Page 142 of Deep Cover

27

Annie

There was the same pomp and circumstance before this party as for the last. That didn't make me feel any better. For the last one I'd been poked and prodded into a gown with a sheer top and found myself drugged and tied to a post while Cole allowed me to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, who just happened to be a guy with deader eyes than anybody I'd ever seen in the Brotherhood.

There were fittings for a dress, this one a corset top that the seamstress seemed to think should be tightened enough to become part of my flesh. And for this one there were heels, which Cole told me I'd have to learn to walk in. The first trial run I took at it – trial stumble, actually – was so uncoordinated and bizarre he broke into laughter and couldn't stop. It didn't help that the same thing happened to me, so that I was unable to let go of the wall I'd been trying to hang on to and just leaned there, breathing gasps of air and laughing. He'd told me to practice wearing a pair of panties and garter and stockings because he might as well have something to look at, but even topless and blushing I thought the uncontrollable laughter probably detracted from the erotic content.

He didn't tell me what he'd done on his trips, and I didn't ask. He'd been gone most of January and the beginning of February but I'd had conversations with Tad, the occasional run-in with Nina that never ended the way she expected (or maybe did), the coursework for the criminal justice class I wasn't officially taking, running, lifting, massage.

No yoga. No meditation. It was like a bizarre vacation. Like vacationing in jail.

The bad thing was knowing that the party was coming up.

When Cole returned a week before the event, I expected him to return to the morning maintenance spankings or even to discipline me for refusing to let Nina do it. Or something.

Okay, or anything. Because even with the stuff that was filling most of my days, I didn't have enough to distract me around the clock. It wasn't like I wanted him to hurt me. More like I just wanted something to happen.

I was sure of it.

The dress for this party was not see through. That was nice. It was long and the skirt dropped from the waist as panels of shimmering silk. I was sure I wouldn't be allowed to wear anything under it, but unless I was cavalier in the way I chose to plant myself on a chair there would be panels covering me and panels I was sitting on. It would expose my hips, and I'd worn plenty of bathing suits that did that.

I was more worried about the heels but as long as we didn't do anything stupid like going for a hike, I'd be fine. There were plenty of walls to lean against when I started to tip over.

Right up to the day of the party everything was normal, in the version of normal where the man who considered himself to be the master utterly ignored the woman he considered to be his slave. Until the morning of the party, when he found me after my run.

I was still breathing hard, using a towel on my hair and face as I came back into the cell, the guards having not even bothered to ogle me. It felt like we were all coming down with Stockholm syndrome.

When I entered the cell, I was so startled by Cole's appearance I didn't even think to sink to my knees. It felt very much too much, like running into a boss or something. It might be a surprise, but unless you were the employee doing the thing you weren't supposed to be doing, it was no big deal.

Finding him there, seeing his face, the face of the masochist, I felt my stomach twist and even though it would have been too late, I might have dropped to my knees if he hadn't grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into his office.

His office. Not the punishment room. Not the room with the giant bed where he sometimes took me. His office.

"Sit," he said, and I sank to my knees. At the last second I realized he'd meant on the chair beside the desk but he didn't correct me.

I was so busy rethinking everything I'd just thought and done, I missed the beginning of what he said and didn't have the guts to ask him to start over.

When I was undercover, there was a chance at any minute I could be hurt. Jesse would have taught me that even if there hadn't been other assignments before him. He was the one who loosened a molar with one blow. He was the rage sex, the man who drove his fist into the pillow beside my head when he fucked me.

More than that. Undercover there was the possibility of being killed. Obviously. Nobody likes a narc.

Only with Jesse, it was a game. Consummate, total immersion, with rules that were never properly explained and a man who enjoyed causing pain and did it when angry, when excited, when calm and dangerous.

My submission to Cole had never been a given. I wouldn't submit to him. I wouldn't let him break me.

But I'd let him help me. That was the agreement and that was why I sank to my knees and why I stared at the ground and called him sir and did the things I did. Because of the agreement. Because he was helping me.

I hadn't submitted. I wouldn't. And my "obedience" came and went.

He leaned in close to me. "I haven't touched you in weeks."

God, I know."Yes, sir?" My hands worked together in my lap.

He looked down at them, where they wrung themselves together, and he grinned, the smile of the man who had originally scared me so badly. "Oh, yes," he said. "No spankings, no caning, no crop, no dildos, no whips, no bondage." His grin grew wider, that upside down triangular grin menacing now.

"I know, sir," I whispered, as close as I was going to come to letting him know I'd missed the attention. Or letting myself know. And it was only because there wasn't much to do out here. I was never a good student. All that studying wasn't enough to keep me entertained and when I tried to do more than two runs a day, the guards refused to let me out. Something about eating disorders and not letting me think I was in charge of anything. Two runs a day and all the weights and so on, I was in the best shape of my life.

And bored.

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