I swallow the last of my pride.
“Please.”
His eyes narrow. “Please what?”
The humiliation tastes sour in my mouth.
“Please let me make myself useful,” I say. “Please let me please you.”
Sophie gives a short laugh. Elliot joins her.
“That’s not very specific,” he raises a brow. “I want to hear you say ‘Please Elliot, give me your big cock.’”
Heat crawls up my neck. He wants to hear me beg in detail. He wants the words themselves to stain.
I meet his eyes anyway.
“Please, Elliot… give me your big cock.”
Sophie watches me closely. There is no pity in her face. Only a quiet, interested focus. She is measuring how far I will go.
Elliot walks around the desk and leans against the front edge, inches away from my knees. His hands rest on the wood. He looks relaxed. His eyes don’t. He pauses, then smirks.
“You must think I’m fucking stupid, Brooke.”
He pushes off the desk and steps in closer. His gaze drags over my face like he knows exactly where it hurts.
“If I put my dick in front of you, you would most likely bite it off.”
I keep still. I don’t give him anything.
“And your back is a mess now. Darts, restitching. Scars don’t turn me on.”
His eyes drop to my stomach.
“And if we kept you long enough, you’d start showing,” he adds. “That ruins the entertainment value.”
He straightens and slides his hand through Sophie’s hair. She leans into it like this is normal.
“You should’ve kept yourself useful,” he gesture to Sophie. “Like Sophie here.”
His tone shifts again.
“Sophie wasn’t born into this. Her father owed The Collective. He refused to pay. He thought he could disappear.”
His grip in her hair tightens for a beat.
“We took his daughter instead. She came here as collateral.”
Sophie’s jaw tightens, then smooths out.
“She had the same choice you had,” Elliot says. “Fight the system or learn it.”
He smiles as he says it, like it amuses him.
“She learned it. She listened. She followed every rule. She did what we wanted. She made herself very useful to me, to Knox, to Asher.”
His attention flicks back to me.
