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There's another part about it not coming back meaning it never was. I wasn't going to consider that part. Because Annie had come back.
21
Annie
The evening ended.
I'd watched couples fucking and girls being disciplined. I watched an elaborate game of trivia where winners got sexual favors and losers got sexual punishments and in between people seemed to forget the sex around the edges and concentrated on their questions and the answers. I watched Chloe be put up on the cross and flogged, her beatific expression revealing the subtlety of the flogging. She hadn't looked like that when Claude had gone after her; then she'd had her head back and her mouth open as she screamed in pain.
What I saw that evening convinced me Cole wouldn't be long with this group. They were playing at what Vincent and Kie, Claude and Chloe, a doctor and his wife had intrinsically had: A darkness. Real pain. Real submission. Real ownership. This was the lite version.
He wouldn't be content with it for long.
I watched his anger through the night, too. When I'd run from him it was from the uncontrolled violence. I thought it was still there. It had been a matter of months I'd been gone, not a year or any significant time. It would be logical for the rage born in the wake of losing control to Vincent and Kie to still be there.
But there was a cap on it. I could see how angry Cole was, not at anyone specific in the room. Just in general. But I also watched Chloe. Not that she was a great arbiter of what was healthy. She'd stayed with Claude longer than it should have taken for her to realize what he was dishing out was abuse, not sex; longer than it should have taken her to understand that she had a marriage infused with actual domestic violence
But the other men, here with actual wives in some cases, and at least girls they didn't seem to believe they owned and who they touched with compassion, those men trusted their women with Cole.
Something had changed. Or he was getting back something of himself. I told myself I was happy for him simply because he had been good for me if not to me and because I wished him well.
I told myself I cared because he'd saved my life and for no other reason past being a human wishing another human well.
I told myself in no way was I back and certainly I wasn't happy about what I'd allowed to happen to me tonight.
I almost believed myself.
22
Cole
Such parties sometimes wind down. Sometimes guests sleep on couches, in chairs, in guest rooms or cells. Other times there's been a start and end time on an invitation, often because the Master has plans for his sub once the evening ends and the Master, at least, is looking forward to it.
This one ended late into the night and I was content to let it extend as long as it naturally wanted to.
Because once it ended, I needed to settle things with Annie, no matter which way that went. Her being here, her not demanding I take my hands off her and walking out, at the same time she said she wasn't back, at the same time she called me Cole? That I couldn't countenance. It scraped like a stone in my shoe during a run.
I might not know just how to address it but I needed to. Annie wasn't the typical sub. Demand she do something and she might.
Or she might run.
I didn't want her to run.
So I waited. Until the party ran down. And the guests went home.
And there were only the two of us left. Alone.
23
Annie
He came in when the party had ended. Because somewhere along the line, I’d been untied and given a robe, then escorted by a tall rangy woman I didn't know who introduced herself as Marilyn. The question must have showed in my eyes – Who the fuck are you, Marilyn? – because she volunteered the confusing message that she was Cole's chew toy.
Well. That certainly cleared up – nothing.
She didn't hang around. She'd been asked to see me back to the suite I was usually confined to and she did that. Past the bewildering notion that she was a chew toy, she offered nothing.
Chew toy, I supposed, could be a stand in for fuck buddy. Or sock puppet. Or for a sub who he called at his convenience. Slowly I was remembering the name Marilyn. It wasn't threatening. She was next to nobody, just someone that St. Martin enjoyed hurting from time to time, when the world and everything in it got to be too much for him.
