by Kitty Thomas
Lindsay brought the tea over and placed one of the cups and saucers in front of her, then he sat across from her again and took a sip of his own tea.
“Tell me what you need, Shannon.”
Her mouth set stubbornly in a firm line. She wasn't going back to that doctor/patient place with him. She'd trusted him once all those years ago in his office. She could never be such a fool twice. She took a sip of her tea, placed the cup back on the saucer, and stared at the steam rising up off the cup.
“I could beat it out of you.” The suggestion sounded almost casual.
Her gaze snapped up to his. “I don't believe you. You feel too much guilt to ever lay a hand on me.”
All at once his stubbornness seemed to mirror her own as he held her gaze trapped in his. “I'll work through it.”
Another flutter. That deep gravel voice.
She ignored it and drank her tea.
“Why did you take the pills?”
She shrugged.
“We could go back to talking about your needs or we can talk about why you took the pills.”
“Why the fuck do you think I took them? I have nothing. You know I have nothing. You robbed me of a life. You lied to me and...”
He held up a hand. “Stop. I did not lie to you. Everything we promised you was on the menu. And it would have happened.”
“But you knew about Brian!”
This time it was Lindsay who looked away. “Yes. I've treated him. I knew about him. But it was the drugs he was on. Otherwise I don't think...”
“The drugs you gave him. This just keeps being more and more your fault. And you have the nerve to try to bring me back to this world to try to appease your own sense of guilt? You should feel guilty every day for the rest of your life for this. You destroyed me, and now you think you can make it all better? You think you can save me and I'll be oh so grateful? You can fucking forget it. You stay the hell away from me.”
Shannon got up off the stool and started to leave.
But Lindsay was too fast for her, moving around the counter and to the door far more quickly than she could get there. His large frame blocked her exit. “Where do you think you're going?”
“To my room. To bed.”
“No,” he said slowly. “You are going to my room. To bed.”
“I'm not fucking you.”
“Not tonight you aren't.”
“Not ever.”
“We'll see.”
He stared her down, and she stared back. “This house is full of twenty-year-olds,” Shannon said. “I'm thirty-one. Past my sell-by date. Pick a fresher product.”
A shocked expression crossed the doctor's face. “Are you kidding me? I'm forty-nine. You're already too young for me!”
“Bullshit. I'm sure you were that age when we met. Or older. Are you a vampire?”
“Don't be absurd. I started going gray prematurely. It runs in my family. Everybody thinks I'm older than I am. It's been a boon in my profession but annoying everywhere else. Do you need to see a copy of my birth certificate?”
Shannon rolled her eyes. So she'd thought he was a lot older. Still. His age wasn't why she wasn't going there with him.
“Okay so big deal. Men get distinguished. Women just get old. Just focus on the new girls and leave me alone.”
He gave her a long hard look. Finally he spoke, slowly and calmly. “I'm going to clean up the kitchen. When I get finished I expect to find you in my room, in my bed. If you are anywhere else, you're going to force me to have to take you downstairs to the dungeon and work past my guilt. Is that what you want?”
Shannon looked down. “No.”
“No, Sir. Say it.”
She shook her head.
“Is this really the hill you want to die on, Shannon?”
“No. But you decided to rescue me from the hill I wanted to die on.”
“You aren't leaving this kitchen until you say it. We can stand here all night.”
“Fine. No, Sir. Was that everything you'd hoped it would be?”
“We never should have let your training slip. Go upstairs.”
***
Lindsay watched her leave. He wasn't sure he should leave her alone even for five minutes right now, but he was certain she wouldn't try anything again tonight. And she didn't have access to pills right now. He doubted she'd attempt anything involving knives. And there were no other ready methods.
Besides, despite her bravado, she was shaken. She probably wouldn't try it again for a while. He'd been watching her carefully since she'd regained consciousness.
Most of the pills had come up fully intact. Most of them hadn't had time to break down. A few of them were probably expired and inert. Lucky.
Still it had been a very close call, but she seemed fine. Physically at least.
Lindsay thought back to that day. He'd been sitting in the conference room with the other three owners, Anton, Gabe, and Brian—deciding Shannon's fate.
“I say we kill her,” Brian said as nonchalantly as if they were discussing some mundane thing like weather.
