Chapter 25
Alex
A subtle chime rang throughout the apartment.
“That’s dinner,” Porter told me, as he took the bigger of the robes from its hook and put it on. “You may stay in your bedroom until the delivery person leaves.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, because as far as I could tell there was nothing else I had it in me to say.
My apartment was so thoroughly his territory, rather than mine, that being told to wait in my own bedroom felt like a reasonable instruction.
I went at once, my bare feet soundless on the floor, my face still warm from his demeaning, impossibly hot treatment of me.
In the bedroom I stood for a second beside the bed, listening.
Muted sounds came from the front of the apartment: the soft opening of the door, low male voices too indistinct to make out, the efficient exchange of packages. The door shut again.
A moment later Porter appeared in the doorway. His big, muscular frame, clad in a robe whose belt he could simply unfasten to reveal the manhood that seemed destined to rule over me… my breath caught in my throat at the mere sight of him.
“You may come out,” he told me, an ironic sort of smile curving one side of his mouth.
I followed him into the main room and saw the brown paper bags set neatly on the kitchen island, along with two dark glass bottles of mineral water and a wine already breathing on the counter.
The air smelled wonderful almost at once—garlic, basil, something rich and buttery, tomato, warm bread.
Maybe it should have made the whole thing feel domestic, but for me it only sharpened the bizarre intimacy of it.
I stood there in little more than decorative scraps while my sponsor…
the man who had just claimed my anus with his cock…
unpacked dinner as if this were the most natural sort of evening in the world.
He glanced toward me. “Sit.”
He plated everything himself. Pappardelle glossy with short-rib ragù.
A fennel salad with shaved parmesan. Veal saltimbocca, because apparently he had already learned enough about my taste to order as if he had been feeding me for years.
There was warm focaccia wrapped in linen.
Little cups of olive oil darkened with pepper.
I stood near the table for a moment, suddenly excruciatingly aware of my body in the lingerie.
It was one thing to spread my knees, to be inspected, to be used.
It was, paradoxically, another to sit down to dinner in lace and stockings with my waxed sex uncovered and no possibility of pretending I was dressed.
Porter looked up at me once, took in the hesitation, and said only, “Sit down, Alex.”
No amusement. No pointed remark. Just the instruction, delivered as if there were nothing at all unusual in it.
The chair felt cool beneath my bare skin.
I was acutely conscious of every inch of myself at first—my breasts held in the lace bra, the tug of the garter straps against my thighs, the bareness between my legs, the exposure of my shoulders and stomach.
I half expected him to comment on the view whenever I moved.
Instead he served me, unfolded my napkin onto my lap with a neatness that made me blush all over again, poured wine, and began eating.
The effect of his composure on me was as powerful as it was hard to describe.
Five minutes later, I still felt embarrassed, but in a softer, stranger way.
Porter looked at me often enough that I could tell the sight pleased him, as if he had decorated something beautiful to suit his own tastes and found the presentation successful.
And because he seemed to treat that beauty as ordinary, my own body slowly began to stop feeling like an emergency.
I took a sip of wine and then, because my mind had finally managed to climb back toward politics from the body-shaking realm he apparently preferred, I asked, “How did it go today?”
He looked at me over his glass. “With the bill?”
“Yes.”
He set the glass down. “Better than I expected. Not well enough, but better.”
I took a bite of the veal, which was so tender it nearly fell apart, and waited.
“You may be right about Gowry,” he said.
My fork paused halfway up.
He saw that and went on. “He and the men nearest him gave off a few signs today. Enough to make me think they’re interested. The veterans provision landed harder than I thought it would.”
I swallowed. “Johnson too?”
“Yes. And Sinogar seemed less hostile than usual. If Gowry moved, I suspect the others could be persuaded to follow.”
Some entirely ridiculous spark of pride flickered in me. He had remembered exactly what I had said. More than that, he had taken it seriously.
“That would be enough?” I asked.
“Numerically, yes.” He tore off a piece of focaccia with elegant fingers. “Politically it would be ugly. Hathaway would be furious. Which, of course, is part of the appeal.”
I smiled despite myself. “A win over her bloc would be half the pleasure.”
“For Gowry, certainly. Especially if she decided she had to back the bill herself for the optics.”
I took another bite, chewed, and said, “Then what’s the problem?”
He gave me a brief look as if acknowledging that I knew there had to be one. “I still don’t know what would make him do it.”
I leaned back slightly. “You think he wants something too expensive.”
“I know what he wants.” A faint dryness entered his voice. “More drilling off the Gulf Coast.”
I made a face before I could stop myself.
“Exactly,” Porter said. “It’s impossible. Or close enough to impossible to be functionally the same thing.”
I looked down at my plate.
And then, as if some wicked part of my mind had been waiting patiently for the opening, the idea came.
Not as an argument, not even exactly as a plan. As an image: a tiny shard of fantasy.
