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39
Annie
He came up behind me. I'd been waiting for so long I'd lost track of the long slow count of minutes in my head. My breathing was muffled by the bedding. It made for shallow, awkward breaths that didn't satisfy and kept me afraid, on edge. Where once even in a situation I'd put myself in I'd have greeted such directions by rewriting them to suit myself – head turned on the pillow because I insisted on comfort and being able to breathe, the cane leaned against the bed because otherwise it rolled against me, for example – I now lay flat on the bed, my face in the pillow, my arms by my sides. The cane had rolled and leaned against me from shoulder to mid thigh.
"Don't move," came his voice from above and behind me.
My arms moved under my head, making room in the pillow so I could grasp at the breath I'd soon need. My hands fisted under my head, but nothing else. Otherwise, I didn't move. As instructed.
But I'd done nothing wrong! I'd called the son of a bitch sir until my teeth wanted to fall out from it. I'd groveled. I'd fucked him, once more since the disastrous party and auction. I'd waited until he told me I could call my family.
What more did he want?
I realized I'd said it aloud when he answered. "Your compliance. Your obedience. Your submission. Freely given."
I can't.
"Yes, sir."
He laughed. I didn't know him. I couldn't read him. The laugh might mean he believed he had won. The laugh might mean he found my attempts to connive amusing. I wasn't convinced he didn't know this submission was only a sham. "Count," he said.
Oh, fuck, please don't….
The displacement of air. The scream of cane through space. The bright, brilliant pain that leaped through me. My grunt of anger, shock and hurt, every time. Every single time. And then the secondary screaming, red raw agony that echoed up from the slice, the cut, the strike..
"One. Sir."
Vegas was as much an explosion and shock, of color and noise and movement, as the cane strikes that came before the journey. I'd been to Vegas two times before, once with Mark, the two of us making the obligatory remarks about how easy it would be to just get married, do away with the engagement and all the planning, spend the money on a long holiday rather than a one day wedding. Looking back, we were both instantly backing away, neither one of us more than the other.
So I was a typical tourist, staring up at the casinos on the strip, wandering through the theme hotels staring at the amazing things Southern Nevada had done in the pursuit of hospitality and gaming income. Staring as well at the difference between the desert compound where I was being held with its white walls and desert vistas, and this world of bright lights, color, movement, noise, music, and slot machines.
There were people here. Cole St. Martin might be a billionaire, but there had to be enough people in this city that I could find someone not on his payroll who would help me if I decided to run.
That was something I would have to think through. Because failing could be a major problem.
I found someone to help me, actually, but not the way I'd intended.
Cole traveled with an entourage. Whatever they looked like on the surface, one big group of smiling men, all tall and buff, traveling together, in reality every one of his "friends" on this trip were bodyguards and enforcers. They were armed, with legal concealed carry licenses. Nevada is an open carry state, but Cole's huge friends carrying handguns on their hips would have been a bit much. There's drawing attention as in Look at the big, beautiful men, what would that be like? And Look at the big, scary men with muscles and guns? Let's get the frack out of here.
They might be big and armed and with us all the time, one room over in the hotel suite, but they weren't ladies. Which meant the ladies room was a definite retreat. Pleading menstrual distress, I went into one of the shining bathrooms full of marble and gleaming brass fixtures and threw myself down into one of the weirdly placed conversation pit armchairs between the entrance and the bathrooms proper.
Blessed silence, despite the sounds from the casino, the piped-in music, and the sounds of women's voices.
Then there was the sound of a voice speaking directly to me. I hadn't realized I'd closed my eyes until the voice came from the other side of my closed lids. I almost smiled to myself, the kind of You're kidding me, right? smile, because it seemed like of course Cole had found someone who could come in and roust me out. You think you're safe in there? Think again. And even though the bathroom was only yards away from where he and his men were, it would feel that way – that there were no safe refuges.
I knew that wasn't true.
It was only a question of whether I could distance myself from him or not.
"You okay?"
The girl was brown-skinned, pretty, with sharp features and long glossy hair. Her nails were done in the new fashion I didn't understand so they looked like insanely sharp claws. I'd once asked a waitress about hers and said they looked like something I'd hurt myself with. She'd grinned and told me that while making her bed her hand had slipped off the sheet she was pulling taut and the tension made her snap back. It struck the wall beside the bed and the nail had embedded itself. It didn't break off, either, she'd said; she had to tug her hand free.
I looked from her nails to her eyes and I was positive Cole hadn't sent her.
The warm syrupy feeling of the fet crawled through my bones. The pain of the last caning was numbed and warmed and cotton padded and wrapped away from me in soft blankets. My thoughts finally calmed. The pleasure seeped through me.
There was more for later.
