by Kitty Thomas
He pressed her against the stone, his hands on either side of her, blocking her in. An unnecessary gesture.
He stared at her for a long time—minutes it seemed—his eyes roving, taking in each thread of the lounge-wear she’d gotten at a clearance sale. It had seemed modest when she’d bought it. Now she felt naked and exposed.
Then he did the oddest thing she’d ever seen a human being do. She’d only seen animals do it on nature shows, or vampires in horror movies. He sniffed her like he wanted to eat her. A moment later, he spun her around and pinned her arms above her head.
She shivered as he lifted the back of her shirt. His fingertips skimmed over her scars—running the length of the long ones, then lightly touching the cigarette burns.
She wanted to say something, anything. She wanted to struggle free of his grasp and run. The person standing with her in the dark dungeon hallway was more animal than man, and if even a man couldn’t find it in himself to be decent to her, she surely couldn’t trust the one that sent all her warning bells ringing.
He’d spoken maybe two sentences since he’d brought her food up. And he didn’t seem prepared to engage her in intelligent conversation now.
She squeezed her eyes shut as he pulled her shirt down and pressed his chest against her back, his cheek resting on her cheek. Her breathing came ragged as he held her this way, no words passing between them.
After an excruciating length of time, he released her. Her arms were sore from being held up so long.
His mouth brushed her ear. “Run.”
Her body had refused the order when it came direct from her own brain, but from his lips, it sent her scurrying up the stairs. She didn’t stop until she reached the tower, even though she felt her lungs might burst from the trip. Mina sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the door, waiting for it to open and hoping it wouldn’t, listening to the rapid thumping of her heart.
***
Lost in the world of dreams, Mina forgot the deal she’d made with the doctor, the long trip to the house, and Brian. She dreamed of normal things. Going to the bakery. Buying a new coffeemaker. Doing her taxes. The kind of dream so boring, its content—if it could be bottled—would cure the world’s insomnia.
Upon waking and finding herself in the tower, she had a sense of inversion, as if reality had flipped. Weren’t things like this supposed to be the dream while boring monotony was meant to be real life?
She’d read the book of rules cover to cover several times the previous night, trying to calm her heart rate, trying to focus on anything but Brian’s intense dark stare, trying to forget the sound of his voice when he told her to run.
She was no stranger to various BDSM protocols, but Jason had made it all more sinister. Somehow in Dr. Smith’s office, she’d indulged in the fantasy that with the right man Jason could be erased. In therapy she’d tried to get to the root of where her submissive feelings sprang.
They were obviously incompatible with reality. No matter what she said she wanted, no matter what she longed for and tried to articulate, gentleness was never on the menu for long when they realized they couldn’t fix her and make her want sex in the normal way, or the normal way with kink layered on top. Jason had punished her the worst for the infraction of simply not liking something. He might have totally lost his mind had she told him she wasn’t fond of chocolate. Because, like intercourse, everybody liked chocolate. If they weren’t weirdos.
Now, instead of running from that lifestyle like the pestilence it was, she’d run headlong into this extreme version of it. The version where it was real—because it wouldn’t be a game. She’d really belong to someone. Actual money would change hands. The promise from someone she’d foolishly grown to trust of the one thing she hadn’t been able to find on her own had made her brain shut down its rational faculties.
Mina startled when the door opened and dropped to the floor on her knees, her head down. The rulebook had been clear that when morning came on her first day they were operating at full protocol, and disobedience would be punished. After seeing the dungeon downstairs and her close brush with Brian, she’d mentally sworn she wouldn’t break any rules. Whatever it took, she couldn’t be sent to him.
Deep down she knew nothing would keep her safe. It hadn’t with Jason or those before him. Jason had made up fake rules that she’d supposedly broken to justify punishment. Or else he claimed he had needs, and she was the slave, and she was supposed to please him. So if he wanted to spend a couple of hours beating the shit out of her and passing her around to his grubby friends, well, she should just be thrilled for the honor. Because didn’t subs like that shit? And what was wrong with her if she didn’t like it, too?
He’d gone so far once as to accuse her of being a vanilla tease, claiming she had grand fantasies but in the end withheld things. But she hadn’t. She’d given him everything he wanted, and it still hadn’t been enough because what he’d wanted was to rewire her brain as if it were his own personally-written software. She was a broken line of code he couldn’t fix. In the end he was disappointed that she was a real person instead of a fantasy in his head that followed his script to the letter.
She pushed down her revulsion as black shiny boots entered her field of vision. Please don’t be Brian. Please don’t be Brian.
“Good girl. What’s next?”
“Lindsay.” Thank God. She crawled to him and kissed his boots. It wasn’t Brian. That was enough. There was a time when every rule in the binder would have made her wet. Now she wondered if she could get excited at all. A flash of her time with Anton at Dome flitted through her mind, and she felt herself flush.
“Sir,” he barked. “In this house, everyone is Sir, do you understand?”
“Y-yes Sir.” It wasn’t as if she hadn’t read that line sixteen times. She’d just forgotten. This was a bad idea. She couldn’t be here. “Please, I-I want to go home. I-I was wrong. This isn’t for me.”
