"What extra?" I asked.
"The money. I'll have myself in hand before a quarter of a million."
"Keep it?" I suggested.
She reached out and touched my face, a caress I'd never have allowed in the maze and cells. I kissed her palm as she pulled it away. "I don't want to be your ward or project." Her eyes watched mine. "I want to be your friend now."
"With benefits?" I eyed her.
She rubbed her ass. "Lots of benefits. I need benefits."
"Careful," I said. "You're still in my custody. I could take you downstairs for another goodbye."
"I don't think I can handle any more goodbyes just now." She smiled. "Seriously. Cole. What about the extra. I can't keep it. I have to..." She paused, looking for a word. "Live."
That was a good word. "If that's what you truly want, then do what makes you feel best. You might want to put some in savings. You can make better decisions for yourself when you know it's there."
She nodded thoughtfully. "And the rest?"
"Pick a charity," I said.
And her tears spilled. "Sexual assault victims." She went up on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. "You're a good man, Cole St. Martin."
The plume of dust from the car's passage faded.
"No, I'm not," I said to the fading car.
Then I found a pair of prostitutes and took them into the pain room and paid them not to safe word for a good long time.
I called them both Annie.
5
Annie
August rolled through, breathlessly hot and beautiful. The apartment I'd taken had everything: Balcony from which to simmer and watch the city. AC to keep me from roasting alive. Big beautiful bathroom where no one ever dragged me for an early morning enema.
My phone had stopped ringing. At all. It occurred to me that now I knew pretty much no one and the thought was disconcerting. I didn't need a job and if I was starting a full load of credits – anything to be in and out quickly, school had never been my bailiwick and I was going for a purpose, not as a pleasure – then it made no sense to start a job just to quit it again.
Claude and Chloe were out of the picture. The last I'd heard she really had divorced him and kept the house, and while the authorities weren't thrilled about her being able to just adopt at will, fortune or no fortune, she was being allowed to foster a handful of children considered incorrigible and it was going well.
But she was out of my life. After the horror in France with Vincent and Kie, that's when St. Martin's rage had flared. To keep me safe – and maybe to punish me in a few new and novel ways – he had sent me to stay with them. At the time I knew the couple from some of the Disturbed Billionaire Dinner Club events. That's what I called them in my mind. To their faces I just called them Sir unless I wanted to be punished. Sometimes I did, but most of the time it was a better fantasy than reality.
In reality, being cropped or whipped or birched hurts.
Which isn't to say I didn't like it.
But once I was in residence with them, St. Martin thinking I was safe, I realized that Chloe's Master/slave relationship was a cover for kind of a lot of fuckery. Domestic violence. Emotional abuse. What Claude was doing was well beyond consensual non-consent.
Which was about it for my friendships in southern Nevada. That left Cole St. Martin in Nevada and my sisters and family in Washington along with whatever Mark was at the time.
No girlfriends and without being part of PD, no male friends or males who said they were friends, whether or not behind my back they seethed at a woman on the force (some did, others didn't, and it no longer mattered).
I might not be an A student or thrilled about school, but I was excited about getting through my courses and moving on to see if I could get in with the DEA. And then who knew where my future would take me?
The university campus looked in some places like a casino, which made sense, and in others like a multiple building healthcare facility, a huge hospital of sorts. There was something ultra professional about the buildings, and something not really welcoming. Or maybe that was just my take on it. Most of the time I'd be in one building, my prerequisites out of the way, most of my classes criminal justice so I could fast track my way back into my "real life."
Standing on the balcony, overlooking Las Vegas, or walking on the campus, trying to get a sense of it, I'd realize all those things would take me away from southern Nevada.
And Cole St. Martin.
His calls had stopped the day he left me the message that Kie had broken away from Norcross, who from all accounts should have been able to handle a dozen subs, even those as dangerous as Kie. But the helicopter went down and there was no way of knowing if she had caused it.
I couldn't go armed to campus, but I could carry a small version of a police baton. In TaeKwon-Do we learned to use the tonfa, the Korean version had apparently first been used in agriculture, but since Korea kept getting overthrown, they’d literally turned their ploughshares into swords, more than once. The version I had looked like a rubber dog bone or maybe something even less likely to be carried into class in a co-ed's backpack. It fit in my hand, with an inch out either side, and could help me immobilize a joint if I had to.
I hoped not to.
I hoped no one would find it on me and call it a weapon. I was a weapon.
And every day out on my own, as anxiety crested and the need to move, move, move through my life increased, I felt a little more dangerous, a little more likely to explode.
Kie might be in more danger of me than me of her.
August rolled on and school started and I had never told St. Martin that I did or didn't want updates on whether or not the bitch reappeared. So he'd decided for himself. Once a week he texted me, never asking where I was or what I was doing, only offering me a no news is probably good news message, though subtly different each time. He was writing them, not just copying them.
He never asked me to get back to him.
I never did.
But I didn't erase the messages either.
6
Cole
"So, Cole, tell me a little more about what you do."
The woman sitting next to me wore a harness that outlined a stunning pair of breasts, neatly pierced with wicked looking barbs. She had shatteringly blue eyes, bright red lipstick, flawless skin, was wearing a skirt that skimmed her hips and disappeared, so every time she moved everyone at the dinner party understood she wore no underwear.
She was stunningly dull.
"I'm the CEO of St. Martin Pharmaceuticals," I told her, and wondered what her rounded ass would feel like pushed up around my cock.
The night was my second with Valley Vice, though why they saw fit to name themselves I didn't know. After Chloe left Claude and Kie and Vincent wound up dead, and then only Vincent was dead but Kie was persona non grata due to being bat shit, it was time to find another group.
Unsurprisingly, million- and billionaires with kinky tastes aren't hard to find. Especially in a place referred to as Sin City.
"Do you get to travel a lot doing that?" my companion asked. She'd eaten about an ounce of celery during the course of the meal. If she were my sub, there'd be a punishment for that. Submissives need to keep their strength up so they can service their Masters.