Page 21 of Shamefully Trained

“You told me to.”

“Yes.” His mouth moved very slightly. “And you obeyed.”

I recoiled at the immediate pulse of heat those words caused. I shrank back far enough that I had to look down at my coffee for a second, though I did not touch it.

“I haven’t agreed to anything,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

The calmness of that somehow made me more unsettled than if he had pressed. He seemed entirely untroubled by the possibility that I might refuse him. Or else, a much worse possibility, too confident in something about me to show it.

I lifted my chin. “You said you wanted me to review your profile carefully before replying. I did. That doesn’t mean I’m prepared to discuss… that.” I could not make myself say Gowry’s name again. “Especially not with a man who opens a first meeting by telling me he’s already heard about the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Second most humiliating,” he said.

I looked at him in shocked silence.

His eyes held mine. “The first was the thing itself, I’m certain. Taking your clothes off for Jason Gowry? Probably more degrading than getting fired for it. Close, though.”

My mouth opened. Closed.

Anger rose, blessedly clear for a second. “You are unbelievably arrogant.”

“Yes,” he said. “And you’re deflecting.”

CHAPTER 8

Alex

I could have slapped him. I could also, horribly, feel the low liquid tremor in my belly that his certainty kept calling forth.

He leaned back slightly. “I’m not asking you to decide blindly, Alexandra. I can show you enough now for you to know whether this is something you want.”

My pulse jumped at my throat. I didn’t think I’d ever actually felt it do that before.

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he said, “that I’ll give you a chance to sample obedience under my direction before you accept or refuse my terms.”

Part of me felt certain I should have stood up then. Instead I sat perfectly still, every nerve suddenly alert.

He went on as if we were discussing a minor clause in a piece of legislation.

“In a moment I’m going to give you some instructions. You’ll have five minutes to consider them. If you decide you want to leave, leave. If you decide you want to know what it would be like to belong to me, even briefly, you’ll follow my instructions.”

My lips parted. I could hear my own breathing now.

“Porter—”

“Sir.”

I blinked, unsure for an instant whether he had actually spoken the monosyllable, or whether it represented some kind of auditory hallucination produced by my probably feverish mental state.

My lips parted.

“Say it,” he said. It didn’t sound like a command. It sounded like a suggestion, and the slight smile on his perfect lips strengthened that impression. But that made it worse, because the suggestion was that I start following his… my potential sponsor’s… commands.

His smile broadened slightly. His eyes crinkled. My heart skipped a beat.