Page 17 of Crushed

“Did he scare you from trying to talk to anyone else?” Teagen asked.

I suppose if it had been a real job, if I really were an entertainment server, I would have been discouraged by the way Cormac had acted. He had been cold, but he had also given me his number and offered to get me any prescription drug I wanted. If he truly didn’t like me, he probably wouldn’t have extended that offer.

“He wasn’t the friendliest person I could have spoken to,” I said. “But why? Do you guys know him?”

“Oh yeah,” Teagen said. She ate another bite of eggs, finished chewing, then said, “He’s been coming here for ages. Used to come with his wife.”

That was interesting. I knew he had a dead wife, but not much else.

“And you?” I asked Iris.

“He’s pretty into the whole master-slave thing and wants a server for a slave. Not my usual arrangement.”

“A master-slave thing?”

“You know. Handcuffs. Floggers. All of that,” Iris said.

“But more like collars, chains, and your biggest nightmares,” Teagen said.

“I would probably stay away from him,” Iris said. “At least until you can figure out how to navigate the club’s waters a little better.” Well, that was going to be hard to do, seeing as I was there to talk to him, and him alone.

“Really?” I asked.

“He has a reputation,” Iris said.

“And you’ve seen him in action?” I asked.

“I have,” Teagen said, raising a hand.

“He likes total control. And I mean,totalcontrol. He obsesses over it. And obsesses over any potential slave,” Iris said.

“Isn’t ‘robot’ a better word?” Teagen said.

“Maybe,” Iris shrugged. “He doesn’t care what you want. Only that he finds your limits and pushes them, more than you’re ready to deal with.”

That seemed dramatic. “And you’ve seen him do this?” I asked.

“I have,” Teagen perked up again. “He made me cry once. I won’t go to the Terrariums with him anymore.”

“That’s crazy,” I said. “Who would actually enjoy making people cry?”

“Someone like Cormac,” Iris muttered.

I wrinkled my brow. “Shouldn’t he get kicked out for something like that?”

“Well,” Iris sighed, “Technically, he hasn’t broken any rules or terms with the servers. He just helps the servers find new boundaries that they had no idea existed within themselves in the first place.”

So it was a shadow you could get lost inside of. A place where you could never tell what was going to bother you.

“Did he stop after you started crying?” I asked Teagen.

“Eventually,” she said.

I turned to Iris. “Have you—” I couldn’t find the right word, gesturing between us. “Have you—”

“Entertained him?” Iris asked.

“Yes, that.”