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I just said, "Yes, Sir."
Next instant he had me around the waist, my running tights pulled down and my body jackknifed over his bent leg. His hand over top of the caning and strapping, the cropping and the use of his belt, made me cry out.
"Then run harder," he said to my noise.
I ran harder and it hurt more and after a while I was walking and he couldn't make me run again.
The new Cole St. Martin was in control this morning. Not the one who had undressed me and put me in his bed the night before. Not even the one who rubbed arnica lotion onto my bruised skin.
This one ordered me into the kitchen after the shower, after the cleansing, after the dressing in the shift. He made breakfast and ordered me into a hard chair at the table. Arnica or not, my ass recoiled at the hard and cold of the chair. I rose halfway out of it before remembering the contract, my submission.
The new St. Martin.
His response was instant. He fetched ropes from the kitchen pantry – a staple I thought was probably never covered in home ec classes – and bound me to the chair, my heels up against the legs, my ass tied firmly to the seat, my arms behind me, strained again, my sore shoulders protesting quietly.
He then fed me, patiently, at the speed that I could eat, but he kept going after I was finished, feeding me three eggs with cheese and tomatoes, a half bagel with cream cheese, and two full glasses of water.
A tiny part of me wondered what came after breakfast, but our days were to progress the way they once had. I studied for the criminal justice classes I'd be taking at community college come fall, and worked out, doing weights silently in the home gym, followed by TaeKwon-Do videos a friend of mine with Seattle PD made. For a while I'd communicated with him through the comments at the end of the videos, until Cole had found out and punished me.
That was when I found out that taking down the Brotherhood hadn't kept my city safe from chinawhite for even a full month. More gangbangers had come in to take Jesse's place and I knew them, knew who they were, and was desperate to get back to the city, even if only for a week or two. Because that time I knew it wasn't ego. I could make a difference.
Cole – back then I'd always thought of him as Cole – had punished me for my arrogance, for my assumption that I could come and go as I needed to.
But he'd punished them more. For moving on unsuspecting middle school children. For spreading their filth and death on the streets.
They were gone and I was accessory to murder because I'd told him to.
Even without the new contract, his hold on me was complete.
He had another hold, too. But I wasn't ready to discuss it. Let alone admit it.
"Sir."
Midmorning. The sun through the windows was making me sleepy. I'd need to get up and do another video, maybe a yoga video showing plenty of plank position.
But Jason had come into the room, the guard who was hospitalized after being whipped because when Kie hurt me he laughed rather than instantly coming to my aid. Not that I'd wanted him hanging over my naked body as I writhed and screamed. He was one of those who always watched me when Cole undressed me and humiliated me. Watched and delighted in it.
We should have been even. He'd seen me punished enough times, I'd seen him beaten until he needed an ambulance.
But I saw when he came in, the look he gave me was dark and angry and my own mirrored it.
"What is it?" St. Martin was reading through findings from his lab, some specialized rainforest derivative cure he was looking into. I didn't even know what that one was for.
"It's Ms. Geddes, sir. She tried to kill herself last night. There's blood all over her cell and she won't let anyone near her."
St. Martin swore and was on his feet. "Stay here," he snarled in my direction.
I chose to believe he meant Jason and I followed instantly, aware that Jason wasn't obeying the dictate.
That was Jason's problem.
This was the first time I'd been in the maze. It wasn't actually a maze. It was a series of hallways that led around the edges of the compound, and then inward. The outer edges of the maze halls had skylights, light coming in from the outside world because they weren't under the compound directly.
The underground facility had to be massive.
Whatever St. Martin had intended it for, he now used it to house the occasional unwelcome guest, it seemed. I shivered as I followed him deeper inside, aware that he could at any minute put me in one of these cells. No one would know and after what had gone down with my father and Mark, no one would come for me.
Down here somewhere, a woman named Ariel had literally gone to ground, choosing a sort of anti-life over anything anyone else could offer her. Even at my worst, had I ever been that far gone? I didn't think so. My run in with fet had never been about death. I hadn't wanted to die. I'd wanted not to be in pain.
