by Sophia Reed
After a short amount of time, I became so much part of the landscape. Once one sub had birched me, leaving me burning in pain, the others seemed to lose interest. Most of them likely didn't switch; they were submissives. They'd be more likely to hurt me on command, not of their own accord.
But the Masters too lost interest. Because I wasn't theirs? Because I wasn't a conquest? Because there was so much available to them?
It kept me going through the evening and kept me mostly from wondering what if Cole didn't release me. What if he didn't even choose to unleash me? I couldn't free myself.
The questions I really needed to ask and simultaneously didn't want answered, started with why I had come here rather than finding some way to contact him that didn't involve physically landing on his doorstep, all but dressed up in wrapping paper and a bow, and why, when confronted with his assumption that I was present to be spanked and manhandled, strung up and made public, didn't I object? Why had his touch left me anxious where James' touch left me interested but able to walk away?
I had come back to Cole St. Martin's desert compound to warn him of the raid. I had not come back to return to his ownership.
And even as I thought that, the question became: Am I back?
20
Cole
She was back.
Not voluntarily.
Annie returned because the raid was in progress. Even that was a tell. She had to know I could buy off even the most conservative determined to interfere with anything he didn't understand type of judge.
She'd chosen to come back to warn me and from her reactions, she hadn't allowed herself to think it through. Her reasoning was probably along the lines of I had helped her through ending her addiction and housed her through the turmoil of doing that. I'd helped her decide to leave what had become a dead-end job with the police in Washington, and decide to go back to school.
She owed me, surely. That's how I thought her reasoning had gone.
That left out every consideration that included free will and her own desire to come back.
Maybe I was overestimating my effect on her life. Maybe not. But the ache inside was unwelcome. I don't miss people. I object to losing control. I object to losing control to the point I can't punish the person who has taken the control.
Of course I missed her as a play toy. Even this far into our relationship, she still blushed. She still got embarrassed, could be humiliated, and every new situation I threw at her elicited such fear, humiliation – and wet wanting - Her nature betrayed her every time.
We'd actually been together longer than any true relationship of mine had ever lasted. More than a year. I hadn't tired of her lean body and her amazing reactions.
But that unwelcome ache inside, the lump in my throat I couldn't quite swallow down. All that was a warning.
I wanted her to want to come back because she wanted to come back. No reasons, no excuses.
But when I touched her, her body might not answer my direct questions. But it did convince me that, at least at the moment, she was happy to be where she was.
I'd let her go before. She'd come back. What's that jaded old saw? If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours?
There's another part about it not coming back meaning it never was. I wasn't going to consider that part. Because Annie had come back.
21
Annie
The evening ended.
I'd watched couples fucking and girls being disciplined. I watched an elaborate game of trivia where winners got sexual favors and losers got sexual punishments and in between people seemed to forget the sex around the edges and concentrated on their questions and the answers. I watched Chloe be put up on the cross and flogged, her beatific expression revealing the subtlety of the flogging. She hadn't looked like that when Claude had gone after her; then she'd had her head back and her mouth open as she screamed in pain.
What I saw that evening convinced me Cole wouldn't be long with this group. They were playing at what Vincent and Kie, Claude and Chloe, a doctor and his wife had intrinsically had: A darkness. Real pain. Real submission. Real ownership. This was the lite version.
He wouldn't be content with it for long.
I watched his anger through the night, too. When I'd run from him it was from the uncontrolled violence. I thought it was still there. It had been a matter of months I'd been gone, not a year or any significant time. It would be logical for the rage born in the wake of losing control to Vincent and Kie to still be there.
But there was a cap on it. I could see how angry Cole was, not at anyone specific in the room. Just in general. But I also watched Chloe. Not that she was a great arbiter of what was healthy. She'd stayed with Claude longer than it should have taken for her to realize what he was dishing out was abuse, not sex; longer than it should have taken her to understand that she had a marriage infused with actual domestic violence
But the other men, here with actual wives in some cases, and at least girls they didn't seem to believe they owned and who they touched with compassion, those men trusted their women with Cole.
Something had changed. Or he was getting back something of himself. I told myself I was happy for him simply because he had been good for me if not to me and because I wished him well.
I told myself I cared because he'd saved my life and for no other reason past being a human wishing another human well.
I told myself in no way was I back and certainly I wasn't happy about what I'd allowed to happen to me tonight.
I almost believed myself.
22
Cole
Such parties sometimes wind down. Sometimes guests sleep on couches, in chairs, in guest rooms or cells. Other times there's been a start and end time on an invitation, often because the Master has plans for his sub once the evening ends and the Master, at least, is looking forward to it.
This one ended late into the night and I was content to let it extend as long as it naturally wanted to.
Because once it ended, I needed to settle things with Annie, no matter which way that went. Her being here, her not demanding I take my hands off her and walking out, at the same time she said she wasn't back, at the same time she called me Cole? That I couldn't countenance. It scraped like a stone in my shoe during a run.
