He'd pulled back to look at me and I realized I was shouting at him. Good. Because the look on his face was one of savage satisfaction.
I wasn't wrong. Whatever he turned into, not after I left, for now, Mark was dangerous.
I waited for him to lean down again, biting at my lips, licking at me. Then I lunged upward and caught his lip between my teeth, biting as hard as the act would allow. Because it was horrible. Because I didn't want to bite it off. Because I'd once loved him.
But mostly because his blood started to flow and I yanked my head away, spitting. He'd reared back, shocked and spraying blood. Now he started to dive in again and I tucked my chin and threw my head forward, headbutting him and catching him under the chin.
I had no idea how soccer players used their heads even once. It fucking hurt, probably hurting me as much as it did him. My only advantage was I'd known I was going to do it.
His head snapped back. I followed it up, toppling him over backwards. He sprawled on the couch, kicking at me, grabbing. I let him grab hold of my arm because he was going to get hold of something and my left arm was less important to me than my right.
There are lots of pieces of advice about avoiding rape. The one that should never be on a list is to kick a man between his legs. Men protect that area. With good reason.
He was still kicking but I stood between his thighs. He was on his back, but because he had a hand to his mouth and the other on my biceps, he was open and defenseless.
I didn't kick him. That wouldn't have been feasible or safe. Or exact. Or possibly possible.
I punched him. A very technically precise TaeKwon-Do strike.
He made something like a scream and doubled up around his genitals. I no longer had any feeling that those had been parts of his anatomy that had once mattered to me. Once all of Mark had mattered to me.
Not anymore. And one of the reasons was that I now mattered to me. Astonishing or not, becoming the sexual submissive of Cole St. Martin had somehow given me back myself.
I didn't stay to take a victory lap. I didn't feel like it had been a victory. Just a necessity. I started to lean close to him but there was no one present but us. So I stood out of range and said, "If you ever come near me again, me or anyone in my family, or anyone I'm associated with, I will kill you."
He said something garbled. Probably it was something terribly unique like calling me a bitch. Then he collapsed again, rolled up on the couch.
I had more than enough time to gather my boxes and put them out in the hall, though I ferried them down and out of the building by carrying as many as I could, then going back for the others, repeatedly, so nothing was ever out of sight.
Mark never emerged from our apartment.
I loaded my life in half a dozen cardboard boxes into my POS car and drove to my father's house. I stayed outside, talking to him from the doorway, just long enough to tell him I loved him but I wouldn't forgive him. My mom was at work. I'd stop to see her. Our relationship had always been strained, unlike the new chasm between my father and me, but she deserved something more than me just going away. I'd been told I was her rock, not my three unpleasant sisters, and it mattered to me.
My circle of people was drawing in again. There was the unpredictable and possibly dangerous Cole St. Martin. My biological family. Some murderous psychopaths (one dead, one sold in sexual service by her own desire to a very cruel sadist of St. Martin's acquaintance). And my ex-fiancé.
I talked to my father.
I talked to my mother.
I left no messages for my sisters. I'd already quit Seattle PD. My bank was interstate.
I got in my car and ignored the phone that had been ringing nonstop for the past half day. The ringer was silenced because there couldn't be anybody calling on that number but St. Martin and I wasn't ready to talk to him. So it buzzed like an angry wasp in my backpack as I checked my directions and set my sights on Las Vegas.
2
Cole
Kent Norcross was ex-military. He had always carried himself exactly that way. He was every bit as regal as he was certifiably crazy. The man had run off more subs than I had ever even entertained the idea of owning. Because truth is, no matter how 24/7 the arrangement, how Master/slave, Owner/owned, people are still free to come and go.
Kie wouldn't have been. Kie was tiny and insane in all the wrong ways. She was dangerous and probably deadly. She hated me, she hated Annie, and she'd done her best to hurt Annie as many different ways as possible all because one thing she'd done at a dinner party when allowed to top Annie had resulted in Kie intentionally hurting Annie so badly that Kie was beaten.
From there, Kie saw to it her Master Vincent Geddes kidnapped Annie. And just when we'd thought she was dead, after Annie and I both killed Vincent at the same instant – or she killed him before I managed it, something the rage inside me was trying to learn to ignore – Kie who was supposed to have been killed by Vincent turned up alive, trying to kill me.
From there Annie had won a fight with her and Kie had been put in my underground holding cells.
Enter Norcross. He'd been looking for a new sub, someone who could withstand him 24/7 because Norcross was hard as nails and kinky as fuck. It seemed a match made in heaven.
Only that's where Kent Norcross was now. Unless his spirit had gone the other way.
I prowled through the southern Nevada compound. The operations room where half a dozen techies worked for me 24/7, watching my interests in the Brazilian rainforest and in other countries, hacking and beating hacks and tracking anyone I wanted tracked – those people were still trying to account for having lost Annie's signal only days after she'd left for Seattle.
No word now as I went in so I went back out again and down underground into the maze of holding cells and a few very dark BDSM rooms. Ariel was still down there. A girl I'd found on the street, minutes away from bleeding out from a stab wound. She'd been an addict, a prostitute, a girl in love with a very bad man, and she'd had less interest in living than anyone I'd ever met. She'd been my lockdown guest for the last several years. Underground, she got sun through reflective skylights, worked out on treadmills and with weights, was fed by great chefs and inventive dieticians, a therapist came to see her multiple times every week, and a companion who had become her friend.
For years I'd taken out my day to day angers on her. She loved to be beaten, to be hurt, to live on a dangerous edge. But ever since Kie and Vincent kidnapped Annie I'd been afraid to do that to Ariel. My temper since coming back to southern Nevada with Annie was on a hair trigger and I didn't trust myself. Even my usual playmate, a pain slut named Marilyn, I didn't trust myself with. I hadn't seen her since Annie left.
My cock could use some action. I was itching to punish somebody. But I didn't trust myself.
And now I couldn't reach Annie. She had to know. Norcross was dead and Kie had run off somewhere. The plane he'd taken Kie to Colorado in had gone down. An ambulance had responded to pick them up. They'd found Norcross, dead.
There'd been no trace of Kie.
I had new and very well-trained security. But Annie was out there on her own. She might be a cop, she might have survived years of undercover but Kie had almost brought her down a couple times.
"Anything?" My voice was a snarl.