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45
Annie
"May I know what you mean to do, Sir?"
"No."
"Sir?"
"Be silent."
He wasn't the Cole who had raced me on other mornings, running through the desert. He wasn't the Cole who had caught me in his arms and held me as I ran from Bevington's house. He wasn't the one who punished me, tying me to benches and using canes on me until I screamed. He wasn't the Cole St. Martin I had known at the beginning, the one who auctioned me off to raise money to fight sex trafficking. Money he could have simply donated.
He liked the irony.
He had hated the effects, when Kie and her Master got their hooks into me, took me to Paris and hurt me severely.
This was the sadist I rarely truly saw, the one concentrating on every step he took, enjoying what he did and giving no quarter to the masochist who rethought every fantasy, every lustful, hopeful thought.
He took my hand, not unkindly, and led me to the middle of the room where chains hung down. Leather restraints hung at the end of them and I found myself panting, repeating that this was different. There was no Evie. It was possible there truly was no Bevington any more.
I couldn't bring myself to care.
There was no Joseph.
I was safe here.
But bile rose in my throat when he pulled my left hand up to the first cuff. I didn't speak, only swallowed loudly again and again, and Cole waited, the sadistic gleam on his features. He liked that I was that scared and that scared me more.
What if he'd changed while I was gone?
What if he'd changed since I'd returned? Because I'd returned? Because I had returned and he could see how ruined I was.
He buckled the other wrist into the restraint. He cuffed my ankles and pulled my legs apart, cuffing them so my arms pulled up tight and I was bent forward at the waist.
He wrapped a white silk scarf over my eyes and nose so I breathed through my mouth and so I could still see light, but not what was happening.
He said, "Red?"
I swallowed. My throat closed up. It took a minute before I could say, "No. Sir."
He moved away from me then, behind me, and I remembered saying in the hospital that I could feel him looking at my ass. He was again, looking at my ass and everything between my legs, displayed for him. He could circle round, quiet on stealthy feet, and look at my heaving breasts as I struggled not to panic.
He could do anything he wanted.
Because I had chosen to surrender to him.
The knowledge didn't help. I was struggling to breathe right when the fist cane strike snapped hard against my uninjured left side.
And nowhere else.
Cole was an expert. His strikes went where he directed them. He laddered my left side, then took the cane across the tops of my thighs, making me struggle and thrash, sucking air, determined to stay silent. Whatever he'd planned, it would be more than this, but he was starting with caning, the thing I hated the most, the hardest thing to take, the bite and pause and then the explosive aching fiery pain.
Out of the whiteness, he asked, "Are you Annie?"
I didn't answer. He'd told me not to speak.
His voice again, accompanied by another wicked cut of the cane. "Are you Lily?"
