Page 6 of Shamefully Trained

Gowry did not bother denying it. “Joe’s good.”

“Good at compromising vulnerable young women who are too beautiful for their own good,” Hathaway said.

That almost made me laugh despite the horrible patronizing tone. It would have turned into sobbing if it had gotten out, so I bit the inside of my cheek hard.

Hathaway seemed to make a decision. “You’ll leave separately. Alexandra, you’ll go first. I’ll have someone bring your coat to the lobby.”

“I can manage my own coat,” I said automatically.

Her eyes flicked to my bare legs, the marks I was sure were visible on my thighs, the fact that my panties were still clenched in my hand like a handkerchief. “Clearly.”

I went scarlet and looked away.

Gowry picked up his belt at last and threaded it slowly through the loops of his trousers, never taking his eyes off me. The sound made my stomach tighten. “You can send her back to me if you’re interested in doing business. It doesn’t have to involve leverage.”

Hathaway’s reply came flat and immediate. “No.”

The word struck me with such force I nearly staggered. Relief, humiliation, disappointment so sharp it made me sick that I even could feel it—all of it twisted together.

He saw that too. “Interesting. Well, Alex, if you’re out of a job after this, you should think about signing up for Selecta Arrangements. If I see you there, we might have some fun.”

Selecta Arrangements. All young female staffers knew about the app where men like Gowry could make ‘arrangements’ with younger women they wanted to fuck in exchange for an ‘allowance.’

I wanted to tell him to go to hell. I wanted to tell Hathaway to stop looking at me as though she felt certain I would indeed sign up for Selecta Arrangements so that I could keep getting brutally whipped and fucked by Jason Gowry.

I wanted it to be fifteen minutes earlier in the evening, before I’d said yes to anything, before I’d discovered that part of me could obey with horrifying ease.

Instead I said nothing.

Hathaway opened the door. “Go.”

I moved toward it, then stopped because I couldn’t make myself pass her without saying something. “Senator⁠—”

“If this is an apology, save it until you’re capable of one that isn’t mostly for yourself.”

That stung because it was true. I closed my mouth.

As I stepped into the outer office, she caught my arm lightly, just for a second. I looked up at her.

Her voice dropped lower. “If he touched you in any way you did not agree to, you tell me. If you are confused about what you agreed to, you tell me that too. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

It was not kindness, exactly. It was too sharp and unsentimental for that. But it was something steadier, and because I was so frayed it nearly undid me.

“He… he…” I stammered. I stood on the knife’s edge. “No,” I went on, “he didn’t. I’m not confused. I… it was consensual.”

Her eyes went hard.

“Then you’re fired,” she told me.

I made it to the stairs before I started crying again.

By the time I got outside the Capitol, though, I had my face under control. Not because I felt better. Because I knew now, with a clarity I hated, that I had just fucked up my life beyond belief, and if I were going to move forward from this point I would have to figure out how it had happened.

And worst of all, beneath the shame and the fear and the sick twisting awareness of how badly I had played this, there was still a pulse low in my body when I thought of his hand on my back, the command in his voice, and the instant, terrible quiet in me when I obeyed.

I walked all the way back to my apartment in Adams-Morgan feeling terribly marked. By the lingering soreness in my backside. By my shameful lack of panties. Things hidden by my skirt, and yet I felt as if everyone who glanced at me could tell what I had done, and had done to me, in a senator’s office… and just how steep a fall from grace I had just taken.