The Institute, Daddy Issues(92)

“Well, I don’t think we can call it rape when they’re crawl­ing on the floor and beg­ging for it,” Berkley said, grin­ning evilly. “At least, I don’t. Think of it—your part­ner is a strong wo­man who re­fuses to fol­low your lead and do as she’s told. And now here’s your chance to get her back for all that. Ad­mit it, De­tect­ive Saltanov, doesn’t it feel good to hear her beg­ging for you to fuck her? It’s po­etic justice, don’t you think?”

“Is sick,” Salt growled at him. “Just as everything else you do in this fuck­ing place is sick. I am dis­gus­ted by you.”

My part­ner’s words some­how pen­et­rated the drugged haze of lust that had clouded my mind. Des­pite the burn­ing in­side me and the feel­ing of need so deep I thought I might scream, I felt them like a knife in my guts. God, did he really feel like that? Did he really think that everything we’d been do­ing here was per­ver­ted and dis­gust­ing?

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Berkley said coolly. “But dis­gus­ted or not, I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to me. As I said, you and your sweet little part­ner are go­ing to be our new­est Please dis­trib­ut­ors.”

“Like Hell we will!” Salt snarled. “Why would we do such a thing?”

“Why be­cause, De­tect­ive, this whole en­counter is be­ing re­cor­ded. And not in grainy black and white like the mon­it­ors—oh no.” Berkley grinned. “It’s be­ing re­cor­ded in high def color. And as soon as you fuck your part­ner—which you will do, be­cause you don’t want her to die—I’ll have the per­fect piece of black­mail to hold over your head. You and De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker will do any­thing I say or I’ll re­lease this re­cord­ing over every so­cial me­dia chan­nel in the world. And I’ll see to it that both your names are plastered all over it so that every­one, in­clud­ing all of your friends, fam­ily, and cowork­ers, know that it’s you on that nasty, nasty video.”

He gave an ugly laugh and Mandy re­peated her an­noy­ing giggle. I wanted to shoot both of them but I had no gun—I only had a burn­ing void in­side me that needed des­per­ately to be filled. With a low groan, I fell to my knees. It was all I could do not to reach between my legs and star­ted touch­ing my­self at once. The de­sire in me was get­ting so bad that I didn’t care who saw me do such an in­tim­ate and private thing. I didn’t care about any­thing but get­ting re­lief.

“Please,” I moaned to Salt. “Please, I need you!”

Berkley let out an ugly, bray­ing laugh.

“Fuck or die, Baby­girl,” he sneered. “Fuck or die.”

His crude words struck a chord with me and brought back a vivid memory.

The video, I thought wildly. The one on­line with the blonde girl and the man in the suit—it’s Berkley. He’s the man in the suit! He’s not just run­ning a Please lab here—he ac­tu­ally in­ven­ted the stuff!

If we could prove that and bring him in—

But the thought was cut off by an­other wave of long­ing. My body was lit­er­ally re­belling against me—de­mand­ing that I get the at­ten­tion I needed. I felt like if I didn’t have it soon, I really would die.

The door slammed be­hind Berkley and his Baby­girl and Salt and I were left alone in the big room to­gether. Salt looked at me and I looked at him.

What the hell were we go­ing to do?





Chapter Fif­teen

“Salt,” I moaned, reach­ing for him. “Papa—please.” I got to my knees in front of him and star­ted fum­bling for his zip­per but Salt knocked my hands away.

“No, Andi!” he said sharply. “Did you not hear what that bas­tard said? We are be­ing re­cor­ded here. Everything we do will be seen by every­one.”

I knew cog­nit­ively that what he was say­ing was true—that we were in danger of com­mit­ting pro­fes­sional sui­cide if we did any­thing sexual at all. Not that the Cap­tain would ne­ces­sar­ily fire us—how could he when I had been given a drug dur­ing the course of duty which im­paired my judg­ment? But real­ist­ic­ally, even if Salt and I kept our jobs, every­one we saw would know us. We would be In­ter­net fam­ous and not in a good way.