Page 23

by Evangeline Anderson

I wanted to protest but I could feel the void open­ing up in­side me again—de­mand­ing to be filled. I had no choice.

Stiffly, I got off the floor and walked over to the broad leather arm of the oxblood sofa. Lift­ing my frilly, little girl skirts, I laid my­self across it, feel­ing the cool air cur­rents circ­ling in the room caress my bare ass.

“All right,” I said, my voice trem­bling only a little. “Give it to me, Salt. Give it to me hard.”

His face was a mask I couldn’t read as he stepped up to me and raised his arm. When the first blow fell and the leather snake kissed my ass with a sharp snap, I knew at once this was what I needed. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt—it hurt like Hell—much worse than Salt’s hand had when he’d been spank­ing me over his knee. But it seemed to fill that aching void in­side me. At least, it star­ted to fill it. I could still feel the ef­fects of the Please in my sys­tem, for­cing me to beg for more.

“Again,” I whispered, grip­ping the cool, slip­pery leather with my nails. “Do it again, Salt. I need more.”

“As you wish.”

He lif­ted his arm again and again I felt the sharp snap of the belt against my na­ked back­side. I couldn’t repress a groan this time. God, it hurt. But I knew the sting­ing pain was all that was keep­ing me from go­ing crazy with lust or pos­sibly even dy­ing from the ef­fects of all the Please I’d in­ges­ted.

“An­other,” I said in a strained voice.

Salt com­plied. I couldn’t tell from his face how this was af­fect­ing him—his eyes were still cold and dead. I knew he didn’t want to hurt me and I was sorry I had to ask him to. But he was right—in the long run, this was bet­ter than fuck­ing me. At least, that was what I tried to tell my­self.

“More,” I begged breath­lessly and an­other blow fell, the black leather lick­ing around my na­ked, up­turned but­tocks, giv­ing me the harsh, angry kiss my body so des­per­ately needed.

The pain was in­tense, es­pe­cially when the belt fell on a spot it had touched be­fore. I could feel my skin get­ting hot and swollen with the re­peated lash­ing and I wondered if I was bleed­ing. It wouldn’t have sur­prised me if I was and yet I still needed more.

“Again.” I whispered, bit­ing my lip. “Please, Salt—again. And this time…don’t stop.”

He hit me again and then again and again. Over and over his arm rose and fell, not stop­ping between blows this time. I put my head down and bit my lip un­til I tasted blood, tak­ing what I needed from him even though it hurt both of us—him to give it and me to re­ceive it. The pain of the whip­ping seemed to grow un­til it filled my whole world and I couldn’t think any more. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do any­thing but just lie there and take it.

Little by little, the void the Please had opened in­side me was filled with sen­sa­tion. But filling it came with a price. I turned my face away so Salt couldn’t see me and stuffed a fist in my mouth, try­ing to muffle my cries of pain. Though I tried to hold still, I could feel my body try­ing to jerk away from the harsh blows as they fell. Some­how I forced my­self not to run—to stay and take the pun­ish­ment I had begged for. The pun­ish­ment I de­served.

“You’re the reason he left,” whispered my mother’s voice in my head. “It’s your fault your Daddy’s never com­ing home again. He got tired of tak­ing care of you. Tired of you need­ing all of his at­ten­tion. He’s never com­ing back and you’re the reason why.”

I felt some­thing warm and wet trick­ling down my cheeks and dimly real­ized I was cry­ing. But that was all right—it was what I de­served. I was the one who had driven my Daddy away—I de­served to be beaten for it. I ought to hurt and sting and cry to atone for that sin. I should— “No more!”

The harsh cry made me turn my head. I saw a tall man stand­ing over me but I wasn’t sure who he was.

“No more, Andi,” he re­peated. “I can­not hurt you like this any­more. You’re bleed­ing.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I whispered as my eyes filled with tears again. “I didn’t mean to make you go away. Please tell me what I did that made you leave—I swear I won’t do it again.”

“Andi, it’s me.”

My vis­ion seemed to clear and the tall man be­came my part­ner. I real­ized that once again I had some­how fallen into Little-space and not in a good way.

Salt’s face was no longer cold and im­pass­ive. There was an­guish now in his pale blue eyes—a look of re­gret and self-re­crim­in­a­tion so deep it made me ache for him.

