by Sophia Reed
Sex had been a fact of life and because I was PD, my life tended more toward the male ideal. Sex didn't have to be about emotions. I didn't have to care. I could just fuck. I didn't have regrets later. I was safe, clean, careful, discreet.
St. Martin's world had been a revelation. Chloe and Claude had been outside my comfort zone, except that during that night, they’d actually provided comfort.
But now I was in a car with them, blackout windows, blindfold ready to be slipped on when I was told to. I was wearing a GPS tracker attached to my leg as if I were a felon out on bail between arraignment and trial.
Chloe was talking about shopping and about what her twin boys were doing at college and about the house, and Claude was driving silently until abruptly he said, "Chlo, give it a rest."
It was the first indication I had that being with the two of them might not be the vacation I was hoping for.
St. Martin wanted me out of the compound for a while. I got that. He had Kie and her transfer to deal with. Apparently some of Kie's men were in the maze, in cells, and something had to be done about them.
I didn't think he was going to kill them. For whatever posturing he did, I didn't think that was him. Though I supposed they might inexplicably find themselves in a trackless desert, or just as easily somewhere with a shit ton of money in their accounts but explosives surgically implanted in their bodies that would go off if they tried to tell anyone or blackmail him.
Or maybe I'd watched too many torture porn movies in my time.
"It's going to be all right, Annie," Chloe said. "You'll see. Mr. St. Martin must have said a dozen times that we don't get to keep you." She laughed a little at that and I turned to stare at her.
"Why would you even want to?" I asked, horrified at the thought. The idea of keeping people and owning them was never going to compute for me.
Chloe missed my point. "You'll see. You'll feel better in no time."
She was wrong.
The first few days with Claude and Chloe were like a dream. Not a good one and not a nightmare. Just unfamiliar and surreal.
It had been long enough, and I had been strung out enough at the time, that I could no longer remember what it was like when I first ended up with St. Martin. Probably there was some disconnect.
But at that time I had a full family I was actually running from, and PD as well, which was also like a family. For that matter, I had the fucking Brotherhood which I was a part of. Being Jesse's old lady meant something, even if Jesse was dead, and I could have gone back there. But for better or worse, with Jesse dead, it was a matter of time before the new players took over the China White trade in that part of Seattle. At that point being with the Brotherhood would have just meant me being part of a gang.
This time, though, being sent to stay with Claude and Chloe whether I wanted to or not felt like being sent away from what I was hanging on to as home.
Maybe it was what I needed. Maybe I needed to realize that Cole St. Martin wasn't home and wasn't likely to ever be. As much time as I spent hating the rituals of the scene he was creating, I liked the trappings. I didn't want to admit that but something in me wanted the discipline for certain. Discipline had always been in my life, whether that meant getting my black belt or staying in shape, or passing the exams to become an active police officer, or whatever. I was on time when I was PD and I was damned good at what I did when I was undercover.
Thing is, what I wanted to do, Chloe told me, was top from below.
We were sitting in her backyard, watching hummingbirds at a feeder. Her mansion was as rural as St. Martin's desert compound, but his was across the desert in the middle of fucking nowhere, which is a direction Nevada has a lot of. Hers was in a high end gated community which she personally hated because it was tied into what had been federal land and therefore open for desert animals and human recreation and now was owned by rich people who had no right to it. Also the commune of huge acreages and offensively huge houses backed up to a national park that was full of petroglyphs and shouldn't have people living next door.
That said, she admitted the house was beautiful, light and airy and capable of entertaining a football team and all its coaches without running out of room. She didn't have to clean it, so that was fine.
I got the impression with her kids grown and her husband her owner, she was bored a lot. She painted, she wrote, she worked out, she hiked, she raised small fluffy dogs whose breed I kept forgetting, though it might have been Animate Mop.
She was glad to have the company and I was glad she was there.
Claude was both horrendously strict and easy to get along with, in that he put together a schedule for just about everything. Chloe was disciplined on a schedule, her demerits played out in a dungeon that was nastier looking than St. Martin's. Once a week she had a maintenance spanking that sounded like a side effect of their relationship and was actually something that scared me when it happened on my second day there.
The easy part of Claude was that he was usually working.
"I'm doing what?" I asked. It was lazy and warm in the early June sun and before eight a.m. it would get too hot to be outside and the hummers would have gone off for the day, to return around evening.
Chloe sat forward, her elbows on her knees, her gaze out at the back yard which managed to be landscaped with desert plants native to the area and still somehow look lush and green. "Topping from below. And you're not doing it, you're just wanting to." She pushed her sunglasses up on her nose. "In most scenes, the sub is in control."
I laughed. She had to be joking.
Chloe smiled, unconcerned. "Meaning that the Dominant in most scenes has entered into some kind of agreement with the sub. There are hard limits – no anal play, no breath play, no knife play, no forced groups, whatever it is – and that's spelled out beforehand, along with soft limits – the sub prefers not to be touched in a certain way but maybe that's even part of the turn on, being forced. Because for a lot of these scenes, that's part of it. Like women who have rape fantasies."
I hissed air between my teeth.
