by Sophia Reed
But I wanted to know everything that happened. It was going to take a long time to feel safe within myself again. Vincent Geddes and Kie had done what a handful of years undercover hadn't: Made me doubt myself.
Watching him, despite the fact that he sat edgily on a couch about six feet from where Kie had been forced to kneel and that she simply knelt but not at a different level, it still somehow felt like he was on a throne and she was subjugated on the ground.
A look of panic raced across Kie's face when he told her that. Her fists tightened and then her hands splayed wide, barely catching her as she flattened herself on the floor, begging. "I'll do anything you want. I will! I'll pain slut. I'll degrade myself. Blood sports. Knife play. Breath play. Please, please don't send me away. All I've known is Vincent and you're my last link to him, please."
She didn't quite say; You took him from me, you owe me but she might have meant it.
Didn't matter. St. Martin had no intention of letting her stay.
"Norcross will be the kind of Master you need." His voice was flat and hard. I couldn't tell if he was battling down any kind of sympathy or rage. "You'll want for nothing and you'll get away with nothing. He'll get you into incredible physical shape and you'll serve him."
Kie's face crumpled.
For an instant, a long, foolish instant, I almost felt sorry for her.
But she was kneeling on her heels, one of the harder positions to maintain, and for the first time the fact of my own borrowed t-shirt and nothing else made me realize she was still fully dressed.
I opened and closed my mouth, keeping my head down. I didn't really want to see her naked. I'd had enough of anybody and everybody being naked. St. Martin was the type to call on me to strip if I suggested Kie be unclothed.
I liked even the small amount of security wearing the t-shirt gave me.
Plus. It smelled like Cole.
I looked at Kie again, who was being unusually quiet, and saw her hands had gone behind her back. From St. Martin's point of view it must have looked very submissive.
From my point of view –
The very human first response was to shout in panic: She's got a gun!
The cop response was to break into motion before I said anything and to say to St. Martin when he looked at me, distracted, "She's got a gun," in a calm voice that almost sounded slow but wasn't panicked. He could understand. He could react.
I was already halfway to her. The gun was just clearing the waistband of her yoga pants.
I reached for her. Kie's back was still to me, her attention focused forward on St. Martin. She didn't flinch when Benjamin crashed into me, shoving me roughly to the floor and diving onto Kie, driving her down and planting one foot on her wrist, even as the rest of him made certain she was under control, then searched her, then threw the gun almost negligently, as if it was the least important part of this, into a corner of the room.
He hauled Kie to her feet by the hair.
"Let go of her hair," St. Martin said instantly.
The guard, looking startled, released her hair and took her arm. Kie shivered as if cold and looked like she wanted to slide into the guard's arms.
St. Martin shook his head. He looked more disgusted than anything else. "Take her back to the cell. I'll contact Norcross." Just like that, Kie was history.
I hoped.
13
Cole
The instant Kie was out of the room, so was I.
Furious, I paced the main house, ran through the halls. Changing clothes, I headed out for a run. Annie would be back in her cell. She might even see me going.
We usually did this together.
We did a lot of things together.
Right now I didn't trust myself with her.
She'd been right about Kie, a snake, mean, desperate. She couldn't be trusted. I'd known that, but I'd given in to a stupid residual edge of sympathy.
That wasn't who I was.
For an hour I ran through the desert, until I'd exhausted myself enough to make the run back unpleasant. April sun pounded down on the Las Vegas valley.
Reaching the compound, I showered and hit the gym, beating a punching bag until even the gloves weren't enough to stop the pain from radiating into my hands.
I threw the gloves down, toweled off, showered again, cold water and rage. One fist pounded into the stone shower wall.
That pain woke me. I've never had a tolerance. I give it. I don't want it. For me to switch is an indicator of near catatonia-causing depression.
I'd only been that way twice in my life. One of those times had been when Emily died.
The sun went down while I worked on rainforest documents, clearing legal hurdles to get my hands on more vines with nearly magical properties. More and more pharma companies were realizing the benefits of not just rainforest naturals, with or without psychedelic or hallucinogenic properties, but the benefits of psychedelics themselves. Soon my type of research would be mainstream if a healthy presidential administration took office, and probably all done in secret if it didn't.
I ate a light dinner in the dining room.
I did business with Brazil.
I did another light workout.
I had another shower.
I got updates on Kie (asleep, whimpering) and Ariel (studying at her desk).
I gave up, and sent for Annie.
14
Annie
If I had expected a reprieve, a matter of time before we started into the new contract, I'd have been disappointed.
I was getting to know Mr. St. Martin quite well, however. The summons came as no surprise at all.
His orders were to shower and shave, to dress in the low cut, very short shift I had worn around the compound the first time I had been in residence, back when I was nothing but a prisoner. He hadn't told me to wear shoes and it was just as well: My feet were torn up from a barefoot run through the desert.
I could have used the night before he sent for me.
Or perhaps the anticipation would have killed me.
