Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86432 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
“I am willing to sponsor you,” he went on. “For ten thousand a month, plus a nice apartment in Selecta’s subsidized housing scheme.”
I stared.
Ten thousand. Plus housing.
The number had enough force to cut through even my shame for an instant. Ten thousand a month. My debts… breathing room… savings… the possibility of stepping out of panic and into something like stability. The figure opened in my mind like a door and then, just as quickly, I understood that with Porter there would be something hard and exact on the other side of it.
He set his coffee cup down with quiet precision.
“But only,” he said, “if you stop pretending that what happened with Gowry is irrelevant to your future. You will tell me the truth of it. All of it. And if I take you on, you will submit to proper training as a sexual servant.”
My jaw had slackened fully by the time he reached the phrase that flipped my heart end over end: sexual servant. Every syllable seemed to strike a different exposed place in me.
“I—” I swallowed. “That’s a very strange way to talk to someone you’ve just met.”
“It’s a very unusual app that brought us together this way.”
I had no answer to that.
His gaze dropped, just briefly, to my blouse, my throat, my face again. “You wore the lingerie.”
I felt my thighs tense under the tablecloth.
“You told me to.”
“Yes.” His mouth moved very slightly. “And you obeyed.”
I recoiled at the immediate pulse of heat those words caused. I shrank back far enough that I had to look down at my coffee for a second, though I did not touch it.
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
The calmness of that somehow made me more unsettled than if he had pressed. He seemed entirely untroubled by the possibility that I might refuse him. Or else, a much worse possibility, too confident in something about me to show it.
I lifted my chin. “You said you wanted me to review your profile carefully before replying. I did. That doesn’t mean I’m prepared to discuss… that.” I could not make myself say Gowry’s name again. “Especially not with a man who opens a first meeting by telling me he’s already heard about the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Second most humiliating,” he said.
I looked at him in shocked silence.
His eyes held mine. “The first was the thing itself, I’m certain. Taking your clothes off for Jason Gowry? Probably more degrading than getting fired for it. Close, though.”
My mouth opened. Closed.
Anger rose, blessedly clear for a second. “You are unbelievably arrogant.”
“Yes,” he said. “And you’re deflecting.”
CHAPTER 8
Alex
I could have slapped him. I could also, horribly, feel the low liquid tremor in my belly that his certainty kept calling forth.
He leaned back slightly. “I’m not asking you to decide blindly, Alexandra. I can show you enough now for you to know whether this is something you want.”
My pulse jumped at my throat. I didn’t think I’d ever actually felt it do that before.
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “that I’ll give you a chance to sample obedience under my direction before you accept or refuse my terms.”
Part of me felt certain I should have stood up then. Instead I sat perfectly still, every nerve suddenly alert.
He went on as if we were discussing a minor clause in a piece of legislation.
“In a moment I’m going to give you some instructions. You’ll have five minutes to consider them. If you decide you want to leave, leave. If you decide you want to know what it would be like to belong to me, even briefly, you’ll follow my instructions.”
My lips parted. I could hear my own breathing now.
“Porter—”
“Sir.”
I blinked, unsure for an instant whether he had actually spoken the monosyllable, or whether it represented some kind of auditory hallucination produced by my probably feverish mental state.
My lips parted.
“Say it,” he said. It didn’t sound like a command. It sounded like a suggestion, and the slight smile on his perfect lips strengthened that impression. But that made it worse, because the suggestion was that I start following his… my potential sponsor’s… commands.
His smile broadened slightly. His eyes crinkled. My heart skipped a beat.
“Alright. We can wait on that one. Not long, or your backside will pay for it, but—”
“What?” I demanded, my eyes going very wide. I looked around, suddenly sure that everyone in the café had heard.
“You heard me,” Porter said, his voice suddenly flinty and his eyes narrowing. “And you’ll definitely need to learn not to interrupt me.”
My skin prickled with mortification.
He folded his hands on the table. His smile reappeared, and to my dismay my chest warmed again.
“There’s a single-occupancy restroom at the back of the café. If you want to try this, you’ll get up from this table and walk to that restroom. You’ll go inside and lock the door. I’ll give you a little time, during which you will undress to your lingerie. Then I’ll come to the door. I’ll knock twice, pause, and then knock three times. You’ll open the door. I’ll come in, and I’ll teach you your first lesson.”