Page 13 of Never Broken

Shoulders as broad as a football player's were barely contained beneath a thin gray T-shirt that grazed veiny biceps, flat abs, and narrow hips: not massive, not burly, just perfectly and beautifully proportioned; the archetypal masculine shape. I wouldn’t dare look any lower than his waist—yet—but the thought was there. And I was already blushing, because, oh yes, it was there.

Well, it may be a body an athlete would envy, and yet I knew it hadn’t come from any gym. Corey may have had the prestigious internship, but this was a boy—young man, really—who knew what work was. And, I realized with a sinking feeling, given the bruises and electrical burns marring his face and neck, he apparently knew what punishment was, too.

But surely he must have done something to deserve it.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” Yeah, I could have come up with something more intelligent to say, but my brain wasn’t exactly my number one concern at that moment. Something lower down was. Needless to say, the faucet wasn’t the only thing in here that was gushing.

And he wasn’t evendone. Whathappened next just about shattered me. His eyes—that foxy shape, that fiery shade somewhere between amber and gold, that boldness to confoundme and a sadness to break my heart—actually lowered for a split second as if his slave training had suddenly kicked in. But he raised them again, however, and formed his full lips into a half-smile—and suddenly, there was the charming, infuriating sexual deviant I’d spent last night sparring with, in the flesh. “Still want that coffee, miss?” he asked mischievously in that rich, slow, lilting accent, the sharp T just ever-so-vaguely New European. “Or was it a massage? I forgot.”

There was no denying it now; no hoping that it was all some bizarre prank or a dream. The proof was right there on his wrist, etched into a metal ID tag on a chain. My mystery guy—the one responsible for my waking up shamelessly wet this morning, unable to function until I reached down to finger the unexpected slickness of my private parts and purr like a tigress at the memory of his voice—was indeed a slave. A shockingly beautiful one, at that. Well, shit. He was a slave, and he had touched me and hadn’t apologized, and now he was standing there, staring me right in the eyes. Had o-chem broken my brain? What was I thinking, letting him get away with that?

“Eyes on the floor, boy,” I said in the most commanding voice I could muster up. That was more like it. I glanced down at the bathtub. “And what were you doing in here, anyway?”

Instead of answering, he extended one long arm, his taut, sinewy muscles flexing beneath his skin in ways that didn’t even seem anatomically possible. He pointed to the book in my hand. “Malchow,” he said. “My condolences.”

“Huh?” I’d been mesmerized by his lips. The last thing in the world I’d expected to come out of them was the name of the author of my o-chem book.

“I can’t stand that pretentious fuck,” he continued. “I swear he must have gotten paid by the word to write that. Hey, guys, why use one page to explain something when we can use ten?”

My mouth went dry. “You—you can read.”

“Yes.” A trace of a smile, an impudent one at that, which was all the more amazing given his eyes were still lowered obediently, though he was still clearly taking in everything as easily as if he’d been straight-up staring.

“And write.”

“Yes.” He was clearly amused at my shock, which was more than a bit annoying. Still, I kept going. I was too in awe to stop.

“And—and do chemistry?”

“And calculus, physics, and engineering. If I were free, I’d be a certified nerd,” he said. “And probably rich, too. But who’s complaining?”

And I thought I’d been blown away last night. Still, a slave was a slave. And I hadn’t yet called him out on it.

“You touched me.”

He shrugged.Shrugged.Slaves didn’t?—

“You going to whip me?”

“I—” His response was correct, logical, and clearly meant to infuriate me. And it was working, of course.

“Ah, I see you’ve met.”

Daddy.

Just like that, the boy’s eyes met mine again. One glance said it all, and even though we hadn’t technically been doing anything improper, we both immediately put several feet of distance between us. But onlyhelooked at the floor.

“I’m sorry, Loulou, I brought him home yesterday while you were in class. I’d hoped to introduce you properly, but I see you’ve already done that yourself.”

Daddy looked from me to his slave boy and back again, with the same question on his lips I’d had when I’d entered. And for some reason, I wondered what the boy was thinking as he studied the bathroom tile—even though slaves weren’t supposed to think anything, and even if they did, I wasn’t supposed to care what it was.

“However, is there any particular reason you were both in the bathroom?” Daddy asked neutrally. Though he clearly expected a good answer. “Loulou?”

“Uh—” I could actually see the muscles in the back of the slave boy’s neck tense in anticipation of whether I was about to have him punished—from the looks of it, for the second time in as many days. And I should. After all, he’d dodged my question about why he’d been running the bath, suggesting that his reasons, whatever they were, were less than pure. Not to mention his behavior had been shockingly inappropriate throughout pretty much our entire interaction.

And yet the last thing I wanted at that moment was for Daddy to know about any of it.

“I-I asked him to listen to the showerhead,” I blurted out. “It was making a funny noise.” It wasn’t a lie. Well, most of it wasn’t.

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