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Our guests arrived in a flurry of activity over a twenty minute period. Cole had said there were all types of relationships and I watched, curious, to see if there was anyone I might be able to make a confidant.
The dress had imprinted itself on me. I burned with humiliation from the moment the first guests were led inside.
I wasn't able to completely keep straight the names and faces, but Cole had said it wouldn't matter and largely it didn't. He had staff to serve dinner, and a bartender to make drinks. There were maids and a doorman. I didn't have to interact much. In fact, he didn't seem to want me to and none of the other women did either.
The first couple to arrive were amazing, a tall, distinguished, silver haired man and his wife, easily twenty years his junior but still in her forties or early fifties. The work that had been done to her was exquisite and aided by good genetics, I guessed. Her hair was honey colored, her skin flawless, her breasts high and proud under her dress. Her husband wore an expensive suit, and an arrogant sneer that somehow made him more sexual than simply horrible.
His wife followed where he went, her head down, a step or two behind him. When he wanted something, she retrieved it promptly. When addressed, she was polite, articulate, friendly, beautiful. When dismissed, she disappeared.
I felt a frisson of angst travel my entire body. I had spent years working to be one of the guys within PD, to be accepted and not treated as the girl, the token girl, the pain in the ass girl, the one to be protected, or the one to be despised for getting herself inserted into the man's world.
Even so, even with the work I'd done, I still wasn't accepted totally. When my Taekwon-do instructor had forgotten himself while talking to me one night in the otherwise empty gym and simply taken off his uniform pants to slide on jeans, never missing a word of his conversation, I felt that I had made it.
And here I had lost all of it. We all had. The women in the room were decorations. Pets. Slaves.
Rage was starting to build.
I wondered if Cole would find that healthy. Or simply dismiss it. Or punish me for it.
The second couple was a young biracial pair. He was male model nondescript, pretty but forgettable, working some job in politics and obviously rich. I didn't recognize him and he was no more interested in me. The woman he was with was his wife, a svelte, muscled black woman with ebony skin oiled to a luster. Her gaze on him was avid and ferocious. Her expression as she looked at the men, respectful; at the rest of us women, contemptuous.
I was not going to find help in this group.
The other three men were rich and well kept, probably older than fifty, and maintained by expensive coaches, expensive trainers, expensive food, expensive everything. Only one of them stood out, a man with cruel eyes I'd seen in too many dealers and too many users. Cruel eyes, cruel smile. I looked to see which of the women was with him.
The women with them were probably not wives. They were all three young, white, some shade of blond. One wore a backless dress that showed off whip marks on her back. When she moved to stand with her man, it was to stand with the cruel blond haired man. No surprise. Another of the women wore an elegant dress, beautiful and long and black and sweeping, well paired with the shiny silver collar and leash. The last girl wore only a skirt, and her nipples were clamped.
The weirdness, I thought, was just beginning.
Dinner was long and utterly dull. After all the weeks with barely any information from the outside world, it turned out the outside world hadn't changed all that much. The presidential administration was still shit, the world was still a dumpster fire, people were undoubtedly still OD-ing and selling drugs to kids, and I was in here, doing something I thought would help me and now doing something I thought absurd.
This wasn't recovery. It wasn't even rough sex, since I wasn't having sex with Cole St. Martin and now I had no desire to ever do so. I was sickened by the excesses of the evening and furious at myself for ever having gotten into a situation where some little shit like Samuels could "sell me."
There was no way anything I had signed could be binding. I sat gripping my wine glass so hard it should have shattered, watching bright women study their plates and boorish men hold forth on topics they knew shit about.
When the topless girl was slapped and her tits slapped for having sneezed once, and the black woman required to take all her clothes off and kneel behind her man's chair for having the temerity to pass him the salt at the wrong time, I stood.
Enough. It was raining and thundering out. If I had to move through the storm, I would. If everyone came to whatever was left of their over privileged senses, I'd use a phone and call a cab.
If I couldn't do that, I just might call the police. Cole didn't know it but I had brought my badge. It was hidden away in my cell. Even if it wasn't, it would be easy to prove who I was. Even if he could hide my existence with Seattle PD, he couldn't do anything about Mark or my parents.
"What are you doing?" Cole asked.
I placed my napkin politely beside my plate. "I'm leaving this shit show and anyone who wants to go with me – women, of course – is welcome. This has nothing to do with my recovery and nothing to do with 'lifestyle.'" I looked from one to the next, finishing with Cole. "This is abuse," I said. "And I'm finished."
I moved to the hallway, plucking a hoodie I sometimes wore for our morning runs from the coat rack and feeling blessed relief as something covered up my torso. I started to turn back to see if any of the women had the guts to follow me, trying my damnedest to remember what I'd heard of names and descriptions, because this didn't end with me just walking out, not if there was even one girl left behind.
That's when Cole grabbed me by the throat and slammed me into the wall alongside the coat rack.
"You're not going anywhere," he said. "There's an auction to get through and then I believe you and I need to have a very serious chat."
I opened my mouth to reply but the guard on the other side of me moved in close and the tip of the hypodermic went into my upper arm.
"Just enough to make her cooperate," Cole said. "I want her aware."
"Got it, boss," the man said.
The world grayed away.
