by Ava Sinclair
What will Sugar crave? We have to get past today before I’ll know. For now, I concentrate on the moment. As we start dessert, more wards and guardians step forward to make Sugar feel welcome. Lou and her guardian, attorney Russ Mayer. Jane and her guardian, Julian, a wealthy financier. There are other women, more than a dozen in all. They all approach Sugar, who sits silently as they greet her one by one.
“You’re not alone,” I say when the last leaves. “These women have all been where you are.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“No, it doesn’t, I agree. It’s time to go.”
“Where?”
I stand and look down at her. “It’s time for your medical check.”
Chapter 8
Sugar
“I could carry you, Sugar.”
Eli Crane is looking down at me, his hands on his hips. I don’t need to see a doctor. I’m perfectly healthy. Can’t he see for himself? I ask him this calmly, even though my heart is pounding.
“I’m a psychologist. You’ll be seeing another doctor.”
“Dr. Brockman?”
“No. He just happened to be in the clinic the day you arrived. You’ll be seeing the institute’s staff physician and his nurse. There are things I need to learn about you, Sugar.”
“Then just ask me!”
He sighs. “Sugar. You either go with me, or you get spanked until you agree to go with me. I won’t promise you that any of this will be easy. I can promise you that it will be a lot more unpleasant with a sore bottom.”
“Is that your answer to everything? Force?” I’m seething with furious helplessness.
“Yes. Until it doesn’t have to be this way. You’re my ward. I’m your guardian. You will always be given the choice to obey me. If you choose to disobey instead, you’ll be corrected.”
He tells me once again that every woman goes through what I’m going through, as if that makes it easier. Like those other women, I face bleak options. Humiliation, or double humiliation. So I feign meekness as I follow, but all the while entertain revenge scenarios. I imagine myself escaping and exposing not only this place but the system that made me so desperate that I was willing to blindly sign away my free will to avoid prison.
The exam room is the same one where I went over Dr. Crane’s knee for the bolus. I think of how it felt as the slippery pill was pushed into my bottom. I think of Mitzi, proudly bending over to show me hers.
There are more people in the room today. Two white clad nurses in old-fashioned caps stand by the table on either side of a pole holding a rubber bag and a coil of clear tubing with what looks like a deflated balloon on the end. On the other side of the table is the doctor. He’s nearly as tall as Eli Crane, but leaner, with russet hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
“This is Dr. Fulton.” Eli Crane nods towards the physician.
“Hello, Sugar,” he says. “We’re glad to have you here. You’ll need to get undressed for the exam. Would you like one of the nurses to help you?”
“I don’t want this.” I feel angry, resentful, and scared.
“We aren’t going to hurt you,” Dr. Fulton says, but it’s not the pain I fear. It’s the shame, the being exposed and helpless.
“Would it help if Dr. Fulton gave you something for your nerves?”
I think of the last offer of pills, the pinching pain of the needle in my ass when I refused.
“It might be easier if I were drugged.” I look at Eli Crane accusingly. He scowls at my unspoken assertion that this is all being done by force.
“I have just the thing.” Dr. Fulton walks over with a pill cup and a glass of water. I down the pills without asking what they are. Hopefully, what happens in here will be just one more thing in my life I won’t remember.
The nurses walk over. They are in their early thirties and pretty. They could be twins, but I can see that one has green eyes and the other brown.
“We’ll help her,” one says, and they guide me behind a screen curtain. They are efficient as they strip me of my clothing.
“You’ll be fine,” one says as she undoes my sash. Her mouth is near my ear. Her breath is warm and smells like peppermint. The other nurse is kneeling to remove my shoes and roll down my stockings. I’m being undressed like a child. They talk gently to me as I’m disrobed and I feel myself relax a bit.
“What’s going to happen?”
“They just want to make sure you’re healthy.” The nurse who removed my shoes looks up at me and pulls down my panties as the other instructs me to lift my arms so she can pull my dress over my head.
“Don’t be ashamed. You’re beautiful, and besides, Dr. Fulton has seen it all before. Every girl goes through this. No need to worry. If you just relax, you might even enjoy it.”
The nurses glance at one another, exchanging knowing smiles and I’m back to wondering what the fuck is going on. But I’m also starting to feel detached, like I’m not seen as a helpless child, but like I am a helpless child. It’s the medication; it must be. How else could I be allowing myself to sink into the feeling, to be led to where Eli and the doctor are standing. The two nurses who helped me undress leave the room.
“Such a good girl.” Eli Crane reaches down and lifts me into his arms, depositing me onto the thin mattress of the exam table. “I’m very proud of you. And now you must be very brave.”
“Brave?” The fog of detachment lifts. “Why?” He’s lowering me down, but I find myself resisting anew as I look up at the two strong men hovering over me.
“Your health is important, little one. When was the last time you saw a doctor?”
I can’t remember. I do remember being sick when I was a little girl. I remember fevers and flus and my mother begging me to stifle my coughs because her boyfriend was working the early shift and would be pissed if I woke him up. I do remember going to the school nurse to recite the lie my mother insisted I tell to explain away the bruise another of her suitors gave me for talking back. I remember her taking a slip of paper from the same nurse with the names and numbers of counselors she never contacted. I was a troubled child, both mentally and physically. I soldiered through it as a child and as an adult. Aside from getting a state-mandated shot that prevents both birth control and pregnancy, I don’t go to the doctor.
