Page 27 of Shamefully Trained

Behind me, he washed his hands with the citrus soap, dried them on one of the folded towels, and looked entirely composed.

That infuriated me enough to restore a little of my brain.

“So that’s it?” I said, still facing the mirror because I could not yet quite bear to turn around. “You finger my ass in a restaurant bathroom and now I’m… sponsored?”

“In essence, yes.”

I turned then, my eyes going wide again despite everything. “You make it sound administrative.”

“It is administrative,” he said. “And sexual. And corrective. None of those categories exclude the others.”

I watched him take his phone from his breast pocket. He tapped, then tapped again.

My phone vibrated in my little purse. I felt my eyes go wide.

“Go ahead,” Porter told me.

I swallowed hard as I opened the purse and took my phone out to see a notification from the Selecta Arrangements app.

Sponsorship offer from Porter B! Tap to review.

In something like shock I tapped, and saw the offer of $10,000 per month, with subsidized housing.

Accept offer in one button. Decline offer in another.

I tapped. Porter’s phone buzzed. I watched him glance down, then back up at me.

“Now take off your clothes,” he commanded. “I want to see what I’ve just acquired right away. Then we’ll go back to my apartment and I’ll finish punishing you.”

CHAPTER 9

Porter

I expected her to refuse.

In fact, when I gave the order, I did so with a very clear sense that I had placed in front of her a line she might decide she could not cross. I thought she would draw herself up, gather what remained of her pride around her, and tell me to go to hell. She would have lost ten thousand dollars a month, the apartment, the structure she so clearly needed, and me. But she definitely might do it anyway, because I could already see that Alexandra Murphy was proud enough to cut off her own hand if the alternative felt too much like kneeling.

That expectation should have made me moderate myself, maybe; start with less of a challenge to her self-image. It had the opposite effect on me, though.

Standing in that little bathroom with her flushed and breathing too quickly, with her skirt just smoothed back into place after my finger had gone into the sweetest, tightest little ass I had touched in a very long time, I felt a pull toward her that had already exceeded common appetite.

I wanted her in ways that had become inconveniently personal much too fast. I wanted not merely to fuck her, though I certainly wanted that, but to secure her. To make sure she understood before she could retreat into some defensive fiction that what had happened with Gowry had not been an aberration and what had happened here was not either. She needed domination too deeply to be allowed the luxury of misunderstanding it.

That realization had a dangerous edge to it, because it carried with it another truth I disliked for its power over me: I had already started to fall for her.

So I pushed.

She stared at me as if I had suggested she step off a ledge.

“No,” she said at once, and then more softly, “please.”

The plea went through me with disturbing force. Her eyes had widened, and the flush already high in her cheeks spread further. She was not being coy, obviously; she didn’t have enough experience with her submissive sexual orientation to use it that way. Alex felt genuine distress, because this line—taking off her clothes in a café restroom—mattered to her.

Good, some hard part of me thought. Teachable moment.

I stepped closer, until there was no pretense of neutral space between us. “If you want my sponsorship, you will do as I say.”

Her throat moved. “I’ve already accepted it.”