The Dark Library (4 page)

She stared at him in disbelief. “You want to
double my salary because...”

“Oh don't be absurd,” he said with a sniff of
disdain. “I double the salaries of everyone who works directly with
me. It's because I'm a right bastard to work for, you see. I
realize it. I acknowledge it. I can be arrogant, overbearing,
insulting, bullying and disrespectful – frequently. That leaves me
with two choices with regard to those employees who come in
frequent contact with me. Either I must routinely hire new people
to replace the ones who quit in outrage, or I pay higher salaries
to compensate people for putting up with me.”

“Or you could just modify your behavior and
act more respectfully,” she growled, staring at the floor.

“Out of the question! I act the way I want to
act and to hell with anyone who doesn't approve. At least you'll
know when I say something good, Miss Quinn, it's honesty and not
mealy mouthed politeness.”

He got up and headed for the door. “Dinner is
at five,” he said. “You can pick up your meal and bring it back
here if you're too ashamed to eat downstairs. And oh by the way,
there's an instruction manual for the electronics in the night
table.”

He paused at the head of the stairs, reached
down, and picked up the bottle she'd flung against the wall, which
had rolled out into the open. He raised his eyebrows at her as her
face flooded with heat again, then tossed it underhand onto the bed
before descending the stairs.

Hannah glared after him. Bastard!

She got up and began to pace rapidly back and
forth, trying to decide what to do. Unfortunately, as he'd pointed
out, she had few options, none palatable. Running back home and
abandoning the job because he'd accidentally seen her masturbating
- with that bottle buried in your pussy, she thought with a groan –
was just not on.

She would just have to face him. She had
already faced him, after all, and hadn't died. And how much time
was he going to spend around her anyway, with all his boasts about
the thousands who worked for him? He must have far more important
things on his hands.

She went to the bed and sat down, glaring at
the bottle hatefully. She was still horribly embarrassed, blushing
right down to her chest, but what else could she do but stay on!?
And double the salary? If he was serious about that it would
certainly help her out a lot!

Her mind was resisting, with little success,
painting mental images of what he must have seen. God! He had seen
everything! Had heard everything! How could she not flee!? How
could she stand such humiliation!?

She used the remote control to force the TV
to descend back into its cabinet. At least then she didn't have to
worry about him peeping at her while she moved around. Not that he
hadn't already seen everything!

Could he have planned to surprise her? Well,
possibly, but there was no way he could have predicted what she'd
be doing at that time. She might as easily have been sitting at the
desk writing a letter.

She gazed suspiciously at the computer at the
desk and the monitor over it. Was that also capable of seeing her?
She sat down and examined it, and found a webcam attached to the
top of the monitor. She wrapped a scarf around it distrustfully,
then returned to pacing.

She fetched her dinner at five, meeting
James, who told her there was, in addition to the pool, which she
could use as she wished, an exercise room with modern equipment.
She hurried back to her room to eat alone, finally turning on the
TV again and flicking through channels. Her humiliation was never
far from her mind, though.

She always masturbated before going to sleep,
though usually not with the bottle, but not tonight. She might be
too traumatized to ever masturbate again, she thought.

She woke with light flooding her room,
sunlight in her eyes, and rolled away. She got out of bed, dressed,
and then brushed her teeth before heading down for breakfast. It
was such a gorgeous day it was hard to feel gloomy and depressed,
and she sat in the kitchen with the two maids, both not much out of
their teens, if that, and both very clearly and obviously lower
class girls from their tones and words. They were both also quite
attractive, though, and she let herself cynically wonder if Carling
had hired them to do more than the dusting.

That was not the case with her, of course,
for she was a plain girl, she thought, and not a long haired, big
boobed cutie like both the maids.

She made her way to the library, dressed in
gray slacks, white sneakers, and green top, and spent the morning
sorting through the books, considering how many of what type there
were, and whether they were organized in any pattern at all.

Her love of books let her lose herself in the
job for several hours, hardly thinking about Lord Carling and what
he'd seen.

And then, suddenly, there he was, striding
into the room without any hesitation.

“All right, Quinn, so tell me what you intend
doing here,” he demanded.

Startled, she jumped up, and her face flamed
again at seeing him.

He clapped his hands together. “Now!”

“Uhm, ah, well, you have a number of very old
books,” she said, still embarrassed.

“Tell me what I don't know.”

“Some of them may actually be rare books, and
worth quite a bit of money. Those ought to be separated out from
the rest and perhaps put under a display case of some sort.”

“No display cases.”

“Well then a shelf with glass doors. Some may
need environmental protection to keep from deteriorating. At the
moment I would recommend separating the books by subject, as there
are a number of broad subject matters I've discovered, then of era
within that division.”

“Can you provide me a list of subject
matters?”

“Broadly; science, geography, history, and
literature. You would have sub-categories within those of course,
such as psychology, geology, chemistry and anatomy under science.
Really, what I need to do is make up a list of all books first,
then we can discuss it further.”

“Right, then do it.”

And just like that he was gone.

Hannah returned to her work. It would take
many days to catalog them all, but every book was a new hope of
discovery, as she examined each in turn for age and type.

She spent all day at it, then returned to her
room, stiff and more than a little sore, and feeling a bit dirty
from sifting through so many old, dusty books. She went downstairs
in her robe and took a shower, glancing nervously at the door lest
Lord Carling abruptly rush in. There was more than mere
nervousness, of course. Being nude in a semi-public place was, as
before, a strangely arousing undertaking.

She did not, of course, masturbate, but her
mind was filled with thoughts of construction workers coming in and
catching her all naked and soapy, or Lord Carling doing so. Her
shower was quicker than before, and she donned her robe in relief
as she made her way back upstairs.

