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And still when the dreaming was over and reality was crashing in on me, holy shit, it hurt. It hurt to be spanked or cropped, it was vile to have my mouth washed out. I hated being paraded past the guard shack with my arms tied behind my back, completely naked. Being auctioned off. Being sent on Cole's whim to stay with Claude.
I couldn't deny I kept going back, and I no longer wanted to deny it. I no longer needed to. That didn't mean I wouldn't try to run again. Or forget what I'd just figured out. Just that, for the moment I was certain I'd be returning to Cole's compound to live there while I went to school. I'd fight with him about hours and days and classes, about who I could be friends with and about study groups.
But going up against the judge, the loathing and disgust at what he'd represented and what I'd known he was going to do to me – that convinced me of what Cole was really offering with his consensual non-consent, his contracts and his rules.
I wanted it.
I paid the check on autopilot and headed out into the day, my phone buzzing again. Just before I answered it the high from adrenaline or lack of common sense or relief at the bullet I'd just dodged, all that fell away.
I realized what Cole needed to do with the judge and what I probably needed to do with Cole.
All his dinner parties, all his Dom/sub, Master/slave auctions and orgies and everything else the devoutly kinky sadistic billionaires got up to, they used proceeds from their fundraising to fight human sex trafficking.
I'd just almost fallen into the hands of traffickers.
Now I had to find them and go undercover again. I had to lead Cole's security into the heart of whatever was going on and make it stop.
And if Cole St. Martin said no to me, then no matter what I'd just figured out about my nature and his, I'd have to go. For a little while.
Because what had almost happened to me in Judge Conway's office was happening to other women who weren't being given a choice, and who were being hurt.
My phone buzzed again. I sat down on a bench outside the diner and pulled my phone out of my backpack.
The text was from Cole. And it didn't matter what I had just decided or what I had just done. The text made me shiver there in the warm sun, abruptly aware of everything I had done since leaving the judge's chambers.
Where are you?
Why haven't you come back yet?
You need to tell me everything that's happened.
These had come in over a period of time that made me realize just how long ago security had left with the judge.
Get. Back. Here. Now.
I swallowed hard and stuck the phone back in my pocket, heading instantly to my car, all thoughts of picking up a mystery or romance at any bookstore now out of my head.
My palms were sweating, my heart thudding.
I was wet just thinking about what might happen.
32
Cole
She stood in my office and told me about the judge. I'd sent Barry after her once she left. Hard to say why. I've trusted my gut often enough in business. Maybe I was ready to do that in relationships, even when the relationship is one of warrants, law enforcement and drama.
The judge felt more wrong than some moral majority party pooper who maybe wanted what we had and maybe was determined to squelch all of it from a place of honestly never having lusted.
I'd started to think about what Annie said and I had started to think about trafficking and suddenly I'd called my team in and sent them after him. After her.
But Annie. Conway was taken care of. Annie was standing here in front of me having come back more than two hours after the events at the courthouse had ended.
She stood before me looking wild and rebellious. Her color was up, her head up and her curls wild. She was smiling and seemed unable and unwilling to stop. Clearly, whatever situation she'd fallen into, she'd enjoyed herself.
I sat back at my desk, one foot up on the open bottom drawer, the chair partially tipped back. Deceptively casual. Though somehow I didn't think I fooled her anymore.
Something made me wonder if she even wanted fooling anymore.