“No,” Gabe said. He didn't shout or make a scene. It was just a quiet, firm vote against taking her life.
“I already told her we wouldn't kill her,” Anton said. “And she has spa experience. We could use her for waxing the girls.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “Please. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to wax a pussy. We can teach the girls how to wax each other. We don't need Shannon. She's a liability.”
“I thought you said you went too far. You said it was the drugs,” Anton said. “Now you want to kill her?”
“I'm not an idiot. I realize nearly killing her over a stupid argument was too much, but I still think it's better to get rid of her and start fresh,” Brian said, seeming more collected and rational but no less sociopathic than normal. “You all know this is the smartest decision. I'm just the only one with the balls to say it out loud.”
When no one jumped in to reaffirm him, Brian sighed and said, “Look we don't have to tell her it's coming, just dose her with a sedative, and I'll take her out clean. Otherwise she's going to scar up bad. If we keep her, it'll cause problems with the other girls. You know I'm right.”
Anton ran a hand through his hair. It seemed he was actually considering this. Finally he said, “Maybe we should kill her. This is a new operation. After Annette acting out today and the others starting a riot, Shannon's damage could be too much for them to handle. We can't afford this first batch of sales to go badly. We don't want to gain a reputation for moving poorly trained merchandise.”
The three of them looked to Lindsay, the only one who hadn't weighed in. He'd remained silent, calculating, observing the rest of the room to decide how best to handle them.
“And you think they would be less upset by us killing her?” Lindsay asked, calmly, betraying nothing.
“Well, we'd fucking lie about it,” Brian said. “Not like we're gonna put out a newsletter announcing her untimely demise.”
“No one is killing anyone,” Lindsay said. He was a few years older than the rest of them, and he used the seniority to his advantage, commanding the room. “I brought her to the house, so I'm responsible for her. And I say no. Killing the girls was never part of this arrangement. If Brian starts killing them, I'm out.”
“Then you'd be the liability, Doc,” Brian said, an evil glint coming to his eyes.
“No one is killing her,” Lindsay said with a growl, rising from his chair and staring Brian down. Then he turned to Anton and Gabe. His voice was hard when he spoke again. “Agreed?”
Gabe nodded, already on board. Anton took a second, but he nodded his agreement as well.
“Brian?” Lindsay prodded. Ultimately they could vote all they wanted but Brian was the dangerous one. He had to be on board or else he might just go rogue and kill her no matter what the others wanted. And they needed his particular skill set to eliminate true threats to the house.
“Oh, all right. Fine. I w
on't kill her. Maybe it'll work in our favor. She can serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when someone smarts off to me. I do so enjoy being feared.”
Soon after the incident with Brian, Lindsay had tried to treat her, but he hadn't been able to deal with the hatred she sent his way. He perhaps could have if he hadn't deserved every bit of her disgust. He'd convinced himself she was okay, that his presence would make her worse, not better. And then he'd faded out of her life, too cowardly to clean up his own mess.
He'd given her sedatives for years whenever she'd asked, too guilt-ridden to think the logical thought... that maybe they weren't for insomnia. He wondered if this was the first time she'd built up a stash for this method. Had she built up others, but lost her nerve? Or had they expired before she worked up the nerve?
He took the cups and saucers to the sink and rinsed them out. Then he put away all the tea things.
He shouldn't be so fucking attracted to her. It was wrong. She'd been through too much. She was too traumatized.
The first time she'd walked into his office in the city, he'd sat behind his desk and avoided coming out to cover the erection. Few women had such a potent effect on him. And if he wasn't so pissed with Shannon right now, he was sure it would have happened again tonight. Despite everything.
She was beautiful, of course, but it was the way she thought that truly undid him. The way she talked. It was her mind. He'd made excuses for years about why he didn't have a pet of his own—particularly when all the other partners, even Brian of all people, had coupled up. He claimed he didn't have time for one. A lie. He'd said he didn't have the interest in having one. Another lie.
What he didn't have was the patience to deal with a foolish little twit—especially one far too young and too inexperienced at life to ever understand him.
Shannon had been too young from the start, but she was smart. She was so smart, in fact, that he couldn't understand why she hadn't used her mind for a more challenging profession. She could have been a doctor or a lawyer with that mind. Hell, she could have been a scientist. She was nothing but potential as far as he was concerned.
