The Collector | 18+

【29】Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

Once I was done with all my calls, nearly an hour had gone by already. So, to make up for lost time, I jumped right into work. With my tablet, I went over everything and photographed the cases and what lay within, with as many details as I could. After I'd photographed everything, I headed to the reserve, where a desk had been set up for me. I did my best to ignore the counter Mr. Westergaard had trapped me against the evening before, dismissing the warmth that spread in me as memories flashed in my head, and settled on the desk. I plugged in my computer, set up my tablet, and took out a notepad and a pen.

I was done preparing my working space when my eyes drifted to the other side of the room. I'd tried to open it the day before, curious to see what was behind it, only to find it locked. I might have thought nothing of it, since it wasn't that strange to have a locked door, but between his reaction and the fact that nothing else was as protected as whatever was in there, I suspected it hosted more than "the usual mess of a house."

Even the glass cases in the gallery didn't have any sort of bolt, and everything in here was free to access. But for some reason, the messy stuff got locked? No, there was something else in there. But what?

Because suspense was eating me from within, I rose from my chair and went to check if the door was still locked. To my disappointment, it was, so I stared at it for a brief moment, trying to figure out what might be in there. Was it another kind of collection? One more taboo, one he didn't want me to know about? Was it his sex dungeon or something kinky like that? Or maybe something embarrassing, like a massive collection of creepy dolls that he wanted to keep secret?

Deciding I'd wasted enough time as it was, I abandoned the door and the mystery kept behind it, and returned to the desk. I spent the next few hours going over the photographs I'd taken in the gallery and organizing them on an online sheet, adding extensive notes along with the pictures. Some things were easy to identify, their material, century of origin, functions... But some stuff was proving harder to figure out. If my work group wasn't of any help with those, I'd ask Mr. Westergaard.

Since he never came down there to check on me or make sure I wasn't destroying anything, I assumed my theory upon seeing him had been right. He must have left the house to attend some meeting somewhere, leaving me alone with Yuko. That knowledge allowed me to relax a little, and I eventually stopped jumping at every sound I heard. If something happened like the day before, only God knew if I'd have the strength to refuse his advances again. Gigi's theory that I needed a man in the flesh and not a sex toy was right, and unluckily for me, I couldn't remember anything of the stranger I'd welcomed in my bed mere days ago. That meant I was longing for the real thing, starving for his body to wreck mine until I passed out from exhaustion and too much pleasure.

I was so absorbed and lost in it that it felt like only half an hour had gone by when the lunch bell chimed, four hours after I'd gone down there. I'd cataloged maybe a third of the gallery's items, and my estimations on a few of them had yet to be confirmed by Ian.

As soon as I finished writing down my theories for the piece I was working on, I left everything but my phone behind and climbed up the stairs. I could smell whatever Yuko had prepared all the way from the gallery, and my mouth began salivating. Just as I reached the main floor, the door to Mr. Westergaard's office opened.

I halted where I stood, my gaze darting to it. He was coming out of it, still dressed like a proper—and edible—businessman of high means. Did he honestly dress that well, even for this? When I'd worked from home during the Covid confinements, I hadn't bothered getting out of my pajamas on most days, slipping on a suitable top whenever we had a video call planned. He was, indeed, a very disciplined man, wasn't he? This impeccable house, his attire, his workout routine... Everything about him screamed rigor and control.