Then a guard came and told me to get up and accompany him.
I didn't know him. The guards sometimes changed and sometimes were the same assholes as usual. They were uniformly big and muscled, the kind of muscle that knows how to work, not the kind that's just for show. He carried a baton, a taser, and a gun.
I stood instantly. There was no point arguing with him, he wasn't the problem, and there was nothing except my badge, hidden back in my room, that belonged to me in this compound. The notebook, the case law book, the pen, the clothes I was wearing, they were all Cole's. I had no need to protect any of that stuff, or make sure no one fucked with it.
And then – I was Cole's, also. I was still working on stopping him from fucking with me.
The guard dropped me off at the door to the room where most of Cole's debasements took place. I still didn't know what to call it. Dungeon, prison cell, playroom, punishment room, therapy office.
There were no instructions from the guard. He simply let go of me and thundered away in the other direction, leaving me to my own devices.
That was one of the most dangerous of tricks. Cole would wait to see what I would do. There were few ways to win. There were myriad ways to screw up.
After a couple minutes of contemplating my options, my heart pounding and my ears ringing, I stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind me, then sank instantly to my knees at the edge of the room, hands in my lap, head bowed.
I kept my gaze down even when I heard Cole sometime later, crossing the room to me. He stopped just short of me, standing there, probably looking down at me. I kept my eyes down.
He wore black motorcycle boots and blue jeans. Past that I had no more information.
His voice came from above me. "That's a good start."
My voice almost sub-audible, I said, "Thank you, sir."
He wasn't laughing when he said, "Why are you still dressed?"
Crap. I was still dressed because I fought every time I was told to not be. Because I'd been dressed when I'd been eating and no one had told me to change that. Because I didn't want to be naked. Because I was afraid of him and my clothes felt like armor even though they were just jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, nothing I could even wear to run across the desert in.
Not that I was going to try to escape again.
"Do you want me to undress, sir?"
It seemed he did. When I stood, he stopped me from doing so, though, and took my chin in his hands, raising my face so I looked at him.
"You need to understand."
He could have stopped right there. The look on his lean, long, serious face, no sign of the triangular, mischievous smile, was more than enough. He knew. What's more, he knew that I did.
That didn't stop him.
"I know that you were on the phone in my office in your suite almost as soon as I left it yesterday," he told me and I melted a little. I almost wished he'd let me kneel at his feet again. For the first time, I honestly felt that I'd done something wrong, something to actually disappoint him rather than something that was part of an elaborate game with all the traps in place so he'd be able to discipline me with – reason?
There didn't need to be a reason. For the first time I understood that, too. He could do whatever he wanted to me, as long as it didn't cause permanent damage. As long as he stuck with that one requirement of the contract between us.
That meant this – this punishment, this humiliation, whatever this was going to be – was something he had put together to help me. Because he cared. Like a parent correcting a child who is in danger of fucking up enough to get hurt.
And instantly I rethought that. There was nothing about children that went with this. This was all about consenting adults and I had to be of age, I had to be able to consent. If he were caught, if there were some form of law enforcement that came through the door and demand he explain and release me, there would be massive attention paid to my ID because I did look underage.
The idea of consent crashed over me, too. That it wasn't a game from my side, either. I had consented to this because I wanted my life back and then I spent so much time fighting it.
That probably wouldn't change. I hated the humiliation, I hated the pain, I hated not being in control. Like someone following an onerous diet routine or endless workout regimen, I understood it was good for me on an intellectual level.
The human part of me was still going to rebel.
The human part of me was already rebelling, dashing back into my own mind, trying to avoid the situation that was already happening.
"Are you present?" Cole snapped.
He'd asked me that before. During a scene, during a beating, a lecture, I could disappear into my head. I'd perfected the ability when my mother used to lecture me when I was in high school. That was her form of discipline – basically talking her victim to death. Because of that, I'd learned to disappear into a fantasy the minute she started. If it looked like being twenty minutes of Why did you think X was a good idea? What were you THINKING? I'd vanish into planning my wedding. Doing my math homework. Making a Christmas list, either to gift or to receive. I would make massive to-do lists, most of which I could remember when she finally, finally finished.
I could disappear anywhere.
Cole knew that. And Cole stopped it.
"I'm present, sir."
He nodded. His blue eyes were very dark, with anger, I thought, but also with some arousal. "Who did you call and why did you feel it was imperative to make the call?"
Now I wanted to look away from him and down at the floor. "I called Tad Charles, sir."
That stopped him because he obviously didn't know who Tad was. "Who is that?"
"He's my contact in PD now that Samuels is gone." Did you have Samuels fired? I didn't ask that.
I think he expected that I'd called my father or even called Mark about my father, those awkward conversations where I tried to pretend I'd called to talk to Mark himself until I could get the information on my Dad. Only because of his health issues. I wasn't unnaturally attached to him. In the past when my assignments had dragged on for months I still went without communication with my family. I wasn't dependent like that.
I was just scared.
Seemed like I was scared all the time now, and that thought left me wishing for the warm, safe place fentanyl formed in my brain and allowed me to hide.
"The job." His voice was flat with anger held in check.
When I'd been making my way through San Francisco sex shops and dungeons, searching for Cole after I left him the first time, I'd picked up information as I went. I'd talked to people as well as searched for him, I'd showed his photo, instantly recognizable as the billionaire CEO of St. Martin Pharma.
But I'd also played. I'd also learned. I'd had an experience that reduced me to tears in the arms of a stranger, when neither strangers nor tears were normal in my life.
And I'd Googled, searched, read and learned. About the types of alternative sexualities, about the scene, as some people called it, about masochism and sadism and about domestic discipline, something as foreign to me as anything I could not quite imagine.
One of the things I couldn't make sense of was domestic discipline. The idea of consigning my life to my husband's – or wife's, whoever's – will was insane. To say yes all the time to whoever it was, a continuation of what I had with Cole, something that wouldn't end. To act as if I couldn't make my own decisions.