by Sophia Reed
Don't fall for me, I thought, wildly and unexpectedly. Don't even think about it.
I had no proof and it was arrogant and it was heartfelt and it was probably based on how I –
Didn't feel about him. Wouldn't. Don't even think Cole and relationship in the same sentence. Hadn't I told myself that?
When did I ever listen to me?
"If that doesn't work for a way in, we can find someone on Metro PD –" I glanced at him and he nodded.
"I've got a couple people."
Of course he did. "We check for missing persons. All cities this size have girls go missing. We look for those girls who have gone missing that have records of petty crimes. Shoplifting. Panhandling. Prostitution within city limits. And see if there's a pattern of judges they've gone in front of. There are probably enough judges that it rotates between those who hear such cases. But if there's a preponderance of those who have disappeared who went in front of a specific judge?" I shrugged and this time it was very obvious Cole did get it.
"Why wouldn't they check?"
"Who?" My wrists were starting to itch under the hard plastic. I shifted around trying to make them stop burning and Cole got up without seeming to pay attention to his own actions and fetched a knife from his desk. "Why doesn't the court system run their own internal checks?" He was standing behind me but instead of cutting me loose, he reached down and ran the tip of the knife over my breasts. My breathing became extremely shallow suddenly. I was glad the handle of the crop wasn't touching me. I didn't need to humiliate myself further.
Though apparently I had. Because Cole laughed and said, "They're hard as rocks. And you're turning very pink." Then he cut my wrists free. "I can guess what happens after that, but walk me through it."
I rubbed my hands over the marks on my wrists and tried to overcome the need to instantly cross my arms over my chest. "I do whatever I have to in order to get myself in front of one of those judges. It will suck if it turns out he's a caring concerned judge who actually has a way about him that turns girls straight."
It was Cole's turn to scoff. "It will be a miracle if that's the case. So you go in front of the judge and he says There's two ways out of this, little lady?"
I blinked at him. "Um, no. He doesn't start talking like a bad porn western."
Cole laughed. It was the first honest laugh I'd heard from him in a while. I liked it.
"No. I go in front of him and best bet is he gives me a slap on the wrist. Maybe overnight in a cell. Then he calls me in front of him, big lecture time or cut you a deal time because you seem like a nice girl who just needs a break so she can get her life together."
"And your big break comes through the door, all handcuffs and gags."
I cocked a finger gun at him. "You got it."
Cole looked amused. "Don't be pointing that thing at me. It could go off."
"Not loaded," I said, glancing at my finger.
Cole adopted a stern face but under it I could see his eyes darkening. He wasn't finished with me. "Never assume it's not loaded. Holster it, Annie."
I sucked in a breath. Was he asking me –?
Telling me –?
"Play with yourself. Make yourself come."
My face flamed. My hands started to shake. I hated this. It was such a male thing, so degrading, such a violation. "Sir."
He was crouching in front of me again, the knife out in his hands. I sucked my breath in but he was just cutting away the remnants of the skirt, cutting away the panties he'd shoved aside. Clearly he wasn't releasing my legs.
"Play with yourself." He picked up the crop. "Use it."
I had no misapprehension about how he meant that. I took the crop from him and licked my lips, locked my eyes to his, and slid the handle of the crop up into myself. One hand kept it moving, the other hand played, carefully, so he could see. Mark had liked this, had sometimes handed me a vibrator and sat back to watch. I'd never felt anything but dirty and stupid.
This time I felt humiliated and helpless in addition to dirty and stupid.
And hot. And needy. And my hips were starting to move, Cole was starting to blur, my hands were moving faster and I was making involuntary sounds, little cries for air.
I came so hard I didn't even care if we finished the plan.
So of course Cole St. Martin, sadist and freak, dressed me in the cloak again, took the crop away, sat down properly behind his desk, and totally finished figuring out the plan with me.
Sadists.
34
Cole
It was decided she'd use the Lily persona. Why not? Annie Knox had retired from Seattle PD. If anyone in the loose world of drugs and motorcycles ever went looking for her, she had just vanished off the face of the earth. It happened. Probably it would be determined within whatever community was looking that she had died. Overdosed. Gotten herself killed. Or killed herself. Annie as Lily had defended girls who assumed she was their age, but they all had their own problems. Probably it was more than safe enough.
Annie was familiar with the Lily cover. She wouldn't need it for long. Because as soon as they took her, I guessed they'd be less than interested in who she was. If they found out she was someone else, they wouldn't care. Probably a lot of girls they took were using different names. It would matter if they found out she was a cop, but neither of us thought it likely. She had quit, her files were sealed because she had been undercover. Plus Lily had never been tripped up.
"The hardest part is going to be getting caught," she said over dinner.
I was still punishing her, so her dinner was fresh white fish and a green salad with water for a drink. As her punishments went, it sucked, because I was in the mood for pizza. I wasn't quite sadist enough to eat it in front of her, though, and not quite foolish enough to not think Annie Knox might launch herself across the table at me and fight me for the slice of pepperoni.
