by Sophia Reed
She had her teeth. Set on his junk, because she was too short to reach his neck.
St. Martin breathed fitfully.
The guards, male every one and no doubt wincing to themselves, backed off.
It took another girl, someone without balls or cock, to step forward and tap Kie on the shoulder, assuming she'd be so surprised she'd let go.
It didn't quite play out that way. She let go, but only because she turned on me, hissing, growling, gone feral and animal, her face a mask of panic and anger.
I slugged her in the mouth. Her teeth grazed my knuckles but she dropped, fell straight down and lay on the floor, mewling. Mostly unconscious.
My own breathing sounded harsh in the hallway.
20
Cole
Now, we had a problem.
Not just what to do with Kie.
But what to do about Annie, who thought so little of the contract she'd signed that she refused to follow orders to stay behind. That she'd followed Jason and me into the maze.
That she'd been right.
21
Annie
That evening there was a round table of sorts. Six guards, Jason, Theo, four I didn't know – for all I knew, St. Martin had recruited them from Kie's crew. I didn't know what had happened to those men and that seemed dangerous enough for me to ask.
When the time was right.
St. Martin sat at the table with us. Everyone had a beverage, though most chose water or at most a Coke Zero. For all that there's an obesity epidemic in the US, it was a healthy, fit, fantastic looking table.
"I have been planning to take her to Hennings," St. Martin said.
It was the first I'd heard the other billionaire's name, but it did me no good. Even this far into the game I didn't know the names of all the billionaires in the world. I didn't even know the names of all the kinky ones in the valley who got together with St. Martin.
He was waiting for input and the men at the table were waiting for direction. When St. Martin lost his patience smacked the flat of his hand hard on the table and demanded they give him ideas, all of us jumped.
"Why not send her where you meant to, Sir?" I asked. It had been the plan. A complete sexual sadist with a desire for his own sub who'd put up with everything. Sounded like a match made in – well, hell, but like they'd both enjoy it.
Like I'd enjoyed hitting Kie. Had to admit it. I hadn't liked St. Martin cleaning the wound with straight rubbing alcohol, the scrape I'd gotten from Kie's teeth, but he was right to do it.
For a minute I thought he wasn't going to answer me, and I could feel the blush trying to creep up my neck from his ignoring me. But after a second he said, "She's a liability. She's dangerous. How in good faith do I send her to someone? Even with a warning?"
His eyes met mine and stared me down.
"Because that's what the other person is looking for," Jason said, an unexpected ally. He met my eyes across the table, expressionless. "You need her gone. Hennings needs a sub. Send her with full warnings and tell the truth. I don't see the problem."
St. Martin looked like he saw a problem, but he'd asked for input and he was getting it. Not like he could complain.
Over the next twenty minutes plans were made and scrapped. There was talk about what had happened to Vincent Geddes' estate and whether a talented hacker could claim it for her. Insanely, St. Martin was considering whether setting Kie up with her own place somewhere in France, hiring guards to stay there and "make certain she didn't leave" but allowing her a life of her own – lonely but taken care of and autonomous.
"You're kidding, right?" It was out before I even had a chance to think of stopping it. When they were all looking at me, I went ahead and sealed my fate. "You might as well trust a scorpion not to sting you." Everyone knew that story, right? "Or – or a wasp or – or – " Everything I was thinking of was a stinging thing. Like a jellyfish. I was looking for something else and not coming up with it.
The guards were watching me like I was an amazing talking houseplant.
St. Martin was watching me like I was an amazing idiot. He was probably closer to right.
That was the difference, I thought. Between me and the billionaires. Between me and St. Martin or even me and Cole when he wasn't the new and terrifying version of himself.
Contract or not, this would remain a game to me.
Maybe not a game. But nothing real, either. To me, it was part time. Or at least, dependent on logic. I wasn't ready to look at the equation as in Say St. Martin wants to hurt, and say I, just for shits and giggles, want to be hurt. Surely in the event of an emergency –
But I couldn't look at it that way yet. He believed that he owned me. I believed that for reasons I did not yet understand, I wanted to be here. I found this to be more home than Seattle and the people I had there. As a result, I was here, under his control.
But it didn't spread farther than that for me. If the house was burning down and we were both in it, I wasn't going to wait on some stupid, make believe protocol before I was "allowed" to raise the alarm. If the house was burning down, I was going to scream bloody murder, wake everyone, grab things that needed to be kept safe, like St. Martin himself, whose self preservation I was beginning to question. If it came to that, I'd throw off the mantle of sub, or slave, or property. I thought logic and life outweighed a game of make believe.
I should know. Being undercover, being deep cover, those were all games of make believe. Dangerous, deadly games with outcomes upon which lives mattered.
The same could be said now. When a dangerous person needed to be controlled and I could control her, I was going to do so. When there needed to be a decision made and I had input, I was going to give it.
