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Chloe shook her head. She was holding her drink but now she put it down as if she no longer wanted it. "She was killed."
My hand went over my mouth. For all the deaths I'd known about as PD, for the deaths I'd ordered as a frustrated cop in "rehab" when Cole wouldn't let me go back to Seattle. I'd known cops who were killed and Jesse who was blown away and –
Somehow, this hit me like a gut punch. "Murdered?"
Chloe nodded. "She'd started hooking. I don't know if the family pushed her out or if she left because of the addiction. I just know she was on the street and I doubt very much that Cole knew where she was. He found her too late. It wasn't pre-arranged or anything. She was strangled by one of her tricks, someone she went with so she could get the money she needed to get her drugs."
Rainforest opiate cures.
Me, and Ariel. Kie, to an extent.
It wasn't company I wanted to list myself in. I thought Ariel sounded weak because I thought suicide was a sign of weakness. I thought Kie was psychotic, sociopathic, and probably suicidal. She was a victim who struck out at other victims. I hardly found her strong. She'd signed over her life to the madman Vincent Geddes.
I didn't identify with the other women. But I could certainly see the similarity in our circumstances.
So much fell into place. I thought I finally understood a little bit about Cole St. Martin.
"I have to get back to him," I said, the anxiety and impatience rushing up on me.
Chloe smiled and pushed my drink toward me, shaking her head. "What you need to do the most right now," she said gently. "Is give him space."
27
Cole
In the evening, I summarized my day on paper. I kept executive journals, planners of a sort. Today I had risen at dawn and run for two hours, returned to spar with one of the guards who outranked me significantly at one of the Israeli street fighting martial arts. I'd eaten a breakfast that would have made Annie blanch and threaten to upchuck, and I would have slapped her lightly for saying such a thing at the table.
I'd worked, thrashing out agreements with countries that had substances, natural or otherwise, that I wanted for my research. In the evening I showered, and spent an hour with Marilyn in the pain room. Her breasts and back and bottom were scourged and red when I finished and she'd cried more than once.
I'd never asked what Marilyn's trip was. It was enough that she was there for me when I needed it.
Tonight I was about to walk away and leave her - she could clean herself up and then request an escort out from one of the guards – when she asked for a favor. Ready to hear she wanted to spend the night or something, she instead asked for me to take her over my knee and spank her until she was really crying.
She said that as if she hadn't already been in tears during the evening.
"I don't want a safe word," she said and my alarm bells went off. Right now, in the mood I was in, missing Annie more than I wanted to admit to myself or would ever admit to her, and still angry about everything else.
"That's dangerous and stupid," I said.
"Then punish me for it," she said and slid from my lap where she'd been sitting, onto the floor.
All at once the anger surged. I pulled her to her feet so hard she lost her balance and would have fallen if I hadn't had hold of her arm. She'd been dressing to go when she made her request so now I stripped her jeans down to her knees and when she made to push them down and step out of them, I snarled, "Leave them there!" I didn't know a single woman who didn't feel humiliated at having her jeans and panties shoved down around her knees.
The bed bounced as I threw myself back down on it and upended her over my lap. "Hold on to my leg," I said. "Don't let go. Don't let go no matter what."
Her yes sir sounded a little panicked. As well it should.
I lost track promptly. Not that I'd had any idea how long I meant to spank her or how many blows I meant to give her. There was no altering between fast and slow, hard and soft, only where the blows landed and all of them were hard, hard and as fast as I could rain them down on her. Pent up fury poured out of me and when she started to thrash, when she screamed Red it only put me into a fury it took long seconds to pull myself out of.
When I did, when she was sobbing, I looked down at her ass cheeks, her hips, her upper thighs, saw my hand prints, the red blotches, the places where her flesh had gone white.
And I saw the slick wet shine between her legs, so thick and heavy it went to her thighs. I could smell her arousal even as she sobbed against me.
I shoved my fingers into her wetness, two of them, hard inside her, then separated her cheeks with one hand and shoved those two slippery fingers up her back entrance.
Marilyn cried out, thrashing, her screams of Red turning to No which made me angrier still, that she would say No.
How dare she?
