sought a glass of water to soothe his vocal chords as he waited.
A cold, lubricated finger slid along her slit, finding her opening. It poked inside her. Anger filled her as steadily as the finger, but she focused on breathing evenly, waiting for it to be over.
“No virginal barrier,” announced the first poker, suspicion coloring his tone.
“It once existed, I assure you,” said Salerno. “It was breeched years ago by other investigations.”
Yes. Jordan remembered.
The finger probed deeper, searching, until even the knuckles of the hand had folded into her. Eventually the finger prodded the end of her canal, exploring the perforation it found.
“Ah! Yes, I feel it.”
Jordan gritted her teeth against the cramping in her abdomen.
He pulled out.
The lubricated finger of another replaced his in her vaginal channel, probing again. The man found the opening, nodded in agreement, and then withdrew.
Fury swelled in her, but she tried to tamp it down. Whatever was done to her on this day, she must allow, she reminded herself. Her mother’s as well as her own continued comfort depended on her obedience.
Obedience. How she detested the word. Every year she balked when Salerno came for her at dawn, but her mother always wept and pleaded. Was one day too much to ask of a child so that her only parent might live in luxury for the other 364 days of the year? she wheedled.
Jordan’s father’s wealth—a considerable fortune—had hung in the balance that morning when she was born nineteen years ago to this day. He had been struck dead in a hunting accident only a week prior. If Jordan had been pronounced female upon her birth, a distant male cousin would have inherited it all. She and her mother would have lost the lovely house and its sumptuous furnishings, the investments, the jewels, the social standing, and the esteem of every patrician family in Venice.
But were Jordan to be pronounced a male—ah! That was entirely different.
Salerno, a young surgeon at the time, had attended her mother at the difficult birth. When Jordan had been born a case of ambiguous sex—one body possessing both male and female parts—he’d been crafty enough to see the potential for his future. A bargain had been struck between him and her mother. He had pronounced Jordan male. And her mother had inherited the entire Cietta family fortune.
For all of her nineteen years, Jordan had faced the world as a man. She wore trousers, was addressed as signore, and was given the respect due a wealthy young man of family name and status.
But this was not what she wanted. And as each day passed, she chafed under her masculine mantle and grew ever more desperate to make a change.
“If a creature has a phallus, it is male. It’s as simple as that,” a man in the audience postulated.
“You call that puny little cannoli a phallus?” scoffed another, waving a hand in the general direction of Jordan’s genitals.
“I hear that’s what the ladies say to you in the privacy of their bedchambers,” Jordan quipped.
Laughter exploded.
“Yes, I call it a phallus,” Salerno interjected, raising his voice in an attempt to restore order. “What would you have it called?”
“A hypertrophied clitoris,” the man replied, loudly so as to be heard over the din.
Salerno sliced the air with his hand. “Absolutely not. There’s no such organ to be found here. I contend the phallus has displaced it.”
“May I put a question directly to the subject?” another man called out.
“Yes,” Jordan shouted back, before Salerno could. “But I don’t guarantee an answer.”
“Quiet, please!” Salerno commanded moving to the forefront of the stage. “Only then will we continue.”
When order was finally regained, the man tossed his query at her. “Do you bleed?”
“No,” she replied with a shrug. It was an easy question.
The questioner snapped his fingers. “That’s settles it then. There is no uterus. No womb.”
“Whether or not a uterus exists is a matter undetermined as yet,” said Salerno. “I’m sure you realize that some women who possess female organs do not bleed, yet they are still female.”
“Overall, do you have a sense of maleness?” another voice asked her. “Or femaleness?”
Her eyes found Salerno’s. “Femaleness,” she said defiantly.
“Never of maleness?” the questioner pressed.
She hesitated. “That’s difficult to say. For instance, I enjoy needlework and female fripperies. But at the same time, I enjoy male pursuits—riding a good mount or having a stiff drink and a good laugh with friends. Of course, I don’t mean to imply I ride and do needlework literally at the same time.”
A few uncertain snorts and giggles came and were quickly snuffed. Her interlocutors preferred to think of her as a specimen under a microscope. When she revealed humor, they were uncomfortable and never quite certain what to make of her.
“Are you now living in society under the guise of female?” someone shouted.
Salerno held up a hand, rebuffing the question. “The subject’s family forbids that question and all others that might lend clues as to its identity.”
Grumbles rippled over the audience.
“I object to the term it, which seems inappropriate and demeaning,” an Englishman wearing spectacles protested.
“What would you have me called?” Jordan snapped.
“An abomination!” someone shouted from the back of the theater.
Heads swiveled backward, peering toward the far end of the center aisle. Two men had entered unnoticed at some point and now stood there.
Jordan sat forward and shaded her eyes, trying to better see them. The one who’d spoken was rounded with too much flesh, but the other was broad shouldered, narrow hipped, and extremely tall. She felt the tall one’s eyes travel over her. Weighing her. Did he think her an abomination, too?
She squinted, trying to make out his features, but found it impossible to decipher them clearly through the dimness. His bearing was straight, almost rigid, giving the impression he was well over six feet.
Her cock perked to attention under his lengthy inspection and she hunched, hugging her arms around her knees to hide it.
The tall one’s gaze darted up to lock with hers. Sparks of silver caught the candlelight. He’d seen her desire, his eyes told her, and he wanted her as well. But somehow she sensed he didn’t like it.
“You’re a monster. A creature of the devil,” the squat man beside him stated with unshakable authority.
