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)
“She does,” he said.
That was all. Two words. Deep, unhurried, perfectly certain. And then the dream leaped in the way dreams do, brutal in its logic and seamless in its obscenity. Porter straightened me, turned me, kissed me hard enough to take my breath away, and then put me on my knees at Gowry’s feet.
“For the bill,” I heard myself whisper.
Gowry’s hand came into my hair.
I woke with a gasp, tangled in the sheets, my heart pounding. The hideaway in the Capitol still seemed so vivid to me that for a second I didn’t know where I was.
Then the apartment returned around me: the muted light, the luxurious quiet, the soft comfort of the place. My body, however, remained in the dream.
I shut my eyes again immediately, because the first thing I understood was that I was aroused. Deeply, helplessly, mortifyingly aroused. My nipples felt tight. My thighs wanted to close. Between my legs there was a thick, hot ache that had a direct relationship to the lingering image of Porter caning me while Gowry watched… of Porter sharing my body with Gowry afterward, as a bribe, or perhaps merely as a courteous gesture.
“No,” I whispered, because some vestige of decency wanted to object.
But lying there, breath by breath, I discovered that the objection had no force behind it at all. Worse than that, the thing I tried to resist had somehow grown beyond fantasy. It had taken on a shape in my mind that felt almost practical.
If Gowry wanted power, appetite, spectacle, concession—if he wanted something impossible in policy terms and negotiable only in the uglier currencies men like him always recognized—then perhaps this was what he should be given. Me. Me, specifically as I was. Claimed by Porter. Disciplined by Porter. Offered by Porter.
Some shred of rationality in my mind made a valiant attempt at feeling sickened by the idea.
Instead I lay in the comfortable bed my sponsor had paid for, and felt the wet heat gather between my thighs. I knew, with a clarity that mortified me even as it excited me, that I wanted it that way.
It might work. That mattered. The bill mattered. The veterans Porter had talked about mattered. The disabled people who would be helped mattered. I clung to that, because it gave my desire a moral frame and I needed one desperately.
Beneath that frame, though, there lay the simpler and more dangerous truth: I wanted Porter to cane me in front of Gowry. I wanted Gowry to see what Porter had made of me. I wanted the shame and the display and the political ugliness of it. I wanted to be useful that way—and I wanted to be used.
By the time my phone rang, I had been lying there for perhaps ten minutes in a fever of thought and sensation, too ashamed and terrified to touch myself and too agitated to get up.
Porter’s name on the screen made my stomach flip.
I answered. “Sir?”
“I’ve gone straight from the airport to K Street,” he said. His voice sounded composed, a little tired perhaps, but very much himself. “I’ll need to see Gowry this afternoon.”
The words came out of me before I could arrange them into anything more dignified. “I think you should cane me in front of him.”
Silence.
My face burned instantly. I sat up in bed, clutching the sheet to my breasts though there was no one there to see. “I know that sounds insane, but I… I woke up thinking about it and I think…” I swallowed hard. “I think you should. And if… if… you… I mean… if he wants… if he wants more than that, if he’d support the bill, then you should… um… offer my… my…”
Another tiny pause, as I struggled to find a noun that wouldn’t sound like a cliché… or like I was a… a…
I let out a little whining noise through my nose.
But I am his little whore, aren’t I? He said so, and I didn’t leave, did I?
When Porter spoke, his tone had changed just enough to make my pulse jump. “You’ve been thinking hard this morning.”
“I dreamed it,” I whispered. “And when I woke up I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe it would work. Maybe that’s the thing with him. Maybe he wants to feel that he’s taking something from you.” My breath caught. “From us.”
“Us,” he repeated softly.
I shut my eyes.
Then he said, with sudden, businesslike precision, “Put on the red lingerie set. All of it, including the garter belt and the stockings. And the panties. Wear your overcoat over it and nothing else. I’ll send a car for you at four.”
My pulse thudded in my throat. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” he said. “And Alex?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we do this, you’ll do exactly as you’re told.”
The words sent a dark shiver through me. “Yes, sir.”
He ended the call.