by Sophia Reed
My own orgasm tightened my muscles, coiling everything up until I fell over the edge, pulsing and pulsing around his cock, shockwaves traveling throughout my body, my nails raking his back, my breath coming hard and ecstatic.
He tucked me up against his chest, my head on the hollow between throat and shoulder, and we slept until the sunlight in the uncurtained windows woke us.
45
Cole
I kept her close to me as I called in favors. Annie had no way of anticipating my help with her getting onboard with the DEA would be so useful. She didn't know I had contacts everywhere.
It was a best kept secret, and best kept that way.
By the end of the day Claude was in custody. The instant he was led out, Annie went in. I waited in the car, giving them space, and watched as she went directly to Chloe and put her arms around her, asking what she needed, where did she want to go, what could Annie and I do.
I froze when Annie followed Chloe into the house, but she looked back before she disappeared inside and nodded at me one time. Everything was fine.
So I waited.
Three-quarters of an hour and roughly a thousand fantasies of things I wanted to do to Annie, both those that would hurt and those that would pleasure and those that would humiliate her and – maybe a thousand of those later, Annie came out alone.
I started the Porsche and we drove down off the foothills. "What's her decision."
Annie had been looking pensively out the passenger side window. Now she turned and said, "She's going to stay in the house as long as he gets prison time."
"Oh, my dear," I said. "Don't worry about that." Personally I thought Claude would disappear before he got anywhere near trial. Or even a holding cell and arraignment. Those things happen.
"Then she's keeping the house. They're legally married. This is a community property state?" She asked it though Chloe must have told her, and since it was, she went on. "She's going to dismantle the pain room herself. Bit by fucking bit was the way she put it, and keep the misery stick in her bedroom as a reminder. Then she's turning the room into a nursery of sorts."
I swerved. "She's pregnant?" Because I could call and stop wherever Claude was being taken and it could all be settled right now.
"No." She was grinning. She was crying at the same time and she seemed to glow with a kind of inner light. "She's going to open the home to children who need families. To orphans. To foster children, especially the ones who have such black marks against them no one will take them. She'll hire live-in counselors, a nutritionist who can cook, a coach who can work out all that energy. And then while the coaches and counselors and cooks do their thing with the kids, she's going to write."
"Write?"
"Articles. Books. On what kink really is and what it isn't. On staying safe. On getting out."
I thought that last was something Chloe didn't have a lot of experience with. None of what had gotten her out had been her work. But I didn't say so. I didn't ask any of the questions I wanted to ask, either, about what was going to happen now. What Annie would decide. Her contract was up to her now.
I hoped she would stay.
But I wouldn't decide for her.
46
Annie
The July sky over Seattle was hazy. It had taken a little more than a month to set my plans into motion. By the end of May I had an apartment in Las Vegas though I hadn't told Cole where it was. Only that I'd be attending UNLV and I needed some time by myself.
When I checked my bank account, I was completely unsurprised to find the regular payments for my "sick leave" from PD were compounded now with the tuition for four years of university and four years of rent. I shook my head. For one thing, I'd already told him I'd be moving fasttrack, testing out of those classes like basic math and English and those procedure classes my work as a cop superseded. By taking classes over the two short terms and the one mini term every summer, I'd be out in two years.
That was okay. The money could sit and accrue interest. If he didn't want it back when I graduated, I'd donate it to Chloe's cause. Or buy my own Bugatti Veyron.
Mark wasn't home when I got to the apartment. He hadn't changed the locks on the door. That was something, I supposed, but maybe he just hadn't thought of it.
Standing in the apartment, looking around at the hazy light coming in the windows, I was struck at how it felt both familiar and utterly strange, as though I had never lived here in this life.
Maybe that was true in a sense.
I'd expected there was very little I'd need to take with me. There were a few things I'd miss if I left them behind. My great-grandmother's copy of Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking-Glass, a Windermere edition from a hundred years earlier. The paintings were nearly pastel in it from age and the pages soft from many hands turning them. A framed photo of my father, which I'd take but not display, and a framed portrait of my parents on their wedding day. I'd hoped to have one very similar made when Mark and I got married.
