by Sophia Reed
Gods, it sounded like he was asking if I'd like some sexual favor. Bile rose in my throat. I'd been hurt undercover, I'd been assaulted once, and I'd had sex that was only consensual for my cover persona Lily, because I definitely didn't want it.
This was something else.
"Sir, Mr. Conway, you don't have to – I mean, I can get an internship by going through the college and –"
"Be. QUIET!" He grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back so I stared up at him. "You silly little bitch. Did you think that you'd really –" He started to laugh. Dragging me with him, he pressed his intercom. "Barb, five minutes and then send Sulk from security."
I didn't hear her response but undoubtedly she knew. And I could guess. This had happened before because he had a system down and a security officer who was going to show up armed and escort out the latest girl.
I could only guess to where. The fact that he was calling before meant the girl in question – me, this time – exited the judge's chambers alive. And ended up being trafficked.
I put both hands over his while he was distracted with his messaging and pressed his hands to my head to alleviate the pain in my scalp. Then I lunged upward, trying to knock him off balance while he was off guard and failing that, knee him hard in his very excited erection.
Only he wasn't off guard. He was waiting for me to do something like that and when I did, he didn't seem bothered by his one hand being pressed against the back of my head or that he couldn't get a huge wind up.
He just slammed his hand into my cheek and sent my head spinning to the side. He released me at the same time and I fell. Sprawled on the floor, feeling my skirt flapping up too high, my shirt opening further, feeling myself at risk, I struggled to get myself onto all fours and heading upward again.
Until the click came as the safety came off and the gun rested against my temple.
I went still, halfway to all fours, essentially kneeling again. Right where he'd had me. Right where he wanted me.
The judge adeptly opened his trousers with one hand, the other holding the gun with a lot more confidence than I was comfortable with him having. "Easy, now," he said. "You're going to have a nice long time to get acquainted with Mr. Happy and you're going to make Mr. Happy Mr. Very, Very Happy and then security's going to come and take you for a little walk." He had his erection out, his fist wrapped around it, pumping a little, at eye level.
The only way I wanted it in my mouth was if I was biting. I glared up at him and he said, "Careful, now. If I get too excited, the gun might just go off. Now take it nice in your mouth –"
He smelled. He was commando and excited, and he had hold of my hair again, guiding my mouth toward his erection while the gun was still against my temple. I gagged, feeling him tighten his grip in my hair to punish me for that, for not being enthusiastic, for knowing what was going to come and –
He had his back to the office door. The one locked on a keyed deadbolt. But I heard the key go into the lock and I heard the door start to open. Security had been called, but no way fifteen minutes had passed already and he didn't think so either, because he started to turn and he started to snarl and –
Hands grabbed him. I could see them as they raised up and came down on his shoulders, balling up the shirt there and hauling him backwards off me. A big meaty hand grabbed his gun hand and disarmed the judge by the sheer expediency of breaking his hand.
Only the judge wasn't quite finished. What he thought he'd get out of it, I didn't know. But he tore away from the man I saw was Cole's deputy chief of security, Barry – a mountain of man, now growling in fury at the judge.
Who was turning with the gun still in his hand, because he hadn't dropped it, whatever he'd dropped, it wasn't the gun.
He'd turn, and shoot Barry.
I moved faster than he did. He had a broken hand, after all. Shoved myself up on my knees, grabbed with my left hand, most of my attention focused there on controlling the gun by squeezing his broken hand and keeping the barrel pointed down.
My right hand came up and grabbed the very thing he'd wanted me to have in my mouth. Only I grabbed with a lot more enthusiasm than he'd intended.
I squeezed until he screamed.
"Damn," Barry said, and I think he winced.
The judge fell, letting go of the gun and curling around himself.
"You get that?" Barry asked.
I nodded, picked up the gun, ejected the shell out of the chamber, put the safety back on, considered what to do with the thing, and tucked it into the waistband of my skirt, against my lower back.
I stood. "What now?"
Only the answer was obvious. Because another member of Cole's security came in and I realized they were both dressed as EMTs. The second guy, who I didn't know by name, was guiding a rolling stretcher.
Judge Conway clearly thought this was a bad idea, because he twisted in Barry's grip and tried to get to his feet, apparently thinking that even bent over around himself, he could make it out the door and away before men half his age caught him.
He didn't make it any distance at all. The new guy stuck a syringe in his neck and the Judge looked at me, said, "You bitch," quite clearly, and collapsed.
I blinked at him. Cole's security picked him up and put him on the stretcher and covered him up to his chin.
"I'd offer you a ride, but best you go some other way," Barry said.
"I have my car." My voice sounded distant and strained. I'd never seen anything quite like this.
And then they were gone, pulling the stretcher between them. The judge had asked for fifteen minutes and they weren't up yet, but I was leaving with Cole's security, and I'd separate from them somewhere before we hit the security checkpoint between the courthouse and the outside world. Because I was not going to be there when Judge Conway's private security came looking.