"How is getting caught going to be difficult?" We'd settled on shoplifting, because retailers did press charges and judges would hear the cases.
"Making it convincing," she said. She was involved in cutting a piece of fish into smaller and smaller bites, then pushing them around the plate as if they were small enough, they'd just vanish.
"You're going to eat that," I said. I was half hoping she wouldn't. The idea of what she had in mind made me anxious. Anxious didn't bring out the playful side of me. It brought out the side that made me want to make her scream. The fact that I already had didn't matter.
Annie said yes, sir without really paying attention. "It has to seem like I was really trying to get away with whatever it is. Really steal whatever we decide on."
There was no way to complain about it, but every time she said "We" I heard an "I" in its place. She was humoring me. She considered this her show.
"Annie."
She looked up, the ridiculous cloak falling around her shoulders, doing a remarkably good job of keeping her covered up.
"Take off the cloak."
She instantly colored and looked around the room. The cook was here, and a maid who was serving. Security was right outside the open door.
"Annie."
"Sir?"
"Did I ask you to inventory the room?"
Her color deepened. She untied the cord at the neck and let the cloak fall over the back of the chair.
"No. Stand up, fold up the cloak, put it on the chair next to you, sit down and keep your legs open wide."
She did as she was told and sat back down, legs over the sides of her chair. I bent and looked under the table at her shining sex, came up smiling. "I haven't forgotten you need a shave."
She mumbled a yes, sir I couldn't quite argue with, and blushed an even deeper shade of red.
"Tell me the rest."
Because we had down the part where she got sent to the judge – it seemed logical and even if it wasn't exactly what would happen something close to it would. One way or another, she'd go before a judge like Conway and things would fall into place.
/> Over the salad we'd talked about what if he didn't come on to her and came to the conclusion it didn't matter. Not every judge who rotated into such cases was going to be a part of trafficking. Not every judge who was would be interested in every girl. They were obviously moving cautiously. And not every one of those that were part of it would want to fuck her or get sucked off by her. Some would just see her as a commodity.
That had made me angry enough that I'd taken her over my lap, rearranged the cloak she'd been wearing then, and paddled the hell out of her ass while she kicked and protested. Then I got her a second helping of fish, the one she was still arguing with. With, not about. Because she appeared to be swearing at it.
Her other question had been if she was sent directly from a holding facility she wouldn't have time for a wire, which didn't bother her like it did me – she was determined to do more than bring down an outside player. She wanted to get taken into the ring itself. But she was worried about having to show up in just some old outfit.
"You could dress like a pop starlet threw up on you every day," I suggested.
She stuck her tongue out at me and added, "Sir."
I just laughed. "It doesn't matter what you're wearing, Annie Knox, you could be sexy in granny panties."
She looked stricken. "Please don't make me prove it!"
"When?" I asked "How soon do you want to do this?"
Annie looked up and instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. I'd deal with that later. "This week? As soon as possible. I'm thinking with the disappearance of Conway they might be looking at getting what they can and moving on."
I hadn't thought of that and told her so. I called for the cook to come in and take the plates and in between the first load and the second I told Annie to put her arms down. She blinked and did so, coloring again as the maid and cook cleared the table.
When the table was cleared, I said, "Before you went undercover for PD, did they give you a physical?"
Her eyes flashed to mine, her mouth opening, and for once she went pale instead of red. "No. No, of course not, half the people who were in the communities I became part of were –"
"Annie." I said it softly and she stopped at once. "You're lying to me."
She dropped her gaze. "Yes, sir. Only, please. Please don't. Please."
Because that was truly one of the things she couldn't adjust to. Not that I wanted her to. Anything that became commonplace lost its ability to hurt and humiliate. "Up on the table," I said. "On your back. Legs tented. And open. Hands under your head. Let's go, Annie. You don't want to make me wait."
But she dropped to her knees in front of me, head bowed, heels up, on her toes and her hands tight behind the back of her head, one of the hardest stress positions for her. "Please, sir."
I didn't touch her, because real anger rather than pretend was starting to rise. I'd been through enough med school before changing to pharma to do a simple physical and to humiliate the fuck out of my sub as I did.
"On the table, Annie. Don't make me tell you again."
She was crying as she did.
35
Annie
The huge, shiny wood table was cold under my back. I lay with my heels on the edge and my knees up and my legs wide. It took a couple minutes to make myself pry my arms from their crisscross over my boobs and where my hands naturally ended up covering between my legs.
Cole administered a sharp slap to my hip. "Put your hands behind your head and keep them there."
My breathing was shaky. It wasn't like he hadn't seen every part of me at this point. But there was something about medical procedures that left me shaky and horrified.
That this would be real, with possible diagnostic tests, I didn't question. That it would be as embarrassing as he could make it? I didn't question that, either.