There was a thrill of danger going to him tonight, something I knew was inappropriate and out of place, and very possibly dangerous. There was something wrong with Cole since I'd returned, enough so that I found myself thinking of him as St. Martin more than as Cole.
I'd never thought of him – and probably never would – as Master.
He was waiting on the other side of the door, his expression distant when I entered. He was facing nothing, staring toward an unadorned wall. His lack of expression was chilling.
Even as I watched him, I identified again the wrongness. Something had changed in him. Could it really be as simple as I was the one who took down Vincent Geddes, depriving him of doing it himself? Or even, I don't know, threatening his manhood? I was the cop, after all. But the death of Vincent Geddes was the only thing that stood out.
Or had something else happened?
Waiting for instruction, I stopped, feet spread wide, arms behind me, hands grasping my own forearms. My heart beat quick and light, a hummingbird heart. A scared rabbit heart. I was trying to breathe in when he turned his face toward me and I swallowed involuntarily, choking briefly on my own spit.
It was a mask of rage that rode over his features, twisted and darkened what was already fairly twisted and dark. When he smiled, that beautiful, upside down triangle of a smile that had once said cruel, yes, but also mischievous – now said something far more frightening.
I breathed in slowly through my nose. Intent has no scent, but I could smell his anger and what he wanted to do to me and what he thought he could do to me and I'd still live.
We'd forgotten each other. When his eyes found mine, I wanted to live in them.
The animal was still there. The demon.
"I want you to hold." He prowled around me, stopping his words mid-flow. "Very." I heard him breathe me in. "Very." He was prolonging it, dragging it out. "Still."
I wasn't moving.
"Very." A tou
ch, on the back of my neck. Cold, like a blade. Knives were the one thing that scared me. "Very." He knew that. "Quiet."
What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Cole, St. Martin, Sir – what are you going to do?
And God help me, I wanted it. Whatever it was, I wanted it. I wanted his touch, yes, there was no other way to find comfort here. Either as the aftercare or during or – or something, at some point he'd touch me with care.
Gently. Healingly.
But before that? And in a rush I understood I wanted this as much as he needed to do it. Whatever was driving him, there was a counter measure in me, something that called out for him to hurt me and banish it.
Maybe it was the time apart. Maybe it was the feel of Vincent's hands on my skin.
It was stupid and careless and dangerous and I didn't care. It was something that probably anyone would want to have me committed for.
But I wanted St. Martin to clean me out, to leave me emptied and bruised and bleeding and broken open and ready to be filled again.
Then I wanted Cole to fill me.
15
Annie
He punished me.
Nothing that had happened was my fault. In fact, I had been "The Hero" of the scene, saving St. Martin only this afternoon from Kie and her gun (and wondering what would become of St. Martin's soldiers who had left her armed after everything else had gone down).
I had been the one to kill Vincent Geddes and even if that threatened St. Martin's world view, still I felt that merited consideration.
Wanting it on the other side of the door, that was one thing. When the punishment starts, there's never a want component and any sub who says otherwise possibly needs to seek help.
Then again, for me this was help. I knew that now. I'd made the choice to come back here. Because right up to the notarizing of the contract, I could have chosen to go.
He circled me. I stood, wearing the shift again. It clung to my upper body and then fell to just below my ass. Almost a baby doll dress, the low scooped neck and spring style.
He circled me and his eyes were cold. He's taller than me. He used his height. He looked down at me. His mouth remained unsmiling. His eyes, cold, so cold, didn't find mine.
They never did at times like these. Every time he had brought me into the cold and echoing chamber of pain with its spanking benches and tables with ankle and wrist straps, its St. Andrew’s Cross and its racks and racks of striking toys, with everything else the room contained, when we were here, he didn't meet my eyes.
It wasn't because of roleplaying or fearing breaking character. He wasn't going to break into laughter or blush if he met my eyes.
It was that here, Cole St. Martin became someone else. Someone dark and driven. Someone who understood other humans only by the way they screamed.
"Don't make a sound."
Or didn't scream.
Visions. Snatches of movement. Outside my body, looking in. Or seeing in mirrors that were here tonight, that hadn't been here before.
St. Martin, circling me.
The cold on the back of my neck. His breath, I thought. He seemed that cold inside. Then the mirrored doors of a cabinet swung shut and I saw myself in the shift, I saw St. Martin and realized he wore nothing but black, fully-clothed, black boots, black jeans, black long sleeved t-shirt despite the heat of the spring day. Black gloves.
The knife gleamed in the light. I wasn't Kie. I hadn't sworn to allow knife play. But there was no negotiation for this, was there? This was punishment. For letting myself be taken, perhaps.
The knife sliding down my back, parting the dress like a hot knife through butter. What it would do to my skin.
"Don't move." As the knife slid between my legs from behind, the cold of it heating as it touched my clean shaven folds.
I breathed. I couldn't not breathe. I tried to do it slowly, controlled. The knife terrified me.
Knife, magically still cold, sliding down my inner thigh.
