Guilty Pleasures(23)

He’d started moving, and she could tell by the angle of his body and the rhythmic sound of the mattress, that he was jerking off over her. He came a few moments later as the door slammed against the wall.

She turned to see Gabe standing in the doorway, looking so livid she wanted to crawl under the bed for fear it might be directed at her. But his gaze was leveled on Brian.

“I thought I made it clear you were not to touch her,” he said, his voice so enraged it shook.

Lindsay had removed the toy from her ass, and she crawled away from both of them to Gabe, until she was leaning against his leg. His hand moved to pet the top of her head.

“Fuck, Gabe. What’s so special about this one?” Brian groused.

“She was brought here too soon. If you dumb asses push her too hard before she’s ready, she won’t be fit to sell, and Anton will have all of our heads. Now get out.”

Vivian cringed as Brian stood and zipped himself back up.

“What the fuck ever.”

Lindsay followed, but Gabe stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You knew Brian wasn’t allowed near her.”

“I thought it would be okay if I was here. He wasn’t as extreme as he normally is.”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

Lindsay shrugged and left the two of them alone.

Strong arms reached under Vivian’s elbows and pulled her up. She was too numb to think as Gabe carried her to the bathroom. He sat her on the closed seat, then shucked his clothes and turned on the shower.#p#分页标题#e#

“Get undressed and we’ll get you cleaned up.” His voice was a gentle purr that Vivian wanted to wrap around herself.

She peeled the T-shirt and shorts from her body, along with her panties, still wet from her orgasm during breakfast. She took his offered hand and climbed into the shower. He was silent as he washed Brian’s spendings from her hair. Then he soaped the rest of her, as if instinctively knowing she’d want to wipe the whole experience off her. After she was clean, he turned off the shower and plugged the tub to run hot water.

When the it was deep enough, he sat and pulled her down into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. She cried softly as he stroked her hair.

“You’ll be okay,” he said.

But his reassurance only made her cry harder. “Please take me out of here. I’ll be yours. I’ll do whatever you want. Please.”

“I have nowhere to take you. I live here. I promise he won’t be allowed near you again.”

Brian had been as physically appealing as the rest of them, but he’d made her feel so dirty just by looking at her. She wasn’t sure why she would so readily submit to Gabe when Brian turned her stomach. But she felt something human in those kind, green eyes that made it feel okay.

What if Anton sold her to someone soulless like Brian? She could see herself belonging to a man like Gabe or Anton. Hell, even Lindsay’s type, she could in time grow to feel submissive feelings toward.

Gabe kissed her forehead. “Tell me what’s going on in there.”

Her voice was barely above a whisper when she spoke. “What if Anton sells me to someone like Brian?”

“He won’t. He screens very carefully.”

“Well, he hired him. Does he not screen carefully for that?”

She felt Gabe’s body tense under hers and knew she’d pushed too far.

“Careful, Vivian. You already have a punishment coming from earlier this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Sir.”

The tension left his muscles, and he went back to petting her hair and back.

“Brian has his uses. Anton knows what he’s doing. Don’t worry.”

Even the idea in abstract form of someone owning her, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege, should have sent her into screaming fits. But instead it settled her somehow and took away the restless feeling she’d had for so many years it had sat as a background hum.

Since things had started with Anton, the hum had grown softer. Then when she came to the mansion, it disappeared altogether, leaving a blissful silence in its place.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” she said, her cheek resting against his pec.

“I know you don’t.”

“I don’t feel like my reactions are normal. The most normal I’ve reacted was with Brian.” Maybe Brian wasn’t all bad if he could make her feel like a normal person having the normal response to what was happening.

“I don’t want you to talk about yourself like you’re abnormal. You have certain needs, and you aren’t the only one. If you were, you’d be the only slave being trained in this house. Others have certain needs to own just like you need to be owned. We’re in the business of matching those needs up. We’re not just training you. We’re watching you, seeing how you react to various stimuli so we can match you with the right master.”

