by Sophia Reed
It was something we believed in, and something that amused us.
I was looking forward to the evening.
33
Annie
The seamstress was back. I'd seen her heading into the closet with a book. Apparently she was simply going to hang out in there, waiting for me to be finished with everything else.
The dinner party was scheduled for eight. The day outside was overcast and chill with rain falling occasionally. The idea of trying to run across the endless miles of empty desert in the dark in such weather was daunting, but for some reason, it had been on my mind for most of the day.
I didn't think that boded well.
The first person in was the masseuse. Most of the time, anyone Cole brought in to work with me on anything at all was a woman. Maybe it was jealousy. Maybe he just didn't want to contend with other males.
This masseuse was a man and I was uncomfortable already.
He was polite, tall and imposing, with a beautiful body under his tight t-shirt and loose scrubs pants. He met me at five at the massage table. Cole hadn't shared with me the schedule. That didn’t matter because there was nowhere else for me to be today. I knew the dinner was in the evening and he'd told me many of the things that would happen. This was a formality. He could do whatever he wanted.
"I'm John," he said and I supposed he could be. It was a common name. Common enough to be suspicious.
"Hello." No point in giving him my name. He already knew it. "I'll just go slip on a robe." I turned away, already wondering that I hadn't seen a number of sheets, one on the table, one that he'd hold up for me to take off my robe behind.
"Not necessary. Please take your clothes off."
I turned back and looked at him. Big, imposing, kind of good looking, like a younger version of Jake Tapper. "Excuse me?" I had no idea why I was surprised, but I was. He was a version of the help. He wasn't supposed to be involved in –
He leaned down into my face. "Take your clothes off."
When I didn't move, frozen in place, he said, "Strip."
I wasted time looking around as if after all this time someone was finally going to come and save me from some indignity or another. In the beginning I had assumed that eventually the painful shyness and humiliation from being forced to be naked in front of people, both familiar and strangers, would pass.
I was wrong. Every encounter was fresh and painful.
John grabbed my upper arm. "St. Martin doesn't want you marked for tonight. So you won't be punished right now. But everyone you're dealing with is keeping a running tally and rest assured, you will be taken in hand when the evening is over." His eyes softened in a moment of the most absurdly fake compassion I had ever seen. At least I knew that even Cole couldn't always hire the very best. "Why not make it easy on yourself? You know it's going to happen eventually." He looked at me frankly. "Strip."
I did. By the time I looked up at hm, hating myself but needing to make certain I had to lose the underpants, my knees were shaking and he had to help me onto the table. I lay face down and he began working my shoulders and neck, arms and back, the usual soothing massage not quite doing it this time. Eventually he dropped lower, massaging my calves, which always felt good with all the running and I thought maybe I could relax, maybe this part of it was nothing more than an unorthodox way of doing massage.
Then he spread my legs and began to massage my inner thighs, hard, pinching without bruising, just hard enough to make me squirm. He went on to run his hands over my ass, separating my cheeks and digging his fingers in to get handfuls of me.
My face burning, I thought of all the things I would do when I was free again and armed again and could find – a masseuse named John. In a town the size of Las Vegas.
Maybe not.
I was waiting for him to tell me to turn over but he didn't. He finished the too close, too familiar massage and laid my robe back across my body then disappeared before I managed to sit up.
Fuck.
Because instantly he was followed by a woman who was, she said, named Mary. They could at least be inventive with their fake names. Mary took my hand and helped me down from the table, leading me over to the tub.
"Just get in and relax for a few minutes," she said and I met her eyes.
"You're kidding, right?"
She had the decency to color, at least, but from what I could tell, the people Cole hired were either sadists themselves or paid enough they didn't care what they did.
I sank down into the water, relieved at the warmth and floating. Mary bustled around the enormous bathroom, collecting things, and I watched her, half worried, half too relaxed to worry.
Until she came back with a wheeled cart and a tray on it covered with a towel. In a torture porn movie, that tray would be covered with wicked implements. In a straight up porn flick it would be sex toys.
I had no idea what to expect here but the cop in me was on full alert.
"Chill," Mary said. "I'm going to start by washing your hair. There's nothing you can do anyway, so why work yourself into a lather." She thought about what she'd just said, our eyes met, and we both laughed. "Okay, bad choice of words," she said as she poured water over my head and lathered up the shampoo.
That part was rather lovely, sitting in a warm tub and having my hair washed and conditioned. When she finished, she instructed me to stand and used the hand attachment on me, spraying every area before she began lathering and washing everything.
Everything.
She washed and rinsed my arms, my shoulders, my back, down the crack of my ass and into my most private places. She washed my boobs and under them and then down the front of my body until my face was hotter than the water and the sprayer was washing out the soap.
When she finished with the washing, she pulled out a grooming tool and had me sit on the edge of the tub, legs spread, while she shaved off every bit of hair, then led me to kneel on the mat, hands and knees, while she made sure there was no hair anywhere else, either.
