by Sophia Reed
Was it my imagination or did his fingers pause where they had been tracing patterns on my lower stomach, just inside the curl of my hip bone? Was he jealous? …because if so, that was all right. Because I was jealous about Marilyn. And Ariel. And Chloe. And maybe even Kie.
I didn't want to be back under his thumb. I did and I didn't. Like going home after a vacation and home is welcoming and you're glad to be there at the same time it is wholly unfamiliar. And unwanted.
"I have night classes. I'm working for an attorney's office very part time but I think I'm going to get the job I applied for in the law library. What?"
"You don't have to work." But he didn't sound angry.
"I know." I said it softly. "Thank you. I'm sure you know I've spent almost none of it. I wanted to do this myself."
I thought he said something then about damn stubborn strong women.
But that was when the police came back.
24
Cole
There was time to open the door to the underground and send her down into the hallways. Her clothes were bundled up in her arms. It wasn't until the last minute it occurred to me the dress she'd worn was still in the closet.
There was no reason to assume the police would even blink at the dress. Even if they did, so what? She'd spilled on the dress that was in the tub. Why wouldn't she borrow a dress? And as to why I had a full closet of women's clothes, if any kind of warrant extended that far, so what? I was a busy pharma CEO who took escorts to various events I couldn't logically get out of attending. Maybe I just made it easier for them to dress appropriately. Or easier for me to dress them appropriately.
Never mind all the dresses were the same size.
The decision to hide Annie was automatic. Because they didn't need to know. Because she didn't need to have anything happen that might work against her career plans.
Because it was none of their business.
And because as it was, she possibly had an informant in her study group friend.
"Mr. Cole St. Martin?"
The officer standing on the threshold – where it would make it impossible to close the door again, the door I'd willingly opened – was one of the cops who'd been here earlier. The African American was missing but the blond was still involved.
I looked at him and gave up all pretense at patience. Twice in one night was pushing it. There was a new judge, who thought of himself as the new sheriff in town, kind of a morality upholding bastion of righteousness. All it would mean was a rough patch before something brought him down or someone bought him out. They always acted like this was something new.
So yes, patience snapped. "You know I'm Cole St. Martin. You have photos of me, you're at my house when my dinner party has ended and there's no one else here. I'm the one you served the warrant on how many long, memory challenging hours ago?" I leveled a gaze at the blond.
Like anyone else with a pale complexion, he blushed. "There's no reason to be sarcastic."
"I think there is. This is harassment. You were here already. You found nothing. You've now got me out of bed for whatever this is. What would you call it?"
Obviously he'd have to call it harassment, too, because he didn't answer. He just said, "I have a warrant," and produced it.
"You're looking for what?"
"Read the warrant, sir." I'd pissed him off.
"Show me your badge, again, officer."
He sighed visibly and produced it, his name on it printed out as Paul Stevens. I nodded and read the warrant. They were looking for a missing girl, seventeen apparently, which would invoke all kinds of penalties and was one of the reasons I never messed with underage. (The others were that it was wrong, and that girls were nowhere near as much fun as women. Women already knew themselves and what they wanted and where their boundaries were and making them break those boundaries and accept what they didn't want? That was a sadist's pleasure.)
"She's not here," I said, trying to hand the warrant back. He nodded at me to keep it. I sighed. "Please don't mess anything up." They couldn't search this time for anything but the girl unless they saw something illegal in plain sight.
They wouldn't find anything illegal. Or anything else. No drugs, only registered weapons in a gun safe. Which, since a missing seventeen year old girl couldn't fit in it, they couldn't require to have opened.
My second in command, Barry, stood behind them on the step as they came in. I started to tell him it was fine, he could stand down, go back to the shack. And changed my mind. It wouldn't hurt to have my own muscle here. They wouldn't find anything. They wouldn't even find Annie. The doors to the underground were only covered over with furniture that slid and locked into place at times like these, but when it happened, it looked like the heavy wood antiques had been there forever.
This was nothing more than a distraction and an annoying one. There was always the chance they'd find something. Always the chance I'd get dragged downtown anyway, and lose a chance to explore the business of the day spa, say, because Fleet maybe had more to lose than I did. Other than Annie, the idea of using rainforest cures in a day spa setting was the first thing to really snag my interest in a while. Fleet, though, like his name, seemed like he might easily bolt. If I wanted the opportunity to expand the range of the good I thought the opiate cures were capable of, this wasn't the time to be facing some kind of morals charge, or even be brought up looking dirty.
Judge Conway was becoming a problem. While they searched improbably small areas for a full sized woman, I explored options for neutralizing the threat.
25
Annie
Cole – St. Martin – Sir came back three-quarters of an hour later. He was livid. I'd pulled the robe back on, honestly cold by then, mostly from his absence and whatever was going on in the main house.
It wasn't easy to pinpoint what I was afraid of. They probably weren't going to find the entrance to my cell and if they did, so what? I was over the age of consent, a former cop, a soon to be fed. If I couldn't consent, who could? As for the locked doors, again, none of their business. Nothing that was going on was illegal.