"I know, I used to think so, too. But usually they're not quite that. This is going to sound judgy, but a woman who dreams of being beaten and raped and hurt savagely in a dark alley say, that woman needs help. If it's only a fantasy, it's still pretty damned edgy. Usually the rape fantasy is simply nonconsensual and often a stranger and think about it - How much safer can a woman get in exploring truly unacceptable fantasies, what society tells her she can't want? First off it tells her what sex acts are all right, which are taboo, which are – " She hesitated.
"Illegal?" I hazarded.
"No." Chloe shook her head. "For example, take anal."
"No, thanks."
She smiled. "I mean, for most people their reaction is exactly what you just said. But for someone who wants it but can't admit it to herself, the stranger who comes out of nowhere and forces his way into her space and then forces his way into her space - That means she's totally not responsible for wanting that. What could I do about it? It wasn't consensual – I said no!"
"Okay," I said. "But how does that...?"
"It doesn't," she said and I wasn't sure she was answering the question I'd really wanted to ask. "That's not really topping from below, that's an offshoot of negotiation. So maybe the Dom knows the sub well enough to know she's always wanted two guys to refuse to listen to her protests, to strip her naked in the middle of his poker game and – "
"Don't say it," I groaned.
"Really have a poke-her game," she said.
I groaned again. "That's terrible."
Chloe just grinned. "Topping from below is when the sub who is supposed to shut up or just scream in pain or submit and do what the top says and nothing else instead dictates policy and procedure. Maybe the sub uses safe words and speeds – green light, yellow, red light – to dictate what she wants. Or she only allows the things she secretly enjoys or hates but gets off on, whatever her trip is. After a while
the top isn't doing what he wants to her, he's doing what she wants to her."
"But I'm not doing that," I protested.
"No," she agreed. "But it sounds like you want to. Because your Master has a game plan he wants to play by. For him, your submission isn't just in the bedroom. Your submission is supposed to be total."
"He's a control freak," I said, nodding, expecting a laugh.
She didn't laugh. "He is. That's his right. It's not something for you to judge him on."
Censor from Chloe kind of hurt. I was silent for a few minutes, pretending to admire the yard. If I were on my own, this might be when I walked away from this relationship.
I hadn't realized how much I depended on the persona I put forth when undercover, and on how much I expected my needs to be met in relationships. I didn't like her telling me what I was doing wasn't right.
"You're a police narc, aren't you?"
I hadn't realized people in southern Nevada knew that, even just in the billionaire's club, but I nodded.
Chloe made a moue with her mouth, considering what to say next. "All right. You expect the people in your life to play by your rules when you're not undercover, right?"
I shrugged. "Sure. It's not like my fiancé – ex-fiancé – would have been free to introduce me as his undercover narc girlfriend."
Chloe kind of shrugged by tilting her head to one side and then upright again. "Those are your rules and you expected him to live by them."
For a minute all I really got out of that was a reminder that I needed to talk with Mark at some point and get off the lease and clean my stuff out of our shared apartment, though where I'd put it I didn't know. A storage unit? And then I realized Chloe was moving on.
"Cole St. Martin has a more intense view of the lifestyle. He wants a sub 24/7. He expects to be obeyed, and to do what he wants, exclusive of controls other than no permanent harm and stopping at hard limits."
I sat up on the chaise lounge and scrubbed my hands over my face. "I didn't ask to be his sub, though."
"Didn't you?" Chloe wasn't looking at me. Her face was tilted up to the sun and her eyes were probably closed behind her dark glasses. "You went back to him more than once. He took you in each time. You knew who he was and what he expected and you knew he hadn't dragged you back to him even when he knew where you were. That sounds like submission to me."
"Fine!" Because she was right and now I was anxious and antsy and angry. "But he's doing stupid things! Kie is in his fucking dungeon and he's taking his time getting rid of the bitch! That's stupid! I kept him from getting hurt by her more than once. Me. Because I'm a cop and because I knew what to do and because I, unlike St. Martin, was paying attention."
"Was that really the only reason?" she asked. "Or are you jealous?"
I wasn't, I realized. Because Cole St. Martin, because he was horrified by what she'd done to me and there was no hesitation in him at all in insisting she couldn't stay.
"I want to keep him safe," I muttered.
"Not your job," Chloe said, and after that she didn't say anything until it got to be too hot and she suggested we go inside.
But we didn't move then, just continued sipping ice water and watching the sun as it climbed up above the Las Vegas valley floor. There was bird song all around us. Despite the huge acreages each mansion had, there were other homes in sight, but they were each fairly well isolated from each other.
There was a kind of eeriness to the desert, all that vast space and horizon. I found the sun blissful but the horizon and all that space was daunting.
Out of nowhere, Chloe started talking again. The morning sun had lulled me. Apparently there was mandatory workout later, which I'd welcome, and mandatory yoga, which I wouldn't. I had no idea if I was to be included in the next maintenance spanking or what to expect from Claude. St. Martin had sent me to live in his house by his rules until whatever time he’d take me back. I assumed it had something to do with learning to live within the contractual agreement, but maybe it was just until Kie was gone, the source of most of the tension between us. Or until he figured out whatever he was mulling over with the woman named Ariel who was apparently also in the maze or dungeon or whatever it was called. I hadn't seen her when we were down there and I was still creeped out by her presence even if I hadn't seen her. The idea that Cole St. Martin attracted women with suicidal ideation didn't bode well for me.
