by Sophia Reed
Took care of it, the two men who had sprung up out of nowhere to push more chemical death on people.
St. Martin took care of it permanently with zero questions or confusion as to what permanently meant. And so because he'd done that, because I'd identified them and pointed him at them and was an accomplice, and maybe for a couple other reasons I wasn't willing or able to identify myself yet, I'd become his submissive.
So now I was here not just to quit my job – that would come as no surprise I was pretty sure – but to quit my engagement, too. I was here to see Mark and end our relationship, this time in a way that wouldn't leave either of us uncertain about the fact that it was over.
Once I got done dealing with one of the sons of bitches that had me committed, I'd go see my father. The other son of a bitch. My one-time hero. My hero my whole life until he came up on charges for being a dirty cop. Even then I defended him, until he teamed up with Mark. So I'd go see him and tell him his last stunt – having me committed to a mental institution because I was in a BDSM relationship and he didn't understand it – had cost him. I wouldn't be visiting. Past telling him that, I meant.
I was ending a lot of things. I was also ending it with St. Martin for the time being, because events had caused him to turn vicious. As a sexual sadist he gloried in control. Not just controlling his submissive.
Exercising iron self-control so he knew he could hurt me and not hurt me. He'd lost that due to a series of events. When the couple he sent me to stay with proved even more violent and dangerous, I'd called off the whole thing, contract and all.
There's something highly not legal about a contract that bonds one into sexual submission. He didn't press me.
Now I was here to make sure Mark didn't press me anymore either.
"I told you I was in town."
Mark continued to glower at me. He also hadn't come into the apartment. He stood in the doorway watching me. That was probably a bad sign.
"I told you I'd be here when you got back from work." I'd been guessing work was where he was because that's pretty much all he'd done when we were together: Med school. Rotations. Or in the apartment trying one more time to convince me I needed to give him my emergency contact number before I left for undercover work.
He was the last person in the world I'd give that number to because his idea of an emergency was a little too fluid for my liking. Like, When are you coming home for a visit? Are you safe? I miss you. Where did you leave the waffle iron?
Mark nodded at me. "I got your message."
Then why are you asking what I'm doing here? I wondered.
"So is this how it's going to go?" he asked. He ran a hand through his hair. He'd recently had it cut and it looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. It was a good look on him, one I'd have enjoyed if he'd tried it while we were together. The faintest unease sneaked through me, the wonder if he was seeing someone else.
I had no right to wonder that. Every time, I'd been the one to leave. Even if I'd recently had an epiphany that his refusal to call us off, his insistence on waiting for me, was controlling and less loving than – well, controlling, I still felt for him. If he was seeing someone, that was fine. I was living with someone who knew more about me than Mark ever would. I'd betrayed him a lot more than just physically.
I was here to break off the engagement.
It still bothered me. I'm a fairly controlling person myself. Of course I am. I'm a cop, a black belt, I go undercover all the time which cuts me loose from the rules of the police department even as I'm still working for them.
Or I had been.
And in the flip side of my life, I kneel naked to a billionaire of undoubted brilliance but perhaps questionable sanity and call him Sir and let him do things to me.
All of which flashed through my mind with the speed of thought. None of which helped quell the anger. "Is what how it's going to be?"
Mark gestured around as if I'd done something to the apartment. I had, but it was only to start collecting those few possessions I wanted to take with me. Now I was wondering if someone else had been here, with him, the petty part of me was starting to think I needed everything. Every item that was mine. Everything in the place I'd purchased.
It was stupid. It was petty. It was human. I didn't need or want a waffle maker. I'd bought it because Mark liked waffles. Why should I leave it so some other woman could make him waffles using it?
Because you don't like waffles and you don't want Mark?
I licked my lips. "I'm in town to quit PD," I said and instantly knew I'd started at the wrong point. There was hope, even now, flashing in his eyes, and even if he used his dogged devotion to control me, he still cared.
Damn it.
"You're quitting?"
I sat down. I'd been standing with my legs spread, my hands in my pockets, my stance aggressive. Now I sat. "Mark. I'm moving to Las Vegas and going to school."
"With him." He said it flatly and for a second I thought he meant was I going to UNLV with Cole St. Martin before I realized he meant something different.
"No. I'm not with him anymore."
Mark sneered. My sitting down had done nothing to even things between us. "Then why go to university there?"
"Because I'm through here," I said gently. "We're not together anymore, Mark. Not me and St. Martin. Not me and you. You can see that." Can’t you?
"So that's it?" His face was incredulous, his eyes big and dark, his mouth uncertain. "You're just going to go?"
Pick one, I thought. Either why am I here and do I think I still have the run of the place, or please don't leave you.
"I have to," I said. "I've been too lost. I need to find myself." God, that was a cliché if ever there was one. "I've put you through so much. It's time to let go. You can't keep waiting for me, Mark. Because I'm not coming back." Probably I never had been.
He sat down beside me on the couch. We'd spent so much time there over our years together, when I was home, in his arms, I was aware how much muscle he'd put on. One hand slid over my cheek, then wrapped around the back of my head, pulling my mouth to his. I balked, for just a second, because this wasn't how it was meant to go. Then I relaxed into the sweetness of the kiss. Everyone is allowed to say goodbye in whatever way works for them. I kissed him in return, only sliding my tongue over the lower lip I used to like to bite softly.