And then if I was honest with myself, would the DEA want to hire someone who was staying with the CEO of a pharmaceutical company who was experimenting creating his own drugs? Even if those drugs were legitimately helpful? Would the idea of my being here lead back to the fact of my own addiction? Almost undoubtedly. And the chances of that screwing up my ability to get in? Very likely. My undercover career with Seattle could either make or break my chances. Time would tell. What I was doing with St. Martin regarding the fet and the end of the fet addiction? That would be a really bad thing to have come to light.
I thought in some ways the fact that St. Martin had a St. Andrew's Cross would look bad for me if I turned up here.
Since James had told me about the raid, I'd done some research and since I had a real world phone and forty-five minutes to myself, I’d done some more. It was strange that, since being out in the world and studying criminal justice, I hadn't looked up the laws pertaining to Master/slave or BDSM or anything else.
But I'd so wanted to keep my lives separate. My life in Seattle, on PD, with Mark. My life in southern Nevada as St. Martin's slave. My life now as a college student.
The lives all fit into one body though, and they had their own thoughts. Those lives had collided a lot faster than I'd expected.
The biggest damage to me could actually be considerable. Planning to head into narcotics with the feds, probably they wouldn't want anyone with questionable morals, and mine would be, even if every step of the way with St. Martin had been voluntary and something I wanted.
For Cole, I'd thought it would be reputation. The way people kept buying from Amazon even after the CEO had that little indiscretion with his camera phone. Cole St. Martin liked to chain women to BDSM furniture and whip them until they were both wet with tears and wet with want. But St. Martin Pharma could cure opiate addiction. What was a little icky whipping between friend
s?
Until I knew it could be illegal. There were no distinct laws on the books for Nevada saying Thou shalt not beat your consenting other. But it was illegal. Quasi-illegal. Didn't matter if there was consent. People weren't allowed to consent to being hit.
Which sounded pretty totalitarian until I read further and understood some of it. Allow that kind of harm because the other person consented (even if she was screaming “No no no please don't!” at the time) consent could be proved and there was a chance that people who wanted to duel in the street would have to be allowed to duel in the street.
Even I didn't think that was a good idea.
I hadn't had time to check further but I thought the State would be the plaintiff if such cases went to trial and it wouldn't matter if the victim didn't want to file charges – like those domestic violence cases where she realizes she loves him and besides that, she doesn't make enough to take care of the kids and… and… they're dangerous cases and a lot of jurisdictions give the arresting officers the ability to file charges and press them. The State (or county or whatever the municipality is) does it.
I couldn't do anything for Cole about that. Just my being here was dangerous for him and leaving wouldn't be an option for a little while, at least not in the middle of the night while the compound was undoubtedly under surveillance.
So I did what I could. When he came back, angry and pacing, I was out of the robe and kneeling on the floor. Refusing to believe I was sending a message.
I was only trying to help.
Yep, that was it.
If Cole noticed, I didn't see any sign. He was pacing and furious. Judge Conway was definitely announcing an agenda. By himself he couldn't do anything about prostitution – he wasn't even an appellate court judge or on the Nevada Supreme Court.
But he could send out warrant after warrant, harrying people he knew in his heart or in his gut were doing naughty things.
Cole paced and swore and paced. He pounded one fist into the other hand. This had nothing to do with helping anyone. It wasn't justified like it had been with Kie when he tried to help her or with Ariel when he did help her. Or even his contract with me – my submission in exchange for the rainforest cure.
This was fury because he was being messed with, because someone had picked up on something that wasn't even on the books, made himself into judge and jury and was coming to get Cole.
I agreed with him. Cole wasn't dangerous and if he was? There were plenty of stalkers out there everybody said they couldn't do anything about until they acted. How could this judge go after Cole when he had no proof Cole was doing anything untoward?
"Has anyone complained?" I asked into his unending tirade. As evidence of how far gone he was, he didn't snap at me to be quiet, not speak until spoken to, to call him Sir.
He saw where I was going. "No. He got wind of what we do here from somebody – damn, it could be Claude, you know that? – and he's going to keep poking around until he finds something in progress and can make an arrest on some kind of last century morals charge."
I considered that. "That's harassment."
Cole rolled his eyes. "Of course it is but his buddies are going to be as afraid of being thought dirty as he is." He barked a laugh at something in that statement but didn't explain it to me. "He's going to keep coming and coming and eventually he's going to find something. Or someone."
He looked at me then, naked, kneeling, and smiled, just a little. "Knees farther apart," he said. "And back straight. I want to see everything."
It was easier to do it than argue. My train of thought was still rolling.
"Let me go," I said, and it was a suggestion but he turned and said briskly, "We're not through negotiating. Let me –"
"No," I interrupted, and because I wasn't trying to start a fight, "Sir. That's not what I meant. I mean, let me go to him."
