by Sophia Reed
If I was fidgeting, it was his fault.
So not going to tell him that.
When breakfast ended Cole stacked his tablets, finished his coffee, finished his water, wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, and stood. His eyes met mine and I blinked twice, feeling like a cornered rabbit, and looked down. His hand moved into my field of vison. He helped me to my feet.
"Come with me."
Fear shot through me. We had finished yesterday, my punishment was over. Cole had even given me after care, and an earthshattering orgasm. I hadn't done anything since then – at all, let alone wrong. I hadn't done anything but sleep, and that had been both decreed and watched over by Cole himself. Cold dread formed in my stomach that he'd lead me into the playroom or worse, somewhere there were other people, maybe people he'd invited over on purpose, and there'd be paddles and –
I let him lead me. Unless I meant to leave, doing anything else would just make things worse. Sometimes after arguments with Mark we'd make up, clear the air between us, and go on with life. Only for the next day or two we'd find ourselves snapping or going back to cover the topics just one more time, a little more thoroughly. Maybe we'd each had our say but one or both of us didn't feel we'd had our say about everything. It was like that, only with Cole, when he said over, it was over. Reopening that can of worms would have consequences I wasn't prepared to accept.
If he decided it wasn't over, arguing would only prolong everything.
Maybe I was learning.
I was surprised when he lead me into the bathroom off my suite. I almost started to undress, then made myself stop and wait, hands by my sides, head down, gaze down. I'd undress when he told me to.
He did, but not the way I expected. Cole himself removed my clothes, his hands gentle as he moved my long, dark, increasingly wild curls off my shoulders and pulled my t-shirt over my head. He paused to run his fingertips over the bruising on my boobs but didn't stop to hurt or to soothe. He instead pulled off my jeans, leaving them in a pile, and then my panties, which made my face flame with embarrassment.
Which made no sense. Only yesterday he'd done so many things to me and I had been naked the whole time and he had been clothed. He'd made me come, using his hands.
What did I have to hide?
But my cheeks flamed as I stood, letting him undress me. When I was naked, he took off his button down, his jeans and his briefs, neatly folding them and placing them on a shelving unit.
"Come on, Annie," he said, and held a hand out, leading me into the shower. Surprised, I followed, and Cole set both shower heads going so we both had spray.
The hot water did everything the caffeine and strawberries hadn't. It woke me up and it made the pain start to lose its grip on the places that had been punished. I was happy to bear the marks, to see the bruising and the handful of cuts from the cane. I was happy to sit on my punished ass, however it might hurt at the moment. But having the stiffness and soreness wash away was fine with me.
I took the soap in the shower, prepared to wash every inch of Cole's beautiful body, and to pay especial attention to a certain part of him. But he took the soap back and exchanged it for a body wash, one that smelled of jasmine and another that smelled of ocean water. He mixed them together in a heady scent and used them in my hair, gently on my face, on my sore nipples, under my arms, between my legs, down my legs to my knees. What he washed he rinsed and what he rinsed he kissed.
When we stepped out of the shower he toweled my hair dry and wrapped me modestly in a robe, pulled on a pair of sweat pants and led me into the room just off the bathroom. I followed, half dozy, half apprehensive.
He picked me up and lowered me gently onto the massage table. It was covered in soft blankets, and gently warm. He peeled away the robe and rolled me onto my stomach.
"Put your head in the hole," he told me. "Just relax."
I wasn't certain I had ever once been relaxed around Cole St. Martin. But I did as he said and he draped a towel over my lower back, ass and the top of my legs. I heard him moving around the room. Morning sunlight came through the skylight. Even on a cool October morning it felt good, and the table was warmed and the blankets soft. I was almost asleep when he started.
His hands, covered in warmed oil, began gently working my neck. His fingers went in circles, rubbing out stress, rubbing in oil, edging just into my hair. He was so close and so gentle. When he started to speak, it took me by surprise.
"I've had my people hacking into judicial systems here in the Valley," he said. His lips were against my ear, his breath warm. His hands moved down a little, starting to work my traps.
I was still relaxed, but my focus had changed. I was actively listening. This was what I'd wanted to know, the topic that had sparked the confrontation that led to everything happening.
"Nobody seems to know the exact number of judges in the ring, but none of them are as high as the State Supreme Court." He smoothed over a couple of tense places with his thumbs, warm, slow circles.
I thought to myself that State Supreme Court had fewer judges than the lower courts, and that it might be the highest state court, but there were federal courts as well, both the federal court itself with branches in Northern Nevada and Southern Nevada, and the bankruptcy court, also a federal court and also at both ends of the state. That was a lot of judges, and it added a lot more chances for judges to be part of it.
I didn't mention this. It was too much trouble to speak. Also I didn't offer my opinion that there could be bad cops and good cops being blackmailed and professional people from other areas, like medical, who had access to people's personal information as well as access to people in vulnerable situations. He'd undoubtedly thought of it.
His hands moved down to my shoulder blades. Still warm and caressing, but somehow speeding up.