I started to break the kiss.
And he didn't.
"Mark," I said. It came out muffled, his mouth hard against mine. "Mark, stop."
But his hand was on my breast, squeezing painfully hard. I tried to brush it off then grabbed his wrist and tried to pry him off me. Instead he tightened his grip so hard I made a sound of protest and started to pull away from him completely, pushing back to create distance between us on the couch so I could stand.
That's when he threw himself at me, pinning me to the couch. His leg came down between mine, forcing them apart. He started to grind against me, his mouth on mine turning to mostly teeth.
For a second I almost let it go. I'd had sex with Mark a billion times over the years. We'd done it outside, inside, in his parents bed which seemed like a big thing to him though they were in Europe at the time and we washed the sheets afterward. We had sex in all positions and sometimes he had cuffed me using my own cuffs, or played rough.
What would it matter? Let him have this last hollow victory. Given what I'd gone through when kidnapped by Vincent and when given to Claude by St. Martin, what would this matter?
But it mattered. I mattered. I mattered enough for someone to want to enslave me to my passion and his. I mattered enough that he'd come to rescue me when I needed it and beaten me later when I felt strange about it all. He'd pulled back when I needed freedom, despite knowing I might never return.
Mark? Mark had endangered my life and my career by calling the instant he got my emergency contact. He called about my father, which I needed to know, and which was the only reason we stayed together after that. He'd staye
d with me despite my job and I was figuring out just how much that was actually control. He was sleeping with someone else, I was pretty sure now, someone he was willing to hit the gym for which he hadn't with me. Maybe that was just the difference in where he was in his med schooling, he had more time to do nonessential things, but I didn't care.
He wasn't getting this. He'd had me committed to a mental hospital, working with my father to do it because he was jealous that St. Martin could help me and he couldn't.
And there was one more thing. One more that flashed through my mind fast and exploded in perfect clarity. I'd never known what I was capable of until I learned I was kinky. I'd never known I could order a man killed until St. Martin gave me that option but not the option to go and take them down myself.
What was Mark capable of? Even St. Martin, a "career sadist" for lack of any better terms, didn't trust himself right now with the rage over some of the things that had happened to me at the hands of those other men.
Why in the name of anything would I trust Mark to only want to fuck me?
He'd pinned me and his weight was keeping me down. I could feel his erection pushing into me. I didn't flex, didn't move, I just considered as fast as I could each of my limbs, my center of gravity, my feet and hands, my teeth. I considered how he was holding me and that his knee grinding between my legs was horrible and distracting but ultimately unimportant.
The other things were more important.
He'd pulled back to look at me and I realized I was shouting at him. Good. Because the look on his face was one of savage satisfaction.
I wasn't wrong. Whatever he turned into, not after I left, for now, Mark was dangerous.
I waited for him to lean down again, biting at my lips, licking at me. Then I lunged upward and caught his lip between my teeth, biting as hard as the act would allow. Because it was horrible. Because I didn't want to bite it off. Because I'd once loved him.
But mostly because his blood started to flow and I yanked my head away, spitting. He'd reared back, shocked and spraying blood. Now he started to dive in again and I tucked my chin and threw my head forward, headbutting him and catching him under the chin.
I had no idea how soccer players used their heads even once. It fucking hurt, probably hurting me as much as it did him. My only advantage was I'd known I was going to do it.
His head snapped back. I followed it up, toppling him over backwards. He sprawled on the couch, kicking at me, grabbing. I let him grab hold of my arm because he was going to get hold of something and my left arm was less important to me than my right.
There are lots of pieces of advice about avoiding rape. The one that should never be on a list is to kick a man between his legs. Men protect that area. With good reason.
He was still kicking but I stood between his thighs. He was on his back, but because he had a hand to his mouth and the other on my biceps, he was open and defenseless.
I didn't kick him. That wouldn't have been feasible or safe. Or exact. Or possibly possible.
I punched him. A very technically precise TaeKwon-Do strike.
He made something like a scream and doubled up around his genitals. I no longer had any feeling that those had been parts of his anatomy that had once mattered to me. Once all of Mark had mattered to me.
Not anymore. And one of the reasons was that I now mattered to me. Astonishing or not, becoming the sexual submissive of Cole St. Martin had somehow given me back myself.
I didn't stay to take a victory lap. I didn't feel like it had been a victory. Just a necessity. I started to lean close to him but there was no one present but us. So I stood out of range and said, "If you ever come near me again, me or anyone in my family, or anyone I'm associated with, I will kill you."
He said something garbled. Probably it was something terribly unique like calling me a bitch. Then he collapsed again, rolled up on the couch.
I had more than enough time to gather my boxes and put them out in the hall, though I ferried them down and out of the building by carrying as many as I could, then going back for the others, repeatedly, so nothing was ever out of sight.
Mark never emerged from our apartment.
