by Sophia Reed
I let out a trembling breath.
Claude walked in the same direction he'd just thrown the stick and I caught my breath again, but when I twisted, trying to see, I could see him picking out a fat, black leather strap, long and heavy and with not much give.
"Claude…" Chloe said. Her head was up, her eyes open though not very focused. She was looking at the strap.
"I don't care," he said.
"But I don't think – "
"Shut up!" He shouted it and turned and rained a dozen blows on her back with the thing, hard enough the welts showed instantly and Chloe stopped talking, put her head down, squeezed her eyes closed.
I had no doubt she was back in her body behind those eyes again. She'd come back from flying, from subspace, for me.
I would get her out of here or I'd kill Claude. One or the other.
Or both.
The first hard blow hit my ass and I screamed.
40
Annie
He let me down after two dozen. I was shaking and crying and in agony from the leather. I couldn't imagine what Chloe felt like.
This wasn't what I'd been led to believe was out there. This wasn't lifestyle. This wasn't normal. This wasn't fucking sane.
I wanted my gun. I wanted a baseball bat. Hell, I wanted the weapon he'd beat his wife with.
Whatever my judgment, whatever her screams had said of what was being done to her, she'd been lost in the mystery after the first part. It wasn't until he'd beaten her with the belt that she'd lost her glow and collapsed in pain and tears.
Yes, but that was the problem. That was abuse. That was violence. Even if that was fucking consensual it was wrong and dangerous and everything I feared of the men in Cole St. Martin's little group.
I'd bring them down.
I'd bring them down and I'd find out where St. Martin stood on this.
And I'd decide whether or not to bring him down, too.
41
Annie
Claude wasn't finished.
I was. Exhausted, sickened, aching. Even though I knew Chloe had been through this over and over, partly by choice, I wanted to get to her.
As if she was the one who needed help, or comfort.
Claude caught me by the arm and swung me around to face him. I took a swing at him and he ducked and laughed, turned me away from him again and shoved me hard against a bench. Standing behind me, he wrapped something around my waist. He was pressed tight into me, his heat a sick feeling, and when I felt his hand between my legs, I roared at him, convinced of what he was doing.
He wasn't. And the rules Cole left me with meant it wouldn't be sexual assault. It would be – in the minds of these men – allowed.
I spat and twisted and fought, but my muscles felt like jelly. I was only just beginning to realize my brain felt like jelly, too. For one horrible second I wondered if the water I'd had at dinner had been spiked, before deciding I was just that tired. Not just physically tired.
Mentally. Emotionally. Maybe even my soul was tired.
Claude clicked the thing into place behind me. I twisted, trying to see down my own back before it occurred to me to just look down, since whatever it was, it surrounded me.
A strap-on.
I pulled on it, repulsed and somehow as afraid as if he'd put something on me that might explode. Or take root.
"What are you doing?" My voice was a ragged scream that mingled with Chloe's frightening, lost laugh.
Claude leaned into me, pressing me into the bench he'd pushed me up against. His breath was hot in my ear. "Fuck her."
No. Everything in me recoiled. I bucked against him, inadvertently touching him. He was hard as a rock under the staid dress slacks he wore. I gagged, and tried to turn.
"She's had worse," he said. "Do it, or I'll do worse. To both of you."
"I'm going to k – "
"Annie." Chloe's voice. She felt the rage simmering through me, from wherever she was. There was a note of warning in her singsong voice. Impossible. She was so high. Unreachable. I couldn't do this.
She'd interrupted what I wanted to threaten him with. I had to believe not because she wanted him saved. But because she wanted me saved.
Does Cole know? The thought drummed through my mind. With all his rage, all the fury since France and Kie and Vincent, he'd never done anything remotely like this, and Claude had no kidnapping and killing of a friend and rival to drive him on.
This was what Claude was.
But was it what Cole was?
Do it. Do it and get out. Do it and get her out. Because the situation had spiraled out of control. Sometimes that happened undercover and I had to ride it out as a participant, as someone as real in my persona as everyone else going through whatever was happening.
That's all this was. Undercover. Horrible. Beastly assignment.
Claude grabbed a handful of my curls, dragging my head back. "I told you to fuck her."
The dildo was huge. Or at least it looked that way when I looked down at it. I shuddered, shook my head against him.
"Let go and I'll – "
"You don't need me to let go." He grabbed me by my hair and led me to her. Her hips were at the right height.
God, Chloe, you fucked up bitch. I don't want –
Claude shook me and I cried out. It hurt. After everything else, it hurt to have him grab my hair. I could hear footsteps in the hall. Some alarm had been triggered. I could do this, or I could be beaten, or beaten and forced into it, my body used like a puppet's. Or any other scenario.
I stepped up behind Chloe and positioned the thing.
"Oh, not there," Claude said and drew the dildo up.
"God," I breathed. "No."
"Annie." Chloe said my name on a sigh. The woman I knew weekday mornings was not suicidal. The woman I'd watched flying through subspace after a spanking wasn't this woman.
I needed to reach that woman. I needed to get her out as I got myself out.
