Page 128 of Deep Cover

17

Cole

Christmas came and went. I bought Annie a watch, precision and analog rather than digital. It was beautiful, slim and encrusted with diamonds and sapphires. In a way, it indicated the time she'd spent with me so far. It was the first way I gave her to track time, though of course when she did the YouTube video TKD workouts, she saw the time. Otherwise, her world was an endless now.

As the season came and went, that now consisted of daily opioid cure, of her workouts, of maintenance spankings I had a hard time making time for.

And yet my world consisted of fucking Marilyn and usually another woman with her. It consisted of my own workouts and meals. Not so much that I was punishing her, but maybe I was distancing myself.

Having emotions has never been easy and I've never enjoyed it. Losing Emily had seen to that if nothing else.

But Christmas drew me back. Because Annie found a way to give me something and that startled me out of my distance. I knew she still had the remainder of the cash she 'borrowed’ from the Vegas cops when she ran. There had been no reason to take it from her, anymore than there was to take her badge. If she was determined to run, and if she managed to get past the guards, then I wanted her safe in the world until I could find her and drag her back.

I wasn't so punitive in my thoughts and actions that I'd let anyone else hurt her.

And besides, she was my property.

The gift wasn't huge. I'd made an offhand comment at some point about wanting to keep a written journal of some of my experiments. I hadn't even told her if I meant experiments with the rainforest drugs or experiments with her or something else entirely.

She'd found a way to talk to the cook without me being present – possibly not that hard, given that I didn't share most meals with her during that stretch of time – who took the cash and came back with a leather bound journal from Barnes & Noble and a fountain pen and wrapping paper.

The journal made a resounding thwack on her naked ass when I slapped her with it and she giggled, but after that I kept it safe and cared for, and used the fountain pen when I wrote in it, keeping track of opioid experiments on one side of the pages and Seattle overdoses on the facing pages.

In January we started a new year together.

The first day of it I roused her from bed before the sun came up.

"It's still dark outside, sir," she said, though she instantly sat up when I shook her awake. Her skin prickled in the cool of the bedroom where she slept in a long t-shirt.

"I don't believe I asked for the weather report," I said. "You're getting soft, sleeping until all hours and running when you feel like it."

I saw the ghost of a smile cross her face. She was wise enough to stifle it. The all hours she was sleeping to was six-thirty because the sun was coming up around seven. I had no doubt she knew the exact time and was on the trail one half hour before it rose, as instructed. It was light enough then, but cold and the ground was hard. Her runs were marked through a trail, no less than five miles and longer if she wanted strawberries with her breakfast.

I knew from the guards she was usually running seven.

She liked strawberries.

Running when you feel like it was a definite misnomer. Maybe she did. But she ran because I wanted her to.

I'd been neglectful of my slave since we came back from Brazil. That was all going to change.

That morning I took her on the morning run, leading her twelve miles instead of her usual five or seven. She was dripping sweat in the low forty degrees weather when we returned. We were short of the compound when I ordered her to stop and remove her hooded sweatshirt, t-shirt and jog bra.

As expected, she balked. That was beautiful to see. Her refusal. And her acceptance.

The guards watched from a distance as Annie pulled off each item of clothing, hesitating just long enough at the jog bra to both prove to herself I really meant it, and give me grounds for punishing her further.

I took the clothes from her and nodded at her to walk to the compound. The two guards watched her. Whatever names she knew them by, I knew them by their actual names, Arron Gold and Tim Shay. I knew for a fact that Annie disliked Aaron. He was big and crude and very strong. He was the guard who had drugged her when she tried to run at the last dinner party, and he was the guard who had watched with close attention when she was strip-searched by a nurse her first morning in my custody.

Despite the fact that he'd seen her naked before, every instance made her color and made her feel vulnerable and controlled.

Owned.

Arron watched her walk toward him. His eyes never moved from her breasts. Annie moved smoothly and confidently until she was required to stop at the gates.

"Open the gate," she said angrily, but I could hear tears somewhere in her voice. She came back every morning from her run and was allowed inside.

"Ma'am, you've been outside the compound."

She was angry enough to put hands on hips. "Open the gates. Mr. St. Martin is with me. It must be clear that I'm – "

"She's been in the world," I said. "Search her. When you're finished, bring her to me." I entered the compound and went to her cell block, leaving her to Arron.

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