“You saw this, did you?” This is said calmly, quietly, in far too even a voice.
“Saw it? No. Heard is a more accurate term, I think. I was under the bed, you see. Hiding from you, and your thugs.”
Jaw muscles work. “X, there are elements to all this that you don’t—that you can’t—understand.”
“Then enlighten me, Caleb!” I shout. “Because it feels like I’m just another one of the girls on the sixth floor. Except, I don’t get the future they have. I’m kept in the dark, alone, day after day, serving client after client. But I’m not allowed to form a friendship with any of them. I’m not allowed relationships of any kind. Except you, when you deign to visit me, in the middle of the night. Are you training me, too? Like you’re training girls Two through Eight? Teaching me to please a man, before you sell me to the highest bidder? Is that it? Or am I just your dirty little secret on the hidden thirteenth floor? The secret you sneak in to, late at night, to have sex in the dark with, after you’ve finished training all the other girls. Or am I—”
“You are mine!” comes the venomous hiss, cutting me off. Huge hard hands clutch my face, tilt my head up, brutal fingers holding tight, not allowing me to escape. “You are not like them, X. You’re secret because you’re special.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You think I’m selling those girls, X? Is that what you think?” An abrupt change of tactic. “That’s not how it is, and if you’d really talked to Rachel, you’d understand that.”
“You’ve got her brainwashed. Like you did me.”
“I saved her life, like I did yours! I took her in off the streets and I sat by her as she went through meth withdrawals. I bathed her, and I held her as she shook so hard I thought she’d break a bone, and I fed her with my own hands. That’s not something I’d sell like a bag of fucking potatoes! I’m giving her a future, and I’m not going to sit here and defend myself to someone who doesn’t have the first fucking clue what I’m about!” I am abruptly released, and long legs begin pacing back and forth, impatient, angry. “You know nothing about me, X. Not the first thing.”
“That’s the point!” I shout. “What do you think I’m trying to—”
“And have you forgotten what I’ve done for you? Who was there for you when you woke up, alone?”
“You were, but—”
“And when you couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk, who wheeled you around in a wheelchair and carried a notebook everywhere, so we could communicate? Who took you to MOMA? Who showed you the Madame X painting? Who held you when you cried at night, every night, for weeks? You had no name, no past. I couldn’t return your past to you, but what did I give you, X?”
“An identity,” I whisper.
“And a future!” Male scent, heat, fingers gripping my waist. “I built you a life, X. I gave you the best of everything. The best clothes, the best food. An education. Skills. A job, something to keep you from going crazy with boredom! I’m not keeping you prisoner, I’m keeping you safe! Have you forgotten all that?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten.”
“I don’t often bring these things up. You know that. I focus on the now, on the immediate future. I move forward. I don’t dwell on what was, X. I don’t expect repayment or even thanks.” Finger and thumb, pinching my chin, lifting my face. Wide, deep, dark eyes penetrate mine. I cannot look away. “What I do expect, X, is loyalty.”
“How dare you?” I pull away. “Loyalty? When you’ve got eight women just sitting around waiting to service you at your every whim? Hoping for a glimpse of you, hoping for the next . . . assessment? Yet you expect loyalty from me?”
“Do not speak of what you do not understand. And that is something you don’t understand.”
“You show up in my room late at night, and you fuck me. That’s all it is. Just like them. All of them. None of it means anything to you, does it? Not me, not them. We’re just . . . receptacles for your . . . male urges, prettied up with fancy excuses.” I fight a sob. “And you always leave and I just . . . want it to mean something. But you never give me anything of yourself. It feels good, sure, but when that’s over, what am I left with? You said it yourself . . . I don’t know the first thing about you. How could I? I don’t even know the first thing about myself. But why should that matter, right? I’m just there to satisfy you when you feel like picking me.”
There is a silence then, and it is a silence more full of tension and volatility than any I’ve ever felt.
“How can you not see, X?” This, so quiet I have to strain to hear it.
“See what, Caleb?”
“See that you’re special to me. I keep you apart. I keep you for—for myself. Those girls, Rachel and the others, I’ve got to give them away. They’re all fucking damaged, and I’m trying to make them whole. I know you don’t get it, but that’s what I’m trying to do. I don’t sell them, I match them. All of them, each one, they’ll all get matched with someone who will appreciate them, even love them. It works. I’ve seen it work. But in order for them to go out and be the wives they need to be, they have to feel beautiful. They need to feel their own self-worth. And when they come to me, when they enter the program, they don’t.”
A few paced steps brings a body I cannot ignore to stand beside me. A long index finger touches my cheekbone, traces its curve. “But you, X. You’re special. I always knew you would be. When I first found you, I just knew I had to help you. And yes, I was eventually going to put you in the program. But I couldn’t. I can’t.”
There is a flaw in this logic, somewhere, but I’m dizzy, lost. Heat overwhelms my senses, the sudden and unexpected rush of truth drowns out my logic. Hands span my waist, gripping with fierce need. Lips touch my earlobe. There is tenderness here, and it is so alien and so welcome.
“Why?” I whisper it. “Why can’t you?”
“I can’t give you away to someone else, because you’re mine. You belong to me. I can’t share you. I won’t. You’re . . .” Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow. “You mean something to me, X.” Behind me now.
I’ve never heard such things from this mouth. Never seen such intensity or openness. I am flooded with doubt.
Lips touch my throat, and sorcery subsumes me, weaves me into the dark thrall of its warp and weft.
“Don’t you feel it?” Broad, powerful hands on my belly. “Don’t you feel . . . us?”
Oh, that word. Us. It means belonging. I want it. I want to believe.
“Do you feel it, X?”
“I feel it, Caleb.” And I do. I do.
I shouldn’t, but I do. I am weak. So weak.
I am falling under the spell.
My thighs tremble, my belly quivers and tightens. Need pulses in me. The hard body behind me is huge and powerful and incites something hungry within me. I cannot help but lean my head back, baring my throat. One huge hand slides up my body, cups my breast, and then curls around my throat, gentle, but insistent. The other skates down my body, over my belly, down between my thighs. Cups me, there. Fingers curl and gather the edge of my dress, lift it. Inch by inch, my thighs are bared. Then my hips. Then the black sheer mesh over my privates, the skinny string around my waist.