by Sophia Reed
It wasn't the lock, stock and barrel contract he thought I'd signed in good faith.
It was refusing to back down.
Naked dinner. The main course was fine, fillet steak that was buttery and delicious, with salad every bit as naked as Chloe and I. As someone who hates salad, not having to gak down dressing helps. Dessert was sorbet. St. Martin's interest in what cold would do to my body parts was mild in comparison to what I might have expected.
After dinner Chloe and I served. Whatever I expected after, the most that happened came at the end of the evening.
I was getting bored. The desire to go lie on the couch beside St. Martin and put my head in his lap was almost irresistible except he hadn't changed. Of course he hadn't. I'd only been gone a couple weeks. He was still mad about whatever was driving the extreme violence in him
"Claude, thank you for the evening. You cook an amazing steak."
The scent of barbecue still hung in the house. The lights were on and the windows all open and Chloe and I were still naked but for once it didn't matter all that much. I hated it, yes. I would always hate being undressed, especially against my will and in the company of others. Come on, it's not like there's anything that can make a human more vulnerable. But naked with the windows open in his house didn't matter; the only thing that might be watching us was a coyote. Maybe an owl. Were rabbits nocturnal? None of them cared.
I still cared. But briefly I'd heard St. Martin talking to Claude about me and I knew he wasn't going to take me back yet.
Then I needed to put a deadline in place. Back before July 1 or I walked. All the way back to Seattle. Figuratively. And there I'd carry out my self sufficiency plan.
It sounded horrible and lonely and somehow magical.
"Do you need a minute with your slave?" Claude asked and didn't wait for an answer. "Don't be a stranger." He brushed Chloe's flank, turning her toward the kitchen, giving us time together.
"Come out with me." It wasn't a request.
The night was hot. Most days didn't get as warm as the Las Vegas valley at nearly midnight in June.
We stood on the front entrance, wide and paved with expensive stones of some sort. The whole house reeked of money. St. Martin's compound reeked of it in the way that said he took care of what was his and everything in the place was guarded by armed penguins and ninjas and it was all very state of the art dangerous and potentially deadly. But the place itself said I don't give a flying fuck about decorating.
Looking down on the desert and the distant lights of the city didn't feel as good naked outside as it did in. Still, only someone with a telescope and a desperate need to see some flesh would take the time to cover house after house looking for someone outside and naked. Besides, it was Vegas. They could go see naked for under $25.
"I had a nice night," St. Martin said. He sounded like a date who did have a nice time but nothing more than a nice time, and definitely wasn't going to call again.
"Sir?" I wanted to ask when I could come back. I wanted reassurance that this wasn't it because if it was, if this wasn't just training for when I went back with St. Martin, then I was wasting my time.
"No," St. Martin said.
"But Sir." Much more urgent. Would he take me back tonight? And if not, when? And in the meantime, there were so many restrictions on me but what about –
"No." Very definite.
He turned and started for the Porsche.
"St. Martin!"
He turned and looked at me incredulously.
I gathered my courage. "Is Kie still in the basement?"
The look on his face was shock and fury mixed. That I dared to go against what he'd said. That I kept pushing for an answer when he'd told me no. "You are treading on very shaky ground," he said.
I wasn't stopping. I'd been ignored and shut out. I'd been treated like someone he thought could do some good, someone who could find a career with the feds. I'd been his fucking bodyguard in Brazil and now he ignored me. Now he kept the woman who'd like to have seen me dead, kept her in his house and kept me out of it while he prepared a treat for her and I should be getting over it, clearly St. Martin thought I should be getting over it.
But I wasn't. He was my last refuge. Until I made something for myself. And it felt like I'd worn out on making things for myself. Like there'd been too many years recreating myself to fit new situation after new, bad, dangerous, potentially deadly situations for myself and maybe it was time that someone gave me something, someone let me matter.
"I'm on shaky ground? You're dealing with a killer. You know that, right? She's not a toy! You don't just wind her up and let her go. She fucking tried to kill you!"
I was shaking with rage and St. Martin was starting back from his car, his fists clenched, his face contorted, when the hands came from behind me, grabbed me by the biceps and throat, hauled me bodily back into the house.
Claude's voice came from right behind me. "Let me handle it, Cole. You've trusted me with her education. Let me do my job."
St. Martin stopped on the crushed gravel driveway, every muscle looking as if it vibrated with tension. For a long minute he just stared at us, framed there in the doorway. Then he gave one tight nod and turned without looking at me again and got in his car. The taillights vanished into the rural desert darkness.
Claude slammed and locked the front door.
I backed away from him, suddenly very conscious of being naked. Suddenly very conscious of every bit of martial arts I'd ever learned.
One minute I was backing up, wondering where Chloe was, and the next instant he had me by the throat and was backing me into a wall.
I broke his grip without thinking about it. It's a fairly easy escape and I was hyped up, hyperventilating, breathing in short, angry gasps.
It was Chloe's voice, coming from beside me, that stopped me from following through with the blow that would have driven my clenched, doubled hands up and into his jaw.