I thought probably Barb had been sent away. Though she was part of it, without the judge I thought it probably ended. If I was wrong, hopefully somebody else would bring her to justice.
"What's going to –?"
Barry just looked at me. Right. I definitely didn't need to know that. If they killed the judge, that would be bad. I thought they wouldn't. St. Martin Pharma had locations all over the world. There were plenty of places Judge Conway could grow older without ever coming into contact with or threatening anyone ever again.
Fine by me. If he had family, they were better off without him.
The whole world was.
I knew the way back to the compound now. I'd head back and the fact that this wasn't an assignment for school, that there wasn't at this moment anything to connect me to the judge – definitely not Barb who wouldn't likely recognize me in real clothes – meant I just went on with my life.
The DEA still appealed, but the idea of doing something to fight human sex trafficking was starting to appeal too. I smiled a little grimly to myself and decided to treat myself to breakfast – extra bacon, please – before heading back to the compound.
I'd earned it.
30
Cole
She didn't come back when Barry and the other men did. They came back without Judge Conway. They'd called me from the "ambulance" and told me what they knew of what had happened, which included the position Annie had been found in, and also that she'd acquitted herself nicely in the following fracas.
"Where's the judge?" I asked.
Barry settled into one of the chairs beside the chief tech in the blue room. All the monitors produced an unhealthy glow in the room where my technological security did its stuff. He handed off the wires and equipment Annie had been wearing.
I glanced around again, expecting her to show up.
Barry said, "Plausible deniability, boss?" He was a big man, curly hair, bright blue eyes, enormous body. He had a law degree but had decided to do security and now he worked for me.
Sometimes the world is strange.
"I can't see where there's anything connecting me to Conway's disa
ppearance. I'll take my chances." I settled on the edge of the nearest desk.
Barry didn't quibble. He nodded once. "He's headed for a safe house in Pennsylvania. If you're still interested in using some of the rainforest cures on him, be interesting to see if it cures him of whatever the fuck's wrong with him."
I thought what was wrong with him was pure sociopathy or the fact that he was a predator, through and through. A man with money and position in the community, a man nicely put together even if aging could find a woman who had similar attributes, maybe brought her own money to the union. He could find a wife and a mistress, or he could find a 25 year old bimbo like Annie had pretended to be who wanted a daddy to take care of her.
Instead, he'd enjoyed the hunt and probably made a lot more money selling the girls he'd already assaulted into the trafficking scene. He was the exact kind we raised money to fight with our billionaire dinners where the centerpiece might wear a butt plug and a ponytail.
Annie had gone in to find proof that Judge Conway was against the kind community because he so much wanted to be in the kind community. I wasn't sure if it was better or worse or just different that instead he'd tried to rape her, than if he'd just wanted to play kinky games. But in the end the incident had been more than enough. Sexual assault followed by sex trafficking beat all to hell anything we might have used against him with the kink factor.
The end was brutal. Confinement and the fact that we were going to use him as a guinea pig with some new drugs to try and change who he was.
Brutal.
And right.
And where was Annie?
31
Annie
I only had a single class today and I was going to skip. The professor was a deputy district attorney who dressed so beautifully I assumed his wife picked out all his clothes. The idea that a straight man dressed that well was impossible, no matter how prejudiced that made me. His stories were interesting but the class info came straight out of the book, and I'd already read the book. Julie from my study group was in the class. If I needed notes, I'd get them from her.
In the meantime, I enjoyed my bacon and eggs at a greasy diner, complete with a lot of coffee and a side of more bacon. While I ate and watched the people around me I had time to think about everything that had just happened.
I wasn't completely happy with how everything had gone down but it had gone down and it was over. Even if I wasn't the one who put Cole St. Martin back to safe, I'd been part of it. At least I'd played a part in my own rescue.
Last thing I wanted was to be the damsel in distress.
Barry had impressed me. I thought he was ex-Special Forces or ex-law enforcement or ex- something and with a clean record. He'd just decided to do something else and that something else today had saved my – bacon, I thought, smiling at my plate. A couple arriving in the diner gave me a curious look. Most people don't smile at their food.
You would if you had to eat what Cole St. Martin serves you, I thought at them. Clean, white fish for breakfast. Ugh.
I was enjoying my time enough that I had half a mind to head to the bookstore after breakfast. There was a Barnes & Noble I could hit, or a couple indies, though I was never as enamored of indie bookstores as the world thought I should be. I liked a big selection and I didn't want to wait for it to be delivered from either Amazon or from an indie that didn't have everything in stock.
I was getting ready to go pay my check and decide once I hit the beautiful day outside if I needed a book for the weekend or if I should just do my homework, when my phone buzzed. I realized then that I hadn't made arrangements for whether I'd spend the weekend at St. Martin's compound or at my own place.
Or if I'd even have a choice.
When I'd left the compound to head to the judge's chambers, I'd known absolutely I was going home afterwards. Big brave me with my big new life. Like I could tell Cole St. Martin what I was going to do next.
