Page 1 of Shamefully Trained

CHAPTER 1

Alex

It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t ask Senator Gowry to fuck me in his fucking hideaway in the Capitol. Even I, twenty-one years old and fresh out of college, in pursuit of my dream of a career as a political operative, knew that had to be a bad idea.

Really, though, part of me knew that I couldn’t even blame Gowry. The simple facts of politics bore just as much responsibility. I had thought of myself as politically seasoned, astute even, but the way my college ‘friend’ Joe introduced me to Jason Gowry should have told me I had just gotten out of my depth. I should have understood that whatever friendship existed between Joe and me took a back seat to his duty to deliver to his boss the kind of young woman his boss liked to fuck.

“Senator, this is Alex Murphy—the one I told you about,” Joe said, after drawing me away from a group of my colleagues in Senator Hathaway’s office.

The milling crowd at the reception thrown by the Joint Committee on Taxation seemed to fade into the background. Gowry looked me over in a way that should have sent me back across the room at once. He didn’t bother to hide it. His gaze went from my face to my breasts, to my waist, to my legs, and then back up again, cool and assessing, as though my friend had presented him with a dossier in a skirt.

“So this is the pretty one,” he said.

I ought to have bristled, especially when I felt myself blush, helplessly, at the strangely phrased semi-compliment. Instead I smiled, because I knew men like him liked smiles, and because I understood what kind of power Gowry had. Not formal power only, though he had plenty of that. The other kind, too. The kind that made people lean in when he spoke and lower their voices when they said his name.

“I hope that was a favorable briefing,” I said.

His mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “Depends what you’re here for.”

There was no graceful answer to that. Somehow that made me want to try to give one. “To meet people who matter.”

His eyes sharpened at once. “Honest. That’s refreshing.”

It wasn’t honest, though. I was there because Senator Hathaway’s staff had been told to show our faces, to be useful, to build connections. I was there because I needed, after the last few humiliating weeks in which everything I did seemed to displease the senator, to prove I could still be useful. If Senator Jason Gowry happened to take an interest in me, if I could draw something out of that interest and carry it back to Frances Hathaway like an offering, then maybe my stupidness in other respects would matter less.

My ‘friend’ murmured something about leaving us to talk and drifted away before I could decide whether to resent him or thank him.

Gowry lifted a hand toward the bar. “What are you drinking?”

I told him white wine. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. I swallowed hard. “You need a martini.”

He vanished and a moment later he had pressed a glass into my hand. I sipped, and coughed. Senator Gowry chuckled.

Then he steered me, not by touching me at first but by simple confidence, moving through knots of people until I found myself standing in a recessed corner near a marble pillar, half screened by a display of flowers and a banner for the committee. Anyone glancing over would have seen us talking and nothing more. He planted himself in front of me and took up the available space so naturally that I didn’t realize I had been pinned there until I thought of leaving and understood I would have to ask him to move.

“I hear you’re ambitious,” he said.

I chewed my lower lip involuntarily, then tried a flirty response though my heart rate had begun to speed up.

“People talk too much.”

“Hathaway keeps clever girls around until they become inconvenient. Have you figured that out yet? From what I hear it’s only a matter of time for you.”

That stung because it was close enough to true to feel intimate. “You seem to have heard a lot.”

“I hear about everything that might be useful.” Gowry drank, looking at me over the rim of his glass. “Are you useful, Alex?”

The chauvinism in that should have revolted me. It did, a little. It also thrilled me in some low humiliating way I didn’t want to inspect too closely, because he wasn’t pretending. Most men in this town wrapped their hunger in civility and strategic feminism. Gowry let his show.

I swallowed again, wondering whether I should try to continue this increasingly dangerous-feeling game.

“I suppose that depends on what use you have in mind, Senator.”

He laughed softly. “There you are.”

His attention was heavy and direct. I could feel heat gathering under my blouse, and not all of it was anger. Every instinct that had gotten me anywhere in politics told me that men who liked hearing themselves be obeyed also liked hearing themselves be flattered. So I let my tone go a little lighter, let my eyes stay on his for an instant too long, asked him about appropriations and trade language and a committee fight Hathaway wanted badly enough to hide how badly she wanted it. He answered, but only enough to show that he knew exactly what I was doing.