"He has the money to make cops and judges look the other way. He has your Master's permission to make you a submissive sub. Think. Don't make it worse than it already is."
I froze. My eyes met Claude's. There was a calmness in his. Even in the midst of this, he knew what he was and what he was doing.
I didn't have a clue about either. I was fighting because fighting was what I did.
I stopped. I was breathing hard still, sucking air, but I was no longer hyperventilating.
Submissive sub. If I ever became that, for real, for any length of time, I thought that would be the end of me and St. Martin. Me and Cole. Either.
For now, it was what he wanted. For now, I had nothing else to hang on to. I could pick myself up and start over. I could. But I didn't want to. That was why I kept fighting. That was why I couldn't give in to St. Martin. That, and he was dangerous right now.
It wasn't just Kie getting to him that scared me.
I was afraid for the woman he said was in the maze beneath the house. Ariel. I was scared for her. And for any escorts he might hire, any hookers he might bring home.
I was afraid for myself.
Just then all I wanted was for the confusion and pain and loneliness to go away.
Claude was still watching me. Waiting. For a second I couldn't think what he was waiting for.
Then I understood. For a second I shut my eyes. One more second of denial.
Then I slid to my knees on the marble floor, put my heels under me, my toes flexed, my hands behind my head, elbows wide, head down.
Tears falling.
Anger boiling.
35
Annie
The front door slammed. Chloe visibly flinched. I had no idea if my behavior reflected on her. Would she be punished for whatever I'd done as some kind of goad to make me toe the line? She was in for a rough time if so and it wouldn't be out of character for Claude to make that retroactive.
"Get up."
I hadn't even realized until I saw her react to the door that Chloe knelt beside
me in her own extreme position. Now at the command she rose gracefully as I never would learn to do. TaeKwonDo taught me to stand from a cross-legged sitting position and lower myself into it without using my hands but I couldn't say I did it gracefully.
Claude watched us both get to our feet. I was aware in that instant how extremely quiet the house was. The benefit of that uber exclusive enclave was it was rural in ways rich people didn't want to think about. It had all the dark skies and coyotes, the cottontail rabbits and owls eating them that any stretch of empty, rural Nevada desert had, but it cost them an arm and a leg and had a view of the valley all lit up and full of civilization.
I was starting to have negative feelings towards the very rich. Silly, because there was plenty of trafficking going on among people who couldn't afford to buy a house practically in a national park, and the gang members I'd ridden with had their money but they weren't like this with it.
Maybe it was just these rich people. There were ultra rich families that started foundations rather than beating on women and –
"I said move," Claude said in such a quiet deadly voice so close to my ear that I flinched as hard as Chloe. I hadn't heard him speak, hadn't seen him move.
I'd been lost in my own little world. Probably it was dangerous to shut out Claude. Probably listening for his least little request right now –
Would do nothing. Face it, he was in this for the pain and beating and I was in it because until this moment, I'd thought getting back to Cole St. Martin was important.
Based on whatever was about to happen, I was no longer certain about that.
That there were guards somewhere on the property I didn't doubt. The entire enormous desert-eating neighborhood was gated. For all I knew, everyone who lived here was super rich and super freaky. Maybe they all watched each other's subs and made sure nobody got away.
I would have snorted at my own paranoia if first, Claude hadn't seen fit to tell Chloe to take me and wait, which sounded dangerous and incomplete. And second, it hadn't seemed possible.
Right before he jolted me out of my thoughts, I'd had one clear memory. Standing in the kitchen all night, my father, mother and sisters taking shifts making certain I didn't sit, didn't move more than an inch off the spot he'd told me to stand. Cold wind coming in through the windows and me wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In summer the process was reversed and the watchers either huddled in blankets or sat with a fan. His discipline was technically abuse, and I was the one daughter constantly on the losing end of it.
Probably that was a large part of the division between me and my sisters and even my distrust of my mother as a woman with her own mind. At the beginning she'd let us sit for her watch, and even doze though never outright sleep, for fear of my father coming out to check.
Only he did, so she stopped that and followed his rules. Because he could guess my mother was the weak link and that her watch was usually far enough into the night to make it likely the miscreant in question needed a break.
For a second I was unaware of the marble floor under my feet, the slap of Chloe's bare soles as she led me to wherever it was Claude had commanded.
Instead I was wondering how my father had ever been my hero and not the man my sisters barely tolerated. They loved him. They didn't like him. And me – had I spent all that time idolizing him and wanting to do what he did as a way to placate myself? To make sense of what he'd done?
By the time we reached the end of the hallway I had an answer.
I wanted to be a cop because that was how I was made. My mother might be weak, but she kept us from actual serious harm. Only twice had my father taken his belt to me and both times it was serious, once life threatening, once just so fucking stupid I'd have done it to my own daughter (seriously, smoking and in my father's backyard?)
But my mother did take care of those she loved. I might not love everyone in Seattle – drive across town with me and it was possible to hear me wishing for a phaser from Star Trek so I could disintegrate the terrible drivers in front of me and that was when I wasn't in a hurry – but I cared about people in general. I hated to see drug dealers profit from the misery they wrought.
