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8
Annie
"Where have you been?"
James pounced on me the minute I stepped into Constitutional Law. I hadn't even taken my seat yet. Not that I was anxious to. The molded plastic wasn't going to feel good on my ass. To compound the punishment, Cole had given me maintenance spankings every morning and evening, and a Have a nice time in class strapping the night before. He was all about greetings and goodbyes. The bastard.
"I've had family obligations I couldn't get out of," I said. Which was true if I really squinted and wanted it to be.
"Don't they know you're in school?" That was Brooke, her long blond hair swept up in an Ariana Grande ponytail.
I made a rueful face. "There really were things I had to take care of. I cleared it with Braunstein," naming my faculty advisor, who also was criminal justice chair. Having him as my advisor was no coincidence. He was interested in the cop who had come to Vegas from the Pacific Northwest to take the criminal justice program. He as a nice enough man, who knew nothing about who he was dealing with. Even if he found a reason to need to contact Seattle PD – which he wouldn't, because I wasn't trying to parlay experience into skipping even the most basic class; I wanted to take the whole program with my peers – there's no way PD would ever release my undercover work. He knew what I'd been.
He had no idea what all I'd done.
"But you missed us," Brooke said in her most languid voice. She looked more the candidate for getting herself in front of a trafficking judge than I did today. Sometimes Brooke dressed like a sluttier version of Britney Spears. She was anything but an airhead, though.
"Of course I missed you," I said. When I had time. In between running and punishments and everything else.
Jenna rolled her eyes at Brooke. "We missed you," she said. "Can't make up the experience. We had one of the DDA's in to talk to the law club." Her eyes were bright at the mention of it and I was happy to hear the story. And a little sad. I'd made arrangements to finish the rest of the semester virtually if I had to. The story of the sick father in Seattle played out. He had been, very, for a while, and if anyone checked, that would show up. I didn't think anyone cared that much. Either I could finish my semester virtually or I couldn't. The administration wasn't going to check with my family over it and Seattle PD would be too busy and impatient to answer questions. Yes, of course he'd had health problems and anything past that wouldn't be the University's business.
My time out of my normal life was accounted for, something I'd never had to do before, since my so-called normal life had been as a police officer. When I was a cop, everyone knew where I was going when I went or, if they weren't of a paygrade to know, probably didn't know who I was and didn't care. The best way to be famous at being undercover is to be unknown.
Which definitely worked in my favor now.
But I really was going to miss being in class.
And being with Cole.
How about that? I'd built myself a life I'd miss if I had to take time away from it. That was more than important enough to remember once I was undercover and the shit was hitting the fan.
Because this time I was going deeper and longer, looking to get as close to the head of the organization as I could.
This time I was all in.
I'd kept my apartment. It had only been a handful of weeks since the raid at Cole's, the one perpetrated by the judge who died. There hadn't been a lot of time to contemplate if I wanted to be back under Cole's thumb most of the time or if I wanted to keep my own place. It was a lot closer to the University and with Vegas traffic, that helped. It was also my little bid at freedom even while living, contract or not, as Cole's sub. And it was a good part of the cover.
Over the next couple days I slept there, divorcing myself from living at Cole's. We texted, but he was working on the project of the day spa he wanted to invest in to put some of his rainforest products to work. One of the other kinky rich men he'd met and partied with and exposed me to – one of them, in other words – had approached him with the idea and now Cole was looking into it in detail.
If he was keeping himself distracted, I wouldn't be surprised. Id keeping himself distracted included bringing in a playmate or two, I got that, too. It was something Mark would never have understood, that sex and love could be so separate in a person's mind that my fucking someone as part of the job didn't bother me and had nothing to do with my feelings for him.
If Cole had somebody else, it wouldn't mean anything about him and me. For that matter, if he did take someone, it would be more likely to hurt them than to take them to bed, or a combination of the two. And as to how I felt about that?
Better their asses than mine.
Which meant I was back in the real world. Because under Cole's roof, my thoughts were different. Once under Cole's actual control, I reacted even more differently. There was the stinging pulse between my legs that begged to be satisfied. There was the ratcheting lust and the gathering fear. There was – all of it.
The weird thing was, when I got out into the world? It stopped. Not always. At the beginning I'd gone searching for him because of it. But now I had a purpose again, now I was on track and on the job? I was me again.
Whether or not I wanted to remain me was something I just didn't know yet.
I was now doing my own research into Grogan at the same time I waited for fake ID to come through. When it finally did and I was finally happy with everything I knew, Halloween had come and gone.
Grogan seemed to have pushed what the other judges were doing. The girls who disappeared under his watch were dealing meth and stealing cars and doing B&E rather than the petty shit. Maybe because girls doing the petty shit were still more tied into a life where people would not only miss them but have the wherewithal to contact the police about it. Maybe Grogan had drawn his own conclusions about what had happened to his peers.
And to Samuels. Samuels had been caught in the last operation Cole had shared with law enforcement. He'd gotten me out before the police got to know anything about me. I'd been afraid Samuels would talk. I didn't want to be associated with the ring, with Samuels, or with Cole, for that matter. I'd never expressed those thoughts.
Cole had known, though. And Samuels had just – vanished. Cole did a lot of work in South America, what with the raw materials he needed from the rainforest. I didn't think every transaction he made there was legal – he was dead set on keeping the rainforest as healthy as possible and not everyone he dealt with could feel the same, right? I didn't think he was above using force as deadly as necessary to accomplish things he felt needed accomplishing. Apparently some of those connections were – useful.