I loaded my life in half a dozen cardboard boxes into my POS car and drove to my father's house. I stayed outside, talking to him from the doorway, just long enough to tell him I loved him but I wouldn't forgive him. My mom was at work. I'd stop to see her. Our relationship had always been strained, unlike the new chasm between my father and me, but she deserved something more than me just going away. I'd been told I was her rock, not my three unpleasant sisters, and it mattered to me.
My circle of people was drawing in again. There was the unpredictable and possibly dangerous Cole St. Martin. My biological family. Some murderous psychopaths (one dead, one sold in sexual service by her own desire to a very cruel sadist of St. Martin's acquaintance). And my ex-fiancé.
I talked to my father.
I talked to my mother.
I left no messages for my sisters. I'd already quit Seattle PD. My bank was interstate.
I got in my car and ignored the phone that had been ringing nonstop for the past half day. The ringer was silenced because there couldn't be anybody calling on that number but St. Martin and I wasn't ready to talk to him. So it buzzed like an angry wasp in my backpack as I checked my directions and set my sights on Las Vegas.
2
Cole
Kent Norcross was ex-military. He had always carried himself exactly that way. He was every bit as regal as he was certifiably crazy. The man had run off more subs than I had ever even entertained the idea of owning. Because truth is, no matter how 24/7 the arrangement, how Master/slave, Owner/owned, people are still free to come and go.
Kie wouldn't have been. Kie was tiny and insane in all the wrong ways. She was dangerous and probably deadly. She hated me, she hated Annie, and she'd done her best to hurt Annie as many different ways as possible all because one thing she'd done at a dinner party when allowed to top Annie had resulted in Kie intentionally hurting Annie so badly that Kie was beaten.
From there, Kie saw to it her Master Vincent Geddes kidnapped Annie. And just when we'd thought she was dead, after Annie and I both killed Vincent at the same instant – or she killed him before I managed it, something the rage inside me was trying to learn to ignore – Kie who was supposed to have been killed by Vincent turned up alive, trying to kill me.
From there Annie had won a fight with her and Kie had been put in my underground holding cells.
Enter Norcross. He'd been looking for a new sub, someone who could withstand him 24/7 because Norcross was hard as nails and kinky as fuck. It seemed a match made in heaven.
Only that's where Kent Norcross was now. Unless his spirit had gone the other way.
I prowled through the southern Nevada compound. The operations room where half a dozen techies worked for me 24/7, watching my interests in the Brazilian rainforest and in other countries, hacking and beating hacks and tracking anyone I wanted tracked – those people were still trying to account for having lost Annie's signal only days after she'd left for Seattle.
No word now as I went in so I went back out again and down underground into the maze of holding cells and a few very dark BDSM rooms. Ariel was still down there. A girl I'd found on the street, minutes away from bleeding out from a stab wound. She'd been an addict, a prostitute, a girl in love with a very bad man, and she'd had less interest in living than anyone I'd ever met. She'd been my lockdown guest for the last several years. Underground, she got sun through reflective skylights, worked out on treadmills and with weights, was fed by great chefs and inventive dieticians, a therapist came to see her multiple times every week, and a companion who had become her friend.
For years I'd taken out my day to day angers on her. She loved to be beaten, to be hurt, to live on a dangerous edge. But ever since Kie and Vincent kidnapped Annie I'd been afraid to do that to Ariel. My temper since coming back to southern Nevada with An
nie was on a hair trigger and I didn't trust myself. Even my usual playmate, a pain slut named Marilyn, I didn't trust myself with. I hadn't seen her since Annie left.
My cock could use some action. I was itching to punish somebody. But I didn't trust myself.
And now I couldn't reach Annie. She had to know. Norcross was dead and Kie had run off somewhere. The plane he'd taken Kie to Colorado in had gone down. An ambulance had responded to pick them up. They'd found Norcross, dead.
There'd been no trace of Kie.
I had new and very well-trained security. But Annie was out there on her own. She might be a cop, she might have survived years of undercover but Kie had almost brought her down a couple times.
"Anything?" My voice was a snarl.
The techs were a new group, young, bright and squeaky clean, not cliched. They didn't eat Cheetos and when they went home at night I didn't think it was to their mother's basement. They'd chosen one of them to lead them, like a jury chooses a foreman.
This girl looked like she was about fifteen. Impossible. I didn't hire anyone under twenty-one.
"We've located her phone," she said now. "That's never been the problem. The problem is she's not picking up and the GPS is screwed."
There were more problems than that but they didn't have to know why it was so urgent I reach her.
The problem there was, she'd want to know. Well before I came close to speaking to her. I had to let her know Kie was a viable threat again.
The girl might have changed. Maybe she didn't cause the accident. Maybe she didn't kill Norcross in the rubble. Maybe, even if she did those things, she was never going to darken our door again.
Maybe.
Not very likely.
When I found Annie again, I was going to put her over my knee for a very long session with a canvas strap paddle and when she was properly red and aching, I'd tie her up and use the cane on her until I knew for certain she'd never again ignore my calls.
Only who said she was coming back? Ever? She was enrolling in college. I didn't even know which one. She was gone and while I had expected she'd come back, maybe she wouldn't.