I was me because of a combination of things in my past, and because of the way I was built. Born this way, I guess. And whatever parts of me wanted the masochistic things in life, nothing in me wanted whatever was coming. I wanted a power exchange. I wanted negotiation. I wanted to sometimes go out to dinner wearing panties and not being considered a flight risk by my "date." I didn't want to sit on the floor at my Master's feet every meal. Sometimes I wanted to say I know fish is good for me. Fuck fish. I'm not eating this.
And this time I was jolted from my thoughts the second I realized my father's abuse hadn't made me this way.
I was who I was.
I was going to get through this because I wanted a chance to talk to St. Martin. And because I needed to know I could, especially in the wake of Vincent and Kie.
I'd tell myself I wasn't going to look for revenge, too.
But that might have been a lie.
36
Cole
Leaving Annie was hard. Leaving Annie to Claude when I knew what was going to happen, at least in generalities, was hard.
And right. If we had a future together, it depended on her ability to understand who I was and submit. I didn't change. Since I'd learned who I was and what I needed, since the last actual girlfriend, one of those not after money but who actually liked me for me, left because of the real me coming out from under cover, the only relationships that lasted were contractual.
Those only lasted when the contract was slanted completely in my favor. Why shouldn't it? I was Master.
It had been a long evening but it wasn't late. I paced the compound hallways above ground, checking in with the techs in the monitoring room. There was a skeleton crew when things were normal, as they were now, but I still had people around who could react at a moment's notice to do what I needed. When they weren't doing more than monitoring, they were free to hack to their heart's content, create new tech and sell it for a bundle and quit if they wanted, read books, work out, eat cheese puffs.
"Boss? Something up?"
Sheila was the newest shift leader. There were only three of them on tonight, monitoring my stocks, monitoring my properties.
Not monitoring Claude's home in the gated neighborhood. There was no way to do that. Among other things, the gated community itself had plenty of tech to keep its super rich residents' information safe. I'd never had anybody try to crack the security protocols, not even on a whim. Until I needed to send Annie somewhere, Claude wasn't often in my thoughts.
Now didn't seem the time to try and break into his camera feeds. Besides, whether from pride at his own doings or simply because he'd said he would, he probably would send me videos of what had transpired.
If he sent me streaming video, live as it happened, would I run over and stop it?
No.
It was early. Not even eleven yet. I poured myself a bourbon and sat down by the windows in the front room, the comfortable front room, not the rich welcome to my insane fortress of solitude in the Nevada wastes living room.
There was no view. It was too dark to see the mountains, too overcast to see the stars. Maybe I should move into a neighborhood like Claude's.
Damn. Maybe I should do something to distract myself.
Maybe I should work.
Maybe. As soon as I opened my eyes.
My eyes flew open. The bourbon I'd been cradling on my chest when I fell asleep in the easy chair sprayed across the room in an arc. At my shout, house lights came up. No security came running. That was good.
I was on my feet in an instant, one hand to my throat, because I wasn't breathing. The other went to my heart.
Because it was racing.
I stood in the too bright living room, gagging on memory.
My heart rate slowed as I woke fully but the shivering, shaking with chills, and the nausea,
none of those abated.
I paced fast, back and forth across the floor, kicked the glass out of the way, gagged on the smell of bourbon at the same time I found another glass and poured another, swallowing it down like it was cheap whisky.
It did nothing to stop the fear that had set in.
It was a dream. You know that. Emily is dead. You can't save her now.
I couldn't save her then. I'd done everything I could to get her off drugs. I'd done everything I could to find her every time she vanished, to bring her back. Our parents were dicks but at the time they had the money. They wouldn't have let Emily die the way she did.
In the dream, Emily came to me. Ragged and worn, her hair in stringy strands, her eyes sunken. In reality she had looked almost as healthy and whole as the last time I'd seen her, but the drugs had still taken her.
In the dream, Emily was a wraith. A ghost. A thing of intent and anger, a darkness stalking my every step.
My sister had never been any of those things. She'd been lost and hurt and running when she found her way to the cotton padding of addiction and fell in headfirst. The only way she had scared me was through her own pain and my inability to save her.
The nightmare left me scared. There was sweat on my forehead. I wanted Annie back in the house because I didn't want to sleep alone.
I laughed at myself for that. Not only because I was more than adult enough and rich enough to have any company I wanted but because I didn't have to sleep. I could wait for daylight. My business was reliant on me, not the other way around.
But walking the floors of the compound was eerie. The HVAC system was advanced, almost noiseless, but at night in the rural desert, anything that makes any noise is instantly audible. I could hear the air in the ducting and it sounded like voices talking, disembodied and weird.
My mind racing, I wondered what Annie was enduring and if it would change her enough that I could bring her back.
My feet carried me where my mind hadn't gone yet, downstairs to the cells, past Kie's cell where she slept in obvious discomfort. She was bunched up on the bed, her hands in fists, her face screwed up as if she faced down her own sleep demons.