Warm hands wrapped around hers and pulled her to stand. He lifted her face to his. “You can never be set free. You’ve seen too much, and you know it. You agreed. You can’t go back on it now.”
“Please… I can’t…”
“Don’t speak another word until I give you permission.”
Mina closed her mouth and dropped her gaze. Even if prolonged eye contact weren’t prohibited in the book of rules, it would be far too intimate. She needed the space and privacy to figure out how she’d endure what would likely be a fate orders of magnitude worse than Jason.
Lindsay took her to a large suite on the second floor. When the door shut, she glanced furtively around. Lindsay’s room. It had to be. It was a jungle of plants—many of them green and leafy. Others were exotics, including orchids like in his office. The plants grew under artificial lights with rain coming out of tubes in the ceiling to water them. The water swirled down drains in the floor. The main part of the floor, away from the plants was dark green carpet that made her feel like she was in a jungle. There was a king-sized canopy bed with a dark green duvet and mosquito netting around the outside.
As if that weren’t enough, there were several large bird cages with parakeets as well as one with an African Grey parrot.
“Yes, Sir. Oh harder harder. Just like that… I’m going to coooooooome,” the parrot said.
Mina laughed. She hadn’t laughed in a long time. The sound felt foreign.
“Enough, Ralph,” the doctor said, covering the cage.
“Enough. Enough. Enough. Yes, Sir. Enough.”
“Ignore him,” Lindsay said. “He likes the attention.”
The doctor led Mina to the bed and spun her to face him. He lifted her face again and held her gaze. The smile lines around his eyes weirdly calmed her. He bent and captured her mouth in a kiss, and for perhaps the thousandth time she wanted to belong to him—not some stranger she couldn’t trust.
“Please, can’t I be yours? I don’t care if you don’t have time for me. We’re here now. I’ll take whatever you can giv
e.”
Lindsay’s eyes narrowed. “I took a big chance on you. If you want to live without pain, you have to be able to follow basic instructions. I told you not to speak until I gave you permission. Did I give you permission?”
“No, Sir.”
“You set boundaries that make it impossible to punish you, then you can’t give me the courtesy of basic obedience? It was a simple request. Keep your mouth shut until I tell you to speak. Is that clear?”
From laughter to tears in thirty seconds. “Y-yes, Sir. I-I’m sorry.”
The previous night she’d had no problem not speaking. Brian’s mere presence seemed to shut down her ability to do much of anything.
“Undress.”
She couldn’t imagine with Lindsay’s anger that what was coming would be the sweet gentleness she’d hoped for. He would fuck her. Or beat her. Or some combination of the two. She never should have trusted him.
But here she was, locked away in a monstrous house where no one would help her. She unbuttoned and removed the top, her eyes trained on the floor. The pajama pants and her panties joined the pile.
He took her hand more gently than she expected—considering his anger—and took her to the large walk-in closet. Inside was a cage. He pressed a code into a metal box attached to the side, and the door opened. The cage was shorter than she was but wide enough to sit and move. Thick, black metal bars made up the walls and top. The bottom was solid.
“Inside,” Lindsay said.
Mina didn’t argue. She was too afraid of how much things could escalate if she tried to refuse her punishment. She was sure if she hadn’t disobeyed him that things would have gone much differently in his plant room. On the floor was a red button.
The metal door locked behind her.
“Push that button at your own risk,” he said. “It’s for emergencies only. You press it; someone will come. If they don’t like your reason for pushing it, you’d better pray to every god you’ve ever heard of.”
She wanted to scream that he was just like the others, but she was afraid to say anything. She was hungry, and she needed a cigarette. How long would he keep her in here?
He turned off the lights, closed the door, and his footsteps receded back to the main house.
***
Brian regretted demanding a day off. After seeing Mina last night downstairs, he wanted nothing more than to stay and hurt someone. His sleep had been more troubled than usual, the memories wrapping around inside his mind like twisting vipers, creating dreams he felt sure were more vivid than it had been in reality.
He needed to get out of the house, get some fresh air. Go into the city. Forget this place for a while. He slowed as he passed Lindsay’s office.
“Where is she?” Gabe asked.
“In the cage in my closet. Hold onto this. Go to her if she pushes the button.”
Brian didn’t have to see inside the office to know it was a black receiver box.
“When will you be back?”
“I have a few appointments. If I’m not back, let her out around noon.”
Brian continued down the hallway and detoured through the cafeteria. He took a secondary staircase to the second floor. Lindsay’s door was unlocked, no doubt so Gabe could reach Mina if necessary, but it also gave Brian access. His day off could wait.
As he approached the closet, he heard her crying. He slipped inside the darkness, shutting the door before she could look up. She went deadly quiet, like she had downstairs with him the night before. Did she know it was him?
She saw what he was in a way few others had. Sure, they were all afraid of him, but usually only after they’d been given a reason to fear: being sent down for a punishment, observing the reactions of other girls, rumors at the lunch table. By contrast, Mina had reacted like a frightened doe the moment she’d seen him—even when he wasn’t being particularly threatening. Her instincts unnerved him.
