The Dollhouse Society Volume I: Evelyn (Includes Indecent Proposal, Dreams in Black & White, Playing House, Freeze Frame, plus a bonus story!) Read Online Free

sharing her with anyone else, and that includes husbands or boyfriends. For another, she will have certain duties to perform…”
    “I’m sure,” I said drolly.
    He continued on, undaunted. “…including acting as my escort at certain public functions, a confidante and companion at home, and, of course, my most trusted friend. We would trust each other implicitly. I have certain expectation of her, of course.” He paused to let that sink in. “I expect my courtesan to be well heeled, intelligent, and to engage me in interesting conversation. I expect her to be strong and confident, but to also know her place. The position is not without compensation, of course.” He sharpened his look at me as if he were x-raying me with his eyes, seeing past the layers of my clothing and skin and observing something inside of me, something that squirmed. “I’ve seen the books you read, Evelyn. Alexandre Dumas, George Eliot. I’ve heard you speak on the phone. I’ve read your resume.” Again he touched the file folder and my godawful resume picture as if these things were very important to him. “I know you’re an intelligent woman.”
    I sat there, blinking at Mr. Sterling like a person gone blind. “I’m sure you can hire a lot of girls for the things you want, Mr. Sterling…”
    “I don’t want ‘a lot of girls,’” he answered tersely. He sounded vaguely annoyed by my suggestion. “And I don’t want just any girl. I want the girl. I want an intelligent girl. And I want a virgin.”
    “And you always get what you want, right?”
    He indicated the whole of the office with a flick of his hand as if to say What do you think?
    “Why me? And why a virgin?” I asked. I was very interested in knowing what kind of obsessive hunger Mr. Sterling had for virgins. Call it morbid curiosity.
    Mr. Sterling rose slowly from his seat once more and came around the glass desk until he was standing right in front of me. He leaned down and put his hands on the armrests of my chair, boxing me in. His heat engulfed me. “I want her unattached…untouched. I want to be her first. I want to be the first man to touch her inside. I want a virgin,” he said, as if his request was all very sensible, as if his word were law.
    I had stopped breathing. I sat there, suffering his presence. “Perhaps I’m not.”
    “Perhaps you are.”
    “Most women my age aren’t, you know.”
    “Are you most women, Evelyn?” he asked, glaring at me searchingly through the reflective lenses of his glasses. “Are you untouched?”
    “I’m…” I stopped. I decided I didn’t want to have this conversation with him, or with anyone. The surge of anger I’d felt earlier was ebbing away, replaced by a strange, abiding sadness. It was none of his business what my nonexistent sex life was like!
    He narrowed his eyes and licked his lips again like a cat in human form. It was a decidedly lascivious gesture, and he meant it that way. “All you need to do is say no, Evelyn, and this interview is over. Then you can go back downstairs to the pool and your little job and never worry about this again.” He said the pool like it was a dirty word, like it was beneath him, and me.
    I sat in silence for a long time. I looked at him and worked at not shivering or cowering under his almost reptilian gaze. I’d always been a sensible girl, a good girl, and what he was proposing was ludicrous. It was old-fashioned, autocratic. It was indecent. Immoral. So why wasn’t I leaving? Why wasn’t I telling him to go to hell?
    “Yes,” he said after a short while, “or no, Ms. Christopoulos?”
    We were back to formalities.
    I kept wanting to say the word, to say no , to shout it in his face, but after a lengthy silence, I felt him move closer to me. He smiled in a vaguely wicked way and lowered his head so he was actually scenting the front of my body, not touching, but making me quiver inside anyway. I had no doubts about what he was scenting. He knew how wet I was