Page 226 of Deep Cover

22

Cole

We lay in the bed together, my body wrapped around hers, as if I could keep her safe. As if anybody could ever keep anyone safe in this world.

Her ass fit beautifully into my body. My arms were around her. At first after I came I rubbed the soreness in her back, easing my knuckles around bruises and into tight, angry muscles.

As she fell asleep, l lay still, holding her, knowing she'd sensed something changing but not what.

But I knew. Lying there in the dark I could feel another darkness reflected within, coiling up like vines or like woodsmoke on a still night, rising in patterns to hang in the air, unmoving.

The rage had built and had nowhere to go and now I was falling, head first, into the black.

I could count the number of times the rage had been this bad.

A prostitute named Lily, whose pimp had choked her unconscious so many times he caused irreversible brain damage. She was just damaged enough to know she was damaged and could never recover. Not hurt badly enough to be beyond caring. Or dead.

She was cared for in a secret villa in the south of France, all her expenses forever paid for. She delighted in painting, in sunsets but not sunrises, and in puppies, so we set her up with the local version of a Humane Society, fostering puppies. She was excellent with puppies. Her capacity to care was tremendous. Once the puppies became dogs, she was afraid of them, so we made certain her experience was endless puppies. That sounds like a form of heaven, even to me.

And as for the pimp who hurt her, he had been incarcerated but nowhere the authorities knew about. He was possibly going to be forgiven when he died, if indeed there's judgment after this life. Because I'd made certain he was facing hell during his time on earth.

Another time I had simply been left by a sub I had trusted, had thought would stay with me. No one else was harmed during that period of time, but my training – running, lifting, martial arts, yoga, sweat lodges, steam rooms, dry saunas – all of it damn near killed me. My intensity, my drive to make myself perfect, was all consuming.

It was after that, after I started climbing back out of that particular darkness, that I began treating my body as a temple, inviolate and never to be harmed by my own hand.

This darkness felt more absolute. As Annie slept I wrapped myself tighter around her until I admitted to myself I was hoping to wake her by the way I held her, crowding her, holding her too close. That was unfair. This wasn't her fault. This was my darkness.

I was up long before she was. I took a run through Paris and when the urge to keep going, to push until I was on my knees, unable to move, I made myself stop and retreat to a café where I ordered coffee. When the desire to leave Annie wondering became less intense, I returned her texts, letting her know I'd be back soon.

For now, this was controlled and contained.

I needed to get her back to southern Nevada, back to the compound, while it still was.

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