Cole blinked several times. His mouth opened and closed and he said, finally, "As what? They've seen you. If you were going to complain –"
"I'm not going to. I'm going to tell him I'm a criminal justice major –"
He actually hissed between his teeth. "You can't throw away –"
"I'm not." I was taking a bunch of chances interrupting him, but what the hell. "I'm talking about not filing charges but admitting I'm criminal justice at UNLV – hold on! Let me tell you! Because I don't have to be heading into law enforcement. I could be pre-law. That would explain my interest in what he's doing. I could totally, if not fan girl –" because even having been undercover as long as I had, there were limits to my acting ability – "then be interested from a How the Law Works angle. If I find out anything and he's a bad judge, we get him off the bench. If he's a good judge, he's angry and enthused with his own little morality play but hopefully by the time I graduate, I'm a memory."
"And so's he," Cole said thoughtfully.
"Yep," I said. "I can ask for an interview for a special project I'm doing for my grades." I rocked my head back and looked up coquettishly at Cole, one finger going to the side of my mouth. "I mean," I said, dragging out the word "I'm not the best student but if I had input for my paper –"
His eyebrows went up and he looked at me, mouth twitching, person to person for a minute, his choice. "How did you make that sound erotic?"
"What?" I asked in the same breathy voice and he blew out a huge breath of air, staring at me. I didn't often see him laugh. I liked the way his mouth twitched.
I said in my own voice, "Just seems anyone that determined to rain on everybody else's parade, especially when no one is getting hurt, that person might have something to hide. I found out about the raid. I want to do a presentation on the laws of BDSM in Nevada."
He looked impressed. "Not on the raid of Cole St. Martin of St. Martin Pharma?"
"Well, you're not supposed to say his name. You shouldn't call him Cole St. Martin. You should call him Sir. But otherwise?"
"Don't get cocky," he warned and I didn't say anything about that choice of words. I just waited while he ran over the idea more and more and more.
26
Cole
It wasn't a great solution. I'd have rather sent someone else. Problem was, for the moment, there wasn't anyone. When Chloe had left, she went in something of a huff. Since she has all of Claude's money and his house and is in the process of setting herself up to work with at-risk kids and those who need adopting and are older and therefore not adopted as often, I wasn't sure what she needed me for, but she seemed irritated as hell to see Annie.
I'd thought they would be friends. When I sent Annie to stay with Chloe and Claude, before all hell broke loose, I thought Annie would learn discipline I didn't seem to be able to instill in her but I also thought she and Chloe might deepen their friendship. When it turned out Chloe was being abused, not just in a lifestyle relationship, I thought she'd need Annie.
None of those things had come true.
And if Annie was back, whatever was eating Chloe was her problem. But it was my problem in that I couldn't send Chloe to Judge Conway. I couldn't send Ariel because she was already gone. Not that I thought that would be a great way for her to get back to real life. I couldn't send Marilyn because I couldn't imagine a scenario in which that would work.
I hadn't gotten where I'd gotten in life by threatening judges.
Truth was, I could more than afford to buy him off if he was for sale. These could be the opening salvos to blackmail or something more carefully worded but with the same effect.
Or I could ignore him. I liked that Annie was worried about me but I could ride the storm out if I had to. A Las Vegas judge wasn't going to bring down an international pharmaceuticals company worth billions.
And I wouldn't send Annie in just because I loved that she was willing.
"There would have to be rules," I said. She was curled up under the covers, having climbed in at some point while I was thinking. I pulled the covers down, exposing her.
"Of course there would," she said, stirring lazi
ly. It was warm enough in the room that the air didn't make her flinch.
"One of the reasons I'm willing to go along with this is Bill Fleet."
She blinked. "I don't know who that is."
I met her eyes.
She didn't roll hers. She just tacked on an insincere "Sir."
We needed to renegotiate. There were times we could be on the same level. There were times when we discussed things that I'd appreciate her input as a career cop and listen to her.
But when I was her Master, I was her Master.
"Turn over."
She pouted.
"Turn over. Now."
She turned over, lying on her stomach with her ass in the air. It was a good ass but all the red had faded out of it. That was a shame. I ran a hand over it while thinking.
"Bill Fleet is a businessman. He was at the party tonight."
She didn't bother reminding me her introductions had been less than professional. Or existed at all. Some people had just touched her without ever saying who they were. No asking. No consent on her part. No opportunity to refuse. She took what I allowed them to do to her.
I stirred at the thought, getting hard.
The first slap made her jump, though she must have been expecting it. I put muscle behind it, raining down a lot of blows on one cheek in the same place.
I heard her breathe out Fuuuuuck.
"Right," I said, and gave her twice as many on the other cheek.
"Sir!"
"Ball up a handful of the sheet and put it in your mouth. Do it now, Annie."
To my surprise, she did, effectively gagging herself.
I started again, concentrating on her thighs this time, right under her buttock, slapping each 50 times, before moving back to her ass cheeks. The redness was becoming deep by the time I stopped and picked up the slapper.