Well. Things change.
Other than that and a handful of fat paperback novels I couldn't remember reading, some t-shirts and jeans, some fluttery tops my alter egos wore, a toothbrush that was practically growing cobwebs, there wasn't much of me here. Hadn't Mark and I shared a life? Apparently what we shared didn't add up to material possessions.
Standing there, looking at the bed, I thought of all the changes I'd gone through. Everyone says undercover changes you. Then again, they say that about anything traumatic. Psychotherapy changes you. Couples split up after one partner goes in and makes changes. Trauma changes you. Parents who lose a child often split.
I was looking for answers, had been for a while. I didn't want to be married to a fellow cop, undercover or not. That was too much of the job and too much stress. I didn't want to marry an adventurer necessarily, someone I had to race to catch up to.
But for the last year I'd considered Mark – not boring - But tame. He was too soft, I thought. Too easily hurt by my job. Too easily afraid. Too prone to feeling abandoned.
That's what I'd been working on while asking myself what I'd wanted from him if he himself hadn't been enough after a while.
But that wasn't it. I stood staring at the bed, where once in a while he'd handcuffed me. Sometimes I reacted in fury, shouting him off me, making him free me. But rough – I'd liked it rough with him, feeling like when he held me down with elbows and knees, he was getting the real me, somehow. Or – what? Just matching the crazy girl who wanted to be a police officer and stop bad guys.
That wasn't quite it either.
Standing here now in an apartment that didn't feel like it had ever been mine, I realized that every moment of our relationship had been dominated by Mark. Before the Brotherhood, before the fentanyl and Cole St. Martin and the rainforest cure, before my search through San Francisco and Las Vegas and all the changes, I'd thought when asked by the PD shrink or my CO or anyone at all that I was with Mark because he was my solid ground. My sanity. My love, my life, the reason I came home again. (Sometimes. Occasionally. When I wasn't undercover.)
I thought as time went by that I was staying with him because I hadn't found the time to stay home and the emotions and words to release him. Any time I came even close, he begged to stay with me. Determined. Hurt by the idea of anything else. He would wait. I wouldn't be undercover forever. Something would happen and it wouldn't be safe. I'd have to quit. We'd have some kind of a life together.
I thought I was sparing his feelings.
But now, looking at it through the lens of a Master/slave relationship, the version of it I saw with Cole's friends and the version of it I saw for myself, with Cole, I thought that every interaction with Mark had been about control. The things he asked for in the apartment, could I not do this or could I start to do this other thing. He was, I'd think, there a lot more than I was. Would it be so hard for me to grant his wishes?
No. Of course not. Except that it made me feel like I didn't really li
ve there, was more of a guest.
And then more thoughts crowded in, faster. The way he contrived to get the emergency only cell number from my family – only my parents had it for that very reason, that Mark would call and compromise my safety and the job itself simply because he needed to connect with me. When he had called and it had been an emergency, still my first concern had been that he had that number and how very unsafe that was.
There was his desire when I was brought back from France where Vincent had held me. He and my father, tearing me away from Cole's compound. They knew nothing about the rest of the story, nothing about France and Vincent and Kie and still he had repeatedly insisted I needed a full invasive exam before I was admitted into the mental hospital. An exam he was going to do himself. That wasn't just control. That was punishment. For having been gone. For having, though he didn't know it, been abused.
And there was his insistence that he would wait for me. However long it took. That was manipulation and to an extent, it had worked. I never forgot that Mark was back in Seattle, training for his job as a surgeon which would keep him away from home for a lot of years but was apparently Mark-Approved, that he was in Seattle. Waiting for me. Patiently. Lovingly.
Or utterly controllingly.
I finished gathering what I wanted. School started summer session in a couple weeks. I'd be staying in a hotel until I found an apartment. Vegas had plenty of hotels. Cole had offered. But I needed the time.
