by Sophia Reed
I knew the story as a soap opera, I thought, but not as real life. Still, he had to come from somewhere and this made sense with the little he'd told me and with the medical connection.
I knew he'd been in med school though I wasn't certain if he'd simply decided that wasn't what he wanted to do or if he failed out of it or chose to walk away because something turned him against the idea.
There were plenty of doctors with amazing skills and terrible bedside manner. To take lives in hand and be arrogant enough to believe you can fix them, that took some kind of personality, and St. Martin had it as far as I was concerned. He'd taken me in, hadn't he? Convinced he knew absolutely best about everything and –
And the rainforest cure.
And Ariel, and Kie, and me.
"Chloe? What happened to Emily?"
She was rinsing her fingers off in running water and she glanced at me as she turned the faucet off and came over with the fruity drinks. "I don't know what happened to make her turn to drugs. Whatever it was, it's always seemed when I hear Cole and Claude talking that it wasn't considered sufficient to explain her giving up everything and turning to opioids. Opioids? Opiates?"
"Whatever," I said, impatient. "She died of a drug overdose?"
Chloe shook her head. She was holding her drink but now she put it down as if she no longer wanted it. "She was killed."
My hand went over my mouth. For all the deaths I'd known about as PD, for the deaths I'd ordered as a frustrated cop in "rehab" when Cole wouldn't let me go back to Seattle. I'd known cops who were killed and Jesse who was blown away and –
Somehow, this hit me like a gut punch. "Murdered?"
Chloe nodded. "She'd started hooking. I don't know if the family pushed her out or if she left because of the addiction. I just know she was on the street and I doubt very much that Cole knew where she was. He found her too late. It wasn't pre-arranged or anything. She was strangled by one of her tricks, someone she went with so she could get the money she needed to get her drugs."
Rainforest opiate cures.
Me, and Ariel. Kie, to an extent.
It wasn't company I wanted to list myself in. I thought Ariel sounded weak because I thought suicide was a sign of weakness. I thought Kie was psychotic, sociopathic, and probably suicidal. She was a victim who struck out at other victims. I hardly found her strong. She'd signed over her life to the madman Vincent Geddes.
I didn't identify with the other women. But I could certainly see the similarity in our circumstances.
So much fell into place. I thought I finally understood a little bit about Cole St. Martin.
"I have to get back to him," I said, the anxiety and impatience rushing up on me.
Chloe smiled and pushed my drink toward me, shaking her head. "What you need to do the most right now," she said gently. "Is give him space."
27
Cole
In the evening, I summarized my day on paper. I kept executive journals, planners of a sort. Today I had risen at dawn and run for two hours, returned to spar with one of the guards who outranked me significantly at one of the Israeli street fighting martial arts. I'd eaten a breakfast that would have made Annie blanch and threaten to upchuck, and I would have slapped her lightly for saying such a thing at the table.
I'd worked, thrashing out agreements with countries that had substances, natural or otherwise, that I wanted for my research. In the evening I showered, and spent an hour with Marilyn in the pain room. Her breasts and back and bottom were scourged and red when I finished and she'd cried more than once.
I'd never asked what Marilyn's trip was. It was enough that she was there for me when I needed it.
Tonight I was about to walk away and leave her - she could clean herself up and then request an escort out from one of the guards – when she asked for a favor. Ready to hear she wanted to spend the night or something, she instead asked for me to take her over my knee and spank her until she was really crying.
She said that as if she hadn't already been in tears during the evening.
"I don't want a safe word," she said and my alarm bells went off. Right now, in the mood I was in, missing Annie more than I wanted to admit to myself or would ever admit to her, and still angry about everything else.
"That's dangerous and stupid," I said.
"Then punish me for it," she said and slid from my lap where she'd been sitting, onto the floor.
All at once the anger surged. I pulled her to her feet so hard she lost her balance and would have fallen if I hadn't had hold of her arm. She'd been dressing to go when she made her request so now I stripped her jeans down to her knees and when she made to push them down and step out of them, I snarled, "Leave them there!" I didn't know a single woman who didn't feel humiliated at having her jeans and panties shoved down around her knees.
The bed bounced as I threw myself back down on it and upended her over my lap. "Hold on to my leg," I said. "Don't let go. Don't let go no matter what."
Her yes sir sounded a little panicked. As well it should.
I lost track promptly. Not that I'd had any idea how long I meant to spank her or how many blows I meant to give her. There was no altering between fast and slow, hard and soft, only where the blows landed and all of them were hard, hard and as fast as I could rain them down on her. Pent up fury poured out of me and when she started to thrash, when she screamed Red it only put me into a fury it took long seconds to pull myself out of.
When I did, when she was sobbing, I looked down at her ass cheeks, her hips, her upper thighs, saw my hand prints, the red blotches, the places where her flesh had gone white.
And I saw the slick wet shine between her legs, so thick and heavy it went to her thighs. I could smell her arousal even as she sobbed against me.
I shoved my fingers into her wetness, two of them, hard inside her, then separated her cheeks with one hand and shoved those two slippery fingers up her back entrance.