“Salt?” I whispered, mak­ing an ef­fort to come back from the dark place in my past. “Salt, is that you?”

“Andi…” He threw down his belt and gathered me into his arms. “Sorry. I am so sorry, my darling,” he whispered into my hair. “I never should have hurt you in that way.”

I wanted to protest that it wasn’t his fault but everything seemed to be fad­ing. Black flowers were bloom­ing be­fore my eyes and dark­ness was eat­ing the world.

“Andi,” I heard Salt say. “Please be all right. Please, I can­not hurt you any­more. I can­not bear it.”

“You had to hurt me,” I whispered. My mind was hazy but I wanted to make that much clear. “It was…the only way other than…than fuck­ing. The only thing that could…could help.”

Des­pite my words, Salt’s strong fea­tures were still filled with re­morse.

“I still should not have—”

Sud­denly there was a splin­ter­ing sound and the thick wooden door burst in­ward.

“All right—hands up where we can see them,” barked a sharp voice. “Tampa PD—every­body just stay where you are.”

“What the hell do you think you are do­ing?” Salt de­man­ded.

The other voice seemed to be an­swer­ing but I couldn’t hear it any­more. The black flowers had grown to fill my en­tire field of vis­ion and it seemed like someone had turned the volume in the room way, way down so that the other voices around me were noth­ing but whis­pers.

“…my part­ner,” I vaguely heard Salt say. “…take her to the hos­pital now.”

No hos­pital, I tried to say—I hated those places. My mom had died in one and I didn’t want to die there too. I didn’t want…

But it didn’t mat­ter what I wanted. Everything went dark and si­lent and the world faded to black.

Chapter Six­teen

“…so we’re lucky that Vice chose that time to make a raid al­though I was pissed at the time that they’d do some­thing so clue­less. And don’t worry about that in­form­ant Berkley told you he had in the PD—that’s been taken care of.”

The Cap­tain seemed to be wrap­ping up his brief­ing, for which I was pro­foundly grate­ful. He’d kept us in his of­fice for at least an hour. Even though the lash wounds on my back­side made by Salt’s belt had mostly healed, it was still pain­ful to spend too much time sit­ting.

“Very lucky,” my part­ner growled softly. “Andi might have died oth­er­wise.”

“I would have if you hadn’t saved me.”

“Saved you by half killing you,” Salt muttered, look­ing down at his hands.

“You only did what I asked you to,” I poin­ted out. “And it was bet­ter than…than the al­tern­at­ive. It was the only way to coun­ter­act the ef­fects of the Please other than—”

The Cap­tain cleared his throat. “Well, yes. I think we can all agree De­tect­ive Saltanov did only what was ne­ces­sary.”

Salt muttered some­thing in Rus­sian, still look­ing at his hands.

“Salt…” I tried to catch his eye but he wouldn’t look at me.

Great. In­wardly, I sighed. This was the way things had been between us for the two weeks since the ab­rupt end of our time at the In­sti­tute.

Everything had gone re­mark­ably well in the af­ter­math. The Vice de­part­ment’s tim­ing had been in­cred­ibly lucky, des­pite the fact that they hadn’t had any idea they were but­tin
g into an on­go­ing un­der­cover in­vest­ig­a­tion. They’d had a re­port of a huge ship­ment of heroine be­ing smuggled through the In­sti­tute and had come to break up the party. In the pro­cess they had nabbed Berkley and his Baby­girl slash lab as­sist­ant Mandy, as well as all the mak­ings of a first-class Please lab.

Also, thanks to Berkley’s need to have the fi­nal say while he was re­cord­ing what he hoped would be a steamy sex show by my part­ner and I, we’d got­ten his com­plete con­fes­sion on tape. The Dir­ector of the In­sti­tute was go­ing away for a very long, long time and Mandy was headed up the river too.

Things really couldn’t have worked out bet­ter—ex­cept for the dis­tance that the whole sorry situ­ation had put between me and my part­ner. I had tried to reach out to him sev­eral times—though it hurt my pride to do so—but he al­ways re­buffed me. I thought he might hate me now for all the sick things we’d been forced to do to­gether and to each other while we were play­ing “Papa” and “mishka” but I couldn’t help wish­ing I might be wrong.

