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That was the last image of the night.
Because when he pulled out, he forced me up onto my knees on the bed. My wrists were bound to the posts of the bed, up and slightly behind me. Still as if I hoped to flap and take flight.
I knelt with my head down, sweat beading my body, St. Martin's come on my legs. I waited for him to untie me.
I realized he was gone when he turned off the light and the door shut behind him.
16
Cole
I left her there, tied to the bed. Strung up, essentially. It felt like the right thing to do. Cole St. Martin doesn't get close to people, especially not someone I'd bought and paid for in order to test my rainforest cures.
Or to own as a sub. Or both.
Annie had served her purpose. She was clean, she was healthy. Tonight had been cathartic.
Probably it had been cathartic for both of us. It would take time for me to come back from knowing I'd lost to Vincent Geddes. At the last minute he'd seen me. I was sure of that. But it depends on how life and death works and how alive he was with his nose shoved into his brain. I'd never know if he knew who I was, if he understood I was the one to shoot him and it had to not matter anymore.
I'd left her there, dangling, because that's who I am and I needed a way back to that version of myself. I couldn't help her if I was weak, and she needed help to return to a full, vibrant, real life. It was like rehabilitating a wild animal. Even if you bond with it, you have to return it to its natural habitat once it’s healthy or it won't thrive.
She hadn't broken. That was interesting. Always before, Annie had broken, dropped into sobbing or begging or empty promises. Something in her this time had welcomed what I did to her.
She reacted with pain. Of course she did. There's no way of being caned on top of being cropped and not shout at the contact, grunt, cry, sob. Scream.
But there'd been something there. When I led her there. When I cut the dress off her, because Annie is mortally afraid of knives.
Something changed. In her. Something had so changed in me, so altered, that what I'd done to her tonight to wring the pain out of her, to clean her out so I could welcome her back.
It hadn't been enough.
Going back to her wasn't a choice.
Annie had come to me to submit. When she ran from the hospital, I think she would have come to me even if it hadn't been for Kie. She submitted when I insisted on it as condition for her staying.
Tonight she’d followed my instructions and she hadn't broken in the pain room.
If she was submitting, if I had brought her to submission, to being my sub - It might be over. Because that was the inevitable next step. Conquest was only interesting while it still was conquest.
Maybe that was some of the crawling restlessness I felt. The need to keep moving.
But there was also the fear. Of whatever was growing so dark inside me. The pain I wanted to inflict was more than a Dominant lays on a submissive. At the heart of BDSM, it's still not actual broken bones. It's not torture. It's still pleasure more than pain, for the Dom if not for the sub. Yet the masochistic sub needs to feel the pleasure even if the pleasure is the pain.
That wasn't where I was and that frightened me. Not just for Annie. Forget Annie! Take her out of the equation. Any sub, Marilyn, her friends, a prostitute off The Strip, Ariel, even Kie - I wasn't there to hurt them, not seriously, not permanently. Control was one of the key facets of my life.
Control led to the physique I was proud of. Control led to being able to run two hours into the desert because something was bothering me that I needed to think through. Control dictated my schedule, my work, the fortune I had amassed. Control kept the subs in my care safe because I knew how to wield each of the tools and weapons, the punishments and threats, how to treat, how to cure, how to cause extreme pain without inflicting extreme injury.
Control. Because Emily hadn't had it, maybe. Or deeper and less deep, both, maybe that was just my make up. Who I was.
Maybe it was nothing more than that I wasn't a monster and didn't want to become one. Yes, I had the money and the power to get my hands on a sub who was suicidal. I'd had the ability before Kie ever came into my life and definitely before she arrived in my maze. Kie was desperate to belong and almost completely suicidal. It was the control that stopped me from harming her when I knew she would not only allow it, but possibly welcome it.
With Kie I could probably go all the way. Use her until she died. Fuck her until she suffocated. Hang her up, tie her down, do all the things she’d listed while she prostrated herself.
I would never have taken her on as a sub. There's a base core of hatred inside Kie. The suicidal ideation is only a facet of that. She's dangerous. I would never have kept her because I didn't want her.
I would never have kept her because Annie didn't want me to.
And I would never have kept her because the temptation would be too great to give in and let myself run wild on her.