She watched TV, did some cataloging, surfed
the internet, and then slept. The next morning she was back at it,
working all day to identify all the thousands of books in Carling's
collection. She had a small computer which she used to type in each
name, author and publisher, and publishing date, and it was
sufficiently mindless she forgot all her other problems while doing
it.

Again that evening she went back to her room
to spend the time alone. She found the guide Carling had spoken of,
and read through it carefully, noting when the videophones could
operate and what warning signal they gave off. The first thing she
discovered was that the TV could be set to automatically answer, or
to automatically block a call until and unless someone answered it
by pressing a button on the control box. She immediately changed
the setting, of course, and that gave her some relief.

At least she knew he wouldn't be able to dial
in while she was sleeping or changing!

But then, in reading the guide and exploring
other options, she horrified herself by discovering that the video
phone messages were recorded automatically. And what was more, they
could be played back – both sides. She literally began to tremble
as she pressed the sequence of buttons, and then gasped as
Carling's head and shoulders popped up on her screen.

Then, the bottom falling out of her stomach,
she pressed another button – and saw what he had seen. Her face
filled with heat and she moaned aloud as she stared at the call
from the beginning, as she saw his view of her body, naked, breasts
bared, back arched, legs spread, her fingers thrusting into her
pussy, then pushing the bottle into her body.

She heard herself moaning and gasping and
grunting as she drove the bottle deeper. She saw herself roll
quickly over, saw her bottom rise high, legs wide, saw herself
pumping the bottle, fingering her clit, saw herself sit up and back
and sink down on it, riding the bottle.

She heard her muffled cries of pleasure as
she buried her face into the pillows, and she imitated her screen
image, burying her face in the pillows, mortified.

She had to get out! She had to run! She
couldn't possibly face him again! Ever!

She erased the phone call, heart pounding,
face a mask of distress. And then she realized that he must also
have a recording like this on whichever screen he had used to call
her!

She couldn't leave! And how would she explain
to him her running off after two days of work? Did he know about
the video recording? Of course he did! Bastard!

Did he watch it again and again, maybe
masturbating himself to the video? The pervert!

A small, back corner of her mind caught at
the thought, finding it both revolting and oddly, darkly arousing
to think of him, to think of any man, so aroused by the sight of
her body, the secret, forbidden sight of her, that he would become
uncontrollably aroused.

She tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep
thinking about that video, thinking about it getting on the
internet, and people she knew seeing it. Yet she couldn't possibly
talk to him about it!

Where had he called her from? He must have an
office, probably on the main floor, and probably off on the other
wing. She looked at the clock. It was past two in the morning.
Everyone else was asleep. She pulled on her jeans and a black
t-shirt, then stepped into tennis shoes and crept down the
stairs.

The lights were on in the corridor, but
dimmed low. She was able to make her way down the to the main
entrance hall, then down the stairs and, slowly, quietly, down the
other side hall. She stopped to peer into rooms, reasonably
confident no one's bedroom was on the main floor. She discovered an
immense oval room with a forty foot ceiling. The floor was polished
hardwood, and there were couches and chairs and tables scattered up
and down along the walls, and a stage at one end. A ballroom, she
thought wonderingly.

Nice to be rich, she thought in
irritation.

She found several large drawing rooms, rooms
with paintings on the wall and an assortment of antique couches,
tables, desks and chairs, the exercise room James had spoken about.
It was large and carpeted, with a dozen pieces of equipment as well
as free weights, chin up bars and other assorted gear. She played
around with it a little, experimentally, then moved on to discover
a billiards room, with a pair of enormous tables, a card table,
dart board, and shuffleboards. There was also a movie theater with
buttery leather sofas, and a sun room filled with flowers, small
trees and bushes.

The next pair of broad doors she opened gave
into a darkened room, with a distinctive smell to it. She flicked
on the lights, and found herself in an indoor pool. The lighting
was by large wall sconces. The floor was marble, and the pool
itself was tiled with postage stamp sized tiles. The water lapped
gently at the edge and she sighed as she looked out the large,
floor to ceiling windows onto the darkened back lawns.

She let herself fantasize a little about
living there, about being Carling's wife, having all this at her
disposal, bringing over some of her 'unfriends' to show off her new
status in life. She kicked off her shoes and dipped her toes into
the water, finding it warm.

A tingling began in the pit of her stomach.
At first denied, it grew, and she felt her nipples beginning to
tingle in turn. It was a bad idea, a daring idea, but one which she
began to find oddly irresistible. No one was around. No one was
nearby. It was the middle of the night. If she turned off the
lights the only light in the room would be the moonlight coming
through those big windows. She did so.

Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dim light,
and, with her heart pounding, she peeled her shirt up and off, then
skinned out of her jeans and panties. Nude, she stepped to the edge
of the pool, then sat down, and slid into the warm water.

Gliding through the water was like a dream.
It caressed her naked skin as she turned slowly, diving beneath,
then arching up again, swimming slowly, easily, gliding, floating.
She felt sensuous, and more than a little aroused. She fingered her
nipples lightly, then arched back and dove under water, kicking her
feet strongly.

After a minute or so she reached the edge and
gripped the bars, then began to climb out.

And it was then the lights flicked on,
blinding her, and she saw a figure coming forward from the
door.

She squealed in shock and threw herself
backwards into the pool. Unfortunately, in her panic, she slipped
off the stair, and even as she tried to throw herself back her foot
dropped down between stair and wall. She wound up going straight
back and down and hitting the back of her head on the bottom of the
ladder. Since it was under water, her momentum was greatly slowed,
but she still saw stars for long seconds.