Girl, Modified

Chapter 7: The Meeting

Rafael settled down against the plush velvet couch in Tori's vault, as the two women knelt before him, a leash sloping from each of their collars. Eli looked on, trying not to feel either awkward or indignant that his partner now held both women who had been promised to him.

His wife, starlit eyes and dark hair trailing down her back, and his tenth specimen, pale in every way that his wife was not. He knew those cerulean irises, because he had watched them drown in pleasure as she had swallowed his cock in the clinic. A perfect blonde fuckdoll.

Eli tried not to ruminate on what Rafael had said to him during the auction.

She's yours.

Two small words, but now in some discordance, as he watched Rafael twirl the handle of each leash around his wrist, slowly drawing each empty-eyed woman closer to him.

Eli shifted in his seat, both desperately wanting to not watch Rafael's small power plays, and somehow unable to look away. The remnants of his shattered love for Victoria — Tori, he reminded himself, although he wasn't quite sure why it was important to use her new nickname — sliced along the inside of his veins. Something like desire and possession for Ten skirted along the edges of his awareness.

Desire, possession. Loss.

And then there was the problem of the money. Rafael's money.

Again.

Eli cursed himself for repeating this mistake, again. He should have known better. But as he had sat at the auction, it was like he couldn't say no. He knew it was the drug. It had been in the air in the hallway down to the vault, so the very act of breathing brought him under Rafael's insidious control. It made him wonder how many other places Rafael had set up to deliver unknowing tiny doses.

Had it been in his clinic? Outside the auction room?

He didn't know much about the layout of this compound, and that lack of knowledge weighed on him. Like so many other things.

He took a deep breath, and wondered at the wisdom of that, halfway through.

Rafael's dark eyes looked at him, drank him in. It was like the man could read his thoughts, and maybe he could. Maybe, after all this time, and everything that had happened – maybe he really could.

"Eli, you look distressed, my friend." Rafael's voice dripped venom, even when the words themselves were innocuous. "How can you be anything but pleased, with two perfect sex toys kneeling here?"

He wanted to tell the other man to go fuck himself, that his wife wasn't some sex toy. But Rafael's words seemed to dig into the crevices of his mind, the truth of them seeping into the anxious, aching cracks of his consciousness.

He took another breath. Of course he was pleased. Some niggling worry evaporated. He looked at the two women, and then back to Rafael, feeling some tension in his shoulders, ease.

Of course he was pleased. The women were both beautiful, doe-eyed, docile, and submissive.

Even now, he tried to remember his wife as the ice princess he once knew, and he could not reconcile it with the look of sheer adoration on her face, as she looked up at Rafael. It was like that memory of her, in his mind, wasn't real. He began to question if he had just imagined it

Had he imagined it?

Uncertainty crawled through his thoughts, and he swallowed dryly.

The chains went slack between Rafael's hand and the two eager women. "Tori, darling. Stand up. Show the new toy the correct position."