by Sophia Reed
I brought her home with me and let her hide. In the underground maze of rooms, in a cell she couldn't leave and where she couldn't hurt herself. When the self loathing didn't stop, I started fucking her on a regular basis. She felt like she was worth nothing. I was never sure if I was taking advantage of her or helping.
Not that it mattered. I just wondered.
Ariel was my go to when things went wrong. Marilyn was a pain slut but she wanted it straightforward and painful. She didn't want anything behind it. Over the years, slowly, Ariel became more than an enthusiastic punching bag for my worst moments. She started to ask questions. She didn't answer them, not herself, not when I asked, and for someone who literally doesn't want to exist, it's hard to threaten them into telling you anything. Because they just don't care.
And then she started painting. It was out of the blue. One day she asked for paints. Another day for the skylight over her cell to be made bigger, or cleaned or something. I asked her if she wanted out and she shrank back. Not ready yet.
But she wanted sun. I made sure she got it.
And then came the day I went to her cell broken, everything crashing in on my life and she let me do what I wanted to her, but she crawled away from me first, frightened. Which stopped me in my tracks. And when I stopped, she came forward. Now she was wrapping herself around me, the comfort of another person who had no agendas. Who cared about me.
That warm glow of knowing someone cared.
I couldn't give that to anyone. I hadn't cared about anyone in years. Not since.
But the thought broke off. I looked at Ariel. She wore a button-down chambray work shirt, tucked into skinny jeans. She was still slim and sexy, though she'd cut her hair super short and wasn't dressing –
I broke off and smiled to myself. She wasn't dressing for me. Not anymore.
"You've made a decision."
She shook her head and smiled. "Have a drink with me?"
As if it were her house! But this was one sub I'd be happy to allow to talk back. "Is that an order, Mistress?"
Laugher sparked behind her eyes. "Yes, um – vassal?"
I started laughing. "I think 'slave' or 'sub' will do. Or – "
"Worm!" She was giggling. It was at once the strangest sound and the most delightful that I'd heard in years.
"Worm?!" I put hurt amazement and outrage into my voice. "You dare!"
"I dare. My life depends upon you having a drink with me."
"Sucky life," I said and she doubled up laughing at a really pathetic joke. "I give up. What are you on?"
She smiled. "I think it's called life." She was prying the top off a bottle of spiced rum.
"What are you planning on doing with it?" I asked.
She glanced at the drink, decided I meant something else, and said, "I'm going to miss you. That's what I'm planning. Because I can't plan anything while I'm here."
I sat down across from her and accepted the spiced rum with curiosity. I think it's supposed to be mixed with something. Drinking it straight was weird. And strong. I don't drink a lot. But I'd drink with this woman who had healed herself while living in an underground cell. I'd showed her the basest of human behavior and the darkest of places to live and she'd found a spark of light then asked the sadist to make it bigger. Cheers!
We clinked glasses. "When you're not missing me what do you plan to be doing?" I took a sip of rum – definitely needed something with it! – and instantly swallowed, coughing, in a hurry to add, "You don't have to tell me a fucking thing. I'll be happy to – "
But I broke off at the same time she said quietly, "I want to tell you." She stopped and tilted her head to one side. "You'll be happy to what?"
I pursed my lips and shook my head. "I changed my mind. I was going to say just send you off and you do what works for you but that's not true."
I saw only the faintest alarm in her eyes. I thought if I had said she had to stay with me, much of the courage she had rounded up would fall away. She would stay.
"I can't just say goodbye, Ariel. I have to know you're all right and you have everything you need. If you want to build everything up for yourself, I'll honor that, but I'm going to watch and I'm going to pick you up if you fall, and I don't think you will, but I'm still going to be there."
There were tears on her face. Ariel cared about almost nothing enough to cry.
So I took a chance. "I will never interfere with your painting. Unless you want me to."
She grinned. "How? You're going to stand behind me and offer suggestions?
Ha! "No." God it was good to see her smile. "I'm going to offer introductions. To gallery owners. Only if you want it and only when you say you're ready."
She hid behind her glass for a moment, considering. Outside the wind picked up. Summer in southern Nevada is windy. So are fall, winter and spring. It's a desert. It's windy. "I'd like that. Not yet. I want to take classes. I want to find my own style. I want to paint something that's not on my laptop."
"And isn't your cell?" Might as well admit what she'd been staying in.
She tipped the glass toward me in acknowledgement. "All that. Sir, would it be horrible if I asked that the door be left open?"
God yes. That would be unhealthy. But I couldn't tell her that. "You'd come back as a guest."
She murmured dissent. "I'd need – "
"The maze. I know. Underground. But the cell would be unlocked. How about that?"
She smiled like the sun. "That would be perfect. Sir – "
"Cole."
She blinked. "I don't know if I can get used to that."
I considered. "How about one for the road, then?" I had to know what had happened with Marilyn had been a fluke. A bad situation. I couldn't be so fucked up over Annie Knox that I couldn't function as Cole St. Martin.