Porter with the cane in his hand. Me bent over, naked, perhaps in Gowry’s office or some discreet room attached to a private club, my wrists held, my cheeks burning, while Gowry watched with those cold assessing eyes.
Porter telling me I had been naughty and required correction.
The cane rising and falling. My body forced to take it.
And afterward—God, afterward—Porter turning to Gowry with that calm dark authority and saying that perhaps the senator might like to sample what was being developed so carefully.
That he had trained me to the penis, and Gowry would find me more pleasing now than he had when he had whipped me for not giving good head.
The picture in my mind’s eye shocked my rational mind so thoroughly that for a second I forgot to breathe.
Heat rushed through me, though, low and hard and instant. I felt it in my face next, a violent blush. My nipples tightened inside the lace. Between my legs the lack of even the thong’s covering became even more of a humiliation as I wondered if I would stain the seat cushion.
I lowered my eyes to my plate because looking at Porter seemed impossible.
Unfortunately I had learned by then that changing my expression in front of him represented less concealment than confession.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
My answer had come much too quickly, though.
One dark eyebrow lifted. “That was unconvincing.”
I picked up my glass to give myself something to do. “It was just a thought.”
“What thought?”
I drank, though my mouth had gone nearly dry. “Nothing worth saying aloud.”
His gaze remained on me for a beat too long.
“Finish chewing,” he said quietly.
I realized I still had a bite in my mouth. I swallowed it under that watchful silence.
“Now tell me.”
I shook my head. “No.”
The word sounded absurdly small in the elegant room.
He set down his fork with exact care. “Bedroom.”
My stomach dropped.
“Sir…”
“Now.”
I rose at once, because his voice seemed to promise much worse consequences if I hesitated. At the back of my mind I realized, with a helpless little thrill, that he had already conditioned me in that mental process.
I have no choice. I have no choice. I have no choice.
My legs felt weak by the time I reached the bed. He followed me in, slower than I was moving, which somehow made it worse. There was no hurry in him. No doubt at all.
“Kneel on the bed.”
I obeyed.
“Bend over. Hands flat.”
The mattress shifted under me as I leaned forward. My pulse had begun to hammer. I heard a faint metallic sound from the vicinity of the floor. I heard fabric rustle, and my fevered brain put it together immediately: he had taken his belt from his discarded trousers. A whimper escaped me.
“Still refusing?” he asked.
I pressed my lips together.
The first lash landed across my bottom with a violent sting that made me cry out and arch.
I thought of Gowry, and I realized with a gasp that Gowry had none of Porter’s skill in punishing women.
My sponsor’s belt felt sharper, thinner, more shocking, the leather folding around the curve of me and burning into the skin of my bottom.
“Answer me,” he said.
I shook my head once, tears springing instantly to my eyes.
The second stroke came lower. I sobbed.
“Tell me what you were imagining.”
“I don’t want to.”
The third strike cut across the backs of my thighs and I broke, gasping. “Oh… oh, God…”
“Sir.”
“Oh, sir…”
The fourth lash made me collapse farther onto my forearms. My hair fell over my face. I could feel my own body betraying me already, the awful hot pulse between my legs answering the punishment instead of learning proper shame from it.
“Talk.”
I tried not to. I really did. But the belt came again, then again, each lash precise and terrible, and before long the pain had braided itself with the image in my mind so tightly that I could no longer tell whether I was being punished for the fantasy or driven deeper into it.
“I thought…” I choked.
He waited.
Another stroke.
“I thought about Gowry,” I cried.
“Go on.”
The humiliation of saying it seemed almost worse than the beating. My scalp prickled so intensely that it became actually painful. “I thought about… about you…” Another breath broke apart in me. “About you caning me in front of him.”
Silence.
I could hear my own ragged breathing, and somewhere beyond it the muted city far below.
Then, very quietly: “And?”
I shook with shame. “And then letting him…” I couldn’t finish.
The belt kissed my skin once more, not as hard, but enough.
“Speak.”
“And then letting him try me,” I sobbed into the bedspread. “Afterward. If he helped with the bill. Or because you wanted him to. I don’t know.” Tears wet the bedding beneath my face. “It was disgusting. I know it was. I know.”
The room stayed still for one suspended second.
When he spoke at last, his voice had gone lower. “Lift yourself up.”
I did, trembling.
He put the belt aside. His hand came to rest on my scorched bottom, not soothing exactly, but assessing. Possessing. I could feel his palm absorb the heat he had made.
“Put that out of your head,” he said. Something in his tone told me that I hadn’t displeased him the way I had feared I would.
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
But his hand lingered. And when I dared the smallest glance back over my shoulder, what I saw in his face did not really reassure me nearly as much as the words should have. He looked stern, yes. He also looked darkly aroused.
He saw that I had seen it.
“Spread your knees,” he said.
My thighs opened on the bed at once.
“Wider.”
I obeyed.
“Now reach back and offer your anus. You’re going to take it in the ass again, you little slut, just like you need it from your sponsor.”