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I stopped. I was breathing hard still, sucking air, but I was no longer hyperventilating.
Submissive sub. If I ever became that, for real, for any length of time, I thought that would be the end of me and St. Martin. Me and Cole. Either.
For now, it was what he wanted. For now, I had nothing else to hang on to. I could pick myself up and start over. I could. But I didn't want to. That was why I kept fighting. That was why I couldn't give in to St. Martin. That, and he was dangerous right now.
It wasn't just Kie getting to him that scared me.
I was afraid for the woman he said was in the maze beneath the house. Ariel. I was scared for her. And for any escorts he might hire, any hookers he might bring home.
I was afraid for myself.
Just then all I wanted was for the confusion and pain and loneliness to go away.
Claude was still watching me. Waiting. For a second I couldn't think what he was waiting for.
Then I understood. For a second I shut my eyes. One more second of denial.
Then I slid to my knees on the marble floor, put my heels under me, my toes flexed, my hands behind my head, elbows wide, head down.
Tears falling.
Anger boiling.
35
Annie
The front door slammed. Chloe visibly flinched. I had no idea if my behavior reflected on her. Would she be punished for whatever I'd done as some kind of goad to make me toe the line? She was in for a rough time if so and it wouldn't be out of character for Claude to make that retroactive.
"Get up."
I hadn't even realized until I saw her react to the door that Chloe knelt beside me in her own extreme position. Now at the command she rose gracefully as I never would learn to do. TaeKwonDo taught me to stand from a cross-legged sitting position and lower myself into it without using my hands but I couldn't say I did it gracefully.
Claude watched us both get to our feet. I was aware in that instant how extremely quiet the house was. The benefit of that uber exclusive enclave was it was rural in ways rich people didn't want to think about. It had all the dark skies and coyotes, the cottontail rabbits and owls eating them that any stretch of empty, rural Nevada desert had, but it cost them an arm and a leg and had a view of the valley all lit up and full of civilization.
I was starting to have negative feelings towards the very rich. Silly, because there was plenty of trafficking going on among people who couldn't afford to buy a house practically in a national park, and the gang members I'd ridden with had their money but they weren't like this with it.
Maybe it was just these rich people. There were ultra rich families that started foundations rather than beating on women and –
"I said move," Claude said in such a quiet deadly voice so close to my ear that I flinched as hard as Chloe. I hadn't heard him speak, hadn't seen him move.
I'd been lost in my own little world. Probably it was dangerous to shut out Claude. Probably listening for his least little request right now –
Would do nothing. Face it, he was in this for the pain and beating and I was in it because until this moment, I'd thought getting back to Cole St. Martin was important.
Based on whatever was about to happen, I was no longer certain about that.
That there were guards somewhere on the property I didn't doubt. The entire enormous desert-eating neighborhood was gated. For all I knew, everyone who lived here was super rich and super freaky. Maybe they all watched each other's subs and made sure nobody got away.
I would have snorted at my own paranoia if first, Claude hadn't seen fit to tell Chloe to take me and wait, which sounded dangerous and incomplete. And second, it hadn't seemed possible.
Right before he jolted me out of my thoughts, I'd had one clear memory. Standing in the kitchen all night, my father, mother and sisters taking shifts making certain I didn't sit, didn't move more than an inch off the spot he'd told me to stand. Cold wind coming in through the windows and me wearing shorts and a t-shirt. In summer the process was reversed and the watchers either huddled in blankets or sat with a fan. His discipline was technically abuse, and I was the one daughter constantly on the losing end of it.
Probably that was a large part of the division between me and my sisters and even my distrust of my mother as a woman with her own mind. At the beginning she'd let us sit for her watch, and even doze though never outright sleep, for fear of my father coming out to check.
Only he did, so she stopped that and followed his rules. Because he could guess my mother was the weak link and that her watch was usually far enough into the night to make it likely the miscreant in question needed a break.
For a second I was unaware of the marble floor under my feet, the slap of Chloe's bare soles as she led me to wherever it was Claude had commanded.