St. Martin felt I shouldn't. How far did that extend? If I noticed the compound really had caught on fire, what did St. Martin think? Did he imagine I would kneel at his feet and hoped he would express his desire to hear what I obviously urgently needed to tell him? Because that wasn't going to happen. It wasn't just that I had too much of a sense of self-preservation, but that for whatever reason, I cared too much to let him be hurt.
"You may leave the table," St. Martin said.
Once in a rare while, I really see red. I stood, and smacked my hand down on the table the same way he had. My eyes took in all the guards there. "Talk some sense into him," I said. "Before he gets all of us killed."
They looked like I'd just thrown a live grenade into their midst. I snorted at them and left the table, a ringing silence in my wake.
For the rest of the afternoon I paced and worried and waited for the summons. When it didn't come I worked on the heavy bag for a while, then lifted, then even tried some yoga, and when that didn't work, I changed into running clothes and went looking for the guard who would open the cell door and let me out into the desert. Not like there was much of anywhere I could go out there. Or like there weren't cameras capable of following nearly the entire run.
There was no one at the controls. That made me swallow hard over a dry throat, a ratcheting sound. If there was nobody at that camera, there was no one to open the cell from the outside and no one inside to open it from within. What if I needed help?
I tried the door.
It was unlocked.
This is a bad idea.
Yeah. But the son of a bitch sent me away, devalued everything I'd said in front of the guards.
I stood for about three seconds of indecision.
Then I went for a run.
22
Cole
I was waiting for her when she got back.
The anger that was always with me now kept building the longer she was gone. In the security office, the guards could monitor her, track her every move, see where she was running, whether she was following trails or heading for Las Vegas as she had once before.
They'd been told not to track her. The only cameras on were the ones directly outside the compound. Just in case Kie, who seemed somehow magical, had contacted ye
t more men and somehow found yet more of Vincent's money to pay them with.
At two hours I stopped waiting for Annie. Having only sat waiting, watching the clock, I rose stiffly and contacted Hennings' people.
"You're still looking for that collectible?" The world has laughed at some ultra rich men who claim they're being surveilled, but it happens, with surprising regularity. When you have more money than almost anyone else, the urge to take you down – or just take away the money – through real or imagined crimes, is almost irresistible, even to people who otherwise are decent.
Hennings listened to the fact that I'd located a collectible that might be like what he was looking for, and that the condition was at best delicate. He said he'd get back to me and named a date and time, which I knew meant he'd be here then.
At three hours, Annie came back. No doubt she'd walked a good part of the run. The last few weeks of activity had left her out of shape. The fact that she'd used her rebellion to try and mitigate that was at least something in her favor.
She came through the door into her cell with her head down, breathing hard. The camera at the door was on, scanning just the immediate perimeter. Paranoia was high enough with forces arraying themselves in my own compound. At the very least I wanted to know what was going on right outside my own front door, even if for now, I wanted to know very little more.
I watched her approach on the monitor that hung there. She was halfway across the room before she looked up and saw me. Her expression changed. I hadn't been able to read the look on her face when she entered. But it was maybe one of profound concentration. Annie said her work gave her time to be alone. Even when she infiltrated a gang and was as accepted into the fold as anyone else, she was quiet because quiet was safer than loud. Loud could lead to a mistake and a mistake could lead to her death. She'd said it as if the problem would then be that the people she was trying to take down wouldn't necessarily be taken down.
I'd thought the problem would have been her death.
Probably the expression on her face had been one of Annie turning over pros and cons. It was obvious now that she believed the contract to be something other than a legally binding document. She thought of it as a negotiation, perhaps, the kind of thing players in a dungeon agree upon before they start a scene.
I thought of it quite seriously. If she didn't like something, she could safe word. If the thing I was doing that she didn't like wasn't among her hard limits, however, and wasn't physically harmful to her, I didn't agree to stop.
Basically, Annie thought she could still walk if she didn't like what was happening.
I thought she'd just signed away that right. Along with owning her, along with controlling her and doing what I wanted to her and enjoying it, I now had added responsibility to her.
She was mine to hurt.
She was mine to keep safe.
What she'd done more than once now where Kie was concerned, was understandable. But not up to her.
I waited to see what she would do now that she'd seen me sitting here. Apparently the same thing had occurred to her and she stopped where she'd been when she first saw me, her head bowed. For several seconds she didn't move, then she slowly looked up at me, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She considered.
I realized I was holding my breath only when my lungs started to hurt.
Then Annie let her breath out in a rush at the same time she sank to her knees, head bowed, hands behind her, ass resting on her heels, toes under her. One of the stress positions she most hated. One of the positions she most struggled with.
I stood and walked to the doorway. Looking back at her, I saw that her head was still bowed, her gaze down. Good.
"Stay that way," I said, and walked out.
The pain room needed preparation. We were upping the stakes.
A prostitute I'd brought back once had allowed me to work her over with canes, to come all over her, and had not necessarily pretended to like what I was doing, but had remained curious through to the end.