Still, so far Salt was giv­ing me no in­dic­a­tion that my guess wasn’t cor­rect. He wouldn’t touch me, wouldn’t look at me, and would barely speak to me. I didn’t want to let him know how much that hurt so I tried to keep it to my­self, tried to tell my­self that things would get bet­ter between us. But when? It had been two weeks—how long would it take for us to get back to nor­mal? A month? A year?

As if you really wanted to go back to nor­mal, whispered a little voice in my brain. What you want is what you can never have again—to be Salt’s Baby­girl and hear him call you “mishka” one more time. To know that your “Papa” still loves you.

I tried to push the voice away. It was all stu­pid bull­shit—everything we had been forced to do to­gether was just for show, I told my­self. And it wasn’t like I had ac­tu­ally en­joyed any of it. I was just as glad to get away from the crazytown en­vir­on­ment of the In­sti­tute as Salt prob­ably was. Right?

Right, I told my­self firmly. And Salt will come around even­tu­ally and then everything will go back to nor­mal.

I hoped.

“Fine,” I said stiffly, look­ing away from my part­ner and stand­ing to go. “Is that all, Cap­tain? Can we go now?”

“I’m afraid not.” The Cap­tain soun­ded ex­tremely un­com­fort­able. “I’m sorry, Sug­ar­baker, but there’s one more thing I need to touch on be­fore we wrap this up.”

“Oh?” I raised an eye­brow at him. “What’s that?

“It’s the fact that De­tect­ive Saltanov has asked for…for…”

“A new part­ner,” Salt fin­ished for him.

“What? What did you say?” I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Lit­er­ally—all the breath left my lungs and I couldn’t seem to fill them again. I had been stand­ing, ready to leave the Cap­tain’s of­fice. Now I sank back down on the hard wooden chair and looked at Salt.

He stared back at me, his face a mask I couldn’t read.

“I am sorry, Andi, but it must be this way,” he said.

“I…” I didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t have hurt me more if he’d pulled out a gun and shot me—that was how pain­ful his be­trayal was. “So you’re leav­ing,” I whispered be­fore I could stop my­self. “Dump­ing me like every other man in my life. Leav­ing just like my—” Some­how I caught my­self and man­aged to stop there but not be­fore I saw the pain flash in Salt’s eyes.

“I am sorry,” he said earn­estly, his tone a little softer. “But I feel that after what I did—”

“No, no—please. No ex­plan­a­tion ne­ces­sary,” I said briskly. In­side I felt like dy­ing but I had shown enough weak­ness already. It was time to pull my­self to­gether.

“Andi—”

“You’ve fi­nally had enough of me—just like the other two part­ners the Cap­tain tried to put me with,” I said stiffly. “I un­der­stand, Salt—really I do. It was just a mat­ter of time.”

The Cap­tain stirred rest­lessly in his chair.

“I don’t like this,” he said ab­ruptly. “This doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Well, it’s not up to you, is it Cap­tain?” I forced my­self to stand back up, even though my legs felt like they might give way un­der me. “Salt needs a change and far be it from me to stand in his way.” I lif­ted my chin. “I’d like to add some­thing to his re­quest though—I want a new part­ner too. Im­me­di­ately. I don’t care who it is—just make it hap­pen today.”

“These things take time, Sug­ar­baker,” the Cap­tain re­minded me, frown­ing. “Time and a hell of a lot of pa­per­work.”

“I don’t care about that,” I snapped. “Salt wants out, then so do I. I don’t want to have any­thing else to do with him and I’m sure he feels the same way about me.”

“Andi—” Salt began again, a pained ex­pres­sion com­ing over his face.

“Andi, Andi, Andi,” I mocked him furi­ously. “Just stop talk­ing—stop say­ing my name, you son of a bitch! You’ve already said everything there is to say—everything that mat­ters.”

“No, I have not,” he growled, frown­ing at me. “I must tell you—”

“I couldn’t split the two of you up right away even if I wanted to—which I damn well don’t,” Cap­tain Douglas roared, in­ter­rupt­ing us. “Be­cause this case is still hanging over our heads.”

