1
Cole
It was a Tuesday in early December and I was running my slave through the empty desert more than twenty miles outside Las Vegas, Nevada.
The desert in Southern Nevada doesn't actually get that cold, though you couldn't tell by the complaining that goes on in winter. Residents begin to whine when the temperatures drop to low fifties or high forties, and anything below that is considered an arctic blast. The millions of tourists who visit the city every year don't notice what the weather is doing because they're behind climate controlled walls inside casinos and convention centers.
Annie Knox was noticing. It was early enough on that December morning for the temperature to still be in the mid-forties and the sun was barely over the hill as we ran. For whatever reason, just after dawn, the temperature actually dips. So she was hot under her running fleece and lined running tights, and cold where her face and hands were exposed. Very uncomfortable.
She might have minded but Annie was used to being uncomfortable when she was with me. For the foreseeable future – still more than eleven months of our year and a day contract – she was mine to make uncomfortable and keeping her that way – uncomfortable, or actively in pain – that was my goal.
One of my goals. Another was to keep my billion dollar pharmaceutical company on track with rainforest cures that allowed for sustainability and worked wonders on everything from cancer to addiction.
Annie was in my care for addiction.
Hers and mine.
Annie Knox was an undercover narc agent from Seattle whose life had gone south in a big way over the past summer. The leader of the gang she'd infiltrated was killed and she hadn't just been his old lady where her cover was concerned. She'd actually started to care for the son of a bitch. Then her father, the hero cop who inspired her to be a police officer when her three sisters were all pretty little wives and mothers, suffered a series of heart attacks and a series of heart surgeries. Add to that, Annie had a fiancé who was a doctor in the making and an intern with extremely limited free hours. Said fiancé also had limited love making skills, limited imagination in the bedroom, and a terrible bedside manner. Add all the stressors together and Annie was ripe to start using the fentanyl she found in her pockets after she left her deep cover with the motorcycle gang assignment.
It might have been understandable for anyone. With the right support from the people in her life, it might have been temporary. But Annie's support system was lousy to begin with and stressed with everything going on, and her addiction took hold. Desperate to keep it from her superiors, she allowed her handler on PD to suggest she come to me for treatment.
She had no way of knowing the man who was her contact when she was deep cover was a deeply flawed, very sick human being in need of some fast cash. Always in need of fast cash.
I'd done a lot of work with Samuels.
He sold Annie Knox to me. When you're rich - Things like that can just happen.
When you're rich, things like that handler getting fired and discredited can also happen. And if you're rich enough – and I am – that handler learned if he started fighting back, he might just up and disappear.
So he up and disappeared on his own.
Leaving me with the lovely Annie for my latest experiment.
The rainforest opiate cure was working on her. The addiction was loosening its grip, but a recent test run into Vegas was proof it hadn't let go, because the second I gave her enough rope to hang herself, she did. Annie bought, Annie used, and Annie paid the price.
And came back with me to my very rural enclave where she went back to the daily routine: Long run or hike in the desert, healthy breakfast, sometimes with things she liked to eat and sometimes with things she needed to eat; weights workout, yoga, meditation, massage, shower - and the rest of the day?
At my disposal.
I had so many delightful ways to dispose of her time.
Thing was, as Annie's addiction loosened, mine tightened. I loved punishing her. I loved exposing her to the world of a sadist and what I could do to her body that would cause no lasting physical harm. I loved watching her fight. I loved watching her submit. And I loved watching the fight build back up again. I'd told her that if she remained with me for the year and a day, eventually we'd have sex and she'd have no say in the matter, but so far, we'd only had a handful of encounters, and they were mostly consensual.
While we ran I watched her every time she surged ahead. I'd purposefully taken our run in the direction of the city, because only a month ago she'd tried to escape from my custody, taking off across the desert and asking for help from other police officers in Vegas. The power of the badge held, even though she's from Seattle, and the boys and girls in blue gave her bus fare to get her back to Washington. Only she got as far as Portland, and turned back on her own. I'd found her the next morning trying to retrace her steps to the very private, isolated compound. She was lost, and she was cold, wet, and crying in the mud.
It's easy to look like the hero when you swoop down in your private helicopter and rescue her.
We hadn't had any in-depth "discussions" about that yet. Not as many as we would.
There were so many more delights for me to wring from her. The sadist in me rubbed its hands together and feasted on her lithe and lean form as it ran. She could handle so much more pain than she already knew she could, and even more pleasure than she dreamed possible.
Especially once she really embraced the fact that the two, in her little masochist mind, were interchangeable.
I wasn't in a huge hurry for that. It would mark the beginning of a different part of our relationship. For now I loved that she fought every invasion, every humiliation, every new and frightening and painful experience.
I loved making her come and I loved making her cry.
When her addiction was cured I'd probably have to let her go. My addiction, on the other hand, was to her. What was I supposed to do once she was healed?
2
Annie
He was watching me again. Ever since I came back from Portland, he'd been watching me. It was enough to make a nun feel like she'd done something terribly wrong.
When a man as intense and smoldering and dangerous as Cole St. Martin watches you with close attention, your every move is double and triple-checked before you make it.
When I first fell into his care, it was after Jesse had been killed in a gang shootout. I hadn't even been there, in my Lily persona, because my father had been hospitalized after a series of heart attacks for what turned out to be the beginning of several hospitalizations and procedures and much complaining from him, freaking out from my mother, and bitchiness from my three sisters.
My father's the only one in my family who understands me, and only because he's a career cop. He was never undercover, but he worked narcotics and vice a lot. He was my hero and my inspiration for becoming a cop.
So he needed me to help defray the smothering care of my mother and three sisters, all of whom are frilly and lacy and child-producing even if they have to go through multiple starter marriages before getting to that point.
I needed a 12-step program for my family. Hi. I'm Annie Knox. I don't belong in my family.
I didn't really belong with my fiancé Mark Tomlin anymore either, not by the time Jesse was killed, because I'd been fucking Jesse for months and telling myself it was part of the job.