Page 14 of Kept

We? A warm hand descended on my shoulder. I jerked, dropping my bag, and looked up at Professor Spears. He was as silent and cold as yesterday, but a dark fire had kindled in his eyes when he looked from the photographs to me. “Interesting way to choose to spend your first night here, Jane. Perhaps I should’ve taken you on as my assistant.”

He was no Superman now. His fingers tightened, holding me in my seat.

“You exist here at the beck and call of myself, Professor Spears, and Professor Harlow. When we want you, you come.” Thayer made the word sound filthy, as I was sure he intended to. “When we tell you to strip, you take off these rags without a word of complaint. When we tell you to drop, get on your knees. Every word from our mouths is a direct order, and your continued stay rests entirely on how well you’re willing to listen.”

My mouth had gone dry. “You’d let me stay?” I heard and processed his demands, filing them away for later while the most important detail was still at stake.

“You would stay, prove to uspersonallyhow hard you’re willing to work to overcome this obstacle, and graduate. These photographs will never see the light of day.”

I clutched the arms of the chair with white-knuckled fingers, my heart threatening to beat right through my chest. The strange urge to laugh hysterically almost overcame me.

Blackmail. This was sexual blackmail, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it if I wanted to achieve my dreams.

Professor Spears’s cool, clipped tone filled in for Thayer. “You have the evening to consider your options, Jane. Leave Bourdillon in disgrace as the scholarship student who couldn’t last a day… or prove yourself a good pet.”

The inhumanity of it ripped at me. Pet. Like a dog.

No, a mouse. But it wasn’t in a trap, it was cornered by three hungry cats, and the slow death promised to be much worse.

“Your first instruction is simple.” Thayer leaned over the desk and handed me a small white business card. The first side was blank, creamy white. The inverse was inscribed with a phone number in angry black strokes. I didn’t need to be a genius to know the number was likely attached to a burner phone. “Film a video of you touching yourself. Not a pathetic twenty-second clip, Miss Fawkes. A full video, with your fingers in your pussy until you come.”

The flush had spread from my face to the rest of me at his language, and god help me, but my nipples tightened to hard pebbles and heat swelled low in my stomach.

Ihatedthem. I hated them so much, but if everything I wanted was a video away…

I was dimly aware that sitting down, my face was on a level with Professor Spears’ crotch, and he was hard as a rock, a thick length laying against the inside of his thigh. With his tight grip on my shoulder, he was getting off on this, watching the beginning of my degradation. Hispet.

The heat didn’t abate but flared higher. Masochist was too kind a word for me.

“Send the video to that number by midnight. One minute past is too late, Miss Fawkes. Midnight.”

Professor Spears’ hand left my shoulder and I shot to my feet, feeling light-headed and clutching the card hard enough to bend it.

“If you fail to send it, don’t bother yourself to show up tomorrow.”

I rushed out of the office, swallowing gulps of air, the nickname ringing in my mind.

Pet.

* * *

I splashedcold water on my face in the bathroom, but there was no evidence to wash away.

I hadn’t cried.

I hadn’t locked myself in a stall to spit and curse alone until the rage left me.

I was a mouse.

And plain-Jane mice accepted what they got.

I dried my face, shouldered my messenger bag, and headed to the library. Professor Harlow’s classroom was dark as I passed, and even if he was there, I didn’t have the words yet to confront him. I mulled over their demands even while Mrs. Clarke admonished me for my tardiness to my first real shift and sent me off with a two-hundred-pound cart of books to shelve.

One by one, I put them in place like an automaton and straightened the rows with ruler-like neatness. Thayer wanted a video of my pussy, and even though I wanted to loathe him for that, there was a deeper, secretive part of me that was uncurling in satisfaction, wondering if I should wear my lace panties and take my sweet time getting to the finish line, giving him his blackmail’s worth. Wondering if he’d take his cock out as he watched it and stroke himself…

If he’d pass the video on to Spears. If Superman wasn’t so cold when he was jerking off to Plain Jane’s pussy.

I licked my lips, coming back to reality with a snap. I was holdingGone with the Wind.

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