I might not know just how to address it but I needed to. Annie wasn't the typical sub. Demand she do something and she might.
Or she might run.
I didn't want her to run.
So I waited. Until the party ran down. And the guests went home.
And there were only the two of us left. Alone.
23
Annie
He came in when the party had ended. Because somewhere along the line, I’d been untied and given a robe, then escorted by a tall rangy woman I didn't know who introduced herself as Marilyn. The question must have showed in my eyes – Who the fuck are you, Marilyn? – because she volunteered the confusing message that she was Cole's chew toy.
Well. That certainly cleared up – nothing.
She didn't hang around. She'd been asked to see me back to the suite I was usually confined to and she did that. Past the bewildering notion that she was a chew toy, she offered nothing.
Chew toy, I supposed, could be a stand in for fuck buddy. Or sock puppet. Or for a sub who he called at his convenience. Slowly I was remembering the name Marilyn. It wasn't threatening. She was next to nobody, just someone that St. Martin enjoyed hurting from time to time, when the world and everything in it got to be too much for him.
But what was she doing here? If I remembered right, the girl was a pain slut. She wasn't a part of the scene, part of the lifestyle. She just wanted a good time every now and again, and was usually available for what Cole St. Martin considered a good time. On demand.
She wouldn't have been at the party, would she?
Once again I had to ask myself why I cared.
The answer walked into the suite an hour later. St. Marti
n stopped and leaned against the door jamb. The door had been locked from the outside before he showed up, the same as it always was.
"Are you back?"
I looked at him, trying not to let anything give me away. He only wore the tux pants now, no jacket, no affected bow tie. His hair was messy, as if maybe he'd been running his hands through it. Did that mean the party had ended earlier and it had taken him some time to come to me?
I was happy with the idea of Cole St. Martin being knocked off his usual even keel.
"I told you I'm not back."
The smirk made the most of his mouth. There was something about the shape of it, the Loki-like smile that always made him look not only like he was smirking but like he knew something so much more than I did.
"Then what are you doing in here?"
That was hardly a question to damn me. "The door was locked. Your minion brought me."
"Careful," he said lightly. "The minion has more power than you do in this –" He hesitated and for a minute I thought he was going to say relationship and didn't know if I objected more to the word or to her having a part in it. "Hierarchy."
I considered that. "I thought I was automatically on the bottom."
He licked his lips. "In every way."
I ignored that. "Then how is it a hierarchy?"
He didn't bother with the question. "Because you're on the bottom and I'm on top. Take the robe off."
I could have. I'd only put it on because I was cold. Under it I wore my running clothes. "No."
He continued to smile but his eyes changed. "Take off the robe. We need to talk."
"I can talk in the robe."
He crossed the room like a storm moving across the sky. I actually put a hand up against him, as if it would do any good. He batted it away and pulled me to my feet.
"Why does everything have to be a fight with you? You came to me. Take the robe off. We need to renegotiate."
His mouth was so close to mine I could have kissed him. His breath smelled of cilantro or something green and leafy. Up close his eyes were super dark, intent on mine. There was no softness in them.
I didn't find myself wanting softness. I could have had control inside a normal life. That would have been marrying Mark.
I could have had something possibly kinky but on an even playing field with James. Or maybe James would turn out to be totally vanilla. It didn't matter. James had been briefly interesting but this was the difference between a boy and a man.
I wanted the man. But I wanted him on my terms.
He was taunting me. Letting me think he'd kiss me. If I reached up to him, he'd pull away. He'd want something in return. Or he'd drive me to my knees and leave me there, still wanting.
Or – or a million other responses he could have. My eyes searching his, I went up on tiptoes, my mouth so close to his I actually brushed his lips with mine before I settled back down on both feet, looking up at him.
"We do need to talk," I said.
There was anger, but there was also laughter in his eyes. "Kneel," he said, and paced away from me. .
"No." It was automatic now.
I wasn't prepared for him to swing around on me, his face actually displaying real emotion. "Damn it, Annie, keep the fucking robe on, though I don't know how you're not roasting in it. I don't care. But please – fucking kneel. I can't think with you at eye level, with you not responding to anything I say."
It was an odd request and not one I should have honored. Or had to honor. But true emotion from Cole was rare. I knelt. My ass rested on my heels and my feet were crisscrossed, the insoles flat on the floor. It was the most comfortable position for kneeling and he didn't order anything else. No stress positions. No hands locked behind my head, elbows wide spread.
It was as close to compromise as Sir was capable of.
He stopped moving and stood and stared at me before he settled at the desk across the room. There was a silence between us and then he said, "You came back."
Suddenly, I wasn't meeting his eyes. I looked down as demurely as I would as a slave.
"I'm not back," I said softly. "I came just to warn you."
