by Sophia Reed
I realized he had let go of me. I was standing on my own. The cuffs were gone from my wrists, the chains swaying, cuffs empty.
I was standing on my own. In the playroom with Cole St. Martin, my ass hurting, my breath coming rough, my heart still pounding and my sex still wet and softly pulsing.
I stood where I had walked on my own and submitted because I chose to.
My eyes moved up slowly to see if he'd allow me to meet his eyes. He didn't stop me. When we were eye to eye, locked, he stroked my face again, leaned down and took my mouth with his, kissing me.
"You're Annie," he said, and pulled me against his sweat slicked chest. "My Annie."
"Yes, Sir," I said.
I was home.
* * *
The End
Bonus
Loving the Billionaire
A Deep Cover Story
Synopsis
Annie Knox
She's changed her entire life, looking for a way to submit to sexual sadist Cole St. Martin, billionaire pharmaceuticals CEO. In the beginning it was because he held the rainforest cure to her opiate addiction. By the time she was clean it was because he held the answer to her sexual fantasies, the ones that drove her from her vanilla fiancé and into the arms of a man willing to make her darkest dreams come true. Now Annie has to decide if she can submit to her Master without a contract in place, especially when he's asking her to do things she's never been asked before – and never been able to do.
* * *
Cole St. Martin
When he bought Annie Knox from a crooked cop, he didn't think she'd be any different than the other women who came and went from his rural Southern Nevada compound. Sexual submissives, they came to him broken and eventually left, whole. But before Annie he'd never really admitted he wanted to heal them, the way he hadn't been able to save his sister from her addictions. Before Annie, he hadn't admitted he was lonely despite friends and coworkers and all the people in his life. Before Annie he'd never had a submissive who wasn't submissive and who made him laugh with her sass – even as he corrected her behavior in the most painful ways possible.
Annie and Cole have been together for a couple years, returning to each other after she walked away and after he sent her away. Now it's time for both of them to decide whether their future is together – or apart.
* * *
Loving the Billionaire is the closing novella for the 6-book Deep Cover series.
1
Annie
Leaving Las Vegas. There's a movie called that, I thought, as I contemplated my phone. Everything I owned was in the suite of rooms where I was standing, the rooms into which I was locked any night I wasn't in Cole St. Martin's bed, or left tied to a St. Andrews Cross, my whip marks still puffing up red. Or set to stand in the corner, my hands behind my head until I sagged and fell asleep and Cole woke me with the hard slash of a cane across my naked ass. Sexual submissive, masochist, owned slave – there were terms that defined my existence but at the moment, freedom was beckoning.
I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
I shook my head and tried to force myself to attend to my task again. When contemplating what I would take with me to Quantico for DEA training, the answer was: Very little. My belongings made "minimalism" sound lavish.
Still, the room was stuffed with things. More than one laptop and two printers sat on an expansive walnut desk with brass fixtures, adored with a banker's lamp also trimmed with brass and a green glass shade. Full bookshelves and an even more full walk-in closet stuffed with everything from workout clothes to elegant gowns to top of the line bondage fetish gear.
Enough high heels to choke on, especially for someone who still can't walk on them, after all these years of trying.
But my possessions were still minimalist. B The room was expansive. For a "cell," somewhere I was locked in at night, it was beautifully appointed with a huge bed in one corner as if it were a studio apartment. More that when Cole wanted me on a bed, he wasn't going to wait to take me into another room. For all that we had been intimate on pretty much every piece of furniture and every wall in his vast rural Southern Nevada compound, he liked beds.
There was a bed in his pain and pleasure room, the playroom just off my cell.
Across from my bed, against the west wall, there were bookcases between doorways that led into Cole's secondary office, into a lavish and tastefully ornate bathroom, to the walk-in closet itself, stocked with bounty other women would drool to own.
To the right of the desk and behind it, across the length of room, was the locked door that led to a short sandy outdoor passage to the main compound by way of the guard shack. I was frequently paraded past that naked by Cole, and it never lost its ability to make me flame with embarrassment. There was never any way to know which guards were on duty behind the tinted glass. Did they know me? had they seen me stripped and punished or presented or played with before or was this new to them? Did they understand Cole St. Martin's sexual sadist behavior or were they thinking this was my idea, that I was a slut or something worse?
More important even than the locked door that led to the desert, to the left of the desk and down a short hallway there was passage into Cole's playroom or dungeon, whatever he wanted to call it. The place of my pleasures.
And punishments.
Not that he kept them all contained there.
But all the bounty in this suite, all my belongings, resulted in minimalism because they weren't my belongings. Everything in this suite of rooms belonged to Cole St. Martin.
Including me.
We'd been together for just under a year as July came around. Cole – Sir – would say going on three years and that was true. But I dated "together" as from the time I came back to him voluntarily and agreed to stay without a contract in place to keep me there.
I was staying with him, voluntarily becoming his submissive, his slave to him being Master, as long as he wanted me. In the past I'd run several times because I didn't understand I was making the decision. It didn't matter that Cole held the treatment for my opioid addiction and required me to be his sexual submissive if I wanted it. Or that he held other powers over me.