"The number of girls disappearing has remained steady over the months. No one had gotten greedy."
Sliding his hands down to my waist, moving them outward in circular motions, driving out tension. I melted into the table.
"The first girl went missing just about fifteen months ago. One or two a month. A nice tidy nest egg for somebody, I guess."
I thought it was more likely that the other professions filled in, or there was a trail he hadn't discovered yet. It was way too hard to convince myself to speak. I'd have time to say all this.
Cole's thumbs slid down, warm and oily, to the spot just above the twin dimples most people have on their ass, the place where tension gathers and refuses to relinquish its hold. I sighed into the sensation.
"There's a good chance the police are in on it," he said.
That I almost answered because we already knew they were. It was the police who had twice taken me before lustful, trafficker judges. Before I could decide whether to stir and speak or wait until a later discussion, Cole said, "Of course we know the police are involved. But it seems there's more of those of Samuel's ilk who are taking matters into their own hands."
His hands were moving harder on my skin, thumbs digging in like a deep tissue massage, which definitely wasn't what my ass needed. I tried to shift, the most delicate protest, and Cole's hands pinned me to the table.
"More than thirty-five girls if we're reading it correctly. Thirty-five young women." His hands slipped down and I froze, then started to try and move from him. The massage continued inexorably, his thumbs and then knuckles beginning to dig into my bruised ass. I sucked in air.
"Then you figure the ones we don't know about from the sources we can't name. What does that make it if we double it?" I both wanted information and to distract myself.
It didn't completely work. His hands were so intent. I moaned, under my breath. His massage had turned to knuckles rubbing over and over at the welts on my ass, reawakening the weird itching pain that made me want to run and run and run to get away from the anxious sensation.
"There's not enough information my hackers can find. Not enough to lead us to them but enough to make us think somethin
g else."
I thought I knew what was coming. The idea of some of the missing girls, those with Have you seen posters, would eventually turn up, and not alive.
Cole's knuckles traveled down and now he was massaging between my legs, hard, insistent, making me flinch and try to crawl away at the same time I wanted to push back against him, feel his knuckles there, rub myself against him. He kept pushing harder, increasing the pressure. My breath started to come very short.
"Seems possible there's something outside Nevada, participation on a worldwide scale. That could mean organized crime." His voice was still low.
His knuckles pressed into me now rhythmically, pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing, fucking me without entering me. I couldn't hold still. My hips pistoned up and down, keeping his pressure on me, keeping him in contact with everything from front to back, catching the pressure on every spot that wanted it.
He shifted so he was standing more behind me than beside me. His other hand came down, easily slipping between my cheeks. His knuckles began to push there, too. For a second I stopped, uncertain. Unwilling. And then I was shoving against him, feeling my heartrate climb, my body heat, my blood race.
"You'll need to go in like you did before. Get picked up somehow. I'm worried about that."
"What?" The word came out easily because he'd surprised me. Cole St. Martin didn't admit to worrying.
"You've been into the system twice. Through fake booking. If those records exist somewhere they'll know who you are and that after one of your busts, a judge vanished, and after another part of the ring was taken down."
"I'll. Be. Careful." My hips were rocking hard, maximum motion to connect with his knuckles where he rubbed them hard against me, hurting and pleasuring and everything in me gathering up and starting to tense, ready, ready.
"How? How can you be careful?" He sounded reasonable. Like he wasn't doing to me what he was doing.
"Contacts," I said, breathless. "Colored." I could only make my brown eyes darker. "I'll go blond. It distracts. Ahh! Men. And." What the fuck was I thinking? Trying to think? Oh, right – "I can get a basic. Tat. Tattoo? One that. Can. Oh. Oh, oh." Rocking. His knuckles so hard. Nothing inside me. "Can be made more complex if I need another. Cover. Some." God! "Time!"
"You're going to do it?"
"Yes!"
"You'll go undercover?" His knuckles, harder, faster, impossible, so much friction building up.
"Yes!"
Pause. He almost stilled. I almost screamed. "And you will come back to me?"
The way he said it. That was new. That was different. That wasn't traditional Cole.
I didn't care. I really, really didn't care. "Yes!"
"Okay, then," he said. And like magic he unfolded all his fingers. Two went into one place and three went into another and I screamed, pulsing from head to toe, feeling the orgasm like something that raced through every nerve ending, every pleasure center. Every inch of me.
I pulsed. I writhed. I rode his fingers shamelessly.
Best. Massage. Ever.
8
Cole
"I need information on Judge Cynthia MacPherson, and on Judge Dane Billings," I told my researchers. "Background, time off, vacations, what they drive, where they go when they're not at work, who they're seeing, especially if they're not seeing anyone. Have they ever been written up or whatever the judicial thing is."
"Censure, I think," April said. She was young, Asian, tiny in a compact and organized kind of way. She had a mind like a steel trap and used some of it to remember very dirty jokes.
