by Sophia Reed
I sounded like law enforcement. It was forced. It was part of the game. Look what you made me do! I have no control over myself. But I thought other than indoctrination and being told that somebody owned them the reason I'd gotten furious responses and flat refusals when I asked any of the other women to walk out with me was that Look what you made me do! And Please! Don't! were part of it.
Cole St. Martin saved my life. When I'd said Don't make me do this to his insistence that I display myself naked before his guests, I meant it.
He did it anyway.
Never mind how I felt about it or what I was looking for. His rainforest pharma could save lives. It had saved mine. He needed to be left alone. There needed to be nobody present who could insist that what I knew to be consensual (even if it was deeply hidden from one's own self consent) wasn't.
I couldn't let him be arrested.
This marked the second time I'd come back to "save" him. Once from Kie, who I was pretty sure he could have disarmed. Now from the police, which might be a bigger problem.
Maybe after this I'd feel we were even.
Maybe after this I could actually move on with my life. Leave southern Nevada after graduation. Leave him behind.
Maybe.
Standing in the sage, on the least technical stakeout ever (I didn't even have a car) I watched as the guests began to gather.
And I watched as law enforcement followed.
12
Cole
"I'd heard about this place," Fred Covington said.
He was younger than me, which was unusual for a billionaire, and not that well known. People tend to believe there are only a handful of billionaires anywhere in the world but that isn't completely true. Not everyone is as flashy as Bezos or Musk. I'd never taken dick pics and sent them to anyone. The idea was repellant. When someone was gazing at my erection, I wanted her on site, close enough to do nice things to it while I did terrible things to her parts.
I'd also never blasted an electric convertible into space, with or without a test dummy driving it.
On the other hand, I did have a compound and techies working for me. Did that make me Bill Gates?
But billionaires while not rare aren't usually all that young. It takes a while to make that much money. Covington earned his through healthcare, not only inheriting from a family business that was all hospitals and managed care facilities, but putting his own touches on the projects and raking in the money.
He was tall, gangly, and attractive in the way of a friendly horse – long face, kind and hopeful eyes. I'd been to a dinner party at his home once in the last few weeks and I knew the friendly, somewhat hopeful expression hid one hell of a sadist.
The woman with him wasn't his wife. Not a surprise there. His wife was attractive, somewhere around twenty, and did exactly what she was told when she was told to do it. She was allowed very little in the way of clothing and most of it served to remind you how little she was wearing.
The woman he'd brought to my house looked like a supermodel from the 90s, those big bright eyes, the beautiful mouth, tall, glowing with health. She also had some pretty severe bruises on her thighs.
I watched her as I reached for Covington's hand. "What have you heard, Fred?" We shook and I drew him further in. He seemed like he was going to stop in the entryway. I thought there might be interest in others coming in eventually.
"That it's kind of crazy," he said without a trace of embarrassment. "High tech and hermit life, combined."
"Don't knock it till you've tried it," I said and reached my hand to his companion. "I'm Cole. Sir, I suppose, tonight. You are?"
"She doesn't talk," Covington cut in.
I was starting to dislike him. Could I count on enough lifestyle enthusiasts of the same financial strata in the area that I might start a third group? My old circle had fallen when Claude was divorced and evicted by Chloe, and Vincent was killed. Arthur was one of the few left and I thought he'd be attending tonight. Fred Covington though, I could probably do without. A true sadist – my style, anyway, and why should I care what someone else thinks? – doesn't have to leave bruises. You can cause the most exquisite pain without breaking the skin or breaking the blood vessels under it. I wanted to stroke ointments over his sub's skin, then maybe spread some of them into her, easing the passage of my cock.
Fred, of course, would have to go before that.
"This is Chloe," I said, as she drifted up to my side. I frowned a little. Chloe was disappearing into ethereal mist after her problems with her ex. Fred's girl was threatened into not speaking. Suddenly I'd had enough. Maybe it was time to find some other entertainment. Rather than ask a group of rich men over for dinner, I’d simply surround myself with the females.
The idea had possibilities.
Abruptly I turned from Fred and said to his date, "In my house, you can talk. I request that you call me Sir."
Covington bristled. "I said she doesn't talk."
I didn't bother to look at him. Abruptly I wanted to punch him in the face. "That's up to her. Go get yourself a drink, Fred. Chloe, could you show him?" I didn't take my eyes from the girl and when they had gone, I tilted her face up, forcing her eyes to meet mine. I always had a soft spot for the abused. "There's a very beautiful supermodel from the 90s," I said. "Elle MacPherson."
Her eyes lit. She smiled.
"Ahh, you know of her. I always thought she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. If you won't tell me your name, I'm going to call you Elle."
She sighed, started to speak, looked around for Covington. I caught her chin in my hands. "He's across the room."
Her eyes flashed as if she was doing something daring. "I like the name Elle."
