Page 92 of Shamefully Trained

He looked devastatingly self-possessed. Dark suit, precisely knotted yellow tie, his briefcase in his hand. A little travel fatigue at the edges of his eyes, perhaps, but worn in a way that only made him seem more dangerous. He took one look at me, took in the coat, my flush, the wide anxious eyes I could not quite hide, and something darkly approving moved in his face.

“The Capitol,” he told the driver.

Then he set the briefcase on his knees, clicked it open, and turned it slightly so I could see inside.

A cane lay there.

For one second the sight made the world narrow. It seemed shorter, and even thicker than the one I had found in his home office. It looked polished and stiff and terrible in its simplicity. Seeing it nestled among files and a tablet and the ordinary instruments of his political life made it all more shocking, not less. As if discipline belonged naturally among his tools.

I heard my breath catch in my throat as much as I felt it.

“This is for little sluts who play with their cunts and their assholes without permission,” he said quietly. “Whether it’s in front of Gowry or not, you’re going to be whipped with it this evening.”

CHAPTER 29

Alex

In the blink of an eye I traveled from DC to that distant galaxy from which I could see myself, in the town car next to Porter, looking at the cane and hearing his terrible words. I watched the tears of panic spring to my eyes and the shudder of terror shake my body under the coat. When I felt those things, it seemed like the body that felt them belonged to that far away Alex who was me, but also not.

The Alex who had no choice.

“Oh, God,” she—I—whispered.

Porter closed the briefcase with a soft click that seemed, absurdly, louder than my little cry. He did not touch me at once. He just looked at me, and the steadiness of his gaze somehow made the panic more acute, because it told me he wanted me to feel it.

The car moved smoothly through the late afternoon traffic. Through the tinted window I caught broken glimpses of Washington sliding by in gray-gold pieces: men in overcoats, the hard stone facades of government buildings. It all looked powerful but also terribly ordinary. That seemed like one of the worst parts, or maybe my brain tried to tell me that, to put something like a rational framework around it. My life, that logical voice said, had become deranged in private while the city remained mightily, and serenely, itself.

“Look at me,” Porter said.

I turned my head. My eyes felt hot and bright. I breathed too quickly, and I knew he could see that. I knew he could see the tremor in my lower lip, the effort it cost me not to start pleading before we had even arrived. Beneath the pink wool of the coat my nipples had tightened in the red lace. Between my legs, to my deep humiliation, there was already a damp, frightened throb.

His eyes darkened, somehow. I knew it didn’t really have anything to do with the color of his irises, but the way his face changed made his gaze seem hungrier, more aggressive, and my body associated those things with darkness… the color of the abyss inside me.

The realization came to me with a strange, dizzying clarity: my fear affected him. In the crude, simple sense that I knew his cock had hardened, but also in another way. It reached him. Moved him. My terror and my body’s shameful response to it had become part of the scene he was creating, and he wanted all of it. The knowledge sent a hot shiver through me so contradictory that for one second I almost forgot to be afraid.

“You understand,” he said quietly, “that if we go forward now, you do not improvise. You obey.”

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

He watched me another second. Then his hand came up and cupped my jaw.

I thought he meant to steady me. Perhaps he did. But the next instant he pulled me to him and kissed me.

It was not a careful kiss. It was not one of the composed, measured things he sometimes did when he wanted to remind me who I belonged to. It felt as if something in him had given way under the pressure of appetite and purpose and whatever else lay beneath those, and his mouth came down on mine with such heat that my whole body jolted.

I made a helpless sound against his lips.

He kissed me as if he meant to take the air from my lungs and replace it with his dominance. One hand stayed firm on my face; the other slid around my waist, drawing me across the leather seat toward him, so that the coat opened a little and cold air touched the tops of my stockings. I felt his control in every inch of the movement, and also something less easily named. Hunger, yes. Possession, yes. But something more overwhelming than either. Love? Or maybe what passed for it in a man who showed devotion by arranging punishments and public humiliations for the young woman he kept for bottom fucking.

The thought nearly undid me.

His tongue parted my lips and I yielded at once. There was no resisting that kiss. My hands, which had clenched uselessly in my lap, came up and caught at his sleeve and then his shoulder. I knew I ought to sit still and be proper and submissive. Instead I kissed him back with a desperation that shocked me. The cane. Gowry. The Capitol. The hideaway. All of it whirled around in my head like a blizzard while his mouth made me feel there was only this.

When he finally let me breathe, I shook in an entirely different way.

He rested his forehead against mine for one suspended second. His voice, when it came, was lower than before. “Good girl.”

The words went straight through me. I could hardly think. My body had become all sensation—fear not gone but transformed, mingled with arousal so intense that I felt almost feverish. I knew my face must be flushed bright red. I knew my mouth had gone soft from kissing him. I knew that under the coat I was dressed for inspection, for exposure, for disgrace.