And it wasn't as if this was the first time he'd gone off script. Bringing your patients to a slave training house wasn't exactly on the approved therapies list either.
Shannon seemed to be dragging her feet now, making the flower arranging take far longer than it should. Even he wasn't this fussy.
“Had you intended to come upstairs to my room after you finished with the flowers?”
She focused intently on a brightly colored day lily with a flush of deep orange in the center of the bloom. “Yes, Sir.”
“Don't lie to me.”
She looked at him for several long seconds, then looked away again. “I-I don't know.”
“Hmmm. And what did you expect to happen if you disobeyed me?”
She shrugged. “I don't know why you're doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Training me.”
Was that what he was doing?
Yes. It was exactly what he was doing. And even as he did it, he knew it couldn't make up for the fact that he hadn't done it eight years ago when she'd first come to the house—before Brian had gotten his hands on her.
“Did you put the flower food in?”
“Yes, Sir.” She finished putting the flowers in the vase and started to clean up the mess of broken stems and leaves and paper and plastic wrapping. “Why are you bothering? Is it some sort of consolation prize? Do you think if you give me the echo of what I could have had that I won't try to hurt myself again? We both know it's not real. You and me.”
She turned and put the trash in the bin next to the desk.
“Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe I just want you?”
She laughed out loud. It was an eerie chilling sound in the middle-of-the-night silence of the house. “Sure you do. You've never touched me. You've never looked at me... that way. But just all of a sudden tonight, you want me. Please. I'm not your pity fuck.”
Lindsay stood. “Come with me.”
Shannon eyed him warily. “Where are we going?”
“You know where we're going. We're going downstairs.”
It took mere moments for her entire demeanor to change. A terrified prey stillness fell over her. Then all at once, she started to cry. Her shoulders began to shake. If he let himself, he could allow the guilt to stop him. He could go back to the same weakness he'd lived perpetually in where she was concerned.
“Please, not down there. I can't go down there.” It had taken so very little time for her please to turn from derisive to desperate.
“You haven't been down there since that day, have you?”
She shook her head. “I-I can't go down there.”
Of course once it had been decided that she couldn't be sold, there would be no need to punish her. She'd been down in the dungeons only that one time. Shannon didn't get punishments because what would be the point? She was part of the staff now, and none of the rest of the staff got punished. Though Phyllis had a few close calls in the early days.
Shannon didn't move toward the door, so Lindsay moved into her space instead. He stood mere inches from her. “Look at me.”
She looked up. “I'm sorry. Please. W-why would you do this to me? Y-you can't. Please you can't.” The last part came out on a whisper.
Yesterday's Lindsay couldn't. And look what a mess of things he'd made. Today's Lindsay could and would. Every time he showed weakness, she got hurt.
If he'd taken her from the beginning Brian never would have touched her. If he had taken her at any point beyond that, she wouldn't have swallowed a bottle of pills. From now on, he was going against all his instincts—or maybe listening to them for the first time. Because everything inside him had screamed to take her. And that voice had gotten louder every time he'd been in her presence trying to shove his desires deep into his subconscious.
Maybe it hadn't just been the guilt, but the fear that he would lose control... and just take what he wanted. And how could he do that to her on top of everything else?
Now it seemed all bets were off. She'd already tried to take her own life. How much worse could it get? Was he risking she'd get more hopeless or depressed? If anything, maybe a little pain would do her some good—distract her from her self-pity... give her something new and more all-encompassing to focus on.
Like his exacting demands.
“The lines I'm now willing to cross with you, kitten, just moved so far away, they disappear behind the horizon.”
“W-why? Why now?”
“Life is short. If not now, when?”
“You're scaring me.” She'd put the desk between them. As if furniture could stop him now.
“Good. Maybe it means you want to live. Do you want to live, Shannon?”
“Y-yes. Please. Please, I don't know what I did...”
“Yes you do. You disobeyed me.”
“I'm sorry. I-I won't do it again.”
“Probably not.” He held out a hand to her. She shrank back. For a moment he was torn between hurt and offense. “I'm not Brian. Let's go.”
60
Shannon didn't know what else to do but go with him. She didn't have the energy to run. She was making a good show of it, but after her near brush with death she felt so ambivalent that the mere act of existence, let alone fleeing to save herself, seemed foreign.
For years now, the house's attitude toward her had been almost entirely one of expedience—whatever made her easiest to deal with. Up until now, this meant placating her, throwing her some small bone of attention now and then like a neglected dog. So when Lindsay had threatened to take her to the dungeon, she'd been convinced it was all talk—something to scare her, something to make her compliant and easy to deal with.
But when he'd said it in the spa, the look in his eyes... shit he was serious. That was the moment Lindsay had gone from being weak and nonthreatening to the most frightening presence in her world. She still didn't know how that gulf had been bridged in such a short time. Or how she'd gone from sullen sarcasm to the abject terror that made her blood run like ice through her veins.
The most fucked-up part was how her body was suddenly reacting to him. She hadn't had this reaction since she'd been his patient in the city. Didn't she hate him? How could her body be betraying her like this? His hand was so large and warm and solid wrapped around hers. And all she wanted was for that hand to grab hold of other parts of her. She wanted to feel that warm solid hand between her legs or wrapped around her throat holding her in place against the wall as he fucked her.
Shannon tried to stop the thoughts, but it only made them darker and more persistent. She couldn't stop staring at the sleek muscles of his back, or the way the pajama pants he wore rode so low on his hips.
She still didn't understand what all of this was about. Was this just for tonight?
“Please, Sir, let's go upstairs. I-I'll do whatever you want.” Great, Shannon. Frame it like you're trying to save yourself. It might make the pill go down easier.
Because she absolutely could not let herself be attracted to him. If she didn't frame this like a sacrifice and convince herself completely... No. She just wouldn't go there. She was officially shutting down that part of her mind.