"Good. Elle, do you need help?" Because I'm so much better at disciplining my subs. I was coming perilously close to the My kink is fine; your kink is weird way of acting but Covington rubbed me the wrong way.
The light faded a little in her eyes. "I don't think there's anything you could do, sir."
"You might be surprised," I said, but there were other guests arriving and I excused myself, nodding at Chloe to come gather up Elle because Covington had gotten into a conversation across the room.
Chloe had been hurt plenty badly by her husband. She understood abuse. She'd take care of Elle.
I turned back to answer the door.
13
Annie
The law enforcement vehicles were moving very slowly. Out on the desert floor, it's hard to drive without kicking up dust. They had to know there were cameras on a billionaire's rural compound. But they weren't coming on foot. They'd waited until the guests had started to arrive and now they were circling the place.
I needed to get inside. While the vehicles were still far enough out that I could move through the sage without being too obvious. All I wanted was to give St. Martin time to – damn, I didn't know what. Time to put clothes on the women and throw out any obvious sexual board games? Time to make the centerpiece get off the table and put her clothes on? Time to somehow make everything look like an actual dinner party and not some kind of Roman feast or Greek Bacchanalia?
Probably I didn't even need to be here. That thought shouldn't have been a surprise. Moving fast through the scrub, keeping low so the oncoming police wouldn't see me, although security already would know I was here, it occurred to me that St. Martin and whoever was left of his group would already have cover stories in place. That, and judges in their pockets. Not that they'd get away with actually running a trafficking ring. Especially not if a judge was up for reelection. But in the ordinary course of things, I'd noticed when there was enough money involved, there were fewer problems that were insurmountable.
The answer to what I was doing here then was not one I wanted to look at too closely.
I moved up around the building. There wasn't time to go all around the compound, not if I wanted to remain unseen by the police. There'd be a couple minutes while they reconnoitered before they went to the
door, when they made sure they'd surrounded the vehicles already present to stop as many as possible from leaving in them. There'd be maybe a minute or two that could be attributed to confusion and reading through whatever warrants there were. That was it.
Still, approaching the southeast side, I passed the short outside walkway between the main house and the semi-detached suite of holding cells where St. Martin kept me.
For a second the world flashed into incandescent fury. The security post was just beyond that, where it had eyes on the exit from my cell and the entrance to the compound and on the long private road that led from the south to the compound.
For that second all there was in my world was the memory of waking in St. Martin's custody and being told I would be examined by a nurse, stripped naked, watched by leering security he did nothing to discourage. I remembered my confusion and anger and fear.
Fear was nothing new. Undercover means never not being afraid unless you're stoned and part of the scene. Or dead. If you're not afraid, you make mistakes.
Mistakes get you killed.
But there in the compound, new to it, unable to stop the violations and humiliations, being touched and exhibited and whipped and punished, being given enemas and forcefed if I didn't eat, being told my rainforest cures would be changed to suppositories administered by the sadist because he wanted to? All of that eclipsed my rational thoughts and drummed out the early morning runs through the desert, the companionable silences as the sun came up, the support he showed me when I decided I wanted to go back to school.
The fact that getting a BA and applying to the feds rather than staying PD had been his idea. All of that was secondary.
There was no rush of lust. Just the question; With everything he's done to you, why are you here?
Loyalty. Or payback. Or to watch it go down? No. Because I was moving to the guard hut, pounding a fist against the door. I didn't want to see anyone hurt and some of St. Martin's men were mercs.
I didn't want to see him hurt. Or arrested.
I was here because he saved my life. It was that simple. And if this made us square, I'd walk away. I'd already walked away, but I'd come back to southern Nevada for school. I liked it here. That was fine.
But I needed it to be for me.
No more submission.
Last minute check in with myself. All of my thoughts running faster than it took to tell. The small plume of dust the vehicles couldn't help raising was closer but there was still a tiny bit of time.
I pounded a fist on the guard shack.
They already knew I was there. Not like they hadn't watched me circling the building like I thought I was invisible. That's okay – I wasn't hiding from them.
"There are police coming here," I said the instant the door opened. And stopped.
I didn't recognize a single one of them. Shit. There wasn't time to explain who I was. I needed them to react by letting me in because my appearance would get St. Martin moving.
Or they could call up to the house, but they wouldn't if they didn't know who I was.
There were four men there. Not one was familiar. St. Martin had cleaned house. Made sense Jason had been a risk, a dangerous thug who worked in his own service before anyone else's. I knew a couple of the others, none well, which was how I'd manage it too if I were keeping a captive – I'd keep her from getting friendly enough with the guard to persuade them into her favor.
They reacted fast. There was a shift leader, evident because he stood behind the others, one hand on the phone to the house, the other on a service weapon he hadn't unholstered.
"I'm not armed." I was wearing tights and a t-shirt, running shoes and socks, I had a water bottle and my phone in a pocket on the tights. I held both hands up and the shift leader nodded at the man closest to me who ran a fast, professional pat down.
