Page 201 of Deep Cover

10

Annie

We didn't run. The morning after the insane dinner and we were still in what I now knew was Paris.

Still in the same house.

Vincent was pleased with everything. He liked how the evening had gone. He liked the compliments he'd received on me. He liked the people who had chosen to speak to me.

That made one of us.

For me the evening had been like something out of American Horror Story. Everything was just off. Just canted the wrong way so everything felt uncomfortable.

For me, the people were like caricatures of real people, like something someone had made up. I had hated every minute of it. Even being out of the house hadn't been worth sporting a back full of bruises.

The fact that Vincent was happy and we hadn't run - That was just good news.

In the car Vincent had been very handsy, his fingers in the neckline of my dress, making me moan in unwilling pleasure as he stroked my nipples and then scream in not unexpected pain but definitely unbearable. He had a grip that was amazing.

"Please, sir," I panted after the third time he made me cry out.

That made him grab me by the hair and drag me over his lap, tearing the dress as he exposed my ass and slapped me until I screamed.

I had never known that spanking with just a human hand could hurt so bad.

Then he sat me back up, told me to pull the top of the dress down, and went back to hurting my nipples.

Then we reached the house and he'd had medical treatment waiting for me.

I was going to kill him.

I was going to kill him and I was going to kill Kie and I was going to kill anyone who got in the way.

But Vincent was happy. Once the scene in the car was over, he was back to smiling, humming, looking around at the city we were passing through.

Paris had never been on my bucket list. Actually, as an undercover narc, I was too superstitious to have a bucket list and I hated the concept anyway. But Paris wasn't on my list of places to see. It seemed too obvious.

But it was beautiful. And old. At least where we were. The idea that Vincent had screwed restraints into a historic house was appalling.

Sometime deep in the night I got up again.

Dressed in my sweats, the night's foot-crippling stilettos carefully stored away, I was training. The room I was in was more than big enough. Moving through the kata, I was building up a sweat, working hard and fast and with precision.

Thinking about what I'd need in order to kill Vincent.

Block. Strike. Kick. Block. Back up. Block. Back up. Strike, strike, strike, kick.

There was no kindness in Vincent. There were no moments when I accidentally caught him in a smile. There were no touches to my face that weren’t a slap.

But there had been the medic tonight. And that I didn't understand. It was almost worse than if there hadn't been. Because it was out of character. In my experience, psychopaths didn't act out of character unless something was in it for them.

I ran through the katas twice, from white belt to black belt, until I was sweating in the cool night and pulled off the sweatshirt. The house shift would be enough for a top. I went back to my workout, starting with side kicks, my least favorite technique and my worst for form. All the way across the suite and back again, changing legs halfway through. Then again. Then slow kicks, those perfecters of form, standing on one leg and painstakingly extending the opposite, watching the strike of the foot with the knife edge, the toes angled back toward the body, fists up in defensive position.

Slow. Graceful. Giving me too much time to think.

I could find my way back to Cole this time. Probably I could find someone who could contact him, possibly among the freakshow dinner guests.

Or Kie. Almost impossible to believe they hadn't been together at some point. Given the hatred the two men had for each other and Cole's tendency to pick his victims from women he wanted to see get on their feet and cast him off, I thought it was possible he'd fucked Kie more than once, possibly one or two times without even tacit permission from Vincent.

---