger. Even now, promising to remain, to honor a new year and a day contract, she was looking up, meeting my eyes and in her expression, there was Annie, front and center. Judging. Deciding. Making choices.
I wanted to take that away from her.
She'd come to me because I bought her. In a way, no one ever truly buys another person. They pay people to deliver them and they pay to keep them there and they pay to do whatever it is they think makes them an owner but it's a lie, a vanity. Everyone belongs to themselves in the end.
But Annie. I was going to break her. I was going to make her mine. Because I had purchased her, no matter how much of a fairytale that fact was. Samuels, with the police department Annie worked for, sold her to me. Although I had paid him more than enough money to disappear and start over (he did disappear; I'm not sure it could be called starting over) it was the fact that she was delivered to me that was important.
Annie came to me because she was addicted and I was working on cures for opiate addictions. She returned to me after the first time she ran because having had a taste of the rest of the package – the dark side of kink – she wanted it again. She never wanted to say that, not aloud. Not that simply. But it was that simple.
She'd gotten hooked to the kink as easily as she had to the drugs.
But now that I had her, I did not want to let her go. She was delightful to hurt and she fought back so nicely.
She'd live up to her promises whether she liked it or not.
The truth was her addiction was history. She was healthy and clean. Samuels sold her to me because he had no honor. I bought her because I wanted a sub who had no alternatives, someone I could hurt, punish and bring pleasure to. Those were my intentions. The fact that in trade I could cure the opiate addiction? That was just more winning for me. Because the pharmaceuticals weren't approved by the government yet. They were still experimental. I didn't want to kill anyone. I definitely didn't want to hurt anyone with the cure – that isn't the kind of hurt I do.
I just wanted someone who couldn't argue and couldn't fight. The fact that Annie is drawn to the dark and that when she ran she sought it out in other cities when she couldn't find me, that was all just luck of the draw.
I wasn't one who was going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Stand up," I said.
She looked up, surprised, then looked back at the floor and rose gracefully. Now she was standing, she didn't know what to do with her hands. They were supposed to be locked behind her, but she had enough to process.
"If you truly want to come back, we need to talk."
She looked up at me again, with an expression so caught between laughter and alarm I started laughing myself. "You didn't expect a negotiation?" There'd been one the first time.
Her cheeks flushed scarlet. "I didn't expect a negotiation when I'm... " She waved a hand up and down her body.
It was beautiful. She had small, beautifully shaped breasts, with light pink, very hard nipples. She needed to shave – or be shaved – because the hospital apparently had thought their residents not trustworthy with blades. That could be dealt with. Her bob of short dark curls had grown out while she was locked up. What would have been the problem with letting someone come in to do residents' hair? But it looked nice on her.
Naked was a good look for her. But I understood her dilemma. "Difficult to think like that?" I asked even as I reached and grabbed the back of my t-shirt, hauling it over my head. I held it out to her and she instantly slipped it on. It hung on her and made her look waiflike and tiny. "Better?"
"Better."
I gestured to a chair. "Then let's talk."
12
Annie
The negotiation took less time than Cole had granted me to think about it. In less than an hour, our dealing was done.
Probably because from my side, there wasn't a lot of dealing.
When I first ran from Cole, when I first then started searching for him again, I found myself in a variety of strange places – underground sex clubs and BDSM dungeons. I didn't spend a lot of time talking to people. I hadn't gone to make friends or join the scene.
But I did participate in a few things and during that time, I learned there was negotiation before anything ever took place if the participants were all going with safe, sane and consensual experiences. Whatever number of people were to be involved in a scene, they'd sit down and hammer out a document or a verbal agreement full of hard and soft limits, of safe words and things the sub wanted or the Dom wanted or sometimes only what the Dominant wanted but with the sub's permission – or wholehearted, enthusiastic agreement.
I'd already been through the contract process with Mr. St. Martin once. I didn't expect him to ask what I'd like, or take anything other than my hard limits into account.
I wasn't wrong. All along I'd been thinking that somehow if I really wanted to go, I could. That he knew he hadn't actually purchased me and I could just pick up and leave.
Or maybe that's only how I handled it. Because the idea that he did think he owned me and he didn't think I could just get up and go - That was worrisome.
The new contract made me his sub. He made decisions for me. It was thorough. It probably wasn't that different from the last contract which I'd refused to believe in but this time there was the gravitas of his strange behavior. The anger I sensed in him.
It wasn't anything I could ask about. My role had just changed and before that happened, I’d had no idea how to ask. Even while I was telling him I hadn't decided to come back yet, even then he was in control of everything. Even then if I had honestly angered him he could have punished me for it.
I didn't anticipate that he'd do it then. I thought we would make our negotiations and then talk about what was going to happen with Kie and then maybe I could sleep for a while. Sleeping in the hospital had been an uncertain proposition and today had been long and hard. Confronted with a ring of armed men, I'd been unarmed and I'd really felt it. Being in that position felt weak, and coming off having been committed and before that having been kidnapped, I was feeling like one of my sisters – girly and ineffective. That wasn't something I was used to feeling.
St. Martin stood at the end of our negotiation and went away, coming back quickly with one of the guards.
"This is Benjamin," he said, and Ben nodded at me. He was Cole's height and even more fit, if possible. Blue black hair that looked real, based on the beard stubble, even though it's rare to see hair that's true black.
"Ma'am," he said.
I just said, "Hello." Damned if I was calling anyone else sir. Also, I wasn't sure where I stood in the hierarchy of St. Martin's compound. Guards might be able to hem me in, but maybe it was like being royalty. Maybe they could control me for my own good, but I w
as actually superior to them.
Maybe I was just really, really tired.
"Benjamin is a notary public," Cole said. "He'll witness our signatures."
Which wouldn't be legal without him seeing our IDs, even if, like all the guards the instant I hit the compound, he knew who I was. That was okay. I was signing the contract not because I wanted the relationship as Cole defined it.
But because I had nowhere else to go and for now, this felt like home.
After Benjamin went away, Cole and I talked about Kie. He told me about the man he wanted to send her to and I listened with two minds. The mind that said whatever she got, she deserved, that I didn't care if she lived or died and I didn't care how bad she was hurt on her way to whichever choice. It was hard to concentrate anyway, knowing that she was in some kind of underground prison with a woman who had been here all along and I never knew.
St. Martin had his secrets.
The second mind said Kie was a living, breathing human and a woman, and how could I simply consign her to some kind of hell.
I hadn't totally made peace with either side of my internal argument when St. Martin had Kie brought up and driven to her knees in front of him. We were in the main house by then, in the living room where Kie had first hurt me. Just seeing her there, all the rage came back and I was fine with whatever St. Martin wanted to do with her as long as it didn't involve kindness.
"I know someone who is willing to pay top dollar for a sub," he told her.
St. Martin sat on the far side of the living room from the door and since he hadn't told me to remain near him, to leave or stay, I stood as far away as I could get from Kie, partially behind her where I could watch her face in profile and see Cole as he faced her. I didn't want to be involved.