Page 4 of Shamefully Trained

I watched Senator Hathaway look around at her leisure, her face manifesting a sort of detached curiosity. My folded blouse and skirt. My underwear near one of the visitor chairs. Gowry’s belt, over the edge of the desk as if it belonged there. Me, naked and red and humiliated past speech. Him, immaculate except for the fact that he was fucking me.

Her expression didn’t change very much as she contemplated it all. That was somehow the worst part.

Gowry withdrew with a lazy, unhurried motion that made me gasp and clutch at the desk. “Frances,” he said, as if she had interrupted a budget meeting.

“Jason.” Her voice sounded cool enough to frost glass.

I snatched one hand off the desk and reached stupidly for my hair, as though my hair was the relevant thing, as though if I could pull it back and tie it, I might become less naked. I could feel wetness on my thighs. I could feel the sting across my ass where he had whipped me. I could feel every beat of my pulse between my legs, traitorous and hot. I wanted the floor to open under me.

“Get your clothes on, Alexandra,” Hathaway said.

Not Alex. Alexandra. That made it worse too.

I pushed myself upright too fast and nearly stumbled. Gowry caught my arm before I could fall, his fingers hard and proprietary, and I jerked away from him hard enough that he smiled.

“She’s useful,” he said to Hathaway, as if I weren’t there. “Ambitious. Trainable enough, with work.”

My throat tightened so strongly in embarrassment I thought I might actually faint from lack of air. I bent and grabbed for my bra with shaking fingers, then my panties, then my skirt and blouse. My body would not obey me properly. I got one foot tangled, swore under my breath, and heard Gowry chuckle.

Hathaway stepped inside and shut the door behind her. The click of the latch sounded final.

I managed to shrug my blouse on and fasten a few buttons, all of them in wrong buttonholes. My bra remained in my hand. My underwear I could not bear to put on, not in front of them, not with the wetness still there, so I balled it into my fist like evidence. My knees hurt. My mouth hurt. I could still taste him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because there was nothing else to say.

Hathaway looked at me for a long second. “Are you?”

That hit hard. I felt my nose working, on its own, trying to hold back my tears.

“I didn’t—” I began, and then stopped, because whatever came next would be either a lie or pathetic.

Gowry had already put himself to rights. He looked perfectly composed, one hand adjusting a cuff. “She came upstairs willingly,” he said in an offhanded way.

“I assumed as much,” Hathaway said.

Part of my mind thought I should have found some comfort in the idea that she thought me capable of making my own potentially terrible decisions about my body. Instead it made me feel more naked than I already was.

“I was trying to talk to him,” I said. My voice came out thin and breathless. “For you. For the appropriations piece, and because you said that he—” I stopped again. Excuses sounded especially vile in that room.

“For me,” Hathaway repeated.

I looked at her then, really looked, because there was no point in hiding. Her face had that polished stillness it got when she was furious enough not to show it. I had seen staffers reduced to tears by that expression alone. I had admired it. I had wanted to learn how to do it.

Now I was the one standing in front of it with no underwear on.

Gowry moved to the sideboard and poured himself water. “Your girl wanted to be noticed.”

My whole body locked.

I wasn’t her girl. I wasn’t anybody’s girl. But I had come to her first as a student intern and then as a legislative aide. Useful. Promising. A young woman who could be brought along if she understood how power worked.

I had apparently decided to get a practical demonstration.

“She isn’t my girl,” Hathaway said. “She’s probably not even my aide anymore.”

Something in my stomach seemed to drop through the floor.

“Ah,” Gowry said, his face taking on a look of mock pity so disgusting I almost lost my composure and burst into tears. “Too bad.”