"I know a lot of your Master's dictates seem random," Chloe said and I startled at the sound of her voice.
"No," I said cautiously, wondering if there was a hierarchy in place. Was I subbier than she was? My goal for the moment was to avoid anything that would cause Claude to want to punish me. I was no more tempted to allow him to than I was to allow St. Martin.
Something had changed in Cole St. Martin but something had changed in me too. Or maybe it had just reset itself.
"No?" She sounded curious, as if we were having a normal conversation between normal people, not slaves.
"It’s not just random. A lot of it is a game. I know there are people out there who believe in punishment." Because I'd read about them, setting up impossible tasks for each other in order to fail and be punished because they apparently couldn't just say, Hey, that feels good, hit me again.
Human egos are weird things.
"But with him it's like I'm somehow just supposed to divine the rules. They don't even exist until I violate them. But if this is punishment, I have to tell you, I'm not having fun."
That made Chloe raise up on one elbow and look at me over the tops of her glasses. "Wait, you don't like any of it? Because if not, what are you doing with him? It's still a choice."
And there it was.
And wasn't.
Because no, it wasn't a choice when you're using opiates and you're supposed to be undercover stopping opiates and dealers and you don't want to lose your job or your life, because you haven't yet determined your life isn't quite what it's supposed to be. That's not a choice. It's not a choice when some asshole crooked cop sells you to the CEO of a huge pharmaceutical company either. A man so rich he's virtually untouchable.
I didn't say any of that.
"I don't like it the same as he likes it," I said finally. This woman had been in bed with me while her husband fucked me after the Kie-slash-dinner-party incident. I guessed I could speak openly to her.
There are different forms of naked.
"That's part of the game," she said easily but she was still watching me. "The pushing of soft limits, the control, the fantasy of ohh, don't make me do that! When that's what you want."
I laughed at her breathy little ooh and said, "I don't think I'm unusual in that I want it until it's happening. I mean, when it's pain. I'm not someone who in the midst of being beaten says more, more! Unless it's to see what I can take."
"Reality is not fantasy," Chloe said. "Except for the sadist."
"Mmm," I said, and then I started talking faster, sitting up and telling her about Mark and my life in Seattle and the panicky anxiety that drove me undercover more often than I needed to go, the fear that I'd lose the ability for that specific and dangerous kind of role-playing. I told her about Jesse, without names or details, just about the way he fucked. And I told her about Mark and about handcuffs and Mark's disdain and Jesse's violence and my own confusion. And somehow or other we ended up laughing about something to do with handcuffs that by the end of the laughing jag I couldn't quite remember but it didn't matter because my ribs and stomach muscles hurt in a delightful way.
When we stopped laughing, Chloe was silent for a beat before she said, "Everybody has something in their past or their present, right?"
"I suppose," I said. "What about you?"
But she was heading somewhere with the topic and she said, "In a little while," to that and then riveted me with her next words.
"Cole's behavior, his demands and his training, his requirements and his rules. They may seem random. But I think the basis of all of them, other than the
pleasure and pain of answering his needs and the ones he knows about or guesses are yours, are aimed at keeping you safe. He has Ariel – you know about her?"
I nodded.
"And you know he's struggling with what to do about Kie. Even if she is a bitch."
"Boy, howdy."
She laughed softly, not looking at me, fanning herself a little. We needed to go inside.
"But so much of it is because of Emily."
I frowned. I had a sister Emily, but that made zero sense. An ex-wife? A late wife? I opened my mouth to ask but Chloe, still not looking at me, unaware I was about to speak, said, "You know he lost his sister, right?"
26
Annie
Sometimes the sky falls on you before you figure out there's even anything to figure out.
Chloe said that St. Martin had lost his sister and my thoughts moved through the fact that he had a sister Emily and so did I, which was confusing, briefly, and probably only because the situations I found myself in were so strange.
From there to the idea of Cole St. Martin losing someone he was close to and realizing I couldn't imagine him close to someone. He'd kissed me the day that Vincent and Kie kidnapped me, just before that happened. There was no way of knowing what would have happened once we got back from the run we'd been on.
The idea that we'd have somehow become close had never really occurred to me. It felt very much like I was always going to be in the southern Nevada compound on sufferance. Or for a very distinct reason: To overcome addiction, or, in a way, to pay for that by remaining with him as his sub for however long.
Lying in Chloe's backyard, then scrambling to keep up with her as we gathered out stuff and got inside out of the heat, my thoughts turned slowly at first, and then fast to what she'd actually said.
Cole St. Martin had lost a sister.
I sat at the breakfast bar and watched as Chloe prepared smoothies. "You mean she died? What happened?"
Chloe glanced at me, then back at what she was doing. "She was his little sister. I don't know the whole story, because all I know is patchwork, but apparently their childhood left something to be desired. Their father was a doctor, a big deal in his field, top flight surgeon, magic hands, fortune in the making, you know the story."