In answer, she slid from the couch onto her knees, head down, hands behind her back.
"Take your clothes off."
She didn't look around to see if there were cameras or even guards in the room. She didn't look at me. She kept her head down, unbuttoned the shirt. Under it she wore nothing, only pert breasts with dark nipples, and scars, where others had hurt her far more terminally than I had.
She unbuttoned and unzipped the jeans before standing just long enough to slip them off. She wore no underwear. That made me instantly hot. My cock had already been hard. Now it was a steel bar.
Ariel knelt again, boobs out, head down, arms behind her, knees well separated so I could see her sex.
"Over my lap," I said gently. This would not be the whole of her send off. Just a start.
She stood and draped herself over my knee, my other leg holding both of hers down. "Put your hands flat on the floor and leave them there."
This was going to be hard and long.
And a warmup.
My hand crashed down on her backside and she grunted, dug her fingers into the hardwood floor that wouldn't allow her purchase.
I rubbed my hand over the cheek I'd just slapped, then hit it as hard as I could, fingers tight together, hand rigid for maximum pain. I hit her two dozen times on that side before changing to the other cheek, giving it the same treatment, watching as her pale skin went from creamy white to pink to angry purplish red. Then I moved down, slapping at the juncture of ass and thigh, making her squirm and pant and knowing if I dipped my fingers between her legs, she'd be wet, even as she grunted and cried out.
Then her thighs, decorating them with handprints and turning them angry red before I said roughly, "Part your legs." When she did, I slapped her there, feeling the fluid on my fingers before I turned her roughly in my arms so she sat more or less splayed on one knee, her legs automatically opening for me. I punished her sex, slapping until she was crying, then started on her breasts, and then I picked her up and carried her down the hall, through the interior entrance to Annie's pain room where I tied her to the cross. All the implements in this room were duplicated in her own cell but I didn't want her there. Whatever she need
ed from that room I'd have someone else bring it up. If she wanted, she could watch on a monitor, make sure everything was collected.
Ariel was done with that cell.
I chained her to the St. Andrew’s Cross, arms above her head, her back to the room, her legs spread wide, and I cropped every inch of her I could get to, leaving angry red marks over her back and ass and legs, and when she was dripping and I was almost broken with need, I stepped up behind her, my hands over hers where they fisted against the cross and I took her, fucking her hard until we came within seconds of each other.
For a second I rested my head against her naked, sweating shoulder. Then I laughed softly and said, "I'm going to miss you, too, Ariel."
The next day my car drove her into Las Vegas. I transferred a quarter million into an account for her.
We stood in front of the compound on a warm and windy day, the car waiting, the driver one of my best guards. Ariel had a portfolio and a laptop, several boxes of art supplies but only one small bag of clothes. There were tears shining in her eyes that didn't fall. If I'd mentioned them, she'd have blamed the bright desert sunlight.
"What do I do with the extra once I've established myself?" She meant to teach, she thought, and work in an art store or gallery. And take classes. And get a library card so she could take out book after book on the masters. I pointed out she could buy them. She said she thought minimal was okay for the time being and she liked libraries. She didn't know anybody on the outside, she said; she wanted to.
"What extra?" I asked.
"The money. I'll have myself in hand before a quarter of a million."
"Keep it?" I suggested.
She reached out and touched my face, a caress I'd never have allowed in the maze and cells. I kissed her palm as she pulled it away. "I don't want to be your ward or project." Her eyes watched mine. "I want to be your friend now."
"With benefits?" I eyed her.
She rubbed her ass. "Lots of benefits. I need benefits."
"Careful," I said. "You're still in my custody. I could take you downstairs for another goodbye."
"I don't think I can handle any more goodbyes just now." She smiled. "Seriously. Cole. What about the extra. I can't keep it. I have to..." She paused, looking for a word. "Live."
That was a good word. "If that's what you truly want, then do what makes you feel best. You might want to put some in savings. You can make better decisions for yourself when you know it's there."
She nodded thoughtfully. "And the rest?"
"Pick a charity," I said.
And her tears spilled. "Sexual assault victims." She went up on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. "You're a good man, Cole St. Martin."
The plume of dust from the car's passage faded.
"No, I'm not," I said to the fading car.
Then I found a pair of prostitutes and took them into the pain room and paid them not to safe word for a good long time.
I called them both Annie.
5
Annie
August rolled through, breathlessly hot and beautiful. The apartment I'd taken had everything: Balcony from which to simmer and watch the city. AC to keep me from roasting alive. Big beautiful bathroom where no one ever dragged me for an early morning enema.
My phone had stopped ringing. At all. It occurred to me that now I knew pretty much no one and the thought was disconcerting. I didn't need a job and if I was starting a full load of credits – anything to be in and out quickly, school had never been my bailiwick and I was going for a purpose, not as a pleasure – then it made no sense to start a job just to quit it again.
