Page 213 of Deep Cover

I shuddered at the thought. He leaned over then to make sure my mouth and eyes were untouched, that my fingers bore no trace of the heat carrying capsaicin. I didn't think I'd touched it, only been touched by it, but I was more than happy to comply.

He never answered the question I finally worked up the nerve to ask. "How did you end up with this particular job?" He wasn't mean about it.

He just didn't answer.

I followed the instructions. I used the burn creams. And for the hours that followed Kie's attack, I did my best to act as depressed as I had been when the little bitch came down to take me for a run. And when she came back, to finish what she'd started at the dinner party.

It occurred to me that maybe she'd done it on purpose. Not what she'd done to me – it was possible that was beside the point for her. Instead, I thought maybe her fear reaction to my calling Vincent "Vincent" even not within his hearing was nothing more than the lies she told herself. Maybe she did what she did to me because she wanted the punishment.

There was no way for me to know. I wasn't given to introspection past learning how to stay alive in the various strange situations my job routinely took me to. If Kie wanted to kill herself, I wished she'd hurry up and do it and not take me with her. If she was that big a pain slut she wanted whatever Vincent did to her that made her scream like that, fine. Again: Leave me out of it.

But I had heard her at the end, when she'd shocked herself so badly she was trying to undo what she'd done. I heard her mumbled words as she tried to use the milk to stop the pain and the coldness of the milk had been a shock on my fevered, burning skin. It had turned hot within an instant. If someone measured the temperature of my skin, I was sure there'd be a major difference between my normal flesh between my legs and the places where Kie had burned me.

But past that. I had heard her, a litany of her own suffering, a suffering so intense that even though she was imposing her own brand of it on someone else, she wanted nothing more than to cease to exist. She wanted to be dead.

At that moment I could cheerfully have taken care of that for her. I did not want Vincent to. She had never hurt him.

She wasn't anywhere around in the afternoon and I remained cowed. Vincent, with very little prompting, brought me lightweight and very loose clothes, and left me to see to the care of my wounds myself. While wearing gloves, because the capsaicin was that strong and stuck that well that even so much later after applications of sour cream that didn't amuse me all that much, there was the fear that the oils could rub off. Spread. Touch my face.

I thought I'd be muttering the same things Kie had been, if that happened.

When Vincent came in, I moved to kneel and when he told me I didn't have to, for fear of pulling the clothing tight against me, I stood with hands folded and gaze down, and he was arrogant enough even then to believe it.

I snapped at him twice during the times he was in the room with me. Both times it was intentional. He liked a sub that fought back. I had to fight back, even against nothing, just enough to keep him interested.

I was a liability now. Whatever he chose to do with me, he had to know the ending would be a blood feud between him and Cole. He talked as if he thought Cole was weak, possibly only because Cole was nowhere near as brutal as he was, but I thought that Cole, of the two of them, was more likely to kill.

Vincent would kill for petty reasons, for spite, for hatred, for feeling insignificant compared to someone else.

Cole would kill to protect those he cared about.

Whatever, the hatred between the two of them was strong. It couldn't end well, Vincent taking me and now this. If he was playing this game, the only reason to keep me alive was to be certain he had something to trade with Cole if it came to that.

He had to think I was still fighting. That wasn't hard. I was. Even with him there I was weighing choices. Whatever I chose, it had to be soon.

He had to think I was cowed, too. Docile. Waiting for the next session. That was harder. Because I wasn't. I wasn't anywhere near resigned.

When he came in the third time, ostentatiously to check on me, he mentioned that he'd sent videos of "everything" to Cole. The dinner party event. The knife play. The stuff he'd done to me in the limo. The breath play he'd done with me.

And what Kie had done with the pepper. I wasn't able to pretend to be cowed or uninterested at that.

I was instantly furious. My head snapped up and my gaze locked on his.

So I didn't miss the nasty little smile he gave me. "She didn't have permission to do what she did." He said that as if somehow it made him look better. In my eyes? What did he care what I thought of him? Not to mention there was no way I'd ever see him as anything but a predator and a psychopath. "But I'd be a fool not to use it." He leaned over from his seat across from me and brushed some of my hair out of my face.

I tried not to react, but the very tightening of my features undoubtedly gave me away.

"For Cole to know you're out of his reach. That he can't even stop the thing he stopped at the dinner party. That she went ahead and – " He leaned in close, as if this were confidential, as if I hadn't most definitely been there – "Fucked you with that thing."

There was a silence that stretched between us and then he said, "You should have heard yourself scream." Pause. "Maybe I'll play it for you some time."

When I was a girl growing up with three sisters I not only didn't see eye to eye with but didn't seem to be the same species as, sometimes I'd fight back inadvisably when the three of them wouldn't stop picking at me. Trying to make me be something I wasn't. When it became physical – because I could always beat them there – my mother would step in, separating us and speaking with us in turn. I tried not to notice that my sister's lectures were always much shorter than my own.

When it came to my turn, my mother would spend a good twenty minutes lecturing me. It was like she had a clock in her head, the way she could set the time and keep going with no problem.

Her lectures were all about the same shit. When I was your age. Appreciate the opportunities you have in life. Understand you love your father but you're going to grow up to be a young lady, not…

I learned the timing too. When it was obvious she was launching into a lecture that was going to stretch the whole amount of time and be about my failings as a daughter, I would automatically reroute my thoughts. I was able to look right at her and pretend to be home behind my eyes while at the same time, I would imagine my wedding. Not because I was romance obsessed, but because the first time I ever tried the tactic I'd come up with weddings and it stuck. It was fast, it was easy to imagine (take my latest crush, add some years, pop the question and voila! Instant food for thought).

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