"She's clean."
Four men, all tall, buff, armed. They wore white polo shirts and khaki pants. St. Martin had created a better force than when Jason led the crew.
I looked back over my shoulder. Time was running out. "Listen to me. My name is Annie Knox." I waited a beat.
Good. My name registered.
"Cole St. Martin knows who I am. I came here because I'm part of a criminal justice program – "
Confusion, but slight. They knew I was a cop.
"I'm getting my BA." No time to explain. "I learned from a student working with the DA's office there's going to be a raid. There's a party tonight, right?" I knew that.
They didn't pretend otherwise.
And so I told them the rest in three breathless sentences. That they needed to be unarmed because they were private security and they did not want to look like a threat.
That they could accompany me in, but not telling St. Martin it was me would have a faster effect than phoning him. I hoped. Because I could be confident if I wanted to, about judges in pockets and money paving the way. But truth was there were women in the world who he'd helped and I was one of them. If he was locked up, he'd be ruined. His corporation could move on without him, but his research into rainforest cures for opiate addiction would never find FDA approval.
I didn't know what would happen to Ariel, the girl in his maze who I didn't think anyone else could have kept alive and who didn't have anywhere else to go.
He'd helped Chloe. He'd helped other women around the world.
He'd saved my life.
I let the shift commander lead me to the front door.
14
Cole
Everyone plays with a different dynamic.
The two groups I've been part of in southern Nevada have been a mixed bag. There are couples that are hardcore 24/7 Master/slave and never anything else. Clyde and Chloe were that way, though it turned out to be more of a domestic violence situation toward the end. Whether it started that way was something I had yet to learn from her. We weren't a couple and probably wouldn't be. Tonight was our first time together and it was an experiment.
I didn't expect it to be anything permanent. With Annie so recently gone, I was looking for a sub at the same time I wasn't looking for anything permanent and Chloe, I thought, needed to be on her own for a while, if not completely out of the scene. If she was still going to be part of the lifestyle, I wanted to be a part of it with her. She needed someone safe. If by some miracle we also got together, that would be time enough to learn how and when Claude's dynamic had changed from the loving Master/slave couple I'd known to the place where Annie had escaped him, stealing his car on the way, and seriously considered killing him.
The rest of the group, some of them coming to this evening's gathering, included some couples that had their own dynamic and all of them were hard, but not all of them were full time. One couple liked to watch and nobody much cared; she liked to get spanked, or rather she howled bloody murder while he turned her ass fire engine red, which seemed to be her version of liking it. Nobody else touched either of them and they didn't touch anyone else.
Different dynamics.
One thing almost everyone agreed on whether they were exhibitionists or forced exhibitionism on their subs or were simply playing a pain game or a spouse swap or – anything – was that nobody liked to have someone outside the group suddenly intrude.
That included guards.
The dinner party was just getting underway. Seven couples and one triad had arrived. I was expecting another four people when the door opened hard with no knock, no announcement. Always the guards follow protocols put in place since the incidents with Kie. There had been measures in place before the attacks, first Vincent, then Kie, but this new band of security never went lax. Call ahead as each set of guests arrive. Each group of guests had obtained a magnetized rubber sign, the kind realtors and landscapers fix on their car doors. Once they reached the unimproved road leading to the compound, they were to affix the sign to the driver's side door. Each sign has a number that identifies who they're supposed to be – meaning the number of people invited who should be in
that vehicle, the vehicle’s make, model, color. Who's in it – ditto: Make, model, color of each of the people in the vehicle. No prejudice intended.
We simply wanted to make certain who we're partying with is who we intended to party with.
Nevada has open laws on gambling and probably as an offshoot, prostitution is legal in fourteen of the seventeen counties. But the compound, though well away from the metro area of Vegas, is still Clark County. No money changes hands at our parties but to say that every female escorted by an insanely rich man was there willingly would be stretching the imagination.
There's a point to Master/slave.
So guests are announced. It's not quite like royalty in a silly movie and it's not entirely unlike that. There are no trumpets blaring but there is a sense of Announcing Lord and Lady Riding Crop.
The party was underway. Everyone expected was present. The women were unwrapped to the extent they would be, sometimes leaving shreds of clothing to make their dignity that much more precarious. There was a girl kneeling on the table with a bit between her teeth, a leather harness rudely splaying her charms for all to see, and a ponytail inserted via one of the biggest butt plugs I'd ever heard someone scream through as she "accepted." There were conversational groups with the women stretched over laps being spanked, and one girl being flogged. Two couples were still undressing the females.
The door banged open without warning. Scott Anderson came into the room. Huge, bearded, ex-Special Forces, he's the best money can buy but he was out of line.
I was on my feet already heading for the door, my hands up, warding, guiding, shooing, because we had two new girls tonight and there's always the slightest brush of danger, the slightest chance that one will go rouge, slip bounds she willingly accepted or deny that whoever sold her had that right.