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I shouldn’t like it when he talks like this. It’s repulsive. The demeaning and disgusting things he utters after injecting me with his sperm should make me recoil. It’s not just the words that make my breath hitch, though. It’s the knowledge that tomorrow we’re going to go to campus, and everyone is going to see the student–the scientist, the doctor, the genius. They’re going to see his straight posture and aloof eyes, and none of them are going to know what he looks like as he bends over me, whispering filth into my ear as his shoulder rolls with the motion of his wrist.

We’ve barely had two sessions together, and he already knows my body better than I do. How to manipulate it. How to make my belly swoop. How to turn my bones to liquid heat.

We’re seeing each other’s secrets.

“Wick knows it,” he says, so close that I can hear the slide of his tongue against his teeth. “That’s why he had you on your knees. Why he forced you to do it in front of us. You like being treated like our bitch, don’t you, Verity? Same reason you didn’t cry when I put that tracker behind your ear.” A lock of hair slides out of his ponytail, framing his face. The look of it softens his jaw even as it tenses. “Bark, Princess. Bark for me, and I’ll let you off this table.”

Truthfully, having the tracker inserted ten minutes ago was the least intrusive thing done to my body this week. It wasn’t even the most humiliating. In fact, it was quick and relatively painless. Not like the hours-long sex with Pace, or the multiple rounds with Wicker, including sucking him off in front of both of his brothers. Nor was it as humiliating as the gift Wicker had waiting for me at breakfast this morning; a bottle of scented lube, tucked neatly in a shiny gold box. And the tracker was quick–definitely a faster procedure than I’m experiencing right now. Legs up in the stirrups. Straps holding me down. Accepting that my body reacts to the terrible things these men do to me.

That’sthe worst part of all this. Feeling weak and pathetic as a man commands my body to—

I gasp, “Fuck!”and he pinches the other nipple, tugging it with a sharp yank. A jolt of endorphins runs from my tits to my clit, and I’m thrashing against the binds to chase it, body shuddering with my release. “Lex…” The sob of pleasure escapes me before I can stop it, and I can’t even bring myself to care. I want to curl up in a ball, beg for mercy, jump on his cock.

At the sound of his name, Lex falters. It’s barely a twitch, but my body is so magnetized to him that I sense it.

The next time he speaks, there’s a gruffness in his voice that wasn’t there before. “That’s right, Princess,” he says, fingers dropping through my folds. I cry out when two of them enter me, smooth and assured. “Let your body do the work.” His lips graze my earlobe as he speaks and I seize at the possibility he’ll cave. That he’ll climb up on this table and just do it already, taking me like his brothers would.

But as I ride his hand, the orgasm wanes, and I tilt my head and see him moving back, securing that lock of hair behind an ear. Aside from a touch of color on his cheeks, all traces of emotion are wiped off his expression, eyes shuttered as he mechanically snaps off the latex gloves.

I’m horrifically disappointed.

“That was better,” he says in a cool voice, tossing the gloves in the bin. “Expect to get finger-fucked next time, too. It’ll work my semen in deeper.”

“O-okay,” I stutter, blinking up at the bright lights. It says something about this whole situation that Lex, the man who squirts his cum into me with a syringe, is the best of the three. He might be a threat if he actually wanted me.

He clearly doesn’t.

As my breathing settles, he unbinds my arms. Like last time, I fully expect him to leave the room with instructions about allowing the sperm to swim upstream. But he doesn’t. Keeping my legs strapped in, Lex moves around the room with his quiet precision, and I start to worry there’s more. There are several instruments on the stainless table next to the bed. One is the empty injector that he used to inseminate me, but there’s also tubing, needles, tape, and vials.

Lex picks up a long strip of rubber and ties the tourniquet around my bicep. “Pump your fist.”

“What is this?” I ask, my center still throbbing with aftershocks.

He pushes at my inner elbow, checking veins. “Blood test.”

“Oh.”Of course. Princesses don’t pee on sticks. They get the earliest results possible.

There’s a shock of cold as he runs a sterile pad over the vein, and then he reaches over me for the needle and vial, giving me another waft of his scent. It’s clean and weirdly familiar, like antiseptic and the smell of man.

I turn my head as he sticks the needle into my flesh; the prick bringing tears to my eyes. For all the blood I’ve seen shed at the gym, it still makes my stomach squeamish when it’s coming from inside my body.

“I’m done,” he says, and I look over just in time to see him dispose of the needle. “Hold this down.”

It’s a cotton ball. I press it against the crook of my elbow as he takes the crimson-filled vial over to the counter, setting it inside a slotted container. He returns with a Band-Aid and adheres it over the cotton.

“How long until we get the results?”

“A few days.” Expressionlessly, he finally loosens the rest of my binds, freeing me from the bed.

I lower my legs, stretching my knees, asking, “So, then we’ll—” But he’s gone. Out the door. No instructions this time, just a quick departure.

Deposit made.

Sighing, I take the pillow beneath my head and cram it under my lower back, tilting my hips up to keep the semen inside. The only way out is through, and the sooner I’m pregnant, the sooner I’ll get some of that leverage Wicker had been so threatened by during the negotiations.

A few days. That’s all it’ll take to know. If I’m pregnant, the horror show is over. If I’m not, I have another cycle of this. Of them.

A wave of emotion rolls over me at the thought, and I press my palms to my flat belly, sending a prayer up to anyone who’ll listen.