“We’re going to need to touch you, Sugar.” Eli puts a hand to my brow. “We’ll need you to relax and not to fight. Is the medicine helping?”
“I’m scared.” I’m surprised to hear myself admit it.
“I know, little one.” He lifts one of my legs and puts it into a curved groove on the side of the bed as his colleague does the same with the other leg.
I hear a hum and a slot slides open in the floor. A screen rises from the opening. There are several lines. At the same time, the bed I’m on starts to move. The bottom raises as the grooves holding my legs move apart, spreading them as curved pieces of metal slide up and over my calves and thighs to secure them in place.
“Don’t…”
“It’s alright.” Eli moves to take my face in his hands. “I need you to trust me, Sugar. Can you do that? I need you to submit. I promise, if you don’t fight it won’t be bad. Trust me.”
I need you to submit. Just as he says the words, my legs open to the point that my outer labia is slightly spread. I can feel the cool air of the room on the inner lips of my bare pussy, and with the sensation an odd, accompanying throb.
Submit. It must be the medicine. I have a flashback to the last time I was over Eli Crane’s lap, to the feel of his fingers as they’d moved between my thighs to brush my pussy, of the soft, shameful ache I’d felt in spite of myself. I’d had no medicine in my system then, nothing to restrain my inhibitions.
Submit. It’s all I can do as I glance down to see my breasts, the nipples taught, heaving in time with my breath. Eli Crane is holding one of my hands, his other resting on my restrained thigh. Beside me, Dr. Fulton is laying out an array of objects.
“We employ new
and experimental diagnostics, Sugar.” Dr. Fulton’s voice seems to be coming from far away. “It’s an unfortunate truth that there are two societies in this country today—only one has had the benefit of the technologies you’ll become acquainted with. But there are also time-tested therapies and you’ll experience those, too. Are you ready?”
I part my lips. I would say no, but it won’t matter. I’m helpless. I can only feel. Dr. Fulton picks up what looks like a hand mirror, but it’s glowing. He moves it over my body, creating what feels like a strange static over my skin. If I had body hair left, it would be rising, but there is none, so only goose bumps form in its wake. The screen to the side catches my eyes. As the implement moves across my torso, three dimensional images of my organs appear on the screen along with a corresponding string of symbols I don’t understand. There’s a pointer in Dr. Fulton’s other hand. From time to time he aims it at a symbol, highlighting and clicking on some. Eli Crane is looking at them, too.
“You’re doing very well,” he says.
Lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys, uterus, ovaries, bowels. I’ve never seen myself like this before. For a moment, I’m too fascinated to remember how nervous I am, but Dr. Fulton’s next words make my nervousness return.
“We need to examine you internally, Sugar.”
Now I know why my legs are spread apart. I’m going to be touched. And maybe it’s the medicine, but I find myself thinking of Eli Crane’s long fingers.
“No,” I say. I can feel it already, that delicious, pulsing ache. But what kind of woman gets turned on strapped to a table? I’m supposed to be fighting this. The medicine. It has to be the medicine. “No,” I say again, trying to force conviction I don’t feel into my voice.
“Would it be easier if I examined you instead of Dr. Fulton?” Eli squeezes my hand again, drawing my attention to his handsome face. He’s looking at me with kindness, but not so much kindness that he’ll let me out of this. I look down at his hand clasping mine, his long fingers. My pussy is throbbing.
“What did you give me?” I ask. “What were those pills?”
“Don’t fight it,” he says. “No one’s going to hurt you. Submit, Sugar.”
Submit. That word again, and with it I feel wetness form between my spread legs. I groan.
“I’ll examine her.” Eli rises. He’s made his decision, even without my input. I could swing my arms. They aren’t restrained, but somehow they feel as bound as my spread and strapped legs he’s stepping between.
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“Just get some information. You’re going to feel me touching you, Sugar.”
And, oh, that touch. It’s like the taste of candy when you want something sweet that you know you shouldn’t have. Satisfying, forbidden. I’m not supposed to react like this, but his finger has grazed my clit and I feel a rush of pleasure through my body. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’ve had lots of sex in my life. I’ve been with strangers, fucking them without shame, hoping the attention would awaken something I could not define. But it’s taken this man I have sworn to hate to send little quakes of pleasure through my core.
Stop it, I say to myself. What he’s doing is clinical. Or is it? He’s sliding something inside me now, even as he presses on my clit again. I feel my hips raise from the table, feel a flood of arousal seep around whatever is lodged in my pussy. I look at the screen. I see the image of my body. Whatever is in me is taking a reading. And what had been a flat red line on the screen is spiking in rhythm with the little bursts of pleasure I’m feeling.
What did they give me? I’m having a full-on climax, and I’ve stopped caring about shame. The line spikes along with my cries, then recedes as I relax. I still feel an odd sensation of pressure on my clit, and now I feel something else. The table is rising under my bottom, pushing it up as it reclines my upper body.