Face flaming, I tried to rise, only to feel her hand on my back.
"Not quite yet," she said. "I have to prepare the enema."
34
Annie
The makeup woman was a genius. I'd never known my eyes could look like that. Huddled in my fluffy robe, watching the elegant black woman transform my face, I actually enjoyed myself. Her name was Evie, which she winced as she told me, so it might have been her real name.
Too bad. She was the first one I didn't want to take revenge on.
After Evie came the hairdresser who designed a romance novel's cover art design out of my hair, leaving bits of it curling down and bits of it cascading from invisible pins. My average mousy dark curls had grown during my captivity and she made the most of them.
The sun was long gone, the November night full of rainstorms and thunder. Sourly I thought it was impressive that Cole was rich enough to force the weather to perform on command. There was no way I could try my luck in the desert in this weather.
The seamstress was back to take care of any last minute problems. I still hadn't seen the dress in its entirety. It had been locked into a closet since last I'd seen the nasty little gnome of a woman.
The dress was beautiful.
What there was of it.
The skirt was long and apricot colored, sweeping down from my waist to the floor, raised just enough in the front to show the peep of satin stiletto-heeled pumps dyed one shade darker.
The top of the dress was a halter, looping around my neck and coming down over my breasts, the back completely open.
The top of the dress was made of completely sheer material. I stared in horror at myself in the mirror the gnome had finally opened up. I'd look less naked if I was completely topless than with the gossamer fabric leading the eye.
The material bunched at the clasp in the back, spreading downwards to surround each breast, so little folds and pleats both hid and revealed, randomly, and would change as I moved, breathed. Seethed.
Panic filled me. Cole had told me there'd be five other couples attending the party. That meant ten people in the dining room with me, sitting at dinner, looking at me.
I couldn't do this. This wasn't my fear the first time I had sex with Jesse or the fear I had the first time I walked into a buy as an undercover narc.
This was humiliation and fear and panic and everything else all jumbled together and no time left to find something else, no time to tell them I couldn't do this, but the seamstress was right here, her eye critically running over me and the dress as a unit.
"I can't wear this," I said in a rush, bending down to talk directly into her face. "Please. I can't go out there like this, it's too embarrassing, please help me, if I – "
She finally looked up from surveying the fall of the dress and met my eye and I knew instantly what she would say.
"He wants you unmarked for tonight. We're all to track your behavior and report." Her dark eyes held no expression.
I tried again, to reach her, this time on a different track, no less frantic. "Please. Please. If you can't fix the dress, if you can't give me something to wear over it, then please, please don't tell him about this."
I didn't realize I'd grabbed both of her arms until she looked up again, this time from my hands to my face. What I saw this time wasn't a lack of emotion but a pleasure. "Every word," she said. "Every action. And you might want to let go of me."
I did. I let go and I stepped back. My hands went up to my chest, hovering, and then my arms crossed over it.
"Don't be stupid," she said. She took one last walk around me as if I were nothing more than a mannequin, then she nodded to herself, packed up her stuff, and left.
I sat waiting for Cole to come fetch me.
"You look beautiful tonight," he told me as he entered the cell.
I stood waiting, not daring to crush the back of the dress. My hands still hovered, uncertain what to do with themselves.
"I hear there's been some trouble."
I blew out a sigh, still keyed up, trembling.
"Not speaking? That's fine. You'll find you have little to say at the party." He surveyed me again. "If you cover up, you'll regret it."
I had no doubt as to what that meant.
Our guests arrived in a flurry of activity over a twenty minute period. Cole had said there were all types of relationships and I watched, curious, to see if there was anyone I might be able to make a confidant.
The dress had imprinted itself on me. I burned with humiliation from the moment the first guests were led inside.
I wasn't able to completely keep straight the names and faces, but Cole had said it wouldn't matter and largely it didn't. He had staff to serve dinner, and a bartender to make drinks. There were maids and a doorman. I didn't have to interact much. In fact, he didn't seem to want me to and none of the other women did either.
The first couple to arrive were amazing, a tall, distinguished, silver haired man and his wife, easily twenty years his junior but still in her forties or early fifties. The work that had been done to her was exquisite and aided by good genetics, I guessed. Her hair was honey colored, her skin flawless, her breasts high and proud under her dress. Her husband wore an expensive suit, and an arrogant sneer that somehow made him more sexual than simply horrible.
His wife followed where he went, her head down, a step or two behind him. When he wanted something, she retrieved it promptly. When addressed, she was polite, articulate, friendly, beautiful. When dismissed, she disappeared.
I felt a frisson of angst travel my entire body. I had spent years working to be one of the guys within PD, to be accepted and not treated as the girl, the token girl, the pain in the ass girl, the one to be protected, or the one to be despised for getting herself inserted into the man's world.