"Do it." Claude's voice was deadly.
My hips twitched and I plunged into her.
42
Annie
Minutes later he let go of me.
Chloe had screamed and spasmed, half ecstatic, half in pain. Her body lay slumped over the bench.
The instant Claude released me, I pulled back from Chloe and wrenched myself away from him. He didn't stop me. My fingers fumbled for the clasp. I couldn't see it and I didn't know how it worked, but I wrenched at it until I heard it click, clasp releasing, and threw the thing onto the ground.
Tentatively I put a hand on Chloe's back. Her muscles quivered gently under my touch. There was no way she could be dragged back from wherever she was right now and logic talked to her. It would be unfair even to try. Whatever pleasure she got from whatever the fuck this was, she deserved it.
I didn't whirl on Claude. I didn't want to see him. From the sounds of everything around us, I could assume he was finding his own release. I wanted no part of it. If he tried to force me now, I'd rip it off him. The situation had changed. Chloe was relatively safe. I thought once Claude came, he'd lose interest for the night. Let him come, then. And let Chloe stay for now. This was her life. She was safer if I left her where she was until I had more resources to save her.
I knew there were guards in the hallway. I'd heard them responding to whatever alarm Claude tripped. All the things I'd done in my career and since my addiction and I could still find room to be embarrassed by being naked in front of those men.
They were like holdovers from my own life. Which was stupid. They weren't. Even if I'd done bodyguard work – which I couldn't, not and be undercover, too – I'd never have done a job like this.
So not only were they not my peers, they were unpredictable.
I'd just have to risk it.
Claude had taken off his button-down at some point. It made more sense than the evening gown I'd discarded somewhere in the house, and the shirt was here. I took it from the hook he'd hung it on and buttoned it all th
e way down. Claude wasn't terribly tall but the shirt still hung way down on me, the hem brushing my mid-thighs.
I paused at the door. When I looked back, Chloe was crying silent tears. Claude was leaned against the far wall. I refused to look directly at him. Instead, I met Chloe's eyes. She nodded, once, and squeezed me with her eyes the way cats do. I wanted to ask if she'd be all right. But she would. For all I knew, I was missing out on the best part of the evening, the lovely aftercare with Claude bathing us in twin matching gold bathtubs full of bubbles, scrubbing us gently, treating us to massages from beautiful men with beautiful muscles, letting us drink champagne and eat chocolate truffles.
I didn't believe it for a minute. But Chloe could wait.
And Claude. I wanted to break him in half. But there were undoubtedly guards in the hall and I wasn't going to get far doing that. Whatever Cole thought in sending me here, whatever I had thought of Claude before Cole did so, the truth was I could disappear from this place as easily as Cole could have taken me out.
I turned my back on the tableau and walked into the hall.
There was only one guard there and whatever he'd been told, apparently if there was no clear and present danger to Claude, he was to stand down and – stand around? He was armed and he didn't meet my eyes. I felt my lips curve into an inappropriate but happily not hysterical smile. He was young. Not inured yet. He was armed with a riot gun – because when you're assaulting two women, of course you should be protected by armed guards carrying shotguns – which he held kind of like a Linus blanket.
Linus gun. I smiled at the thought. When I had my hands on my gun again, I wasn't going to put it down for a long time. Being vulnerable didn't suit me. I'd have to try Chloe's topping from below, I thought, and wondered where the thought had come from.
"Excuse me," I told the guard.
He nodded. "Ma'am."
I padded up the hall to the front entrance. Claude had taken my phone, which I thought Cole had probably meant for me to hold on to. Whatever he'd done to it, it only called him, I thought, and the GPS would track me anywhere for him. I had no problem with that but I didn't know where my phone was.
I knew where Claude's was. He'd left it with his keys in the silver tray on the sofa table by the front door. His phone called whoever you wanted it to call. I could call 9-1-1. I could call the feds and tell them these men had taken me across international borders to do the things that had been done, that Cole had dragged me across state lines.
I had no real desire to do that.
The crushed gravel of the driveway was still warm from the day, though dotted with the damned stickers the Nevada desert breeds. I picked them out of my feet before I keyed the fob and chirped Claude's Bugatti Veyron Super Sport.
Claude was an idiot. Just sitting behind the wheel of that car was better than sex could ever be. The leather seat was cold under my naked ass. Even that wasn't unpleasurable.
I set the phone on the seat next to me. Slid the key into the ignition. Claude came running as the car fired up, the sound of it amazing in the still air.
Claude was screaming, trying to run toward me but he only wore slacks, unzipped, which made him look stupider than he had to. Cartoon villain, waving his arms.
I gave him the finger and stepped on the gas, churning gravel up into his face as he ran at the car. I left him shouting at the taillights and pulled out into the night.
"What's the problem, Claude? She too much for you?"
St. Martin's voice was warm with humor. He'd seen the name displayed and made assumptions. He still thought everything was all right.
"It's not Claude," I said from between clenched teeth. I couldn't stop shaking. I had no idea how to get to St. Martin's compound from the Ascaya neighborhood, so I just followed the lights down to the city itself. Finding The Strip isn't hard. I could have done it from space.
