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42
Annie
Cole had no history for me. He simply existed as a billionaire sadist and someone who somehow owned me. When I thought of all the things I knew about Mark – his family, what his childhood had been like, what he'd wanted to be on his way to deciding to be a doctor – I saw a complete person. There were things he’d told me in the dark of the night, those hurts and boosts to the ego, those things that make you human so you respond to situations in a unique way – I knew those about him. Of course it had taken longer than the time I had known Cole St. Martin, but Cole knew me so intimately, had already disassembled me and put me back together, it felt like a longer and more intimate time than I'd spent with the man I loved and meant to marry.
My history was an open book. Washington State. Born and raised in Olympia and moved to Seattle for school and career.
I was used to rain.
So the one thing I knew about Cole that he didn't know I knew: wherever it was he was from, he was a wuss about cloudy skies and chill temps still in the high forties. When there was actual rain coming down on the Nevada desert, he was apt to threaten me with the treadmill.
"Come on, sir." I was wheedling. I was trying to be cute. I was trying to call him sir. I was trying to make sure I didn't get punished for my attempts to get him outside for our run. Because the treadmill wasn't enough. I'd come to love the smell of the sage and the emptiness of the world around us. The compound was completely isolated. It wasn't even in a tiny western town and the Nevada desert surrounding it was vast, empty, eerie and beautiful.
And with every run I insisted we go another way, wheedling, pleading, calling him sir, promising to give him a workout, a challenge! Though to be honest, his legs were miles longer than mine. I was never going to challenge him with a race.
That's why I wanted to see everything I could of the desert around us as December came down. Because he was watching me like a hawk. Never mind that the fentanyl in Vegas had been his plant, his test, a trap I'd fallen into neat as you please. He was still watching me despite the fact there was no fet for me to fall into here.
So I challenged him to run, I teased him so lightly I could get away with it, pointing out that his sub had a better affinity for running in the rain than he did. Was he going to let her be superior to him in something?
So he'd go out with me on mornings when even on the flat valley floor the sun didn't make an appearance until quarter to seven at best.
Being out at dawn, the glow from the city was obvious. The beam of light that shot from the Luxor and could be seen in space was clearly evident. The desert is like that. The glow from a city can light the night sky for a long distance.
I didn't know how far from Vegas we were. But I was relatively sure I knew which way to run when I went.
The chance came a week after we returned from Las Vegas.
"You've changed," he said, sliding into a light slicker against the rain. Vegas has a rainy season, usually after the holidays in the new year. I was lucky. This year it was early.
"Why do you say that, sir?" My own weather clothes were already on. I was jogging in place, warming up. I had a large water bottle on my arm. I had a couple of the protein bars he left in my room for those lockdown times he didn't see to me for a day or more. Over the past few days I'd moved around in my cell more when he wasn't with me, getting whoever monitored the cameras in my room used to me being on my feet and fiddling with things. More than once I'd checked that my Seattle PD badge was still in the drawer where Cole had put it.
"In the beginning I had to drag you out of bed. Now you're dragging me out in the storm."
Well, yes. But I needed reconnaissance. "This should please you," I said.
He actually smiled at that, a real smile that touched his eyes. "It does, where you're concerned. You should be up and running at the crack of dawn. Me, I could still be under the covers."
Not today,I pleaded silently. This was the last day. From what I'd seen in the forecast, tomorrow's rain was going to be accompanied by thunder and lightning. I thought I'd wake to find a text from Cole in his room reading something to the effect of go back to sleep. Not today. And then I'd go for my run, the same way I sometimes did when he was too busy and convinced that I was too far away from anything to get anywhere on my own.
Too far away. Too dependent.
He was too trusting now. He'd wanted a stronger Annie.
He had one.
For now.
And if he sent a message inviting me – or rather, "inviting me" – to his bed? I'd tell him I'd slept poorly and had night sweats and needed a shower first. He was squeamish over very few things, but that was one of them.
"It's beautiful out here, though, isn't it?" I asked as we stepped through the gates the guards opened automatically at the sight of us – or just me – in running gear.
"It's wet. It's cold." He sounded like a grumpy child. Why did he have to choose today of all days to make me smile?
"Come on. Be the big strong dom."
The look he gave me was part danger, part humor, part wet grumpy child. "Don't tempt me."
I laughed, threw out a Sir! for good measure, and set the pace, well under what I thought I could now maintain for several miles.
