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And then she started to birch my back and ass and thighs.
I've been a student of human nature for a long time. Something about the things that drive me also makes me someone who feels deeply about humanity but separate from it. Not separate in a better than kind of way. But also not less than. I simply feel apart a lot.
When I'm undercover, I'm often closer to fitting in and being a part of whatever's going on than at any other time and a lot of that's because I have to. I have to act as if of course I feel I'm a part of things. I've watched the gangbanger girls and the og boys, the young adults so determined to make a mark in the world no matter what it is and most of the time it doesn't feel forced to me, their belonging. They are part of a group.
My experience was more often with the motorcycle clubs, the men with leather vests and huge engines that vibrate between their legs. Men who classify their women, it seems, from girlfriend to whore to sister who rides with (and those women are not my peers, not trusted confidantes. They are the flip side of the men only in gender. They're rough and cold.)
Being in the Brotherhood and the other clubs before that, I found myself fitting in and sometimes forgetting for minutes at a time that it was a charade.
The same thing growing up. It didn't make me sad, it was simply who I was. I was raised by a strict, determined, controlling father. At the time there was no reason to believe he was anything but the good cop he appeared to be, and I was closer to him than anyone else in my family but my mother. Even then, her relationship with him was as a wife in love and his with her was as a man in love and able to bring to bear whatever was necessary to keep her safe.
My three sisters resented our father and his control. The distance between us didn't come from my closeness to my father or actively following in his footsteps, but because as girly girls, we were different enough to be from separate species.
So I grew up on the outside, watching.
Now I was doing that again. I watched throughout the rest of the party. Watched the female subs grow bored with me when they were allowed a hand in whatever it was Cole was playing at. Putting me back in my place? Welcoming me home? Letting me know he'd just taken my servitude back in his hands, perhaps.
After a short amount of time, I became so much part of the landscape. Once one sub had birched me, leaving me burning in pain, the others seemed to lose interest. Most of them likely didn't switch; they were submissives. They'd be more likely to hurt me on command, not of their own accord.
But the Masters too lost interest. Because I wasn't theirs? Because I wasn't a conquest? Because there was so much available to them?
It kept me going through the evening and kept me mostly from wondering what if Cole didn't release me. What if he didn't even choose to unleash me? I couldn't free myself.
The questions I really needed to ask and simultaneously didn't want answered, started with why I had come here rather than finding some way to contact him that didn't involve physically landing on his doorstep, all but dressed up in wrapping paper and a bow, and why, when confronted with his assumption that I was present to be spanked and manhandled, strung up and made public, didn't I object? Why had his touch left me anxious where James' touch left me interested but able to walk away?
I had come back to Cole St. Martin's desert compound to warn him of the raid. I had not come back to return to his ownership.
And even as I thought that, the question became: Am I back?
20
Cole
She was back.
Not voluntarily.
Annie returned because the raid was in progress. Even that was a tell. She had to know I could buy off even the most conservative determined to interfere with anything he didn't understand type of judge.
She'd chosen to come back to warn me and from her reactions, she hadn't allowed herself to think it through. Her reasoning was probably along the lines of I had helped her through ending her addiction and housed her through the turmoil of doing that. I'd helped her decide to leave what had become a dead-end job with the police in Washington, and decide to go back to school.
She owed me, surely. That's how I thought her reasoning had gone.
That left out every consideration that included free will and her own desire to come back.
Maybe I was overestimating my effect on her life. Maybe not. But the ache inside was unwelcome. I don't miss people. I object to losing control. I object to losing control to the point I can't punish the person who has taken the control.
Of course I missed her as a play toy. Even this far into our relationship, she still blushed. She still got embarrassed, could be humiliated, and every new situation I threw at her elicited such fear, humiliation – and wet wanting - Her nature betrayed her every time.
We'd actually been together longer than any true relationship of mine had ever lasted. More than a year. I hadn't tired of her lean body and her amazing reactions.
But that unwelcome ache inside, the lump in my throat I couldn't quite swallow down. All that was a warning.
I wanted her to want to come back because she wanted to come back. No reasons, no excuses.
But when I touched her, her body might not answer my direct questions. But it did convince me that, at least at the moment, she was happy to be where she was.
I'd let her go before. She'd come back. What's that jaded old saw? If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it's yours?
