Chapter 1: Morning Rituals: Obedience and Indifference
The suite at the Burj Al Arab was a monument to excess, all gold leaf and cascading velvet, but the air in the main room hung thick and strange with the aftermath. Pip lay on the enormous bed, a small, ruined figure against sheets of sinful thread count. The room smelled of sex, of expensive perfume undercut by sharper, animal scents. Her body was a map of their attention—a constellation of faint bruises, stripes from careless grips, skin flushed and shimmering with drying fluids.
Doll and the Singaporean CEO, a severe-looking woman named Anya Lee who matched Doll’s height and predatory grace, stood near the floor-to-ceiling window, silhouetted against the nighttime sprawl of Dubai’s lights. They were dressed again, Anya in a sleek black dress, Doll having changed into a sharp silk robe. They each held a crystal tumbler of amber liquor, the ice cubes clicking softly.
“Your people still haven’t answered the patent question,” Doll said, her voice back to its boardroom crispness, as if the last two hours hadn’t happened.
“My people answer to me,” Anya replied, her accent clipping the words. “And I was… otherwise engaged. They’ll have it by dawn.”
A soft, satisfied hum was Doll’s only reply. She took a sip, her eyes scanning the city. “The little one held up better than I expected.”
Pip, hearing this, felt a weak flutter in her chest. She didn’t move. Every muscle protested. The memory was a violent, perfect kaleidoscope: the shock of being presented like a novelty at the gala, Doll’s cold fingers digging into her shoulder as she said to Anya, “She’s endlessly useful. We could wreck her.” The elevator ride up, a silent tension Pip had mistaken for terror until she recognized it as a wild, soaring hope. Then the collision of their two dominant bodies, a symphony of demands and degradations that had felt, to Pip, like liturgy.
Anya chuckled, a low, dry sound. “She is dedicated. The way she took it from both ends… impressive. Most would scream.”
“She doesn’t scream,” Doll said, and there was a faint, unfamiliar note in her voice. Not pride, exactly. More like the satisfaction of a speculator whose risky asset had just mooned. “She accepts.”
Pip’s heart hammered against her ribs. She accepts. It was the closest thing to an endearment Doll had ever offered. The aches, the burning stretch, the humiliation of being used as a vessel for their combined release, then the hot, marking streams they’d both painted her with as a final joke—all of it crystallized into a single, radiant point of meaning. She had been of service. She had been instrumental.
“Clean yourself up,” Doll’s voice cut across the room, not even looking at her. “You’re dripping on the linens. They’re Frette.”
The spell broke. Pip pushed herself up, her legs wobbling. She shuffled to the lavish marble bathroom, her reflection in the gold-rimmed mirror a shocking sight. Her simple dress was torn at the shoulder. Her hair was a wild tangle. Her face and torso were a painted canvas of their indifference. She looked thoroughly, completely owned.
A strange, wobbly smile touched her lips. She turned on the shower, steam billowing into the room.
Outside, the conversation continued, lower now. Pip strained to hear over the water.
“—valuation is still inflated,” Anya was saying.
“It’s aspirational,” Doll countered. “Like this hotel. The price is the point.”
A pause. Then Anya, her tone shifting, less business, more something else. “And the girl? Is she part of the valuation?”
Pip held her breath, water sluicing over her still-trembling skin.
“She’s off the books,” Doll replied after a moment, her voice final. “A private utility.”
Pip’s smile didn’t fade. A private utility. It was a fact. It was her title. She scrubbed her skin until it felt raw, washing away the physical evidence but letting the sensation imprint deeper. When she emerged, wrapped in a thick towel, the suite was quiet. Anya was gone.
Doll stood alone on the vast balcony, the desert wind pulling at her robe. The city glittered, cold and artificial below. Pip approached silently, standing just inside the threshold, waiting.
“The deal with Anya will go through,” Doll said, not turning. “She respects appetite. She saw mine.” She finally glanced back, her eyes traveling over Pip’s clean, scrubbed face, her damp hair. “Yours, too, in a way.”
“Thank you, Doll,” Pip whispered, the wind snatching the words.
Doll’s brow furrowed slightly, that almost-expression she got when something didn’t compute. “For what? You’re sore. You’re exhausted. You’ve been treated like a party favor.”
“For letting me be useful,” Pip said, and she meant it with every fractured piece of her heart.
Doll stared at her for a long, silent moment. The flicker was there again, behind the ice—a loneliness so profound and habitual it just looked like another shade of contempt. She turned back to the view.
“Order breakfast for tomorrow. Ketogenic. And make sure the car is downstairs at seven. Not seven-oh-one.”
“Yes, Doll.”
Pip retreated into the glow of the obscene suite. She pulled on a simple silk slip she found laid out—Doll must have called for it—and began to tidy the chaotic room. She picked up discarded clothing, straightened cushions, wiped a smudge from the minibar door. Each motion was a sacrament.
In the bedroom, she carefully stripped the stained sheets, folding them neatly for housekeeping. As she worked, she felt it again: that small, cold question from the jet, now sharper. It was everything. Wasn’t it?
She had been shared. She had been a conduit for a business deal. She had been praised for her endurance. The longing in her, the one that whispered for a touch that wasn’t a demand, for a word that wasn’t an instruction, yawned wide and empty.
She finished and stood in the center of the room, the city’s light painting her pale. Doll was still on the balcony, a solitary statue against the sky.
Pip climbed onto the freshly made bed, curling onto her side, facing the open balcony door. She would sleep, and tomorrow she would order the car and the ketogenic breakfast. She would be perfect.
The hunger, she decided, was just part of the service. She closed her eyes, the phantom sensations of the evening lulling her toward a dark, conflicted heaven.