Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Aiden walks in the front door holding a basket-style dog carrier that is vibrating with rage. My heart leaps.
“I don’t know if this is what you wanted,” he says. “And I don’t know that I should give it to you, because frankly it seems dangerous, but…” He sets the carrier down and opens the top.
Ethel comes out of the basket like a little tan bat out of hell, heading straight to me with her tail tucked and her ears down. I crouch down to pick her up, going onto my knees to let her wriggle against me in that way dogs do when they’re happy. It’s like she wants to burrow right under my skin.
Once she gets in my lap, everything changes. As Aiden approaches, Ethel stands bolt upright and starts screaming at the top of her lungs, teeth flashing, eyes bulging with fury.
Aiden
“What the hell is going on?”
Leo comes out to investigate the sound. He has to know what a small dog sounded like, so the question is redundant. Underneath it all, he just wants to see the puppy.
Unfortunately, the puppy is gray around the muzzle and is basically threatening to shank us all.
“I love her,” Ella says, grinning ear to ear while the creature continues to unleash that unholy cacophony. “I wish I could do this. Just bite people and scream at them and then demand a bed with a heating pad.”
“Of course you do,” Leo says, rolling his eyes. “Are we really going to live with an animal in the house? It’s probably not even trained.”
“She is trained! Sort of! Little dogs are hard to convince! They enjoy peeing recreationally.”
“Everything can be trained,” I say soothingly.
“I’m going to take her out to potty now,” Ella says. “And then we’re going to go for a walk and I am going to buy her some food and some toys and probably some sweaters.”
I pull a credit card out of my wallet and hand it to her. “Get whatever you like,” I tell her.
Another Rubicon is crossed with that gesture. I am letting her go out. I am giving her a chance at freedom. I am showing trust. After several weeks of sexual domination, treating her like she is an animal under my care, I let her experience her full humanity again.
“Really?” Her eyes widen. “Why are you being so nice?”
“It’s not the dog’s fault it was owned by a bad man,” I say. “Go on.”
Ella scoots out of the house without saying another word to me, almost as if she’s afraid I’m going to change my mind.
“So you’re spoiling her now. Sugar daddy,” Leo says, giving me a judgmental look.
“When you take someone prisoner, you have to take care of them,” I say. “And Ella deserves to have some means of getting around.”
“You’re going to follow her via her transactions, aren’t you.”
“Absolutely I am,” I say.
Leo snorts. “I thought you were getting soft, but you’re just giving her enough rope to hang herself, aren’t you.”
“I want to know what she’s going to do.”
“I can tell you what she’s going to do. She’s going to do what she was trained to do, which is make men like you and Teddy think she’s an adorable girl who just needs a chance. She’s not innocent. Not in any way. We might have killed BP, but she’s part of it. All of it.”
“What do you want to do with her, Leo?”
“I think she should be in that cage unless she’s having her pussy spanked, or fucked, or whatever we want to do to her. I think letting her walk around in the world makes us as dumb as can be. We lost Teddy. It’s time to tighten up.”
“I respect your opinion,” I say.
“I’d rather you just told me to go fuck myself,” he says. “I fucking hate it when you use your diplomat voice on me.”
He may not be happy about this turn of events, but Ella definitely is. She comes home a few hours later, not having tried to run away with my credit card at all. She goes upstairs with the small hound and when Leo, Luke, and I go to find her, we discover her asleep in the dog bed in her cage, cuddled up with the tiny dog who occasionally shifts and stretches, pushing its little feet against her while its tongue lolls out of its mouth.
“It’s such a silly creature,” Leo says. “What’s the point of it?”
“This,” Luke says. “This is what they’re bred for. To be companions. It’s doing more to fulfill its purpose on Earth than you are.”
Leo shoots him a venomous look.
“We did a good thing,” Leo says. “In taking her in and protecting her. She could have been like the others, destroyed in the raid.”
He’s not talking about just the dog.
“We did the right thing,” Luke agrees.