He made it sound like an online dating service. In her head she could see a list of sexual proclivities . . . likes kneeling, doesn’t like kneeling, likes being called a slut, doesn’t like being called a slut . . . She wondered if someone sat in a sterile office with a clipboard noting all this stuff down, and if she’d end up with a master like Gabe.

“Let’s get you out of here before you turn into a prune. Pruny slaves are harder to sell.”

She shouldn’t have laughed; she shouldn’t have wanted to. But in a weird way, Gabe made everything feel safe, and she wished again that he had someplace he could take her and that he wanted to.

He helped her out of the tub and dressed her in another pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

“Am I going to the gym?”

“You’re going to talk to Dr. Smith.”

She was about to argue, but the look in Gabe’s eyes told her he was finished coddling her, and if she pushed any further she’d have another punishment coming.

Ten minutes later, Gabe had taken her down four different hallways and into an office. The office was a larger replica of the first one she’d met the doctor in. She stared at the orchids for a long time.#p#分页标题#e#

“Sit down,” he said when Gabe had left them. She tensed now that the man she was starting to class as her protector had left her with someone she most definitely didn’t feel safe with.

She sat.

He clasped his hands together and leaned forward over the desk. “Ms. Delaney, I apologize.”

She cringed at hearing Michael’s last name. She’d been trying to erase him from her mind. Trying to erase thoughts of him worrying, not being able to find her, of never seeing him again. That chapter had to be closed. For her own sanity.

“Ms. Delaney?”

She looked at Lindsay, not sure she could keep the disgust off her face.

“I didn’t follow protocol. Even if Brian wasn’t going to do anything too extreme, they don’t want you fucking everything here. I should have respected that. I betrayed your trust.”

Her mouth gaped. “You betrayed my trust the moment you sent me to Dome. What’s a little boot licking and sticky hair added to that?”

He smiled. “I’m glad it didn’t put your fire out.”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest.

Lindsay took out a notepad and propped it on his knee, a pen poised over the paper. “One of my jobs here is to assess your psychological condition and how you’re responding to training. I want you to talk to me about Brian and how that made you feel. Was it him specifically, or what he did or . . . ”

Vivian just stared at him. “I can’t talk to you about that.”

“Why not?”

“Gee, let me think. You helped orchestrate my capture. You’re one of my captors. Yeah, I’ll just give you more weapons to use against me. Why don’t I make a list of everything I’m afraid of while I’m at it. That way you have all the torture options in one place.”

An exasperated look came over his face. “Let me put it to you this way. You will talk about this or you’ll be punished, then you’ll talk about it. And if I have to, I will hook you up to a polygraph machine. I can say I won’t use this knowledge against you, but you won’t believe me. And it doesn’t really matter what you believe. You have no options here except to obey. Now tell me about Brian.”

She looked at the orchids again. He was right, of course. But Anton’s earlier exclamation about her intelligence had been rattling through her head since he’d said it.

“I don’t know. It’s too many different people. I just . . . I can’t handle that many different people fucking me.” He started scribbling down notes as she talked. “There’s something very cold about him. On the coldness scale it’s him, you, Anton, then Gabe. I can barely deal with you.”

He smiled, still scribbling. “Noted. Is that all?”

Vivian shrugged, pulling at a stray thread on the gym shorts.

“What else?”

“I don’t know. Maybe what he did, but maybe not.”

“If it had been Gabe it wouldn’t have upset you, would it?”

Her eyes shot to his, her face flaming. The last thing she needed was for them to think she had some kind of schoolgirl crush on one of them. Before she could answer, he spoke again.

“It wasn’t lost on me how you reacted to him when he entered the room.” Lindsay sat the notepad on the desk and propped his feet next to it. “Here is how we operate. We only hire attractive men because we want to make training easier. It also subtracts a variable so we can get a better read on your reactions to things. It’s easier to get you to submit to beauty. And the easier it is for us, the quicker we can sell you and the more money we make.”