EXTRACT FOR
Librarian's Experiment
(Daisy Rose)

"You liked it, didn't you?" he asked. His expression was a mixture of amusement and pleasure.



"You're insane!" I exclaimed. Every practical part of my mind screamed for me to leave, but my legs felt like they were made of lead. I couldn't get up no matter how hard I thought it.



"Did you like it, Alice?" he asked again, adamant on getting an answer I wasn't ready to give him.



"This is not okay!" I said. I was still trying to get up to no success. I looked around to make sure we weren't still being watched. We were. There were people around us who had their eyes glued to us. The table next to ours housed a group of university students and a few table downs was a couple who raised their glasses to me when they saw that they had my attention.



My face was burning with embarrassment.



Ignoring my horror and humiliation, he raised his hand to get the attention of the waiter. "They like what they saw, Alice," he said.



I hastened to make sure I was properly dressed before the waiter arrived. It was no use. I jumped when the waiter lowered two brimming glasses of beer on our table.



"Compliments of the table there," the waiter said, staring at me with a knowing look that sent a shiver down my spine. He'd seen me too. Had everyone seen me? I turned away from him in shame.



"Did you enjoy the show, Jonathan?" Damien asked.



"Of course, Sir," he said.



"Tell Alice here what you thought of her."



"She has a beautiful body," he said without missing a beat. I wondered how the hair on my head hadn't caught on fire yet.



"You see, Alice. There's no need to be embarrassed," Damien turned to me and said, his tone so calm that I couldn't help but wonder if I was overreacting. Everyone else seemed to be taking it all in stride. Was this normal? Had I been so isolated from society, working in my little cafe in the middle of nowhere, that I couldn't tell what normal was anymore?



Wait. No. 



Normal was a nice dinner date and maybe kissing at the apartment door afterwards. Normal is mindless chitchat and mundane conversations about what we did for a living. This was far from normal.



I didn't know him enough to let him do all the things he had done to me! I made up my mind to walk away. I'd misunderstood him. He wasn't the kind gentleman I thought he was.



I stood up with the full intention to walk straight towards the exit. "Maybe you've misunderstood, Damien. I'm not-"



"Thank the men for the beers, Alice," he interrupted.



"What?" My mind was a whirlpool of confusion. My thoughts were jumbled and I couldn't quite grasp at a sense of normalcy for long enough to decide if I should head to the exit or towards the men to thank them for their generosity.



"Who sent the beers?" he asked Jonathan.



The waiter gestured to a table on my right, where two burly men were still looking at us.



"Go ahead," Damien urged.