“You have a nutritional deficit,” Dr. Fulton says. “In order to be perfectly healthy, you need medicine that’s absorbed internally. Dr. Crane will administer it.”
I feel light-headed, then apprehensive as I see the contraption I’d noticed when I first walked in being rolled to the foot of the bed. The red rubber bag is bulging with fluid, and Dr. Fulton injects something through a valve at the top.
“You only need a little. Just relax.”
Just relax. Something is pressing against the pucker of my anus. I think of the bolus, of the shame of it. But this is different. It feels soft and is narrower. I hear myself whimpering. I try to move my hips away but I can’t. The pressure increases and whatever is being pressed against my bottom slips inside.
“I don’t think we need much inflation, Dr. Crane.” Dr. Fulton is looking at the screen and I do to. There’s what looks like a small balloon in my bottom. I feel it growing, feel it pressing against the membrane between the dual passages of my bottom and pussy. I’m aware of the sensation of being stretched inside. I start to cry out, and then I feel it—Dr. Crane’s finger on my clit once more. The pressure in my ass suddenly feels … different. My cry becomes a moan.
“Start the drip,” Dr. Crane says, and Dr. Fulton opens a tiny valve on the bag. As he does, Eli Crane approaches me. My body is strapped, restrained, my ass filled with something that’s pressing into my core with the most delicious pressure.
“You’re such a good girl,” he says, and I feel a flush of odd excitement at the tone of his voice.
Such a good girl.
I close my eyes. I should be ashamed of not fighting, of how stimulating this all feels. It’s the medicine. It must be. I’ll fight later, I tell myself. I’ll make them pay for the sweet, decadent shame they’re putting me through. But for now? For now, I can only feel as I’ve never felt before, the little waves rising and falling until it’s over and I feel the nozzle slip from my bottom, feel myself wrapped in a warm blanket, feel myself lifted in Dr. Crane’s strong arms.
I say nothing as he carries me to my room, and perhaps it is the sight and sounds of the manner that jar me back to reality after being in a clinical setting. Or perhaps it is the medicine he gave me wearing off. Whatever it is, the fog of pleasure is lifting to be replaced with feelings of humiliation and self-loathing at my weakness.
I’m ashamed of myself. I’m angry at him and the other doctor. By the time he returns me to my room and tucks me between the covers of my bed, I’m again more fully aware. And then the tears come.
“You had no right.” I sit up, clutching the blanket to my chest. He’s at the wardrobe, taking out a soft cotton gown. He brings it over. “Did you hear me?” I ask, my voice shaking with barely suppressed rage. “You had no right.”
“You’re my ward. I have every right to see that you are evaluated in a manner that gives me all the information I need.” He’s dispassionate as he answers, authoritative. It only makes me angry.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” When he goes to lift the gown over my head, I move to slap his hand away, but he catches it.
“I know you’re confused, Sugar. I know you just went through a lot, which is why I’m inclined to be lenient. It’s why I’m not going to turn you over my knee and paddle your little ass, unless of course you raise your hand to me again.”
Our eyes are locked. I lower my hand when he lets it go. I let him dress me in the gown, as if I were a little girl.
“You had no right to drug me,” I say. “You had no right to give me something to make me feel…the way you made me feel.”
He stands and turns, walking to the door. “I want you to nap. We’ll talk about it later.”
“You had no right to drug me!” I cry again. “I’m not a whore! You had no right to make me feel like one!”
His hand is on the knob. He tenses, then he turns back to me. “You’re right. You’re not a whore. You’re a healthy woman, Sugar. What you had was a healthy response. And that wasn’t a drug we gave you. It was a placebo. The reactions you had were normal. And beautiful. Eventually, you’ll come to accept them.”
He leaves then, and I am alone, sitting in stunned silence.
Chapter 9
Eli
I was going to wait to tell Sugar about the placebo, but hearing her refer to herself as a whore was like a knife in my heart. I wasn’t about to allow her a single moment of thinking about herself like that.
I wasn’t flattering her, either. Her response was everything I’d hoped it would be. Sugar’s promiscuity in her old life was nothing more than a desperate attempt to find the approval and validation of the father who abandoned her. Like her mother, she found her way to men who used her without every valuing the prize they’d briefly won.
“These are impressive responses.” Chance is overlooking the data from Sugar’s exam. Even if she is mine, it’s standard practice for institute heads to examine all data together. He looks up now and smiles. “You must be a happy man.”
I lean back in my chair. Sugar shows definite submissive tendencies, but if that were all that mattered to the big picture, I’d indeed be thrilled. But for the last two hours I’ve been viewing her memory scans. The damage done to her by family, society, and a string of predatory men runs deep. Will it be too deep for her to overcome? On the exam table, she’d believed herself drugged and was able to use that as an internalized justification to let down her inhibitions. But the guard is back up now. Even if she believes me when I tell her that the response is natural, she may be too guarded to allow herself to be that vulnerable again. I don’t want to think that I’ve only gotten a taste of her sweetness. Now that I’ve sampled it, I want more. But I need Sugar to own her passion, to acknowledge it. I need a clear breakthrough.