It bothered me that I was thinking that way but at the same time, there'd been something almost freeing about being back there.
But if that was what I was thinking and what I was planning, not only was I in deep trouble, I also needed to decide if I was going to submit. It was obvious Cole liked a fight. He enjoyed bantering with me, especially because he always, always won.
But my own behavior was so uncertain, the way I kept jumping from one thing to the next, I had to wonder what I actually wanted. Was I going to submit? Or run?
I wasn't going to run. It was time to stop pushing my own doubts onto Cole St. Martin. His anger after the events with Vincent Geddes and Kie and my being abducted to France had made me afraid and sent me running. There's a difference for me between being undercover, which is something like playacting in your own life, and actually being Annie Knox and facing that maybe I wanted some of what Cole was dishing out.
More than that, what I didn't want, I didn't want to stop. I wanted him to push my boundaries. That's why I kept coming back. It had been so easy when Mark was waiting for me in Seattle, to tell myself that what I was doing and what I was allowing to be done, those things were only temporary. Eventually I'd go back and pick up the raveled pieces of my life, be Seattle PD again, marry Mark. I was only doing this because.
Because Cole had saved my life, getting me un-addicted.
Because Cole had allowed me to come back when I'd run from him and then found him again, uncertain – and not without reason – that I could safely navigate the outside world without returning to opiates.
Because it was ultimately a safe place. Jesse, the leader of the Brotherhood before he was gunned down, had been an unsafe place to explore my need to be –
My thoughts broke off. Was I really ready to admit this?
Apparently I was.
To explore my need to be dominated. Hurt. Punished. Controlled. Maybe because everything else in my life was up to me. Maybe because I was an undercover narc, because I did have a man's job, because I could take care of myself.
That didn't mean every protest I'd made to Cole had been me pretending I didn't want it. That much, at least, I'd figured out considerably earlier. That I could dream day and night about Cole's room of pain, about the implements he had there and his hard, hard hand, about his hand on my throat or between my legs, about the things he used on my body and the people he allowed to do whatever they wanted to me.
About not being able to say no to the pain.
And still when the dreaming was over and reality was crashing in on me, holy shit, it hurt. It hurt to be spanked or cropped, it was vile to have my mouth washed out. I hated being paraded past the guard shack with my arms tied behind my back, completely naked. Being auctioned off. Being sent on Cole's whim to stay with Claude.
I couldn't deny I kept going back, and I no longer wanted to deny it. I no longer needed to. That didn't mean I wouldn't try to run again. Or forget what I'd just figured out. Just that, for the moment I was certain I'd be returning to Cole's compound to live there while I went to school. I'd fight with him about hours and days and classes, about who I could be friends with and about study groups.
But going up against the judge, the loathing and disgust at what he'd represented and what I'd known he was going to do to me – that convinced me of what Cole was really offering with his consensual non-consent, his contracts and his rules.
I wanted it.
I paid the check on autopilot and headed out into the day, my phone buzzing again. Just before I answered it the high from adrenaline or lack of common sense or relief at the bullet I'd just dodged, all that fell away.
I realized what Cole needed to do with the judge and what I probably needed to do with Cole.
All his dinner parties, all his Dom/sub, Master/slave auctions and orgies and everything else the devoutly kinky sadistic billionaires got up to, they used proceeds from their fundraising to fight human sex trafficking.
I'd just almost fallen into the hands of traffickers.
Now I had to find them and go underc
over again. I had to lead Cole's security into the heart of whatever was going on and make it stop.
And if Cole St. Martin said no to me, then no matter what I'd just figured out about my nature and his, I'd have to go. For a little while.
Because what had almost happened to me in Judge Conway's office was happening to other women who weren't being given a choice, and who were being hurt.
My phone buzzed again. I sat down on a bench outside the diner and pulled my phone out of my backpack.
The text was from Cole. And it didn't matter what I had just decided or what I had just done. The text made me shiver there in the warm sun, abruptly aware of everything I had done since leaving the judge's chambers.
Where are you?
Why haven't you come back yet?
You need to tell me everything that's happened.
These had come in over a period of time that made me realize just how long ago security had left with the judge.
Get. Back. Here. Now.
I swallowed hard and stuck the phone back in my pocket, heading instantly to my car, all thoughts of picking up a mystery or romance at any bookstore now out of my head.
My palms were sweating, my heart thudding.
I was wet just thinking about what might happen.
32
Cole
She stood in my office and told me about the judge. I'd sent Barry after her once she left. Hard to say why. I've trusted my gut often enough in business. Maybe I was ready to do that in relationships, even when the relationship is one of warrants, law enforcement and drama.
The judge felt more wrong than some moral majority party pooper who maybe wanted what we had and maybe was determined to squelch all of it from a place of honestly never having lusted.
I'd started to think about what Annie said and I had started to think about trafficking and suddenly I'd called my team in and sent them after him. After her.