He’d thought he wanted her to be afraid, but the marks on her back were like a mystical shield of protection. It put her on his team. It made her his co-captive in need of justice and protection. Brian didn’t know what to do with these thoughts and feelings. He’d never had them before. He didn’t welcome them, but he couldn’t push them away. He couldn’t push her away.
When he managed to stop the circle his thoughts ran around, the darkness of the closet engulfed him, and for a moment the room went hot, and he couldn’t breathe. He was trapped under the stairs again. He gripped a shelf that held Lindsay’s casual khaki pants. Mina gasped at the sound, clearly working to hold in her own panic.
He tried to steady his breath, tried not to hyperventilate, tried not to be that weak, scared child again crying out in the dark for someone to help and protect him.
He’d wanted to come in under cover of darkness. He’d wanted to touch the side of her face and have her lean toward him through the bars, not knowing it was him. He’d never wanted a woman to come to him willingly, to trust him. He’d never cared and thought any woman who trusted him was foolish and deserved whatever she got. But Mina was different. He wanted to know what one moment of tenderness given or received could feel like even as he berated himself for the thought.
But the darkness swallowed him. He wanted to flee, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave her behind.
He took a slow, shuddering breath and flipped the light on. Just a normal walk-in closet. Everything was fine. He was large and strong. Six foot four. Broad. Even grown men walked the other way when he moved down the street. Nothing could hurt him anymore. He composed himself and turned toward her.
Mina scooted as far as she could into one of the back corners of the cage, which admittedly wasn’t very far.
He approached and sat cross-legged next to her. When she started to edge away, his voice stopped her.
“There’s nowhere for you to go. I’ll be annoyed if I have to chase you around the cage.”
She stopped her retreat, still trembling. “P-please, Sir… I didn’t push the button. I didn’t push it.”
“I know you didn’t.”
She wouldn’t stop shaking.
It bothered him more than he liked to see her huddled in the cage. Some sinister part of him rebelled, wanting to hurt her for whatever it was about her that made him feel compassion for a woman he didn’t even know. But the greater part of him—for possibly the first time ever—rebelled against that notion so strongly that the thought of it almost made him physically ill.
Instead, he found himself saying, “Do you need anything?”
Her face was guarded, as if she were looking for the trap. He didn’t blame her. If it had been any other girl, the trap would have been set and waiting. But there was no trap this time.
Brian raised his voice. “When I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Do you know who I am?”
“N-no, Sir.”
“No you don’t need anything or no you don’t know who I am?”
“The latter.”
Interesting. She still had no idea of his role in the house. Why would Lindsay bring someone here that was so damaged? Did he really think he could find someone suitable to buy her? This girl was too far gone—not fit for anyone. And she couldn’t be released back out into the wild. If Lindsay had wanted her for himself, he should have taken her, rather than engage in this charade.
“Do you need anything?”
“B-bathroom,” she whispered.
He input the code on the cage. When the door opened, he reached inside to take her hand.
She remained pressed against the corner. So still. The weird thing was, he was only now noticing she was naked. That should have been his first observation. Ordinarily he would have taken it all in and been gleeful about his find and all the depraved and sadistic things he could do—both sexual and non-sexual—to his captive. But with Mina, the overriding thought in his mind had been that she was in a cage, and he didn’t want her there. In fact, it began to irritate and grate on him, causing that burning itch that usually
only hurting someone stopped.
“It would be better for you if you come out on your own.”
Mina considered this, then slowly crawled out. She hesitated before her lips brushed over his boot. She didn’t attempt to rise until he helped her up and led her to Lindsay’s bathroom.
“I’ll wait out here.” Another thing he wouldn’t normally give a woman here… privacy. What was going on with him?
The lock clicked over, and he wondered if she might stay in there all day, considering it a safer cage to be in where he was concerned. But when she finished, she came back out. Her hair fell over her face as she looked down, and the trembling starting again. He didn’t say a word as he led her back to the closet and into the cage.
She didn’t go to the corner this time. Instead she chose the center of the enclosure. He could reach her if he stretched, but not as easily as when she’d been pressed against the bars. He watched while she stared at the bottom of the cage.
If he let her go, Lindsay would be furious and probably punish her worse. If he took her down to the dungeon suite, he’d have a fight on his hands with the other partners—since it had been decided without his input once again that a girl here was off limits to him.
Brian retrieved his cell from his pocket and dialed Lindsay from the contact list. The doctor answered on the first ring.
“I’m currently standing in the walk-in closet with your newest caged acquisition. She’s naked. She’s vulnerable. And she can’t get away from me. Three of my favorite things. You might consider rescuing her before I decide to get creatively sadistic. Just a thought.”
Brian hung up and waited. It didn’t take long.
Less than five minutes later, the door flung open to reveal Gabe full of puffed-up righteous indignation, as if he’d somehow been personally slighted by this.
“Lindsay said you knew you weren’t allowed near her,” Gabe said, the rage barely concealed. Let him be angry. This house didn’t function properly without Brian. Good luck getting these lightweights to enact any real discipline.