I would have continued to run because of the contracts.
I would have continued to return because if the lifestyle.
And because of him.
As soon as we agreed – painfully, and at the expense of my ass and many spankings – that we wouldn't have a contract and I'd stay because I said I would and because I wanted to and because my own code of discipline said it was what I deserved? I stayed.
I was in danger of staying even longer if I couldn't ever manage to pack.
"If you don't get what you're packing sorted out and spread on the sofa in the next three minutes, I'm going to come in there and punish you."
I jumped. "Spying, much?" I asked the empty room. There were cameras and mikes in my "refuge." I was constantly aware and then again, not aware. He'd used them judiciously in the beginning, to make certain his newest wounded sub didn't hurt herself, either intentionally or not. I was an addict. I could be trusted to do some weird shit back then.
Now? I still do weird shit. Mostly because I want to. Like submitting when Cole says he wants to try figging and then struggling to continue to submit when the ginger root shoved up inside me in more than one orifice begins to burn.
Or like graduating from UNLV with a degree in Criminal Justice. Now I had my BA as well as an extensive background as a deep cover narc with Seattle PD – retired! At the age of 25. The luck of good genes and a pixy face, curly dark hair, slim athletic figure meant at 25 I still had a year or two I'd be able to go undercover in high schools and when that ended I could probably do a year or two of junior colleges. That and the education and the background as a deep cover narc was enough: I had applied to the DEA and been accepted.
Thus the packing. I was leaving Las Vegas in two weeks for 18 weeks of training in Quantico. Just the idea gave me chills and I co
uldn't think what to pack. Normal clothes for classes – button down white shirts, khakis and jeans, boots – and workout clothes – t-shirts and shorts, sweats, running shorts, athletic shoes – though I thought a lot of t-shirts would probably be given out – dark blue with a gold DEA emblem. I was so looking forward to that.
I was also looking forward to the training, to 18 weeks of learning a new law enforcement agency. I'd be living, studying, training with professionals who did what I did. I'd be somewhere I belonged, among my peers. To me a bonus was the inclusion of all the promised hours on the gun range and all the hours physical training: weights workouts, martial arts beyond my black belt in Taekwon-Do, , even more ways to restrain someone than I'd learned at Seattle.
Born and raised in Seattle to a super cop I'd been the only one of four daughters to grow up to follow in his footsteps. It had been a long road to where I was now, and I'd managed to get addicted to fentanyl along the way, which led to a cure at the hands of Cole St. Martin, and "retirement" at the age of 25. If it hadn't been for that detour, I might have retired from Seattle after 10 or 20 years, married to Mark, my ex-fiancé, who understood my sexual needs about as well as I understood – oh, let's see: Nuclear physics?
Even happy in Cole's compound, I'd become restless lately. I wasn't attached to a law enforcement agency. I'd graduated college. It was time for something new. I wanted a change of pace, a change of scenery. I figured Virginia was as different from Southern Nevada as I could get.
At the same time, leaving Sir for that long?
I came out of my thoughts to find I was holding a stack of brief-style underpants and a stack of socks and just staring at my dresser, unmoving.
And Cole was at the door.
Shit. Three minutes were more than up.
"Why are you standing?"
His voice wasn't the cozy cuddly Cole. This was my Master. I instantly put the clothes neatly on the dresser top and sank to my knees, spreading them wide despite being dressed. Instead of putting my hands loosely on the tops of my thighs, open and submissive, I put them behind my head, laced tightly, elbows back, breasts jutting.
I knew I was in trouble.
"That's a start."
I hadn't seen his face yet but his voice was angry. Not playacting angry. It rarely was. If he was just playing and wanted to punish me or simply inflict pain, sexual or otherwise, he did so.
There was no need for role playing. The role was real. The roles never went away, 24/7. He could be my friend, my confidant, my partner in (solving) crime.
But he never stopped being my Master and those times I chose to put my concerns above that relationship, he reminded me. If it was an emergency or something urgent, he reminded me later, when the problem was past.
Very often, being forced to wait to correct his sub had a deleterious effect on said sub's backside.
The sound of his voice now said I'd missed his previous orders and screwed up, and it didn't matter if the initial screw up had been a trivial matter or even if he'd been half joking.
Because he wasn't joking now.
I kept my eyes trained on the ground and felt him pass close to me and continue down the hall to the playroom.
Shit.
He was back a couple minutes later. "Annie."
"Yes, sir?"
"Come here."
He was seated on the couch. I rose, dropping my hands to my sides, and went to stand in front of him.
"What did I tell you?"
"To finish deciding what to pack and have it spread out on the couch within three minutes. Sir."
"Why didn't you?" He sounded honestly curious.
I sighed to myself. "Because I'm distracted. I'm scared and happy and missing you ahead of time."
I heard him laugh softly under his breath, so maybe it wasn't too bad. "Aww, that's sweet. Now strip your jeans off and let me take a look at you, then get over my lap."
