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That led to Mark finding out and walking out on me. Not for good. He lived there, after all. But things became a whole lot more strained than they already were with a fiancée who wouldn't say where she was and rarely even called to check in.
When my handler in PD found out…
He sold me to Cole St. Martin.
Who wasn't just a billionaire pharma king putting together remedies for opiate addicts.
He was a sadist with his own ideas about recovery. And penance. And getting clean.
I stood and felt the pull of skin across my ass. The welts were swollen, a couple of them beaded with blood around the edges. Gingerly I reached back and put both hands on my sore ass.
"If you soak in a hot bath, you'll feel a lot better."
The voice came out of nowhere, scaring the beejezus out of me. I whirled around, already going into fighting stance like I had a clue what was going on. At the same time I recognized Cole's voice.
That really didn't mean I could stand down.
"You really did a number on me last night. What the fu –? " I caught myself. Billionaire, pharmaceutical genius, benefactor of a whole slew of charities.
Control freak, sadist, bastard.
Master.
He had a weird streak of propriety. He did not like hearing me swear and I did not like being corrected.
"What did I do to deserve that?" Just shy of two weeks into my month off, that PD ordered me to take because of my father's impending charges and his health. Part kindness. Part administrative leave because he was a family member being brought up on charges. For those two weeks – twelve days – whatever, it felt like forever the way my skin crawled and everything itched and the impatience drummed in me day and night like fire in my in my veins, making me want to run and run but my conditioning was kind of out the window.
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.