There was a flurry of motion and he was on his knees in front of me, his hand around my jaw, but gently, pulling my head up so my eyes met his. "You came back." He was asking.
I swallowed. "I knew about the raid. I knew that if anything was found and you were arrested or it got into the media, it could hurt your business."
He nodded. "You could have called. You could have texted. You could have emailed. You could have sent carrier pigeons."
I could have emailed, I realized, but emailing him was strange and surreal. It had happened a couple times, so rarely I'd forgotten I had an email address for him. "I tried. I forgot about email but Cole, I tried." He winced at his name. I ignored it and kept going. "I texted you and I called you and you didn't pick up and I ran out of time and I believe in what you're doing, oh don't give me that, I mean the opiate research, the rainforest cures. And I didn't want to see you hurt and you do matter to me, of course you do, not just because of what you've done for me – or for fuck's sake, what you've done to me – but I –"
His mouth stopped mine. His tongue was in my mouth, his hands in my hair, but he wasn't pulling, he wasn't hurting, he wasn't growling my name or crushing a nipple, he wasn't holding me gently, no, because there was too much passion.
But there was no pain.
He stood, somehow taking me with him at the exact same time and though he's about half a foot taller than me somehow our mouths stayed together. He pulled me up and he pulled me into his arms, swinging me up until he carried me, one arm under my knees, one arm under my shoulders and still his mouth on mine.
We only moved far enough to reach the bed again. He laid me gently on top of it like I might break and the idea made me want to laugh, inappropriate, terrible timing, nothing I wanted to interrupt and my mouth was too full of his to really laugh but – break? As if I were delicate? And thinking about the laddering game where he marked me from mid-ass to mid-thigh, up and down until the marks looked like a ladder and I'd lose count of how many cane strikes I'd already endured and he'd start over, the pain of the caning increasing and fading depending on how hard he struck.
I thought of the crop, stinging my nipples, dipping between my legs to slap so hard I'd cry out every time, wincing without being able to stop myself no matter how much I knew it was coming.
No matter that sometimes I'd all but asked for it.
But the pain. The discipline. The games. The times it was fury and not game, when I'd done something he thought made me unsafe, when I'd done something he'd told me not to or not done something he’d told me to, the pain then because he wasn't kidding, he was in charge.
The times he'd spank me on my bare ass, my hips over his knee, his hand hurting more than an implement, more than his belt, more than a slapper, a paddle, a strap. Those times when I cried and howled and protested.
Those times I lay awake dreaming, wondering what he'd do to me the next morning. The next day. Those times he did nothing and I ached for it.
All that, and he treated me now as if I were breakable?
He followed me down onto the bed, moving the robe away and half laughing, half groaning at the running clothes. Because they meant I was not planning to stay. Because having dressed in them I was as much as announcing my determination to run.
I didn't run. I turned in his arms and wrapped mine around his neck. He pulled me close to him, my breasts pressed hard into his chest. He kissed my mouth, my jaw, my throat, he bit at my shoulders and sucked on my nipples and then he was somehow not dressed anymore. Like magic. Like I'd lost time. He was naked.
He was sliding into me.
My head went back on the bed, my eyes seeking out the ceiling, unable to focus on him, on anything. My nails scoured his back and he growled and dug into me, slamming me with every thrust and I met him, hard, needy, wanting to give and wanting to take every sing
le thing I could from the encounter.
In case we didn't find a way for me to stay.
I was sobbing by the end of it, some kind of idiotic release, some kind of dam broken inside me. I wanted to stay. I wanted to pull him tight into my arms and hold him against me and comfort him as if he were the broken one.
Maybe he was.
But I was only just starting to find myself, 25 years old and figuring out who I was. I liked what I'd put together for myself.
Hesitantly, I said, "Sir."
He sat up and tugged at me, turning me over so I lay face down on the bed. "Put your arms under your head," he told me. "Keep them there."
I felt him move and heard him pick something up, a strap it turned out, and then he started spanking me, softly at first, stroking my ass with the strap, then harder and harder until he was standing above me, swinging it down with tremendous power.
I grunted as each blow landed.
I heard the strap hit the floor where he'd thrown it. I felt his hand come down on my ass, making it burn hotter. I waited for him to run his fingers between my legs and tell me this was what I wanted.
He didn't. He just rubbed. Quietly, until I turned over and held my arms out. He slid down, then, resting his cheek on my belly, my legs around him, my hands in his hair, his hands on me.
"You could continue going to school," he said and I sucked in a breath, realizing we were having that conversation. "You would have to. School and good grades. Whatever you're doing now. You could do it but live here."
I breathed in slow, watching his head rise and fall with my inhalation and exhale. "You wouldn't be in control."
"Nights I would."
I shook my head. "I have a study group. Without it you wouldn't have known about the raid in time, because I found out from James. He's one of the people in my group."