But still, she'd been too young.
She was one of the first women he'd brought to the house to be trained and sold. But he'd brought her there for himself. He hadn't been able to admit the truth until he'd almost lost her. And then it was too late for honesty because she wouldn't stop looking at him with that raw unfettered revulsion and blame.
But leaving her alone obviously hadn't done her any good. He hadn't stopped to think about the fact that much of her pain now was from loneliness. It was a pain he could have spared her much sooner if he'd been able to work through his own guilt.
He'd been shocked she was so worried about her age.
She was young. Why would she worry about her age? But there was a kernel of truth in it. Every year he was sure the girls they brought in to train looked younger and younger to her. They seemed younger and younger to Lindsay. Getting older would do that to you.
It must be a constant reminder that she'd missed her opportunity.
But she hadn't missed it. He could no longer deny how much he wanted her to be his. He just didn't know if it was possible for her to stop hating him long enough to see that. Or if she even cared. Then again, the way she'd looked at him when she'd come out of the bathroom had given him enough hope and resolve to do the incredibly stupid thing he planned to do next.
When everything was cleaned up, Lindsay folded the dish rag and draped it over the sink and went upstairs to his suite. He had no idea what he was going to do with her.
Actually he had plenty of ideas. The problem was, he didn't know what he could do with her. If all he cared about was what he wanted, he wouldn't have to struggle. He'd go up there and he'd take her. Right now. He'd take her until she begged him never to leave her body empty of him again. He'd make her drunk on him. He'd addict her to the feel of his hands on her flesh... controlling her. Consuming her.
But such an outcome was unlikely. Especially tonight. He'd almost lost her tonight. Again.
It was too quiet when he reached the bedroom. “Shannon?”
“You're a very dirty girl. Do you know what I want to do with this body?” the bird squawked.
“Shut up, Ralph.” He should have kept that goddamned bird at the office.
Lindsay searched the bedroom, the bathroom, the balcony, even the closets. No Shannon. His emotions warred between anger and fear. He'd told her to go to his room. What if he'd miscalculated her willingness to try again... or her ability? What if she had a second stash of pills hidden away?
He raced down the stairs, not sure where she'd go. Maybe the pool? Would she fling herself into the pool? No, that seemed unlikely. It was an awful way to die.
The spa was the last place he'd discovered her, so it was the first place he looked. He let out a sigh of relief when he found her there, alive and well and not looking particularly suicidal—at least for the moment. The relief turned quickly to anger.
“I thought I told you to go to my room,” he said, not caring about the cold ice that seeped into his voice. Did she not take him seriously? Somehow the desire not to damage her further and the guilt over her current state came in a distant second to the urge to make sure she never underestimated him again.
“I didn't think you'd want the flowers lying out overnight,” she said, carefully avoiding his gaze.
He'd forgotten about the flowers. Shannon stood near the desk arranging the second bouquet in one of the large vases. The other one she'd already done while he'd been in the kitchen. She was right. They would have been wilted by morning.
“You didn't know there were fresh flowers. You were unconscious. So why did you come down here instead of going up to my room like I told you?”
She shrugged. “I just... didn't.”
That wasn't going to work for him. Lindsay sat in one of the large red chairs in the waiting area and folded his arms over his chest.
“I'll wait while you finish. Then you have a punishment coming.”
She looked up, startled. The first real, solid fear on her face since she'd regained consciousness.
“You wouldn't... not after tonight...”
“Why not after tonight? I should punish you for that, too. Especially that.”
She just stared at him. “How is it even possible that you're a doctor? You think punishing somebody for trying to kill themselves is the way to go?”
“I'm open to trying new experimental therapies,” Lindsay said. In truth, he did sort of want to beat her back into living. As wrong as that thought was, he felt something dramatic must be done or she might somehow just float away. She barely even seemed real now. Wispy. Like a shadow or a ghost, barely tethered to this reality by the thinnest of strings.
And either way, he wasn't acting as a doctor. He was acting as a person. And he was certain that when somebody you cared for tried to off themselves, it was quite normal to want to shake them or smack it out of them. He wasn't sure that would work, but he wasn't sure it wouldn't, either. It wasn't as if it was on the list of approved therapies.
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.”
&
nbsp; 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.”