“Five children from the same mother and father?”
“Yes,” I said, having forgotten they’d looked at my file. It was a strange thing for him to remember. He was sweet, unlike Bron.
No doubt the only part of my file that had interested Bron had been how I’d reacted to the initial medical. The first time I’d gone, I hadn’t realized there’d be a video of it that served as an audition. I thought about the men—a different pair each time I’d been assessed. Hopefully, they were all rotting in hell instead of putting new girls through their paces. I knew the job needed doing, but it took a special kind of sadist to surprise a girl like that and pit her desperation for a scholarship against her common sense.
If it hadn’t been for my stupid ankle, I could have gotten a full scholarship instead of doing this kind of work. Even so, that wouldn’t have helped my siblings—not when they were all so close to my age. I could have gone to college, but then what about them? They would have been stuck working at our parents’ general store for eternity.
“Would you like to come downstairs and watch a movie with me?”
“Are they newer than these ones? These are so old I always think an ad for an adjustable bed is going to play, or that the swears will be bleeped out.”
He looked at me blankly. “I haven’t seen many commercials, so I’m not sure what you mean, but the movies down there are newer than these.”
“Give me a sec.” I stripped off the robe and didn’t miss the way his eyes widened at my nudity.
He turned his back to me, but not before he had scanned me from head to toe.
“I would have waited outside your door.”
“I’m sure you saw me naked on the Island, and you saw me naked in the audition videos and the pictures in my file.” I opened a drawer and grabbed a clean nightgown and some thick socks.
“I didn’t look!” he objected.
“Why? Am I not your type?”
He made a sound of distress, and it was hard not to laugh.
“You are…” He made some frantic gestures, still not looking at me as I pulled on the nightgown and sat on the bed to put on the socks. “Very, very beautiful.” He rattled off some words in Russian that had me giggling to myself.
“Are you going to write me poetry, too?” I asked innocently.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you like poetry?”
The door burst open and Bron stormed in. Ilya jumped, and I swore creatively enough to make a sailor blush and possibly get excommunicated from a religion I didn’t belong to.
Bron was in a towering rage, his eyes flashing with malice.
“What the fuck are you two doing?”
“Ilya is giving me privacy while I put on socks,” I said caustically. “You should avert your eyes, too. You might see my ankles.”
Bron’s gaze went to the robe on the bed, but as far as he knew, it had been there for days.
“Why are you up here, suka?”
“I asked her if she wanted to watch a movie with me.”
He stalked into the room, and Ilya backed away, his eyes huge—afraid and maybe also aroused. Damn, I knew that feeling. I’d seen this dynamic a billion times between men and women, but it was different seeing it between two men. Ilya was big enough to hold his own against Bronislav, but the way he averted his gaze and ducked his head spoke of a deeply rooted submission. Was he submissive by nature, or had Bron just trained him well?
Bron had moved in when Ilya was only eighteen, and from the way this place was, I assumed he’d always been relatively sheltered. He would have had no way to stand up to Bron’s bullying if his caregivers hadn’t raised him to stick up for himself.
I adjusted my second sock, wondering if I should intervene.
Bron’s harsh Russian tirade felt out of place in this room, like arguing in a mausoleum.
Cranky now, I strode up behind Bron, who now had Ilya cornered, his hand on the submissive man’s throat. I tapped Bron on the shoulder.
“What?” he snapped, pausing his rant.
“If you’re going to do this in my room, at least do it in English so it’s not as boring for me.”
Bron let go of Ilya, who had a reddened grab mark on his neck—and a telltale bulge in his pants.
“Nosy little bitch.”
“You came into my space. I have every right to be nosy. What’s wrong with him asking me to watch a movie?”
“I thought I told the two of you to stay away from each other if I wasn’t around.”
“You told us no fooling around. Watching a movie isn’t the same thing.”
He paced between us like a father who’d caught his virginal daughter making out with the high school quarterback. In this scenario, I wasn’t confident about which of us was the virginal daughter, but I was pretty sure it was Ilya.
“Ilya is not supposed to moon after you like this, like a stupid puppy—kissing you and asking you on a date. He needs to be a man!”
“What does that even mean? There’s nothing wrong with kissing. Wanting to spend time with someone outside of having sex with them isn’t being weak. It’s lonely here. He was being polite and checking on me.”
“Don’t coddle him! He needs to be tough, not sighing over the thought of holding your hand.”
“And jamming your cock up his ass is supposed to make him tough?”
His jaw worked, looking like granite under his beard.
“Tell anyone about that, and we’ll all be dead—us for doing it, and you for knowing.”
Shocked, I made a sound of disbelief, but when I looked at Ilya, his eyes said Bron was serious.
”Is it that illegal here?”
“Forget the law. Vas would kill us.” He mimed a gun with his hand, and I flinched when he put his finger against his head and pulled the imaginary trigger.
Oh god—how was that level of homophobia still a thing? Would Vas really kill them rather than have a bisexual son?
“Even if Vas were to spare you, which I doubt he would, you wouldn’t get paid. Maybe he would keep you and use you in one of his clubs. Maybe cut out your tongue.”
I shuddered. “Point made.”
“It’s why you’re here. We need to make him harder.”
Bron seemed to make Ilya plenty hard, but it was probably a bad time to point that out.
“Come here.” He beckoned to me with one hand.
Warily, I went.
“Kneel at his feet.”