Gone. I opened my eyes, unaware I'd closed them. The mirror was gone, though. The cabinet stood open. I wouldn't be watching him.
The night broke into shards.
Holding on to ropes that bound my wrists, pulled cruelly tight overhead, pulling me up on my tiptoes until my calves burned and he whipped those calves, my dress still in place, the night still young. Brine-soaked switches, taken from some tree nearby, I didn't know, I only knew the sound of screaming, the sound of St. Martin's voice ordering me to stop.
Another shard of vision. My back, bared. The single tail whip. The sound of it. The coil of it in the air. The red pain. He was holding back. I knew how strong he was. He was holding back and I didn't want him to and he'd kill me if he didn't and I knew that, I knew that and I'd come here anyway.
Maybe not all my addictions were dealt with.
Maybe not all of them could be changed with rainforest drugs.
Vision. As if outside myself. Bent over the bed, ass out, back bowed, arms strung up above me as if I was bent at the waist, straining to flap my arms and fly.
St. Martin behind me. The crop, hot, white slashes and snaps of pain. The crop, the leather strap, and when that wasn't enough, his belt, pulled in a fury from his pants, the buckle end of it wrapped hard around his fist, the snap of it, the uncoiling, the unraveling of my guilt and fury and fear as I screamed and fell, thrashing to get away from the belt.
Thrashing and struggling to keep myself in the path of it.
He roared at me to count. He started over time after time. There was only raw, red pain and the longing for more of it, impossibly, to see what I could take and what he could do.
Another random slice of vision: the belt, flying past me to land on the bed like a rattlesnake thrown away from what it might strike.
The sound of his clothes.
Mine long gone to the knife.
St. Martin behind me. Not consensual, undoubtedly not safe. Oh so far from sane. And then again, what did the slick, shiny wet want on my thighs mean if not consent?
He pushed me down, pushed my back, getting me into position again, bent against my will, supplicant and not participant, but still panting for it, shifting, groaning.
His gloved hands on my hips, dragging them where he wanted them. I made some kind of mewling sound. Consent? Plea?
He thrust into me hard, plunging in to the hilt, so hard he felt like an implement. Or a weapon.
For a second he stood, holding my hips, breathing hard as if he'd been running hard through the desert, racing me. Or as if he'd been the one being punished, his body subject to the whims of a furious Master.
In a way, I thought he had.
His hand snarled in my hair, dragging my head back at an unnatural angle. I'd always hated that, hated a fist in my hair, hated having my head ratcheted back and yet this time, I welcomed it.
It felt like home. Or belonging. Or penance. Or suffering.
It felt safe.
There was no way I'd come from this and it wasn't about pleasure, but he pulled out and thrust inside and I found myself writhing and gasping and wishing I had the use of my hands to prop myself up on the bed or to touch myself, anything but hanging here with my shoulders burning and the straps biting into my wrists.
Didn't matter. He continued to stroke hard and long and fast, in and out of me and I could feel everything building and burning and breaking, not just releasing the past weeks, but feeling the pleasure race through me.
Was I supposed to? Or did he even care?
I screamed out my orgasm at the same time St. Martin bucked his hips and came inside me.
That was the last image of the night.
Because when he pulled out, he forced me up onto my knees on the bed. My wrists were bound to the posts of the bed, up and slightly behind me. Still as if I hoped to flap and take flight.
I knelt with my head down, sweat beading my body, St. Martin's come on my legs. I waited for him to untie me.
I realized he was gone when he turned off
the light and the door shut behind him.
16
Cole
I left her there, tied to the bed. Strung up, essentially. It felt like the right thing to do. Cole St. Martin doesn't get close to people, especially not someone I'd bought and paid for in order to test my rainforest cures.
Or to own as a sub. Or both.
Annie had served her purpose. She was clean, she was healthy. Tonight had been cathartic.
Probably it had been cathartic for both of us. It would take time for me to come back from knowing I'd lost to Vincent Geddes. At the last minute he'd seen me. I was sure of that. But it depends on how life and death works and how alive he was with his nose shoved into his brain. I'd never know if he knew who I was, if he understood I was the one to shoot him and it had to not matter anymore.
I'd left her there, dangling, because that's who I am and I needed a way back to that version of myself. I couldn't help her if I was weak, and she needed help to return to a full, vibrant, real life. It was like rehabilitating a wild animal. Even if you bond with it, you have to return it to its natural habitat once it’s healthy or it won't thrive.
She hadn't broken. That was interesting. Always before, Annie had broken, dropped into sobbing or begging or empty promises. Something in her this time had welcomed what I did to her.
She reacted with pain. Of course she did. There's no way of being caned on top of being cropped and not shout at the contact, grunt, cry, sob. Scream.
But there'd been something there. When I led her there. When I cut the dress off her, because Annie is mortally afraid of knives.
Something changed. In her. Something had so changed in me, so altered, that what I'd done to her tonight to wring the pain out of her, to clean her out so I could welcome her back.
It hadn't been enough.