"Annie? What's the matter? Why are you using Claude's phone?"
There was so much riding on what his next questions were.
"Are you all right? Where's your phone? Annie? Are you safe?"
I melted against the Bugatti's seat. He'd gotten them all right. I started to cry so while I could still talk at all coherently I said, "Cole. Please come get me."
43
Cole
She hung up after telling me which parking garage she was in.
I drove like a man possessed. Claude would have trackers on all his cars. I had to get to her before he did. I'd wanted her to go into the casino until she told me she was only wearing Claude's shirt.
I needed to know everything. But I didn't need to know everything right then. I didn't actually need to know anything right then except Annie needed help and she'd called me.
We left the Bugatti sitting in the parking garage of a Las Vegas Strip casino. Annie was semi conscious when I found her. Had any security guards happened by, she'd have looked like a hotel guest who'd had a little too much to drink. The fact that she was wearing only a man's shirt would have been a problem but five minutes after I got there I'd managed to get her into a pair of her own sweats. Getting her feet into flipflops was impossible. I threw them into the Veyron and left them there, levering Annie from the front seat where she sat sideways with her feet out the door. Filthy concrete, no matter how often they might pressure wash it with water the valley doesn't actually have. I lifted her into my arms, cradling her against my chest, and carried her to the Porsche.
"You're going to have to get yourself in there," I said. "It's too small to lift you into."
I thought she was out of it, but she gave me a loopy smile and said, "Are you calling me fat?"
I wasn't. I was calling her awkward. Holding humans is awkward. But what the hell?
"Yep. Big old tub of lard. On your feet, lard girl."
She took a playful swing at me as I set her on her feet, overbalanced and fell neatly into the passengers seat. Problem solved.
I'd have to remember that one for the next time I had to contend with a drunk friend or drunk date.
I was pulling the seatbelt harness over her when she slurred, "Chloe needs help."
I froze. That was a different matter. Carefully, I said, "What kind of help?"
"Out. She needs to get out."
"Does she want to get out?" I asked.
"When she's not flying," Annie said and seemed to pass out.
I patted her cheek roughly. "Annie!"
She opened both eyes and frowned at me.
"Does Chloe need help tonight?"
"Oh," she said, as if my having patted her rather hard had made sense. "Nope. Right as rain. But soon. Because that Claude...?"
I waited for He's an asshole but she didn't say it. Waiting, I looked at her. Really looked past the mechanics of getting her dressed so she wouldn't be more traumatized than she obviously was by whatever had happened. Looked past being obscurely surprised and delighted that she'd stolen Clyde's prized car.
There were marks on her that shouldn't be there. She had scuff marks on her face. Bruises on her legs and ass I'd seen while getting her dressed.
The rage finally had a place to focus.
Annie focused too, just then. She roused herself and sat more upright in the seat. Her eyes found mine. "We have to get Chloe out because it's bad there." She tightened her lips and nodded. "And Cole?"
"Yes, Annie."
"We have to get her out because Claude...?"
"Is an asshole?"
But for a moment she was stunningly sober as she looked deep into my eyes. She shook her head. "No. Claude. Is a dead man."
44
Annie
Aftercare.
It mattered. Aftercare was arnica cream and aloe gel. Aftercare was hot tea with brandy in it which tasted bad but bloomed inside me with heat.
It was a hot shower that Cole carried me into. His big, beautiful shower with shower heads on three sides, the enclosure itself of natural stone that heated under my feet. He slid me down his body and held me against him,
letting me lean. Probably I was more than only semi conscious but I didn't have to admit it. To him or to me.
He lathered my hair with shampoo and washed it out again twice, as if knowing I needed to feel clean. He ran conditioner through it with his fingers and let that sit while he used a citrus body gel on my face, gently massaging jaw muscles, then turning me so he could scrub and massage my neck and shoulders and back. It should have felt like flashback material to have him pressed against me, but though he was hard, though we were naked, there was something less erotic than comforting.
His hands moved around to the front of my body and washed my breasts, sliding his hands under them to touch the silky skin there. Down my stomach, slicking gel into the curves of my hipbones, and down.
I started to cry when he washed between my legs, but when he tried to stop, I shook my head. Claude hadn't fucked me but I still felt violated and filthy and I wanted Cole's hands there, replacing those memories.
When he'd rinsed me there he turned me, maybe planning to let me hold on to him with my arms around his neck as he turned off the water and got us out of there. But he looked down at me, our faces indistinct in the roiling steam of the shower, and our eyes met. Cole bent his head and kissed me and I found myself going up on tiptoes to meet his mouth, my calves aching from having been strung up that way, but the muscles eager for this use.
He pulled me tight to him, his erection pressed between us. My arms did go up and circle his neck and Cole moaned into my mouth. I ran my tongue along his bottom lip, then slid it farther into his mouth.
He stroked his hands down my back, cupped my ass, and then he was leaning back against the heated stone of the shower, pulling me with him, pulling me up. My legs wrapped around his waist and his cock pressed up against me until with a sharp pop of sensation, he found his way inside me.
