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"You don't need me to let go." He grabbed me by my hair and led me to her. Her hips were at the right height.
God, Chloe, you fucked up bitch. I don't want –
Claude shook me and I cried out. It hurt. After everything else, it hurt to have him grab my hair. I could hear footsteps in the hall. Some alarm had been triggered. I could do this, or I could be beaten, or beaten and forced into it, my body used like a puppet's. Or any other scenario.
I stepped up behind Chloe and positioned the thing.
"Oh, not there," Claude said and drew the dildo up.
"God," I breathed. "No."
"Annie." Chloe said my name on a sigh. The woman I knew weekday mornings was not suicidal. The woman I'd watched flying through subspace after a spanking wasn't this woman.
I needed to reach that woman. I needed to get her out as I got myself out.
"Do it." Claude's voice was deadly.
My hips twitched and I plunged into her.
42
Annie
Minutes later he let go of me.
Chloe had screamed and spasmed, half ecstatic, half in pain. Her body lay slumped over the bench.
The instant Claude released me, I pulled back from Chloe and wrenched myself away from him. He didn't stop me. My fingers fumbled for the clasp. I couldn't see it and I didn't know how it worked, but I wrenched at it until I heard it click, clasp releasing, and threw the thing onto the ground.
Tentatively I put a hand on Chloe's back. Her muscles quivered gently under my touch. There was no way she could be dragged back from wherever she was right now and logic talked to her. It would be unfair even to try. Whatever pleasure she got from whatever the fuck this was, she deserved it.
I didn't whirl on Claude. I didn't want to see him. From the sounds of everything around us, I could assume he was finding his own release. I wanted no part of it. If he tried to force me now, I'd rip it off him. The situation had changed. Chloe was relatively safe. I thought once Claude came, he'd lose interest for the night. Let him come, then. And let Chloe stay for now. This was her life. She was safer if I left her where she was until I had more resources to save her.
I knew there were guards in the hallway. I'd heard them responding to whatever alarm Claude tripped. All the things I'd done in my career and since my addiction and I could still find room to be embarrassed by being naked in front of those men.
They were like holdovers from my own life. Which was stupid. They weren't. Even if I'd done bodyguard work – which I couldn't, not and be undercover, too – I'd never have done a job like this.
So not only were they not my peers, they were unpredictable.
I'd just have to risk it.
Claude had taken off his button-down at some point. It made more sense than the evening gown I'd discarded somewhere in the house, and the shirt was here. I took it from the hook he'd hung it on and buttoned it all the way down. Claude wasn't terribly tall but the shirt still hung way down on me, the hem brushing my mid-thighs.
I paused at the door. When I looked back, Chloe was crying silent tears. Claude was leaned against the far wall. I refused to look directly at him. Instead, I met Chloe's eyes. She nodded, once, and squeezed me with her eyes the way cats do. I wanted to ask if she'd be all right. But she would. For all I knew, I was missing out on the best part of the evening, the lovely aftercare with Claude bathing us in twin matching gold bathtubs full of bubbles, scrubbing us gently, treating us to massages from beautiful men with beautiful muscles, letting us drink champagne and eat chocolate truffles.
I didn't believe it for a minute. But Chloe could wait.
And Claude. I wanted to break him in half. But there were undoubtedly guards in the hall and I wasn't going to get far doing that. Whatever Cole thought in sending me here, whatever I had thought of Claude before Cole did so, the truth was I could disappear from this place as easily as Cole could have taken me out.
I turned my back on the tableau and walked into the hall.
There was only one guard there and whatever he'd been told, apparently if there was no clear and present danger to Claude, he was to stand down and – stand around? He was armed and he didn't meet my eyes. I felt my lips curve into an inappropriate but happily not hysterical smile. He was young. Not inured yet. He was armed with a riot gun – because when you're assaulting two women, of course you should be protected by armed guards carrying shotguns – which he held kind of like a Linus blanket.
Linus gun. I smiled at the thought. When I had my hands on my gun again, I wasn't going to put it down for a long time. Being vulnerable didn't suit me. I'd have to try Chloe's topping from below, I thought, and wondered where the thought had come from.
"Excuse me," I told the guard.
He nodded. "Ma'am."