Making sure I had gathered everything I was taking, I texted Mark.
I'm in town. I'll be at the apartment when you get back from work.
We need to talk.
47
Cole
The compound was silent when I got back from a long run. There were people present, working, but they weren't around me.
That was fine. I needed the time. To process Annie having left for school and that we'd be mostly out of touch.
To process that I missed her.
Ariel was somewhere, probably still in the maze. She still painted down there, though there was better light up top. She'd be with me for a few more months, acclimating, but she wasn't with me.
Kie had gone off in an ambulance with Norcross the day before.
There was nothing I had to do. Maybe I'd work. Maybe I'd workout. Maybe I'd call –
Give her space.
Right.
And then my phone buzzed with a text, from a restricted line and a secure phone, though I thought secure meant less if he was going to text.
Norcross.
One look and no. It wasn't Norcross.
It was his top bodyguard.
I breathed in. Norcross was dead. Kie was in the wind.
And Annie wasn't answering her phone.
* * *
The End of Book 4, Deep Cover Series
A Message To My Readers
Thanks for purchasing this book. As an author, there’s very few things better than having a reader go through one of my works. If you enjoyed Punished by the Billionaire then I’d appreciate you leaving an honest review on Amazon. Reviews are the lifeblood of my publishing endeavors. A 5 star-review would mean the world to me. Thanks!
To leave a review go to:
https://bit.ly/sophiareed
A Dark Mafia Romance Series
Varasso Brothers Prequel:
Devil´s Pawn
He kidnapped me.
Locked me up in his mansion.
Would it be too crazy to fall in love with this monster?
* * *
Luca is the oldest son of a mafia boss.
He’s the sanest one in his family, if you ask me.
His little girl makes him human.
But danger is still his middle name.
I’m drawn to his power.
His devilish gaze that wants every part of me.
He has a dark soul that fills a void in mine.
Reminding me of things that I’m capable of.
After his father’s assassination, Luca is the new king.
And he needs a partner in crime.
A queen.
* * *
I’m the woman in his bed. In his heart.
So, what does that make me?
Click here to read:
https://bit.ly/DevilsPawn
Varasso Brothers Book 1:
Fallen Knight
Luca is the oldest son of a mafia boss.
He’s the sanest one in his family, if you ask me.
His little girl makes him human.
But danger is still his middle name.
I’m drawn to his power.
His devilish gaze that wants every part of me.
He has a dark soul that fills a void in mine.
Reminding me of things that I’m capable of.
After his father’s assassination, Luca is the new king.
And he needs a partner in crime.
A queen.
Click here to read:
https://bit.ly/FallenKnight
Varasso Brothers Book 2:
Cruel Prince
I gave my innocence to a mafia prince...
But I haven’t told him that I’m carrying his baby.
* * *
My life was mundane before I met Marco.
I didn’t know how dangerous he was until it was too late.
He’d already hired me as his assistant.
Marco has my body… and my heart.
He also holds my career in his hands.
The only way out of this is to run for my life.
Even though I know he’d do everything to hunt me down.
Now, I’ve asked for something impossible.
* * *
Would he abandon his mafia family to be with me?
And how would he protect me and his unborn baby if our lives were threatened?
Click here to read:
https://bit.ly/cruelprince
Varasso Brothers Book 3:
Dark King
He’s part of the same family that’s responsible for my father being in prison.
So, why do I feel such love for him?
* * *
Alessandro and I were together as teenagers before the pressure of being raised by a mob family got to me.
I needed to move away from the house to get my life back.
That also meant leaving Alessandro behind.
He begged me to stay, and I asked him to come with me.
Years have gone by since I’ve seen him.
Now, fate is bringing us back.
And a big decision is on the table.
* * *
Can I fit into his family and accept a life of crime?
Or will be hold my hand and agree to start afresh?
Click here to read:
https://bit.ly/darkKing