Marilyn cried out, thrashing, her screams of Red turning to No which made me angrier still, that she would say No.
How dare she?
A third finger poised.
I stopped.
She didn't notice. Probably wouldn't. I still had two fingers buried up to the knuckles inside her.
I stopped. I breathed. Marilyn was no more or less worthy as a human, as a sub, as someone who could say something stupid like No safe word but still had a safe word as any decent human and Dom would acknowledge.
I didn't have it in me to pull her against me, to smooth her tangled hair, to hold her against my chest and let her cry. She had started the whole encounter, and I was ending it. That was the most I could do, other than apologize.
I pulled my fingers free of her and examined her for tears or damage, making her squirm in embarrassment. I didn't correct her. This was no game. But if she got something out of it, good for her. And if she instead was determined only to avoid the living fuck out of ever putting herself in such a situation again, so much the better.
With a pang, I realized I'd miss Marilyn if she stopped coming over. That didn't change how I was going to treat her, either in future encounters or now. More, it made me feel sorry for myself.
I rubbed her ass until her sobbing stopped. She was still across my lap, red and white and sobbing. When she stopped I asked if she could sit up. Sniffling, she did, not meeting my eyes.
That was all right.
What I really wanted to do was offer her money. I'm sorry, here's some money. How much did it take to make someone feel better after something like this?
She wasn't a hooker. I wouldn't treat her like one. And she wasn't a wife in a domestic violence relationship. I wouldn't buy her something nice to "make up for it."
I just wanted her to go.
And I wanted to know that eventually, she'd come back.
I gave her time to clean up. When she opted for a shower, I made sure she had everything she wanted in it.
Except me. I was capable of remorse, i
t seemed. But not kindness.
When she came out, her long blonde hair wet and tangled into curls, I watched her dress and finally couldn't stand it.
My voice didn't sound remotely like mine as I asked, "Will you come back?"
She turned to look at me, confused. I waved one hand. "I mean, to see me. You'll come back some time?"
The look that crossed her face wasn't anything I could understand. It took me until long after she'd left that evening to identify it.
At that moment, though, she walked across the room and drew me to my feet, another woman acting as if our relationship were normal and we could communicate at the same level. When I was standing, now towering over her, she went up on tiptoe and kissed my mouth, then met my eyes.
"Of course I'm coming back. If you'll have me."
Relief rushed through me. With it, a tiny bit of the normal Cole St. Martin returned. I gave her a half smile and said, "Good."
And swatted her ass as I saw her to the door, laughing when she flinched and hurried out of reach.
It wasn't until much later that night while I was watching a video of what I'd done to her that afternoon that I understood the expression on her face.
Peace.
28
Annie
That night answered most of my questions.
It didn't seem like Chloe was trying to be cruel or play games. More like she didn't understand that there were different types of submission and different house rules, so to speak.
Or maybe St. Martin or Claude had told her not to tell me but to make me scramble to catch up.
Maybe it was a test or a game. Or maybe she just didn't think of it.
But Chloe didn't tell me what to expect when Claude was on his way home from work. Whatever he did, it was in the Las Vegas valley and it was a long commute and long hours.
Somehow if I'd ever considered the idea of being a billionaire – which honestly, being from a working class family with a cop for a father, I'd considered being a billionaire about the same as I'd considered being the first woman to set up housekeeping on Mars – I'd have figured once the bank account was in the billions - You retired.
Apparently whatever it was Claude did, he enjoyed it.
When his car sounded on the crushed gravel of the driveway, Chloe stood and calmly removed every stitch of her clothing. That surprised me into staring. I'd seen her naked before. Hell, she'd seen her husband fuck me before. But the calm removal of clothes in the kitchen was weird.
"You're running out of time," she said calmly, looking at her panties which topped the pile she'd neatly stacked on the counter.
I almost asked For what? because this seemed so bizarre, but the answer was obvious and I managed not to ask. My disrobing wasn't anywhere near as elegant as hers. Also, hers undoubtedly didn't have a mental soundtrack of Why am I doing this?
Because she had.
Because it was what was done here.
I never thought of myself as a follower but being undercover, I'd learned quickly that imitation wasn't just the purest form of flattery but a good way to stay alive.
Also I'd been sent here, a sub given away by a Master. I may not believe all of that, but I was damn sure going to be treated as if I did.
Chloe hadn't grown any more anxious, so apparently I was in time. When my clothes were folded and stacked much as hers were, I followed her to the foyer where she knelt as if marble floors were comfortable.
The position she took wasn't stressful. Her feet were flat and she sat back easily on them. I'd never quite mastered that. I'm not as flexible as I could be. Her legs were parted a little, but nothing obscene, and her hands were demurely folded in her lap. Her head was tucked down. I'd seen that during the interminable dinner parties at St. Martin's.
I didn't know what to expect. Would we take his hat and coat? Never mind that it was warm out and he wouldn't have a hat, there was something weirdly Edwardian about this, except that of course those women would have had on more clothes than I could imagine wearing.
