Her Shameful Correction (The Institute: Shameful Arrangements #7)

Chapter 1

Laura

It represented the faintest—and most embarrassing—possible glimmer of hope, I thought, but the special promotion I found on the internet at the end of the worst day of my life nevertheless sent a surge of optimism rising in my chest.

Just for you… the girl who waited!

Selecta Arrangements has the answer for young women with a very special asset! If you’re verified as intact where it counts the most, you’re eligible for our premium placement program. Top-tier sponsors are looking for you!

I stared at the words on my phone screen, my thumb hovering over the link. Premium placement. Top-tier sponsors. The sizzling language somehow made it feel less sordid, more like a simple, efficient business transaction.

Which was exactly what it would be, I reminded myself. A business transaction.

“Ms. Martindale, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve been expelled, effective immediately.”

The dean’s words from that morning still echoed in my ears.

I’d sat in his office, hands clenched in my lap, watching my entire future disintegrate.

One stupid mistake—okay, several stupid mistakes—and suddenly my scholarship was gone, my dorm access revoked, my distant, elderly parents’ disappointment inevitable and crushing.

“You have until five o’clock to vacate campus housing,” he’d said, not even looking at me as he signed the paperwork.

I’d stumbled out of his office in a daze, my mind racing through impossible options.

My parents couldn’t afford to send me anywhere else—I had already had to take out two loans without telling them.

I had no job, no prospects, and now no degree.

I’d wandered to the student union, collapsing at a corner table while other students chatted and laughed around me, oblivious to my catastrophe.

That’s when I’d overheard them.

“She’s making like ten thousand a month,” one girl had whispered to her friend. “Just for being with him.”

“But doesn’t he, like, own her?” the friend had responded. “And… you know… being with him? Like…”

She had giggled nervously, then continued in an even lower whisper.

“Like, you know… being with him?”

“I mean, yeah, kind of. Sex. But still. Ten thousand.”

Selecta Arrangements. I’d heard the name before, whispered in dorm rooms late at night. Girls trading rumors about classmates who’d dropped out to join the program. Some spoke of it with scandalized disgust. Others with barely concealed envy.

Now, sitting in the cramped studio apartment I could barely afford even for one month, I clicked the link.

The application loaded immediately. Name.

Age. Contact information. The questions grew more personal.

Sexual experience—I checked ‘none.’ The box expanded with a notice that the intact status of my hymen would be verified with a medical exam.

My face blazed like the sun, but I clicked the box that meant I consented.

Then came the waiver, page after page of dense legal text.

I scrolled past it all, my heart pounding. What did it matter what the fine print said? I had no other options. My thumb hit the ‘Accept and Submit’ button before I could think better of it.

The confirmation appeared instantly: Application received. You will be contacted within twenty-four hours.

The email arrived the next morning.

Dear Miss Martindale,

Congratulations! Your preliminary application has been approved for consideration for our premium placement program.

Please report to Selecta West Headquarters, 2400 Dune Hill Road, Edison Park, California, tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. for your verification examination and orientation.

The receptionist at the building’s main information desk will direct you to the appropriate office.

A shuttle is available from the Palo Alto Caltrain station. It leaves every fifteen minutes from the bus area and the ride to Selecta West takes five to ten minutes depending on traffic. Please be punctual. Failure to comply with stated instructions constitutes grounds for denying your application.

Sincerely,

Rhonda Havers

Communications

Selecta Arrangements

I must have checked the Caltrain schedule at least fifty times.

I left my apartment two hours before I needed to, taking the earliest train that wouldn’t leave me sitting at the station or, worse, at Selecta, for an hour.

The shuttle from Palo Alto was sleek and modern, emblazoned with the Selecta logo—a stylized red S that looked both elegant and vaguely predatory.

I sat in the back, clutching my purse, watching Silicon Valley’s corporate campuses slide past the window.

The Selecta West building sprawled like a testament to the megacorp’s global footprint, its glass and steel dominating the campus’s artificially green environs. I walked through the revolving doors at exactly 1:45 p.m., my sneakers squeaking softly on the polished marble floor.

The receptionist looked up from her desk with a practiced smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her nameplate read Joann.

“Hi?” I said, and immediately had to swallow hard to clear my mouth. “I’m… Laura Martindale,” I said, my voice still coming out smaller than I’d intended. “I have a two o’clock appointment.”

Something flickered in Joann’s expression—was it pity? Contempt? I couldn’t tell. She picked up her phone without a word.

“Hank? The two o’clock SA girl is here.” A pause. She looked up at me. “Yes, Laura.”

The way she said my name made my stomach clench. Did everyone here know why I was here? What I was doing?

“Have a seat,” Joann said, gesturing to a row of sleek chairs. “Someone will be with you shortly.”

I perched on the edge of a chair, my hands twisted together in my lap. Around me, people in business attire strode past with purpose. No one looked at me, but I felt exposed anyway, like I was wearing a sign that announced that I had gotten desperate enough to sell my virginity like a whore.

“Ms. Martindale?”

The voice was deep and authoritative. I looked up to find a massive man in spotless blue medical scrubs standing before me. He had to be at least six-two, with a military haircut and the kind of build that suggested he could snap me in half without effort.

“I’m Hank Grovers,” he said. His tone was clipped, professional, but there was something in his eyes when he looked at me—a flicker of judgment that made my tummy lurch. “Follow me.”

I scrambled to my feet, nearly tripping over my own shoes. He was already walking away, his stride long and purposeful. I hurried after him, my heart hammering against my ribs.