“What are you talk­ing about?” I had my arms crossed and I tapped my fin­gers im­pa­tiently. “I thought it was all tied up with a bow on top.”

“Not quite.” The Cap­tain sighed and ran a hand over his face. “There’s still the little mat­ter of the evid­ence.”

“Do you not have everything that you need?” Salt asked. “Equip­ment from the lab, Berkley’s con­fes­sion…”

“Yes but we also still have all the evid­ence col­lec­ted by the hid­den cam­era equip­ment,” the Cap­tain said quietly. “I need to re­lease it to the judge but there are parts of it…” He cleared his throat. “Parts that might need to be, uh, ed­ited out.”

“You can’t do that, Cap­tain.” I was shocked. “That’s tam­per­ing with evid­ence.”

“Look, Sug­ar­baker, I’m not talk­ing about get­ting rid of any of the vids show­ing the Please Lab—which Berkley was stu­pid enough to re­cord, by the way. I’m talk­ing about cer­tain, uh, in­tim­ate events that you might not wish a judge or jury or the gen­eral pub­lic to see if they got out.”

Cap­tain Douglas’ face was red and I could tell that he’d watched the tapes he was talk­ing about—the im­ages of Salt and I in our room do­ing…oh God, do­ing all kinds of things I didn’t want any­one know­ing about.

“My God,” I whispered, feel­ing sick and faint for the second time that day. I grabbed for the back of the chair. “If those got out…”

“Now you’re get­ting the idea,” the Cap­tain said grimly. “Those parts of the tape don’t really do any­thing to make our case. And I don’t really think any­one but you and your part­ner need to see them.”

“He’s not my part­ner any­more.” I couldn’t keep the bit­ter­ness out of my voice and I couldn’t look at Salt as I spoke.

“He is for a little while longer, Sug­ar­baker,” Cap­tain Douglas said gently but firmly. “At least un­til the two of you re­view these videos and de­cide what parts you want me to ‘lose.’” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small flash drive. Reach­ing for­ward, he placed it at the edge of his desk and looked at me mean­ing­fully. “Do you un­der­stand?”

“This should be up to Andi,” Salt said in a low voice. “She is the one who should de­cide—”

“I want you both to de­cide to­gether.” The Cap­tain glared at us. “I mean it—find some time out­side of work and go through these. And it needs to get done soon. I can’t hold this back for much longer.”

“Fine.” I reached for the flash drive but Salt got to it first. He fo
l­ded it in his big hand and looked at me.

“I will come to your house to­night. We will re­view these to­gether.”

I re­fused to meet his eyes.

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“It is,” Salt said quietly.

“Good.” The Cap­tain slapped his desk with fi­nal­ity. “Come back in to­mor­row and tell me what you want to do.”

What I wanted to do was go dig a hole and bury my­self in it but I couldn’t say that out loud. Couldn’t give my bas­tard of an ex-part­ner the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing how badly he had hurt me—how deeply his treach­ery cut.

In­stead, I lif­ted my chin and left the Cap­tain’s of­fice with my head held high and my heart aching.

It’s your fault, whispered a little voice in my head. Your fault he left and he’s never com­ing back.

I knew it was true but it didn’t make his be­trayal hurt any less.

Chapter Sev­en­teen

The knock on my front door startled me. I was stand­ing in the kit­chen, cut­ting up ve­get­ables for a crudités plat­ter to serve while we re­viewed the video evid­ence.

I know mak­ing a tray of snacks sounds stu­pid but it was what I had done the first time Salt had ever come over to my house, not long after we’d be­come part­ners. I for­get why he came—prob­ably to re­view evid­ence from some case or other. Any­way, I had made a ve­get­able plat­ter with sour cream dip and now I found my­self do­ing it again. I don’t know why—maybe I was try­ing to take my­self back to the time be­fore I’d cared about my part­ner as more than a part­ner. Maybe I wanted to re­wind the clock and pre­tend noth­ing had ever happened between us.

Now, how­ever, I de­cided it was a ri­dicu­lous idea. It wasn’t like I could pre­tend away the hurt in­side me—the gap­ing hole of loneli­ness that had opened in my chest where my heart used to be. All I could do was try to hide it and get through this night as well as I could.