When I had come for the third time, when she was already starting to color with bruises, I had relented, sitting on the couch, watching as she began to pull herself together. Abruptly she must have felt she had nothing to lose and asked if she could take a shower and, when I said yes, if I'd join her.
We left the lights off and it was winter. The desert doesn't get particularly cold but it still gets dark early. In the dimness of the bathroom, in the closeted space of the shower stall, she asked questions through the shared and temporary intimacy.
"What makes you want to do it?" she asked. She had beautiful ebony skin and even so I could see the bruises rising.
"What made you submit?" I asked.
"One thousand dollars," she said instantly with no embarrassment.
I laughed at that. "Okay, you win there. For me? It's a drive. It's a need. It's primarily harmless. I've practiced everything I've ever done on life-size models, on watermelons, on –"
But she was laughing and I saw her point. There were classes, though. How to tie a knot. How to swing a single tail. I'd known I needed absolutely mastery of each new thing before I ever inflicted it on a person, but I'd never asked myself the questions she asked me.
I didn't tell her about Emily.
I didn't have to tell her about the empty place inside me where emotion seemed to go to die. And because those two things were closed off and nothing I wanted to discuss, it was that afternoon as it bled into evening that I understood how much of what I really wanted was control. To control other people to the extent that they controlled themselves for me, by following my commands.
And that the rest of it was a need for them to trust me in a way no one did. In a way I didn't even trust myself. Because however many contracts were out there, if the person was mentally healthy and I started to do something they couldn't tolerate, nine of out of ten would run. As they should.
I was looking for the tenth.
Well, the tenth, and forgiveness for letting Emily down. And the Emily types who needed help. I was looking for them, too. Just because I'd take my pound of flesh in exchange for helping didn't mean I wasn't helping.
She'd asked another question I had very little answer for. What I'd done to her that afternoon had been mostly pain. I wanted to hear her scream, and she did, several times. I didn't tell her, but it wasn't as satisfying as it would have been if she were someone from the scene, but I stayed away from others in Southern Nevada. In the Las Vegas valley, I was a force, a member of economic development advisory boards, one of the few ultra rich businessmen trying to stem the wild expansion of the city into outlying bands of beautiful desert.
My rural compound was one reason I wanted Vegas to keep to its boundaries. The fact that it already had severe demands on water, which isn't available in huge quantities in the desert, and the fact that the desert was prettier without man and his concrete fucking up the view was another.
So if I wanted someone who was used to impact play or breath play or something similar, I usually had to travel. It was better not to play where I lived. Because of that I had scenes with beautiful strangers for money. That was all right, but it meant I had to control what I did. Some Dominants like a virgin bottom to mark. I'd rather have someone who knows her limits and be allowed the freedom to hit harder, strike longer.
Among her other questions though, had been one about those people in the scene and those subs who sign on with one Master and stay, either through contract or relationship. What she'd asked, taking humiliation for the example, how did it continue to be effective? “If Submissive Sally”, she started, making me laugh, “Is horrified at the idea of being displayed, if she's pretty much the opposite of an exhibitionist, and part of the thrill for her and for her Master is to be put in positions where she's humiliated by being stripped, or displayed, or forced to disrobe in front of a room of strangers, or to wear something short with no underwear and display herself "accidentally" in public, how long before that pales? How
could it continue to be effective?”
It was a good question. Truth was people could build up a tolerance to the exact thing that pushed their buttons, the same as someone who was spanked too often ended up with an impervious leather butt if care wasn't taken.
There are always new ways to humiliate, though. If someone becomes inured to being naked in front of others, then make them beg to have their nipples clamped in front of that audience. Allow the others to touch and examine. Make them wear a butt plug. Put the butt plug in when there are already the others present. All of course only if it pleases the Dom.
There are possibilities as endless as there are submissives to carry them out.
Later that night, after she'd gone - carrying more of a tip than she'd seen me put into the envelope with the cash, but she was blindfolded before the limo drove her back to Vegas - that night I understood that every sub who came to stay with me retained free will whether they knew it or not. Whether I liked it or not. Most of them discovered it when they hit a limit I made them cross and they either broke the scene or lit out after. If they asked, I sent them with a cash settlement and a limo ride like the whore had received.
If they just ran, I let them run. If I could, I found them later and deposited the money into their account. Only one had ever returned it.
It took two people fully invested for a contract to stand. Annie was right there. The contracts would be impossible to uphold in court. It took two people fully invested to create a true consensual Master/slave relationship and without that, it was just a game. It was still a game I excelled at and enjoyed.
The second thing I understood that night, thanks to a woman I'd picked up outside a southern Nevada casino and beaten for my own enjoyment, was that the lifestyle kept people away from me. Even the most determined sub couldn't hold on to illusions of being in love with me after the canes started to do their work in earnest. After I proved their screams didn't stop me because their screams delighted me. Their screams were what I was after.
