AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He rubbed his face. "I honestly don't know why I told you about her except to prove that she's been here and you've never known it and I can do the same with Kie."
I started to say he couldn't just throw her into a makeshift prison, there were rules in the world, justice and a court system that at least at our level wasn't too corrupt, and then realized I'd been arguing for her to be killed so maybe I didn't have an argument to make.
And I started to say he couldn't just lock her up like he did the girl who said she wanted to die, because Kie wasn't saying that.
Except she was. Or she had. More than once she'd begged to be killed.
And I was back to thinking that was a good idea. Because keeping something deadly is stupid. Rattlesnakes are not good pets. Ticking bombs should be disarmed or detonated, not stuck in the back room. Cole was considering keeping Kie. Not as a sub, not as a slave, but keeping her where he lived nonetheless.
"Forever?" Because my skin crawled with claustrophobia at the idea.
"No. She wants to belong to someone, maybe more than she did to Vincent."
On my feet and pacing, I wanted to turn back to him and say he couldn't take her on as a sub. I couldn't be expected to share him with someone so loathsome.
But I didn't. Because he could and I couldn't. He could do that and I couldn't tell him not to. The only thing I could do in that case was leave.
Only he said, "I would never take her on for a sub. She's a snake. She's mean and she's a liar and she's deadly. But I can find a home for her."
I wanted to say she wasn't a feral dog either.
Except she kind of was. Except that I had already exhausted the limits of my desire to fight for Kie. Truth was, I didn't want her to have anything she wanted. Reassured she wouldn't get Cole, I wanted to stop her from having any Master. Why should she? After everything she'd done.
But Cole was offering a solution. Another Master, more brutal than he was, who wanted a more debased and debase-able sub, someone who would disappear from the real world. It was a solution and it was a good, logical one. It could work.
As long as she didn't stay here. That's all I really wanted from Cole. To do something with Kie that got her out of the way well away from – not us, there was no us – away from Southern Nevada and out of the country and somewhere or with someone where she couldn't come back.
It looked like Cole had the same idea.
Good.
7
Cole
Of course, there were the men who had come with Kie who had to be considered. Sooner or later Annie would remember them.
For now, my own guards had the situation locked down. Annie considered the suite of rooms where she was held to be a cell and certainly she wasn't at liberty to come and go as she pleased. But there were much more real cells on the property and the men with Kie were going to be my guests until I figured out what to do with them.
The billionaire I had in mind for Kie was Vincent-like. He'd control her every move. He'd punish her slightest transgression. He'd been looking for someone who would come willingly to his style of extreme sadism and thrive by being beaten down.
Kie fit the bill.
She could agree.
Or she could go into the maze and stay there.
It was obvious from the (unguarded and unwise) things Annie had said that she feared I'd go too easy on Kie.
She thought wrong.
If she thought I was going to go easy on her, or allow her the freedoms she was taking, for much longer? She was wrong there, too.
Underneath all of it, a core of rage kept growing. Too many things happening reminded me of Emily. My sister had died a prostitute, making money to support her habit. Thinking about Ariel always brought that back to me. I'd be glad if she were able to leave the maze and lead some kind of life. And I didn't want Kie down there, among other reasons because if I could get Ariel out, I wanted to not have anybody down there. I was aware my lifestyle was unique and extreme. The money allowed it. Being secretive by nature and comfortable living away from society and community fostered it. But those things also made it possible to take in the people who needed it, who needed a haven and refuge. I may have brought them here but that didn't mean I wanted to be responsible for them forever.
It would be nice to go from having responsibility for people to having free will among those people who had signed a contract with me and become my submissives.
If for no other reason than Ariel was always tempting. Someone who didn't care how badly she was hurt or whether she lived through it. A suicidal pain slut who was willing to do anything. Dangerous.
