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It sounded horrible and lonely and somehow magical.
"Do you need a minute with your slave?" Claude asked and didn't wait for an answer. "Don't be a stranger." He brushed Chloe's flank, turning her toward the kitchen, giving us time together.
"Come out with me." It wasn't a request.
The night was hot. Most days didn't get as warm as the Las Vegas valley at nearly midnight in June.
We stood on the front entrance, wide and paved with expensive stones of some sort. The whole house reeked of money. St. Martin's compound reeked of it in the way that said he took care of what was his and everything in the place was guarded by armed penguins and ninjas and it was all very state of the art dangerous and potentially deadly. But the place itself said I don't give a flying fuck about decorating.
Looking down on the desert and the distant lights of the city didn't feel as good naked outside as it did in. Still, only someone with a telescope and a desperate need to see some flesh would take the time to cover house after house looking for someone outside and naked. Besides, it was Vegas. They could go see naked for under $25.
"I had a nice night," St. Martin said. He sounded like a date who did have a nice time but nothing more than a nice time, and definitely wasn't going to call again.
"Sir?" I wanted to ask when I could come back. I wanted reassurance that this wasn't it because if it was, if this wasn't just training for when I went back with St. Martin, then I was wasting my time.
"No," St. Martin said.
"But Sir." Much more urgent. Would he take me back tonight? And if not, when? And in the meantime, there were so many restrictions on me but what about –
"No." Very definite.
He turned and started for the Porsche.
"St. Martin!"
He turned and looked at me incredulously.
I gathered my courage. "Is Kie still in the basement?"
The look on his face was shock and fury mixed. That I dared to go against what he'd said. That I kept pushing for an answer when he'd told me no. "You are treading on very shaky ground," he said.
I wasn't stopping. I'd been ignored and shut out. I'd been treated like someone he thought could do some good, someone who could find a career with the feds. I'd been his fucking bodyguard in Brazil and now he ignored me. Now he kept the woman who'd like to have seen me dead, kept her in his house and kept me out of it while he prepared a treat for her and I should be getting over it, clearly St. Martin thought I should be getting over it.
But I wasn't. He was my last refuge. Until I made something for myself. And it felt like I'd worn out on making things for myself. Like there'd been too many years recreating myself to fit new situation after new, bad, dangerous, potentially deadly situations for myself and maybe it was time that someone gave me something, someone let me matter.
"I'm on shaky ground? You're dealing with a killer. You know that, right? She's not a toy! You don't just wind her up and let her go. She fucking tried to kill you!"
I was shaking with rage and St. Martin was starting back from his car, his fists clenched, his face contorted, when the hands came from behind me, grabbed me by the biceps and throat, hauled me bodily back into the house.
Claude's voice came from right behind me. "Let me handle it, Cole. You've trusted me with her education. Let me do my job."
St. Martin stopped on the crushed gravel driveway, every muscle looking as if it vibrated with tension. For a long minute he just stared at us, framed there in the doorway. Then he gave one tight nod and turned without looking at me again and got in his car. The taillights vanished into the rural desert darkness.
Claude slammed and locked the front door.
I backed away from him, suddenly very conscious of being naked. Suddenly very conscious of every bit of martial arts I'd ever learned.
One minute I was backing up, wondering where Chloe was, and the next instant he had me by the throat and was backing me into a wall.
I broke his grip without thinking about it. It's a fairly easy escape and I was hyped up, hyperventilating, breathing in short, angry gasps.
It was Chloe's voice, coming from beside me, that stopped me from following through with the blow that would have driven my clenched, doubled hands up and into his jaw.
"He has the money to make cops and judges look the other way. He has your Master's permission to make you a submissive sub. Think. Don't make it worse than it already is."
I froze. My eyes met Claude's. There was a calmness in his. Even in the midst of this, he knew what he was and what he was doing.
I didn't have a clue about either. I was fighting because fighting was what I did.
