I'd been off the fet. So what the … hell?
Cole tilted his head to one side and considered me. He was hot, so hot he took my breath away, with the kind of cruel looks I was coming to realize were my personal turn on. He had a wide mouth, endlessly mobile, and when he grinned, those piercing eyes and the triangular smile all came together to make him look like a mischievous forest sprite. Mischievous. Or malignant. He was taller than six feet, buffer than shit, built like a bodybuilder but with the long lanky muscle of a tall man. He wore clothes effortlessly and took them off just as effortlessly and unselfconsciously, though I had yet to see him totally naked. I'd felt him though, pressed up against my still stinging, throbbing flesh after he'd taken a belt to me, or his hand. His own hand with nothing else felt like the worst kind of punishment.
He had more. He had a leather paddle I hadn't felt yet, and a wooden one with holes drilled through it. He had hairbrushes the way my sisters had shoes. He had a variety of canes I trembled at the sight of.
But so far, in my recovery, he'd only used the belt, well worn and buttery soft when it was threaded through the loops of his jeans or when he held it out to me to kiss before he ordered me off my knees and across his. Or face down on the bed. Or his desk. Or hanging on to a kitchen counter.
He'd kept his word. So far. And I hadn't asked for anything else. He'd told me from the beginning I didn't have to sleep with him, though I'd seen the outline of his enormous erection pressed against his jeans or sweats or once, memorably, his boxers. He got off just on the beating, I thought, but there'd be no problem applying that to me.
I hadn't asked. I was still processing Jesse's death. I was still engaged to Mark who didn't even know where I was, didn't have any way of knowing my undercover assignment right now was off the books. Having been sold by a fellow cop into the keeping of a man who meant to keep me sober by way of natural pharma and routine punishment.
For everything. For asking for my phone. For finding my phone and liberating it from the locked cupboard where he'd been keeping it. For getting online. For not calling him sir.
For talking back.
For trying to run. That was early though, when despite the herbs and derivatives of vines that he was giving me I craved the fet. China white. I woke sweating from dreams of it. I cried for it in the shower while I ran my hands over my aching bottom and sometimes my thighs and once my back.
I couldn't tell. Maybe the addiction was easing. Maybe it wasn't.
But I was trying. So – "What the hell, sir?" I asked.
He raised one eyebrow, looking more like Loki from the movies than ever. Instead of answering he simply held up the bottle of Advil I'd liberated from his bathroom and relocated to mine.
It had been mostly full when I picked it up. Not that I'd counted.
Okay. I had. Of the 250 caplets listed on the bottle, there'd been 249. Obviously Loki didn't need a lot of painkillers. Go, trickster god.
The bad news was, I did need it.
The worst news was there were probably about 20 left.
And I'd been in residence how many days? Even I knew that was bad news.
I was invested in coming clean. There was no way I was weak. I went through SEAL training. I didn't go out for SEALs, just did the Bud-K training to see if I could. I was strong. I could deadlift 400 pounds. I could bench 150. I could throw a man over my hip and break his larynx before he got back up. I could take Jesse's rage sex and pounding and I could fight for my father in any way possible and I could deal with the death of a high school senior who was bright and funny and cute and hooked on the China white dealt by my deep cover boyfriend.
I could kick the fucking addiction.
But. It. Fucking. Hurt. Even with the rainforest pharma which, yes, it was doing wonders for me. It made me feel clear-headed even without the fet. It gave me energy and it cut down the nausea and headache and diarrhea and everything else that opiates did as they left your body.
"I'm trying," I said. All the things that made me shoot up the first time were still happening.
"That's not good enough." He sounded so patient. A teacher waiting for the somewhat stupid student to make a connection.
Instead, all the usual anger bubbled to the surface. "Do you think this is easy? Have you ever had to sweat poison out of your system? Even with what you're giving me, it's like flu times ten. I'm sick, I'm scared, I'm somewhere I don't know where and my father – "
I was starting to cry. I never cry.
He just waited.
"Fuck you!" I threw the bottle at his chest. The instant it left my hand, both my hands went up over my mouth. I didn't want to be punished again. I didn't. I still hurt. I slid to my knees without knowing I meant to do it.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Sir! I didn't mean to! Please don't be angry!" I risked a look at his face.
It was as impassive as ever. His voice sounded like the voice of a million fathers worldwide though he was nothing like a father. "I'm not angry," he said. "I'm disappointed. Stand up."
No.
I stood. My legs shook so hard they barely supported me.
"Do you still have the same goals? The same desires? Do you still want to kick this and go back to your job before your month’s leave ends?"
You know I do. Don't make me beg. "Yes. Sir." I couldn't help it. The sir always got tacked on at the end.
"Then I will help you." He pulled a hardback chair out from the desk beneath the window.
No.
"Come over here."
No.
I moved across the room on shaking legs. My teeth had started to chatter. On one stupid, entirely absurd impulse, I bent and picked up the Advil bottle, offering it to him.
"Thank you. Put it on the desk."
Shit.
I put it on the desk and faced him. I didn't see where he got it, but he held one of the hardwood hairbrushes in his hand.
"Pants and panties down to your knees."
I'd woken in sweatpants I couldn't remember putting on. But then, I couldn't remember getting to this house. Just that there had been a flight from where we were to here. Wherever here was.
"Annie."
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband and pushed them down. After ten days of this, it shouldn't have bothered me, but shame blushed my face. I hated facing him naked. I hated even more facing him only partly unclothed, my sweats and underwear pushed to my knees, bare from the waist down and waiting to be punished.
"Across my knee."
I was shaking almost too hard to comply. He helped me, guiding me down, laying me across his lap. He wrapped one leg over mine to stop me from kicking.
"I suggest you don't fight me on this."
I couldn't answer. I bit back a sob.
"Annie? Grab the chair legs. If your hand gets in my way, I'll just hit it."
My hair was in my face, my dark curls long now, catching in the sweat and tears on my face.
"There were 249 caplets in the bottle."
Oh, god. Oh, please.
"There are 29 now."
"Sir…"
"That's 220, Annie."
"Sir, please." I was dizzy, the blood going to my head. Hanging on to the chair legs was almost impossible.
"Don't make a sound," he said.