"Meaning?"
"These buyers don't just want to see you in pretty dresses. They want to know you're properly trained. Responsive. Experienced enough to please them."
Understanding dawns in her eyes. "You want to try me out yourself."
"I want to ensure the merchandise is everything I'm promising it is." My hand settles on her hip, thumb brushing against bare skin where the dress rides up. "Consider it quality control."
"Quality control." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Is that what you're calling it?"
"That's what it is."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you go to auction unprepared, and unprepared women don't survive long with men like Kozlov." I let that sink in. "But if you cooperate, your survival odds improve significantly."
She's quiet for a long moment, processing the implicit threat. When she speaks again, her voice is steady despite the situation.
"What kind of cooperation are we talking about?"
"The kind that ensures you know exactly how to please a man. How to respond to his touch. How to make him believe you want everything he's doing to you." My thumb traces along her collarbone. "Some of these lessons can only be taught through practical application."
"You want to fuck me."
I force my expression to remain neutral. "I want to ensure you're properly trained for your new role. If that requires intimate instruction, then that's what it requires."
"How noble of you. Sacrificing yourself for the sake of my education."
"Mock me all you want. But remember—I'm offering you survival skills. Turn me down, and you face these men completely unprepared."
She studies my face for a long moment, looking for cracks. Finding none.
"And this training... when would it begin?"
"Now."
I see her weighing her options, calculating risks and benefits.
"Fine," she says finally. "Teach me. Show me what these men will expect from me."
"Just like that?"
"Yes." She meets my eyes directly. "But understand something, Renato—if you're going to touch me, if you're going to claim the right to my body in the name of training, then you're going to have to face what that does to you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means every time you put your hands on me, every time you show me how to please a man, you're going to remember that soon you'll be giving me to someone else. You're going to have to live with the knowledge that you prepared me for another man's pleasure. And that you’ll never touch me again."
The psychological warfare in her words is masterful, and we both know it. She's turning my own desire against me, making every touch a form of torture.
"I can handle whatever this training requires."
"Can you? Because I don't think you realize what you're signing up for." She moves closer, eliminating the last inches between us. "I think you're about to discover that some things are much harder to give away once you've claimed them."
"Is that supposed to be a threat?"
"It’s a promise."
I stare down at her, this infuriating, brilliant, dangerous woman who somehow keeps turning the tables on me, and realize I'm walking into a trap of my own making.