There was something so rushed – You're running out of time – and strangely clinical? Or logical, or just routine about changing into nothing to greet the Master of the house that it had taken me until then to realize, sort of, that I was naked in front of Claude.
Yes, he'd fucked me.
Yes, I'd been physically damaged that night and confused and in a dream-like state of dissociation that I've fought my entire life. When things get too intense, I disappear.
I'd expected, once I heard about subspace, that it would be the same. Maybe it was and I just hadn't gotten there yet. But when St. Martin hurt me, it hurt. There was no disappearing into myself or out of myself and nothing even remotely like the way I'd heard it described – as flying.
"This is a beautiful welcome," Claude said, and dropped his briefcase by the door. His keys clattered into a silver tray standing on the sofa table beside an entrance hall wall. He toed off expensive shoes without unlacing them, kicked them carelessly under that table, then came over to where we knelt. "It looks good," he said, and I could feel his eyes were on me. I shivered under his gaze, wanting frantically to rise and run and find clothes and the way back to wherever home was now. If it wasn't St. Martin, and I knew for certain it wasn't Mark, then maybe I needed to find something new.
Plus, I was ready to get up from the floor. My knees hurt on the marble, and I was tired of kneeling. I hoped the entire night wasn't going to be spent naked as eventually body parts sweat and get sticky and I was feeling anything but alluring this way. I also didn't feel subby. I felt like telling them Okay, silly time's over, what's for dinner and please don't let it be fish.
Instead of any of that happening Claude said, "Chloe, show our guest Position A, and keep with it for the next twenty minutes." He walked past us, his feet quiet on the floor, and I could hear him in the kitchen, getting himself a drink.
Moving gracefully, Chloe raised her arms and twined her fingers behind her head. Her elbows stuck out to the sides, drawn back, straining to hold them as far back as she could. Her chin was up but her gaze down. Her breasts were thrust forward, her back arched, and she was sitting up on her heels now, her toes under her.
A basic stress position that St. Martin had put me in more than once.
I'd never held it for anything close to twenty minutes.
At seven minutes I was shaking and panting as if I couldn't catch my breath.
"Breathe through your nose, exhale slowly through your mouth," Chloe said softly. Her faraway gaze never wavered. "Do it like yoga."
"I hate yoga," I said. My voice was soft, but my teeth were gritted.
"This is not a conversation," she said. "Merely I am to instruct you."
The easy familiarity of the morning when we'd laid out in the sun and she'd told me about St. Martin's sister, that was gone. In its place was every office manager I ever suffered under before I made PD, every teacher who ever knew how much I didn't care about her class.
I almost snapped Yes, ma'am! but I didn't want to waste the air. And I wasn't certain she'd realize I was kidding.
From where we knelt, Chloe apparently oblivious, though as time went on (supposedly; it might have been stuck), I saw her tremble slightly. It was faint. But it was there.
At twenty minutes, or whatever he judged sufficient, Claude rose and came to us. He put a hand out to me first, and having no clue, I took it, my head down, my gaze at my own feet. If I looked at his, I'd think of stomping on them in my Doc’s. He helped me to my feet, then helped up his wife.
I didn't know what to do with myself once I was standing. I didn't dare look at him. The desire to stomp on his sock-clad feet had morphed into a desire hit him in the face. He'd seemed a decent if insane man at the dinner parties but now I hated him. My knees, already traumatized by age twenty-four because of TaeKwon-Do and running, felt like twin cages of fire and nails. My arms shook. I was cold.
"I've had you before, haven't I?" Claude wondered and then my ey
es really did flick to meet his. Was he crazy? What a thing to ask! He'd fucked me with his wife lying in the same bed after one of the worst experiences of my life.
At the time St. Martin wasn't letting me into his bed. He still rarely did. It seemed that was too intimate a thing for him, too close to emotion.
Sleeping between Claude and Chloe had been comforting when I was hurt and scared. Now he acted like he didn't know he'd slept with me?
It was acting. It was an act. Whatever it was meant to do, it just made me angry. "Yes, sir," I said, and swallowed down the pain. Because it was Cole St. Martin's fault. Every bit of this.
Not yours? Asked the impossibly helpful voice in my mind. Not yours and your addictions and your inability to tell your father or your fiancé that you had slipped and fallen? Your inability to ask for help?
My attention snapped back to Claude because he stepped up close to me, sniffing at my hair. That was disturbing. I held still, like he was a rabid dog who might bite, and he laughed to himself under his breath, then reached out and cupped my breast in one hand, his thumb flicking over the nipple.
Abruptly he pulled away. "Go dress for dinner," he told us, and Chloe took my hand and led me to her room.
The instant we were inside, she shut the door so gingerly and carefully I knew she wasn't supposed to close it at all. It sneacked into place nearly silently and she whirled on me.
"You have got to get yourself under control!"
"I'm angry!" I said, frustrated, and at that instant felt completely naked and furious about it. The blush seemed to spread full body. "What can I wear?"
She looked like that was the least important thing we needed to consider, then gestured to the closet. "Whatever you like. He just wants us not naked. I mean, not jeans. But..." She waved her hand again.