I didn't hesitate. It still made me blush bright red to strip in front of him, especially if we weren't headed to bed and a good time. He knew that. When he thought I needed extra correction, he made me stand in front of him, partly dressed, while he touched and manipulated my sex, looking closely, stroking his fingers through the wetness that automatically gathered there when he was present. Being half dressed with the t-shirt and athletic bra on and everything from the waist down removed made me feel all the more naked. Him being dressed while I was undressed or half dressed had always made me feel owned and used.
His fingers touched between my legs, uncovering everything to his view. My entire body suffused with heat. Satisfied, he ordered me over his lap. When I was face down, my hands holding his ankle, his other leg pinning my legs, he showed me what he had chosen. One of the short canes, just over twelve inches, natural wood, heavy as shit. He used them for intimate up close work, for spanking between my legs, or getting the strikes precise on my thighs and ass, or for punishing my nipples.
"Not a sound," he cautioned.
There was no way to be caned with a long or a short cane and not make noise. Grunts. Cries. Begging. Caning is one of the most deliciously painful punishments, especially when wielded by an expert. The initial thud or sting of cane, depending on its size, can be a wasp sting or a thud. Bearable, until the next burning, searing pain sinks in through the dual tracks of the cane strike and the agonized tissue in between.
It was impossible not to make noise.
He knew that. The directive was to make sure I failed. Whatever followed would be worse. Tied up. Strung up. Long canes. Misery stick. His belt.
His hand.
His hard, huge erection where I didn't want it and was still learning to take it without pain.
It was going to be a long painful afternoon.
So why was I grinning?
2
Cole
Damn I loved it when she disobeyed.
The marks from her last corrections had almost faded. Almost virgin canvas to color.
Color a lovely shade of red.
She made it to the sixth strike before she cried out.
"I'm going to punish you for that."
"Yes, Sir."
She sounded greedy. She'd changed from the lost, angry, soon-to-be ex-cop she'd been when she arrived a couple years earlier, strung out on painkillers, wanting above all to keep her life the way it was: In her father's shadow. Working for a police department that didn't truly understand how phenomenal she was. Hurting and seeking more hurt, punishing herself in ways that were self-destructive.
She'd fought every control I put on her, every order I gave her, and she still talked back, still fought the punishments for doing so, and still blushed so wonderfully, humiliated to her core when I stripped her in front of my circle of like-minded billionaire perverts, or paraded her naked past the guard shack, or took off her shorts on our desert runs at dawn, birching her lovely naked ass to make her run faster.
She was a pleasure to play with and to punish, to push her boundaries and to make her cry out, or just cry. Her brain was half the pleasure – she was brilliant and funny and she couldn't help herself: When her Master said jump, she didn't say How high? She said, What for?
Watching her bloom through control and pain and sadistic sex games, through situations she didn't think she could handle and some that went out of control, that had been a pleasure. Now she was ready to start the next phase of her career, and I was proud of her, if one can ever really be proud of something someone else has done.
I'd provided the space and the instruction. I'd taught her what her body could take and what it craved, then passed that and gave her what I wanted to, hurting her, punishing her, enjoying her tight ass and pained screams.
She'd done all the work of transformation. Changing into a miraculous and assured law enforcement agent. That was all her. I didn't think she realized that.
Or how much I'd miss her. Eighteen weeks of training for DEA. That was a third of a year. Not that I couldn't take my jet to Quantico any time th
e mood struck. But I wouldn't. She needed to concentrate, to immerse herself in the training. I thought she probably was light years ahead of all the other newbs but anything that would keep her safe.
Right. Safe and DEA agent are not synonymous.
It was what she wanted so it was what I wanted for her.
Before leaving for the Rainforest Day Spa and Wellness Centre I checked on Susan. It had been my business partner John Fleet's idea to open a spa and put in place more than just detoxing from day to day toxins.
We offered detox from opiates. There is surprisingly little regulation over such things. So while the FDA wanted approval over any new drugs before human trials and so on, they pretty much threw their hands up at the idea of policing tinctures and tisanes, herbal remedies and anything made out of vines that could be found in a jungle. Who had the time?
The latest of the sub's I'd found through the spa I opened with John Fleet, Susan was still dealing with her addiction. So far, then, she'd only had a few sessions with me, some where I required her to strip for medical exams before giving her the natural rainforest cures that would help her overcome – once and for all – her addiction to Oxy. She'd hurt her back working at the big book warehouse named for the river the rainforest contained and the company doctor had instantly put her on opiates. Then, overworked and underpaid like most doctors, he forgot to take her off of them.
Now she lived with me. And with Annie. The compound I'd bought and had built for myself was located 15 miles outside Las Vegas. Fifteen miles outside Las Vegas is already very rural. So I had a lot of land and a lot of protection and under the living quarters of the house, I had what Annie called a labyrinth of rooms that formed vertical layers and horizontal circles. I'd kept more than one woman there, some for their own protection. Some solely for my amusement.