It was good to have my property back.
4
Annie
My knuckles were sore from working on the heavy bag and the meditation had given me time to review my latest escape fantasy.
It didn't matter if I didn't try it. The point was to keep from screaming in boredom during the meditation, and if anything happened with Cole, to know I had a plan in mind.
The latest plan included getting out through the fire exit in the holding cell that was my suite of rooms. I'd managed to get one of the keys during a long, long session of yoga when there'd been a visiting instructor. If she'd made a fuss about the key being gone, I'd have been busted and punished, possibly with the teacher joining in, depending on her proclivities.
The longer I was with Cole, the more I started to believe the entire world was made up of kinky fucks who lived to dominate and punish.
I still had my badge, too. When I ran before I took it with me and used it to convince some Vegas PD officers to loan me the money to get to the bus station and from there, theoretically to Seattle. Only I'd turned around in Portland, because the real life I was heading back to seemed like it should be capitalized and trademarked – Real Life™ - it no longer quite felt like it would fit me.
I blamed that on the drugs still echoing through my system and told myself I'd try again. I was still waiting for Cole to come down on me all the harder for it but he hadn't. I'd been cold and terrified and lost when he found me and he'd taken me back and put me in a hot tub and warmed me up and slept wrapped around me.
It was after that we started having sex but that had only been a handful of times.
He was remarkably respectful for a sadist who lived to humiliate me.
That thought alone was enough to make me want the fet.
I'd run that time because he'd pushed me. Looking back at it, the whole experience had a dreamlike quality. Nightmarish, actually. I'd only been back with Cole a few weeks after having insisted I was healed and capable of making my way in the world and then failing utterly.
He'd thrown a dinner party, inviting five other couples, and the whole thing had been elaborate from the start. A seamstress had basically sewn me into a dress with a sheer top that highlighted my naked boobs more than clothed them, and a long skirt that draped elegantly. A makeup artist and hairdresser had gotten me ready, and before that a masseuse had "relaxed me" as best a huge man could relax a totally naked me, and another woman had given me a humiliatingly thorough bath.
But the dinner party itself, complete with the wives being auctioned off between the men to the highest bidder, had horrified me and I'd risen from the table, not caring about the guard or the thunderstorm outside and asked if any of the women wanted to go with me, because I was out of there.
Of course they didn't. They were sold to their masters or they were true submissives or they were terrified and stuck and had no choice.
And of course I didn't get out. A guard shot me up with something and I went down for the count, never totally out, but out of body in the sense I couldn't use it myself for much of anything.
A hateful man with dead eyes bought me for 5.5 million and later I heard Cole fighting with him, refusing to give me up. I was too new to it, he said. I wasn't ready. Not that day, not that week, not that month.
Maybe not even that year.
On reflection, that might have been what scared me most. That my "treatment" for my addiction might extend beyond a year. I had a fiancé, a family, a career to get back to. I wasn't in love with Cole St. Martin. Most of the time I didn't even like him.
So I ran. And I came back.
And here I was.
The shower after the bag workout and yoga was hot, steamy and short. Cole went away and took his own shower while I had mine. I noticed during my time with him that he kept from me the little things in life that would make him seem human.
His bathroom was separate from mine, of course. He was in the main house and I was in a suite of rooms that was basically a prison. But there was no evidence of him brushing his teeth or doing anything human and when he showered in my suite, he did so in a separate stall where I didn't see or hear him.
At the end of my shower I reported to a large and thorough woman who massaged the living daylights out of me.
It was both relaxing and somewhat fearsome. Today she’d had a running commentary as I climbed naked onto the table. Cole refused to let me have a sheet or robe during massage. The stupid thing was I never quite adjusted. Every time was as if it were the first – undressing in front of strangers or appearing naked. I couldn't handle it.
After the massage I showered again then dressed to be escorted over to the main house to have whatever meal he'd dreamed up for breakfast. If I was making him happy, there might be strawberries and salted mixed nuts along with the oatmeal or scrambled eggs.
If he was angry, it was fish of some sort and a great leafy thing that was good for me and tasted like I supposed old newspapers would.
Today he surprised me. When I got back from my shower, he was waiting for me, already showered himself, his hair wet. It’s a dark blond, nearly not blond in certain light, and he often combs it straight back. He's a tall, lean man with more developed muscles than most long-limbed men have. His face is intense, long and sharp and very handsome but with a cruelty to it.
Then he smiles, the inverted pyramid smile of Loki from the movies and he's a mischievous sprite.
That never lasts.
"Sir?" I asked.
"I'm changing some things in the morning routine," he said.
Instantly I had goosebumps. Still dressed, my first instinct was to run. The sick notion of punishment rose up, making me hot and cold all over, but I'd done nothing wrong. Or if I had, I was unaware of it.
"May I ask a question?" I forgot the sir at the end of that and left it alone when I saw him register it. Sometimes it seemed worse to tack it on.
"As we go. For now, just take your shower."
He was dressed. Long sleeved henley against the cold, as cold as it gets in the Southern Nevada desert, and bare feet under his jeans. He was carrying a bag but I couldn't see what was in it and suddenly my heart was pounding and I wanted out of the bathroom, out of Nevada, back to Seattle. I wanted to be a police officer again, I wanted to be undercover with Jesse, for Jesse not to be dead, for none of the previous months to have happened.
The desire swept through me as strong as the addiction ever had.
When he's dressed and I'm not, I never feel more naked. And though he's seen me remove my clothes on multiple occasions, something about this lack of balance of power today left me shivering.
Before he could order me to, or bring someone else in to do it for me, I took off my running clothes and climbed into the shower. Over the sound of the water, he asked me questions about the fentanyl addiction. They weren't new, but I thought somehow he was interpreting them differently. He asked me about my physical addiction and symptoms, about what it felt like emotionally, about any cognitive difficulties I might have experienced as a result of the addiction and I answered him as thoughtfully as I could. The rainforest cure he’d developed was either the greatest placebo in the world or some kind of miracle serum made from vines and herbs.
Toward the end of my shower I heard him go out of the bathroom and come in again, heard something placed in the room. The trembling started again.