Claude and Chloe were out of the picture. The last I'd heard she really had divorced him and kept the house, and while the authorities weren't thrilled about her being able to just adopt at will, fortune or no fortune, she was being allowed to foster a handful of children considered incorrigible and it was going well.
But she was out of my life. After the horror in France with Vincent and Kie, that's when St. Martin's rage had flared. To keep me safe – and maybe to punish me in a few new and novel ways – he had sent me to stay with them. At the time I knew the couple from some of the Disturbed Billionaire Dinner Club events. That's what I called them in my mind. To their faces I just called them Sir unless I wanted to be punished. Sometimes I did, but most of the time it was a better fantasy than reality.
In reality, being cropped or whipped or birched hurts.
Which isn't to say I didn't like it.
But once I was in residence with them, St. Martin thinking I was safe, I realized that Chloe's Master/slave relationship was a cover for kind of a lot of fuckery. Domestic violence. Emotional abuse. What Claude was doing was well beyond consensual non-consent.
Which was about it for my friendships in southern Nevada. That left Cole St. Martin in Nevada and my sisters and family in Washington along with whatever Mark was at the time.
No girlfriends and without being part of PD, no male friends or males who said they were friends, whether or not behind my back they seethed at a woman on the force (some did, others didn't, and it no longer mattered).
I might not be an A student or thrilled about school, but I was excited about getting through my courses and moving on to see if I could get in with the DEA. And then who knew where my future would take me?
The university campus looked in some places like a casino, which made sense, and in others like a multiple building healthcare facility, a huge hospital of sorts. There was something ultra professional about the buildings, and something not really welcoming. Or maybe that was just my take on it. Most of the time I'd be in one building, my prerequisites out of the way, most of my classes criminal justice so I could fast track my way back into my "real life."
Standing on the balcony, overlooking Las Vegas, or walking on the campus, trying to get a sense of it, I'd realize all those things would take me away from southern Nevada.
And Cole St. Martin.
His calls had stopped the day he left me the message that Kie had broken away from Norcross, who from all accounts should have been able to handle a dozen subs, even those as dangerous as Kie. But the helicopter went down and there was no way of knowing if she had caused it.
I couldn't go armed to campus, but I could carry a small version of a police baton. In TaeKwon-Do we learned to use the tonfa, the Korean version had apparently first been used in agriculture, but since Korea kept getting overthrown, they’d literally turned their ploughshares into swords, more than once. The version I had looked like a rubber dog bone or maybe something even less likely to be carried into class in a co-ed's backpack. It fit in my hand, with an inch out either side, and could help me immobilize a joint if I had to.
I hoped not to.
I hoped no one would find it on me and call it a weapon. I was a weapon.
And every day out on my own, as anxiety crested and the need to move, move, move through my life increased, I felt a little more dangerous, a little more likely to explode.
Kie might be in more danger of me than me of her.
August rolled on and school started and I had never told St. Martin that I did or didn't want updates on whether or not the bitch reappeared. So he'd decided for himself. Once a week he texted me, never asking where I was or what I was doing, only offering me a no news is probably good news message, though subtly different each time. He was writing them, not just copying them.
He never asked me to get back to him.
I never did.
But I didn't erase the messages either.
6
Cole
"So, Cole, tell me a little more about what you do."
The woman sitting next to me wore a harness that outlined a stunning pair of breasts, neatly pierced with wicked looking barbs. She had shatteringly blue eyes, bright red lipstick, flawless skin, was wearing a skirt that skimmed her hips and disappeared, so every time she moved everyone at the dinner party understood she wore no underwear.
She was stunningl
y dull.
"I'm the CEO of St. Martin Pharmaceuticals," I told her, and wondered what her rounded ass would feel like pushed up around my cock.
The night was my second with Valley Vice, though why they saw fit to name themselves I didn't know. After Chloe left Claude and Kie and Vincent wound up dead, and then only Vincent was dead but Kie was persona non grata due to being bat shit, it was time to find another group.
Unsurprisingly, million- and billionaires with kinky tastes aren't hard to find. Especially in a place referred to as Sin City.
"Do you get to travel a lot doing that?" my companion asked. She'd eaten about an ounce of celery during the course of the meal. If she were my sub, there'd be a punishment for that. Submissives need to keep their strength up so they can service their Masters.
I didn't want to have the conversation. So far the party had been somewhat like a regular dinner party (see and be seen; bore and be bored) except that the women were scantily clad. Some of them were wives, mistresses, slaves and subs. The others were elite entertainment for the evening. I didn't think the girl next to me was anyone's significant anything, but she definitely wasn't entertainment.
At the start of the party it had just been conversation – a handful of us thought we might have a business venture that would work with all of us involved, opening a day spa that could utilize some of the rainforest products my company had synthesized that didn't require extensive testing or drug trials. People worry about what the general public ingests. They pay less attention to what they smear on their skin.
That part had been interesting and kept my mind off the fact that I was looking for a sub, a new girl to break and rebuild, and that I didn't want to.
Annie's not coming back.