Cole started by looking into my eyes and ears, palpitating my throat, then looking into it. How was it that a doctor with normal hands would instantly become chilly and clammy the minute he touched the lymph nodes on the side of the throat? Even Cole did it.
That done, he felt around my throat and the top of my chest, then retrieved a stethoscope from the black bag he fetched from under the table. Seeing it gave me a bad feeling. He listened to my heart, then moved the thing down under my breast, the way doctors did that always freaked me out. For once it was less having someone touch me there and more like they weren't quite sure where I kept my heart.
"You look like you're going to laugh," Cole said.
He was looking into my eyes.
"Farthest thing from my mind." And then, "Sir."
He did smile then, and inclined his head. "I think for now, call me Doctor."
That wiped away any smile. "Yes, s – doctor."
And he moved down to what I was dreading and hating, the part where he examined my breasts, touching every inch of them, stroking and massaging and touching them in overly intimate ways that had nothing to do with pleasure or pain. I thought if I could ever determine what I hated about this I could get on top of it.
But then, a public relations campaign in favor of people being prodded and poked in disgusting, intrusive, invasive ways had run for a summer, something about If you don't get this test done, you literally could die from embarrassment or something like that. It didn't completely make sense. It was just icky.
Cole finished with my breasts, then moved down my torso, checking for whatever doctors check for when they try to touch the surface you're lying on by pressing their fingers through your stomach. He palpitated and massaged, then his hands went lower and I jackknifed upright.
"Sir!"
He slapped me across the face without pause. "Doctor."
"Cole," I said, furious suddenly. "I don't have to take this. I don't have to stay here. I don't need your money and I've got a life put together and I don't want this! It's not erotic and it's not –"
"For your benefit," he said and his voice was just short of a roar. "You think everything is about hurting or humiliating you. You think everything is a game simply because I'm a sexual sadist."
I had been halfway off the table but now I cringed back.
"You are putting yourself in harm's way. I understand what you're doing and Annie, rest assured if I thought you were doing it to help a billionaire who can ride out any storm thrown at him, I guarantee you I would out you so fast you'd never have a chance to go near any crooked trafficking judge. They'd all know you. I'd send text alerts. I'd put up billboards. I'd have feeds sent directly to their social media accounts."
I was staring at him, mouth open.
He reached out and grabbed my right boob, squeezing so tight I yelped and tried to pull free but that hurt too much and I stayed still. "You're mine," he growled.
I froze. I'd already been still. Now I was a statue.
"You are mine. You have promised to be mine. You have signed contracts to be mine. You have come back time after time when you didn't have to."
Everything I'd told myself. Spat back at me in fury.
"You're mine and I –"
His tongue hesitated on the edge of a word I silently begged him not to say. Not yet. Not now. Not ever, maybe, because it sure the fuck hadn't gone well before.
I drew in a shaky breath.
I watched the tension drain out of his body. "You're mine, and I take care of what's mine. I have invested in you, Annie Knox."
Invested?
"I care about what happens to you."
I let out the shaking breath I'd been holding. It wobbled as hard as it had going in.
"You're going to be raped going into this. You understand that. It's as inevitable as night and day."
I put one hand hard over my mouth, trying not to vomit up the fish I'd managed to force down. "This is what I can do."
I stared at him, feeling my eyes were doing deer in the headlights. Feeling my head was spinning out of control with fear and humiliation and excitement. Half wishing he'd take me off the table and spank me until I sobb
ed.
Half wishing he'd take me off the table and fuck me until I did the same.
Instead, he met my eyes. "Lie. Back. Down. Spread your legs."
And I did.
He was thorough. He was slow. He was, whatever he'd said, still making me endure it. When he finished, he pulled me to my feet and turned me around and bent me over the table. I felt all the fight go out of me as he snapped into a new pair of gloves. I heard the lid to the lube open. I felt his finger probing before it slid in, the digital exam of whatever it is doctors look for. I bit my lip, silent tears, saw him in the mirrors opposite the table, watching me as he slid his fingers in and out and I slammed my eyes closed tight.
Opened them again when he dragged my hips back to him, forced my back down and ass up, separated the cheeks and pulled on a different sort of protection than the gloves.
"No," I said. "No, don't."
He paused. Our eyes met in the mirror. They held for a long minute.
Then I cradled my head in my hands and felt him spread my ass cheeks wide before he thrust himself inside me.
36
Cole
I made her sleep beside me that night, chained to the bed. Plugged and spanked before I allowed her to disappear into sleep, hiding there.
She slept.
I didn't.
There was no point in waiting. Every day we didn't act more women disappeared. More were sold into situations that I'd already been fighting. Things that made my worst dreams, those things I never did, seem like child's play.
This was what I'd been raising money for. To fight the insidious evil that trafficking was. It was worldwide. I knew that. This would be a tiny section of it, roped off and stopped, however that ended up going down.
I didn't think Emily had ever fallen into anything like that. My sister's story had been drugs and prostitution but I thought even through that horror she’d still maintained herself, decided what she would and wouldn't accept.