Page 24 of Shamefully Trained

My hand found the knob, I slipped inside the door and locked it behind me.

The room was small and surprisingly elegant, floral wallpaper above white tile, a brass-framed mirror, a little sink with folded linen hand towels instead of paper. The air smelled faintly of soap and coffee and something citrusy. I stood with my back to the door, my bag still clutched in one hand, trying to breathe.

What the hell was I doing?

I set my bag on the counter because I had to do something with my hands. In the mirror I looked flushed, wild-eyed, too bright. My blouse lay smoothly enough over my breasts, but I could see the faint rise and fall of my chest from breathing too hard.

I should unlock the door and leave right now, I thought.

I didn’t move. The passing seconds seemed to thicken.

My hands rose to the first button of my blouse and then stopped there.

I stared at myself in the mirror as if the woman reflected there might decide for me. Strip, and this became unmistakably real. Don’t strip, and perhaps I could still tell myself I had only come back here to prove I could leave. My fingers trembled against the button. I imagined easing the blouse off my shoulders, standing in the little floral bathroom in my ivory bra and panties waiting for him like some kind of arranged toy, and heat rushed through me so hard I had to grip the edge of the sink.

I didn’t do it, but I didn’t leave either.

I was still standing there with my blouse on and my skirt smooth over my hips when the knock came: two measured taps, a pause, then three.

My whole body jumped. For one panicked second I just stared at the door, behind me in the mirror’s reflection, incapable of movement. Then I turned and unlocked it.

He opened the door immediately, slipped inside, and turned the lock with an ease that made me wonder if he’d done precisely this before: not just entered a restroom and locked the door, but entered this one… this one already occupied by a possibly nude woman he intended to discipline and train as his fuck toy, and made certain she could not easily escape.

His gaze took me in with a single pass. I watched his eyes narrow as he registered my state of dress.

I flushed hotter.

“I gave you instructions,” he said, his tone amused.

“I know.”

“You didn’t follow them.” He stepped closer. “I’ll give you one opportunity to correct that. Take off your clothes.”

The air seemed to tighten around me. My mouth had gone dry, but underneath the fear there was that awful pulse again, low and liquid and impossible to mistake.

“What happens if I don’t?”

The words came out breathless. The instant they did, a hard throb went through me between my legs so sudden and humiliating that I nearly closed my eyes.

His expression barely changed. “Then I punish you.”

“How?”

“You’ll find out.”

I don’t know what possessed me in that moment. Pride, perhaps. Or the need to see whether he would truly do what he had said. Or, more shamefully, the terrible need that had flooded me at the word punish.

My heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat, I heard myself say, “I’m not taking them off.”

He moved so quickly that I barely had time to gasp. One second I was facing him; the next he had turned me, his hand firm over my mouth, and bent me forward over the sink. The cold edge dug into my hips. The mirror showed me only fragments—my wide blue eye, a spill of red hair, his dark suit behind me.

“Quiet,” he said near my ear.

I nodded frantically against his palm.

His hand left my mouth only long enough to gather my skirt and flip it up over my backside. Then I felt his fingers hook the waistband of my panties and pull them down in one smooth, devastating motion, to mid-thigh.

The exposure of it made me let out a muffled sound before I could stop myself.