Page 6 of Contention
With a violent jolt, Kara wakes up, hand clutched to her chest as she pants heavily. Large sobs that wrack her lungs threaten to crawl up her esophagus. An emotion that feels vaguely like horror is carousing through her. It’s like her body is a carnival and ridiculously, she feels like crying.
Oh, wait. Perhaps she’s already crying.
With a groan, she rubs her eyes, dismissing the wetness that she feels there. She rarely has dreams that affect her so deeply. She breathes in and tells herself that it isn’t real. “Just a dream. Just a bad dream.”
Which, of course, is a lie, but she’s always been good at denial.
What’s worse is her stomach is in knots and her core is heated. Her nether regions feel swollen and she refuses to put a hand near the source of that ache. She mutters darkly,“How sick in the head am I?”
With a mutinous glance, she cranes her stiff neck to look at her clock. Seven in the morning. Early enough to get up and make coffee. To sit and read notes to prep for Monday. Something to get her mind off the past.
And to get her mind off that effed up dream.
It didn’t happen. You are letting your imagination run away with you. This is your way of gaining control of something you don’t have control of.
With furious intent, Kara grabs her work tote, filled with her laptop and folders for her latest assignment. This will keep her busy. This will keep her mind off of the weekend until tomorrow. Her nerves are already on edge; she’s got court in the morning and this time she is going to be assisting one of the named partners at the firm; Derrick Benson.
She’d begun working at Benson & Clarke about two years ago. It’s a prestigious law firm and she’d been thrilled to have gotten the opportunity to work there as a junior associate, a step up from her law gig prior. She’d started out as an info jockey, always looking for data and documents to help senior associates on their cases.
Kara had shadowed on court days when allowed, sitting in the back to observe the back and forth, the flow of the room. It was a lot of long, unforgiving hours. She loved it. She loved that it kept her mind completely busy, kept her from worrying about her social life for the most part.
She has her one close friend from her college days. Bianca. While Bianca isn’t always the most reliable of friends, she’s fun when Kara is actually looking to relax her mind, if only for a bit.
Her childhood home had been too much of an unpredictable disaster to allow anyone to get close, let alone come home with her. During her time away at college, she became fast friends with the wild child Bianca, full of boho style.
Bianca is a good match for Kara, who by all accounts is far too emotionally closed off to let anyone in. The other girl had made a space for herself in Kara’s heart by never giving up. “You’ve got trust issues. That’s cool,”Bianca had said one night, drinking in their dorm room. “But I’m not trying to date you, so just accept that you’ve got to trust that you’ll always have a good time with me. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
There’s an ugly feeling in Kara’s chest at the memory. Look where that trust got her the other night. She should have known better though; how could she have ever imagined that Bianca could be trusted to watch her back in a club? Bianca had been too far in her own cup to think clearly. Not that she can be blamed for it, considering Bianca usually has Kara to keep an eye on her.
Kara usually never needs Bianca to take care of her and Bianca has settled into that routine. Kara is the alpha watchdog female; Bianca is her wayward pup. It’s because Kara doesn’t drink much, not anymore. Drinking leads to bad things, where she’s concerned.
Despite all this, she feels disappointment. If there’s one thing Kara does trust in, it’s that she can always trust in people to disappoint her.
She found out at a young age that if she always expected the worst in people, she could never be hurt. Nothing could touch her. She built a wall around her heart that no one could penetrate and it kept her safe.
With a sigh, Kara realizes that she should probably check her phone to see if Bianca even texted her to make sure she got home alright. Then again, Bianca would probably say,“You’re twenty-eight, you don’t need me to baby you.”
Or something to that note.
Sipping her coffee, inhaling the soft scent, Kara opens up the large folder that Derrick had sent her home with to study. The case is…well, it isn’t clean cut. Apparently, there’s a private sex club for the rich and for the freaky in one of the financial district skyscrapers. TheDark Miragetakes up two floors, the fortieth and the forty-first in the building. A special passcode is required to enter.
From there, apparently any fetish can be met. Swingers. BDSM. Whatever.
Months ago, a woman had gone to the hospital with bruising and cuts, along with visible signs of sexual assault. Which, of course could be attributed to rough sex, but the anal tearing in addition to the vaginal trauma made that seem a little less likely. She’d been a member of the club, which she had been reluctant to mention, given the nature of the situation.
The woman had been going to the club for a few months and had been seeing one of the professional Doms there. Apparently, she’d been looking to live on the edge for a while. She admitted to being interested in extreme pain and submission.
This woman, Debra Mills, had told her Dom to stop when he’d decided to suspend her from the ceiling with…an anal hook. Kara had squirmed in her seat when Debra Mills had told the story, piece by piece. Because, what the fuck?
The act had started on the ground with Debra’s arms bound up behind her back, a cord from the inserted hook connecting to her bound wrists. Apparently, Debra had beenfinewith this until the Dom connected her bound hands to a chain, hoisting her into the air, putting extreme pressure on her arms and...delicate bits.
Debra adamantly claims she told him to stop. As it were, the Dom hadn’t listened. Then, while Debra fell into what she called ‘subspace’ due to the chemicals in her body kicking into overdrive, he’d tied her down onto a table and had sex with her when Debra was in no position to say ‘no’ anymore.
Ah, the legalities of it all. The whole affair is a twisted slope and Debra wants justice against the club owner as well, claiming the club is aware that they employ less than savory characters. It’s a two-front battle.
Kara and Derrick are the counsel of the woman.
These cases are always miserable. It’s always a ‘he said, she said’ situation. One can never actually see the facts. No one ever knows the truth behind locked doors.
