AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was beautiful. She had small, beautifully shaped breasts, with light pink, very hard nipples. She needed to shave – or be shaved – because the hospital apparently had thought their residents not trustworthy with blades. That could be dealt with. Her bob of short dark curls had grown out while she was locked up. What would have been the problem with letting someone come in to do residents' hair? But it looked nice on her.
Naked was a good look for her. But I understood her dilemma. "Difficult to think like that?" I asked even as I reached and grabbed the back of my t-shirt, hauling it over my head. I held it out to her and she instantly slipped it on. It hung on her and made her look waiflike and tiny. "Better?"
"Better."
I gestured to a chair. "Then let's talk."
12
Annie
The negotiation took less time than Cole had granted me to think about it. In less than an hour, our dealing was done.
Probably because from my side, there wasn't a lot of dealing.
When I first ran from Cole, when I first then started searching for him again, I found myself in a variety of strange places – underground sex clubs and BDSM dungeons. I didn't spend a lot of time talking to people. I hadn't gone to make friends or join the scene.
But I did participate in a few things and during that time, I learned there was negotiation before anything ever took place if the participants were all going with safe, sane and consensual experiences. Whatever number of people were to be involved in a scene, they'd sit down and hammer out a document or a verbal agreement full of hard and soft limits, of safe words and things the sub wanted or the Dom wanted or sometimes only what the Dominant wanted but with the sub's permission – or wholehearted, enthusiastic agreement.
I'd already been through the contract process with Mr. St. Martin once. I didn't expect him to ask what I'd like, or take anything other than my hard limits into account.
I wasn't wrong. All along I'd been thinking that somehow if I really wanted to go, I could. That he knew he hadn't actually purchased me and I could just pick up and leave.
Or maybe that's only how I handled it. Because the idea that he did think he owned me and he didn't think I could just get up and go - That was worrisome.
The new contract made me his sub. He made decisions for me. It was thorough. It probably wasn't that different from the last contract which I'd refused to believe in but this time there was the gravitas of his strange behavior. The anger I sensed in him.
It wasn't anything I could ask about. My role had just changed and before that happened, I’d had no idea how to ask. Even while I was telling him I hadn't decided to come back yet, even then he was in control of everything. Even then if I had honestly angered him he could have punished me for it.
I didn't anticipate that he'd do it then. I thought we would make our negotiations and then talk about what was going to happen with Kie and then maybe I could sleep for a while. Sleeping in the hospital had been an uncertain proposition and today had been long and hard. Confronted with a ring of armed men, I'd been unarmed and I'd really felt it. Being in that position felt weak, and coming off having been committed and before that having been kidnapped, I was feeling like one of my sisters – girly and ineffective. That wasn't something I was used to feeling.
St. Martin stood at the end of our negotiation and went away, coming back quickly with one of the guards.
"This is Benjamin," he said, and Ben nodded at me. He was Cole's height and even more fit, if possible. Blue black hair that looked real, based on the beard stubble, even though it's rare to see hair that's true black.
"Ma'am," he said.
I just said, "Hello." Damned if I was calling anyone else sir. Also, I wasn't sure where I stood in the hierarchy of St. Martin's compound. Guards might be able to hem me in, but maybe it was like being royalty. Maybe they could control me for my own good, but I was actually superior to them.
Maybe I was just really, really tired.
"Benjamin is a notary public," Cole said. "He'll witness our signatures."
Which wouldn't be legal without him seeing our IDs, even if, like all the guards the instant I hit the compound, he knew who I was. That was okay. I was signing the contract not because I wanted the relationship as Cole defined it.
But because I had nowhere else to go and for now, this felt like home.
After Benjamin went away, Cole and I talked about Kie. He told me about the man he wanted to send her to and I listened with two minds. The mind that said whatever she got, she deserved, that I didn't care if she lived or died and I didn't care how bad she was hurt on her way to whichever choice. It was hard to concentrate anyway, knowing that she was in some kind of underground prison with a woman who had been here all along and I never knew.
St. Martin had his secrets.
The second mind said Kie was a living, breathing human and a woman, and how could I simply consign her to some kind of hell.
I hadn't totally made peace with either side of my internal argument when St. Martin had Kie brought up and driven to her knees in front of him. We were in the main house by then, in the living room where Kie had first hurt me. Just seeing her there, all the rage came back and I was fine with whatever St. Martin wanted to do with her as long as it didn't involve kindness.
"I know someone who is willing to pay top dollar for a sub," he told her.
St. Martin sat on the far side of the living room from the door and since he hadn't told me to remain near him, to leave or stay, I stood as far away as I could get from Kie, partially behind her where I could watch her face in profile and see Cole as he faced her. I didn't want to be involved.