"We're also looking over the relationship between each judge and all police departments in the Valley," Scott said. He was my chief of security, a big, hulking, almost redhead who gave Annie the shudders just looking at him. She hadn't said anything. I'd just seen it. I was planning to make her strip in front of him one day when I knew he was on camera and she knew it but he wouldn't know it was for him. I'd seen him look at her, and knew he found her beautiful. She was. But just undressing her with him present would embarrass him.
I wanted to embarrass her.
But not until she came back from her undercover. It was coming up in less than a week as October moved inexorably toward November. I wasn't looking forward to her going in. She'd be marked, a tracker implanted, but things can malfunction, too thick of concrete and steel can block signals, and when you care about somebody, suddenly everything you'd have watched just because it made sense was everything you watched because fear and paranoia said if you didn't, the person you cared for would pay the price.
Cared for. I bought Annie Knox from a bad cop and used her as a human guinea pig for a rainforest opiate cure I was 99 percent certain would work. She'd refused to believe I owned her and I'd put together a contract that I made her sign so that she got the treatment in return for my getting to make her my sub.
Even after that she left me more than once, heading to California or back to Washington state, coming back when need was bad or when my life was threatened by a psychopath with a violent hatred for both of us.
Now Scott was telling me how we could keep Annie safe. The very fact that even as he spoke the voice in my head demanded, What if it doesn't work? Spelled out the trouble I was in. Annie Knox was just under my roof and sometimes in my bed.
She was taking up residence in my heart, and I didn't know how I felt about that.
I ran her the next morning. Sometimes we ran together at dawn, companionably racing each other and falling back to work on endurance rather than speed. Other times I pushed her, coached her, forced her to run faster or farther than she thought she could. Usually it was faster. As if was she had the endurance to do an ultramarathon if she wanted.
This morning I just wanted to be out in the desert with her. This was something we did together, even if I was sometimes her master rather than her training partner.
There'd be no enemas this morning, no forced breakfast she didn't like. There'd be a maintenance spanking, because anything else would freak her out, and probably me, too. Annie was assuming her cover the next day, which would require going to her classes in part dressed as her undercover persona. It seemed unlikely her classmates wouldn't notice some of the changes. That seemed a risk, but one she insisted she was willing to take, mostly because she wasn't willing to miss going to her criminal justice classes at UNLV.
"How far are we going?"
She wasn't even breathing hard. "Until you're panting," I told her.
She grinned. "Shouldn't we be somewhere else for that? Sir?"
I laughed at her. She was light and happy in the cool morning. I refused to believe it was because she would be away from me within the next day or so, but rather that she was happy to be doing her work again, as she saw it.
"Run faster, little girl. Or I'll find a nice stick and take your shorts right off you." It wasn't an idle threat. The desire to have her over my knee without giving her any pleasure in the process was growing. Something to remind her who was boss and something to remind her what to come back to.
Instead of running faster, she danced in place for a minute. "Don't push me," I warned, but I was laughing and she heard it. Next second she turned and ran, setting the pace, heading back away from the compound. I didn't know how long we'd been out and running. She had more endurance than I did. I watched her ass moving under the silky shorts with appreciation and followed.
Cook brought in fish, because I could, but it was centrally served and so was bacon and strawberries, croissants and eggs, orange juice and coffee. Under a special silver platter cover there was a special treat.
"Pop-Tarts!" She couldn't have sounded more amazed if she'd pulled off the cover and found fairies. "You're the best!"
I smiled. "You can have them in just a minute."
Her smile didn't falter but her eyebrows went up. "Sir?"
I pushed back from the table and patted my lap. "Shorts and panties down. Not off. Maintenance time."
She sw
allowed and I could see easily on her face that places she didn't look. At the camera pointed directly at the table from across the room. At the swinging door that separated dining room from cook's domain of kitchen. We'd done this before, but with guards she knew and never with a cook still serving.
"I'm waiting," I said. "Three. Two."
Annie shot out of her chair and circled the table to stand beside my chair. I noticed she went the long way around and smiled to myself. It was a long table but it still only bought her a few seconds before the pain and humiliation would start.
"Sir?"
The question caused me to stand, move my chair farther back from the table, and turn it so her naked ass would be pointed at the camera.
Annie got the message. She dropped her gaze, swallowed once, hard, and slid her shorts and panties down to her knees, keeping them there by spreading her legs the way she hated. In the beginning when I ordered her to keep them at her knees, she tried to do so by squeezing her legs together.
As if I'd allow that. I patted my lap and she draped herself over it. I heard the swoosh of the door between kitchen and dining room and only the smallest of pauses before Cook came all the way in to deposit a fresh pot of coffee. I looked up and caught her eye. She hadn't know exactly what she was getting into when she signed on, but she knew something of it. Her eyes were on Annie's ass, tracing the lines, looking with pleasure between her separated thighs.
I smiled. When she looked up, she didn't blush, but smiled back at me.
"That will be all, Cook. Thank you."
"Sir," she said, and disappeared back into her kitchen.
Annie let out a small moan.
I just laughed at her. "How does 50 sound this morning?" It was two days past her punishment.