Page 211 of Deep Cover

"Mr. Geddes says I'm not to leave until I can get you out of this room," she said, sounding like throwing me out a window might be an option.

I lay on the couch, looking at her. "Security can do that for you."

Her glare was epic. "You know better."

"I don't care," I told her.

"You will."

The threat was the first thing to rouse me from a near stupor. Even as I struggled to sit up, it was already too late.

She was on me faster than I anticipated, her hands on mine, the plastic zip ties already set for my wrists. She'd tied my hands more than once already. Vincent liked to threaten me by giving her limited authority over me and she liked to use whatever she had. She knew the right size space to leave to force my hands through.

Cuffs. And then the leash she'd brought, to attach them to the leg of the couch, leaving me bent back over the arm of the sofa, weirdly like the position Vincent had dragged me into after he'd slugged the air out of me.

She was fast. She got one of my legs and tied it to one of the rings. The other leg she just avoided, letting it thud uselessly against her shoulder as she knelt between my legs.

"What are you doing?" I shouted at her. Fear had started to crawl up inside me, honest emotion and horrifying.

"Making you care," she snapped and there were scissors in her hand, cutting through the running shorts I'd pulled on again at some point.

"Kie, don't!" Scared now, my breath coming too short. This was the woman who had hurt me so badly that Cole wouldn't even let me be taken by her master. "Kie, please."

She just looked at me and held up the pepper, letting me see it as she used the scissors to score down the sides of it. I could smell it then, jalapeno or ghost pepper or whatever the fuck it was, it didn't matter, if she – she couldn't – I hated her, she hated me, but I thought – under the same roof with the same madman and she had access to scissors and if we worked together –

And besides, she'd done it once, all the horror that was trying to drive me back into my own head. She'd done it and been horrified at the results, and been beaten senseless for doing it.

She was doing it anyway. There was a short stretch of time when it felt like neither of us was moving, when what was between my legs felt cool.

Then I screamed. I screamed and writhed and my back arched farther. My eyes poured tears and useless saliva pooled in my mouth, as if I might vomit from the pain.

She spun the pepper inside me, then looked up at my face.

I heard her swear. It was the same sort of sound Vincent made when a whip landed the wrong way. As if something had happened she hadn't anticipated, but she'd done this before - She had to know.

I felt her hand on my face and snapped at it, trying to bite, then screaming again.

Kie ran. I heard her shout, a frantic, Get the fuck out of my way and assumed it was at security.

And assumed she was doomed to whatever Vincent would do because clearly she was on her way out of here. Too late for me, she was finally running.

All the while, I couldn't stop the keening.

Then she was back. Tears poured down her ruined cheeks, probably hurting to some similar degree as my screaming my head off.

She had milk. She had a towel. The speed with which she retrieved them meant she'd at least planned that far ahead. There was no way she could have made it to the kitchen and back with the milk, bowl and towel. I could hear the panicked labor of her breath.

She had the presence of mind to soak the towel and squeeze it up against me and into me, letting whatever it is in milk do whatever magic it does against the unholy capsaicin of pepper.

It took several long minutes. It took more endurance than I thought I had.

Then I was sliding down the far side of pain, the milk-soaked towel nestled against me, something cold and horrible, like a memory that's inescapable.

I was sweating everywhere from the pepper. I could smell the reek of it, mixed with the milk.

Mixed with Kie's rank fear sweat.

My screaming turned to sobbing. Through the sound of it, I could just hear her.

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