We passed through a security door, down a corridor that seemed to stretch forever. The walls were lined with frosted glass, beyond which I could see shadowy figures moving. Medical equipment. Exam rooms.

Oh, god. This was really happening.

Hank stopped at a door marked Examination Room 4 and pushed it open.

The room beyond was sterile and clinical, dominated by a padded exam table in the center.

Bright overhead lights made everything harsh and unforgiving.

I saw stirrups. Then I noticed something else: a detail so shocking it took me a moment to process it. Restraints, attached to the exam table.

“Wait here,” Hank said, “Nurse Samuels will come in a moment to conduct your exam.”

He left, the door clicking shut behind him with a finality that made my knees weak. I stood frozen in the middle of the room, my arms wrapped around myself. The exam table loomed before me, the incongruous restraints dangling like a promise of what was to come.

What was I doing here? What had I been thinking?

But I knew the answer. I’d been thinking about eviction notices. About my parents’ disappointed faces. About having no future, no prospects, nothing.

The door opened again without so much as a knock, and a woman in her mid-forties entered.

She wore a tailored medical uniform that somehow managed to look both professional and intimidating in a uniquely corporate way.

Her steel-gray eyes swept over me with clinical assessment, and I felt myself shrinking under her gaze.

“I’m Nurse Samuels,” she said, her voice crisp and efficient. She carried a tablet, which she glanced at briefly. “Laura Martindale. Twenty years old. Applied for premium placement.” She looked up at me. “Strip. All of it.”

The command hit me like a slap. “I… what?”

“Your clothes. Take them off. All of them.” She didn’t raise her voice, but something in her tone made it clear this wasn’t a request.

My hands trembled as I reached for the hem of my hoodie.

My face burned with humiliation as I pulled it over my head, then fumbled with the button of my jeans.

Nurse Samuels watched with detached patience, like she was observing a laboratory specimen.

I kicked off my sneakers, peeled off my socks, pushed down my jeans.

When I stood in just my bra and panties, I hesitated.

“Everything,” she repeated.

I unhooked my bra with shaking fingers, crossing my arms reflexively over my breasts as soon as the fabric fell away, until I realized I would have to use my hands to take off my panties.

My forehead creasing, I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my sensible gray bikini briefs, and they followed.

I stood completely naked in the harsh fluorescent light, trembling and exposed.

“Is there… is there a gown?” I managed to whisper.

“No.”

“But I—”

“You need to remember what kind of program you signed up for, Laura.” Nurse Samuels set down her tablet and stepped closer.

“This isn’t a standard medical examination.

You’re applying to be an associate member of Selecta Arrangements, which means you’ll be what you might call the junior partner in a sexual relationship—a relationship in which the senior partner is an extremely wealthy man who has the right to expect his money’s worth.

To ensure your eligibility for the premium offer you applied for, I have to inspect your body thoroughly, test your responses, and evaluate your potential as an associate member. Modesty is not a consideration here.”

The words made my stomach drop. Junior partner. Associate member. Hearing it stated so baldly made the reality of what I was doing crash over me.

Nurse Samuels picked up her tablet again, scrolling through what I assumed was my file.

“The preliminary data from your application is quite revealing. Selecta has developed some extraordinary technology to extrapolate psychosexual patterns from small pieces of biometric data. The application you filled out online captured not only your actual responses, but the way you moved the cursor and the time you took to answer certain questions. Then, of course, our computers scraped your publicly available data, and a very clear picture emerged—which is why you’re here this afternoon. ”

My lips had parted, my jaw going slack. I closed my mouth, feeling like a fish—one specifically way, way out of water.

“And?” I managed to whisper. “I mean… I guess I mean… why am I here? Besides, you know… the money?”

“You’re here, Laura, because we’ve identified you as a natural, though repressed, submissive who requires old-fashioned discipline and thorough sexual domination to live a happy, fulfilling life.”

“I… I don’t…” I couldn’t form words. My face felt like it was on fire.

“The data doesn’t lie, Laura. You need structure.

Control. A firm hand. I’m guessing you were expelled from college?

We don’t have the actual records for that, but your behavior over the past forty-eight hours, as available in the public record as well as in the application you filled out…

well, it’s highly suggestive of a girl who broke an important rule and suffered the consequences—though by no means what I might call the full consequences. ”

My heart had skipped three or four beats by the time the nurse had finished delivering this much-too-accurate assessment. I bit my lip, my brow working hard and my cheeks burning.

“I don’t need a verbal answer, given what I can see in your face,” Nurse Samuels said.

Her voice had a modicum of compassion in it that my heart clung to like a makeshift raft in churning rapids.

“But I think you might want to consider what made you cheat… what you were really looking for when you made that poor decision.”

“I… I…” I looked down at the floor, clutching my forearm inadequately over my breasts and my other hand over my lightly thatched pussy. “I don’t know what you mean.”

But I did. I definitely did, no matter how hard I tried to deny it.

The nurse looked up at me over her glasses. She raised her eyebrows, let me see them raised, and finally continued.

“Alright, be that as it may, we’ll start with some basic questions. How often do you masturbate?”

The question made me quail back a step, my tummy lurching. “That’s… that’s private!”

“Nothing is private here. Answer the question.”

I shook my head, my arms still crossed over my breasts. “I’m not… I can’t…”

“Laura.” Her voice took on a warning edge. “How. Often. Do you masturbate?”