Page 31 of UnTrained: Volume One
The truth is, I am using her. Every command, every moment I slip into that dominant headspace she responds to—it's calculated to get results. But somewhere along the way, the calculation became something more. Something I don't want to name.
I take a sip of the bitter coffee and grimace. When did I start caring whether she trusted me beyond what was necessary for the mission? When did her pain become something I wanted to heal rather than just work around?
The door opens and Alex walks in, looking tired. He glances at me, then at the coffee pot.
"How did it go?" he asks, pouring himself a cup.
"She remembered," I say simply. "Her name is Lana. She was a teacher. Third grade."
Alex nods, settling into a chair across from me. "That's good. What else?"
I tell him about the club, the fake auction, the drugging. With each detail, his expression grows darker. By the time I finish, his jaw is clenched tight.
"Jesus Christ," he mutters. "They're using legitimate kink venues as hunting grounds."
"Looks like it." I drain my coffee cup, the caffeine doing nothing to clear the fog in my head. "She blames herself for what happened. Thinks she deserved it because she wanted to explore submission."
"Classic victim response," Alex says, but there's something in his tone that makes me look up sharply.
"What?" I ask.
He shrugs, turning his coffee cup between his hands. "Nothing. Just... this is getting complicated, isn't it?"
I narrow my eyes at him. "What do you mean?"
"I saw how you looked at her during the examination, Aiden." His voice is neutral, but I don’t miss what he’s saying. "I know that look."
"There's no look," I snap, more defensively than I intended. "I'm doing my job."
Alex raises his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm not judging. Just saying maybe, you should be careful. Getting emotionally invested in a subject can cloud judgment."
His words hit closer to home than I want to admit. I stand abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. "I know what I'm doing."
"Do you?" Alex's voice follows me to the door. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're getting attached."
I don't answer him. Can't, because he might be right.
I walk back toward Lana's room, my footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. Through the small window in her door, I can see her sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest. She looks so small, so fragile. Nothing like the broken slave I first met in that warehouse.
She's becoming real to me. Not just a source of information or a mission objective, but a person. A woman who taught children, who had a cat named Mochi, who went to a club because she wascurious about something that should have been beautiful and consensual.
I press my palm against the door frame, watching her through the glass. The way she sits there, so still and quiet, makes my chest tight with something I don't want to examine too closely.
Alex is right. I am getting attached.
I should walk away, hand her case over to someone else. Someone who can maintain professional distance, who won't lose sleep thinking about the way her voice broke when she said my name.
But I can't. The thought of another man questioning her, touching her, using the dominance she responds to. It makes anger flare hot in my gut. Possessive anger that has no place in this situation.
I turn away from the door before I do something stupid like go back in there. Instead, I head to my office to write up my report. Cold, clinical facts about what she's revealed. Nothing about the way her eyes looked when she finally said her name, or how her body trembled when I praised her.
Nothing about how much I want to show her the difference between what those monsters did to her and what real dominance should feel like.
22
LANA
Iwake to the sound of the door opening. My body tenses automatically, months of conditioning kicking in before my mind fully surfaces from sleep. I sit up quickly, pushing tangled hair from my face as I try to orient myself.
