Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 61287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Fear of what?
Miss Charlotte’s voice, over the perfectly balanced sound system, smoothly covered over the pause as Master Hendryk stepped around in front of me.
“Mr. Vanderbruggen’s Candy is one of the first AI concubines to come from Selecta Research’s first production line. They call them Pleasure Girl 2.0.”
The dean’s voice sounded so businesslike that her words almost seemed normal, like a marketing campaign for a new phone or a new dishwasher. At the thought of Candy… Mr. Vanderbruggen’s Candy… as Pleasure Girl 2.0, my heart flipped over. Something started to become clearer in my mind… an unwelcome realization, but one that at least made some sense of my strange reactions.
The sudden reluctance that had made it necessary for Master G to come on stage and manhandle me onto the horse, then strap me down atop it… the rebellion against my training… came from a new need to feel that I didn’t want this.
I don’t want this, a voice inside me said. I’m an intelligent young woman with a good education—so far, anyway. People could rant all they wanted about the corporate takeover of the public secondary schools, but those teachers had taught me how to think for myself. A young woman who thinks for herself doesn’t end up bound over a bench in a babydoll nightgown so that her owner can punish her and then use her without having to worry about the possibility of her interfering with his enjoyment.
Unless it’s against her will, I told myself.
Same with going home to a house where an artificial girl already occupied my new master’s bed—a Pleasure Girl 2.0, a sexbot whose numerical designation indicated that she could give more pleasure than a human girl like me could.
It’s monstrous, the scolding voice inside me declared. So much worse than being trained at the Institute. Of course you don’t want that.
“Look at me, Renee,” said my master’s voice, from above me and right in front of me.
I tried to close my eyes tighter.
“Renee, my dear,” he said again, his tone even and calm but with a hard edge to it that made butterflies fill my tummy, “I’m going to whip you more severely if you continue to disobey. I believe in making it clear to my girls that it makes much more sense to follow my instructions immediately than it does to follow them with a bottom you can’t sit down on for a day or two.”
With a little sob of fear from deep in my throat, I opened my eyes and looked up into Master Hendryk’s face.
What I saw in his expression drew an even deeper sob—not just of fear, but of something else, too… something that came from the fear but also from a place Master G had, it suddenly seemed to me, only scratched the surface of.
Force. That was the only way I could describe it. Master Hendryk’s blue eyes, slightly narrowed as he gazed down at me, and the slight smile on his lips, seemed to me to embody some special kind of power. This man would follow all the rules that would keep me safe, but he and I both knew that those precautions wouldn’t spare me from any measure, no matter how harsh, that my owner deemed necessary to get what he wanted from me.
How can that naked force shine out of such an angelic face? I wondered, trying desperately to get my breathing under control as I blinked up at him. Up close, Master Hendryk looked like a heavenly messenger from an old, old painting. Instead of announcing joyful news and telling me not to fear, though, my new master’s face told me that I should most definitely fear him.
I felt my limbs start to struggle against the straps securing me atop the horse. The movement, and the defiance it implied, came upon me without my consciously trying to escape. I saw myself squirming as if it were someone else. That detached part of me condemned the girl on the horse. She was ignoring what her training master had taught her. She was breaking the chain of the heart that should make her submit meekly to her master’s will. To struggle only meant more punishment.
But Master Hendryk said, “I know how frightened you are, Renee. I’m not going to whip you for struggling, especially since it gets me so hard to cane a girl who can’t get away.”
Oh, no. My back had arched, as he said it—the cruel sort of thing Master G had never said to me because, I had thought, he had never needed to. Between my legs, a surge of heat, and a hard clench, at the terrible thought of my owner’s hardness.
I felt my forehead crease as I looked up at him and I saw that his smile had grown a little wider.
“Yes, my dear,” he said, his voice somehow both soft and brutal at the same time, “that makes your little cunt wet, doesn’t it?”