Even so, even with the work I'd done, I still wasn't accepted totally. When my Taekwon-do instructor had forgotten himself while talking to me one night in the otherwise empty gym and simply taken off his uniform pants to slide on jeans, never missing a word of his conversation, I felt that I had made it.
And here I had lost all of it. We all had. The women in the room were decorations. Pets. Slaves.
Rage was starting to build.
I wondered if Cole would find that healthy. Or simply dismiss it. Or punish me for it.
The second couple was a young biracial pair. He was male model nondescript, pretty but forgettable, working some job in politics and obviously rich. I didn't recognize him and he was no more interested in me. The woman he was with was his wife, a svelte, muscled black woman with ebony skin oiled to a luster. Her gaze on him was avid and ferocious. Her expression as she looked at the men, respectful; at the rest of us women, contemptuous.
I was not going to find help in this group.
The other three men were rich and well kept, probably older than fifty, and maintained by expensive coaches, expensive trainers, expensive food, expensive everything. Only one of them stood out, a man with cruel eyes I'd seen in too many dealers and too many users. Cruel eyes, cruel smile. I looked to see which of the women was with him.
The women with them were probably not wives. They were all three young, white, some shade of blond. One wore a backless dress that showed off whip marks on her back. When she moved to stand with her man, it was to stand with the cruel blond haired man. No surprise. Another of the women wore an elegant dress, beautiful and long and black and sweeping, well paired with the shiny silver collar and leash. The last girl wore only a skirt, and her nipples were clamped.
The weirdness, I thought, was just beginning.
Dinner was long and utterly dull. After all the weeks with barely any information from the outside world, it turned out the outside world hadn't changed all that much. The presidential administration was still shit, the world was still a dumpster fire, people were undoubtedly still OD-ing and selling drugs to kids, and I was in here, doing something I thought would help me and now doing something I thought absurd.
This wasn't recovery. It wasn't even rough sex, since I wasn't having sex with Cole St. Martin and now I had no desire to ever do so. I was sickened by the excesses of the evening and furious at myself for ever having gotten into a situation where some little shit like Samuels could "sell me."
There was no way anything I had signed could be binding. I sat gripping my wine glass so hard it should have shattered, watching bright women study their plates and boorish men hold forth on topics they knew shit about.
When the topless girl was slapped and her tits slapped for having sneezed once, and the black woman required to take all her clothes off and kneel behind her man's chair for having the temerity to pass him the salt at the wrong time, I stood.
Enough. It was raining and thundering out. If I had to move through the storm, I would. If everyone came to whatever was left of their over privileged senses, I'd use a phone and call a cab.
If I couldn't do that, I just might call the police. Cole didn't know it but I had brought my badge. It was hidden away in my cell. Even if it wasn't, it would be easy to prove who I was. Even if he could hide my existence with Seattle PD, he couldn't do anything about Mark or my parents.
"What are you doing?" Cole asked.
I placed my napkin politely beside my plate. "I'm leaving this shit show and anyone who wants to go with me – women, of course – is welcome. This has nothing to do with my recovery and nothing to do with 'lifestyle.'" I looked from one to the next, finishing with Cole. "This is abuse," I said. "And I'm finished."
I moved to the hallway, plucking a hoodie I sometimes wore for our morning runs from the coat rack and feeling blessed relief as something covered up my torso. I started to turn back to see if any of the women had the guts to follow me, trying my damnedest to remember what I'd heard of names and descriptions, because this didn't end with me just walking out, not if there was even one girl left behind.
That's when Cole grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into the wall alongside t
he coat rack.
"You're not going anywhere," he said. "There's an auction to get through and then I believe you and I need to have a very serious chat."
I opened my mouth to reply but the guard on the other side of me moved in close and the tip of the hypodermic went into my upper arm.
"Just enough to make her cooperate," Cole said. "I want her aware."
"Got it, boss," the man said.
The world grayed away.
35
Annie
"The bidding starts at one million dollars," a voice said.
I shook my head but nothing became much clearer.
"I see one million, do I see one-point-five?"
Auctioneer, said a helpful internal voice. You're listening to the voice of an auctioneer. "Thank you, I see – "
I tuned it out. There was a sense of missing time bothering me but more than that, the fact that the time missing had been short. I was pretty sure I was same place, same night, probably somewhere in the same hour as when I'd been trying to escape.
Which was what? I asked myself and this time the helpful internal voice had nothing to say except, Open your eyes.
I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was the black girl who had come in with the blandly beautiful man I thought I recognized from somewhere.
He was no longer of any importance at all to me. She was. Because she was trussed to a post, standing on a makeshift stage where the dining table had been, completely naked and the same group of people were bidding on her.
What the fuck? Because if it was an auction, it was between only the people who had come here for dinner tonight. If they wanted to participate in wife swapping or partner trading, why not just fucking do so?
The answer became apparent when I saw the screen behind the girl, a double feed showing us in the room and tiny thumbnails of people all over the world bidding.
