by Kitty Thomas
She was afraid to answer. She didn’t know what the right answer was. Which one would get her beaten? Which one would set her free? She didn’t want anything right now as much as she wanted safety. Even the insistent throbbing between her legs took a back seat to her self-preservation instinct.
“Tell me. Now. The truth.”
“Y-yes, Master.”
He pressed a button on the side of the spanking horse, and it came to life, vibrating underneath her.
“Grind into it like a good girl.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice. The dual relief of stimulation between her legs and him not hitting her was enough to send her over the edge after only a few seconds. But he kept her there and made her come several times before he turned the vibrator off. The vinyl padding felt slippery underneath her, and she flushed, embarrassed by how wet she’d made it.
Brian didn’t comment. He unshackled her feet and went to sit in a chair at the other end of the room he used to torture the poor women unfortunate enough to catch his eye or be sent to him.
He unbuttoned his pants. “I want your warm mouth wrapped around my cock.”
Mina slid off the spanking horse and crawled across the floor. How could any of this be okay? How was it possible that she wanted to do this with him, after the others? There was a loneliness inside of him that reached out to the loneliness inside of her.
As she kissed and licked and sucked him, his fingers threaded through her hair—comforting her. How could this be the man she’d been afraid of? All she wanted was to please him.
“That’s it. Such a good little cocksucker.”
She froze. Jason’s friends had made the same comment. She had to forcibly remind herself that she wasn’t being passed around down here. It was only Brian. And he didn’t know the history of those words.
He stopped her. “Look at me.”
She looked up, surprised to find concern in his eyes.
“Are you all right? You left me for a second.”
She hadn’t thought it possible for a man to be more perceptive than Lindsay with the fancy degrees lining his walls and books to decipher the inner workings of the mind and human behavior. But Brian saw each shift in her demeanor. He saw things she didn’t realize she was broadcasting.
“I’m fine, Master.” She went back to servicing him, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“Mina, I’ve warned you about lying to me. Do. Not. Lie.”
She cringed and shrank from his tone. It took so little to erase trust.
“I asked if you were all right.”
She shook her head, her gaze trained on the floor. She couldn’t look at him.
“Come here.” He pulled her onto his lap and cradled her in his arms.
She could barely let herself breathe, afraid even the tiniest movement might shatter whatever this was forming between them. Jason and the others had play acted at being kind at first, but they never increased in kindness or concern. Could Brian really care?
Oh, she didn’t think he loved her. They barely knew each other. She didn’t think they’d have some great romance like in books and movies. But did he care, as one human to another about her pain? It seemed utterly impossible that he had the capacity, given the pain he seemed to so gleefully deliver to others.
“Tell me,” he said.
She wanted to play dumb, to pretend she didn’t know what he wanted her to confess, but she was too afraid of breaking this new intimacy. She’d seen a hint of it the night before when their hands had touched in the shower—and she wanted more. She was starved for it.
“My last master—”
“You’ve never had a real master. You had an abusive asshole that played games with you that were to his advantage and not yours.”
True. And now she had a real master in the sense of someone who wasn’t playing a game with her, and everyone in the house knew how much he liked hurting people.
“Continue.”
“Jason,” she corrected. “He used to share me with his friends, and they’d all go on about what a good little cocksucker I was.”
“Sharing upsets you.”
“Yes.”
“But you know I can’t be exclusive. I’m going to be with others down here. And with your list of limits, exclusivity was never in the cards with any master.”
“No, I mean… being passed around. I-I don’t care about the other.” She cared that he hurt others, but she didn’t care that he fucked them. Though maybe that was because it all existed as something to feed his sadism.
It was obvious that what had taken place between the two of them was a whole other zone of reality. Mina thought that if he were to be tender with someone else, it might pose a problem for her. But shouldn’t she prefer him to be tender with others than to be violent with them?
He guided her hand to circle around his cock. “I’ll let you do it this way for now. When you feel you’ve worked through this, you can come to me and please me with your mouth.”
It only took a few minutes before his breathing deepened and he came. She didn’t wait for an order this time. She licked it up as he petted her hair and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Go shower, have breakfast, do whatever you need to do. At eleven-thirty, I want you to go to room 308 on the main floor in the east wing for a waxing appointment. Then I want you in the gym working out. You need to stay fit for me. After that, you can have the rest of the day for yourself.”
Mina went back to their room, but Brian didn’t follow. She used the bathroom and washed her face and got in the shower. For the first time she noticed the thickness and strength of the shower glass. It could bear weight. The proof was the shackles built into the shower wall.
***
The spa was tucked away in a far corner of the east wing, nearly deserted.
“Hey!”
Mina turned to find Annette getting a pedicure.
“Most of the girls don’t know about this place,” she said conspiratorially. “Sometimes we send them before they get sold for a bit of grooming, or as a reward for something. But most of the time it’s me hogging all the spa treatments. Does Brian know you’re up here? I can’t believe he’d send you to be pampered.”
“Waxing appointment,” Mina said.
“Oh.” Annette’s oh was like an encyclopedia’s worth of verbiage. They both knew what that oh meant. It was, Oh, of course, a sadist would send you to get waxed.
“Should I even ask what you’re waxing?”
A girl who worked in the salon approached them. “Everything,” she said. Her name tag read, Shannon.
Mina couldn’t stop the gasp. Shannon wore a low-cut tank top. Harsh scars covered her arms and whipped around her chest, a few inching up her neck. One had gotten her cheek. “What happened to you—”
“Mina… don’t,” Annette said.
Shannon smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “Don’t worry about it. She should know what she’s in bed with. Brian did this to me. Once upon a time I was here to be trained and sold to someone. I was all wrapped up in the fantasy—until the day I was mildly disrespectful to your master. I didn’t realize who I was speaking with, and it was only my third day in the house. He dragged me to the dungeon and he did this. It made me unsaleable. If he’d only marked my back, it might have been different, but he did too much damage in too many places. When they found out I had work experience in a spa, they decided to spare my life and keep me here.”
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
Shannon sneered. “Of course you didn’t. He favors you, doesn’t he? I could hear it in his voice when he called to make the appointment. How lucky for you to be in the favor of the house monster, protected from the one person who could ever cause you genuine harm. I wouldn’t get too comfortable in that position. Wild animals don’t make good house pets.”
“It’s not as if she picked him. Lay off her!” Annette said.
“It’s okay,” Mina said.
She
needed to hear the truth. Brian could make her forget who he was, what he was. She could put it all in a box and never look into it. But the moment she stepped outside of that bubble, she was confronted with one more reason why she had to guard her heart against this man. She couldn’t allow herself to want to be near him. She’d melted too easily into his embrace in the dungeon.
She’d allowed his kind words and gentle touch to soothe and make her forget. How did he know how to be gentle? Where could he have possibly learned such a thing? She had no evidence he’d ever carefully touched another living being in his life. And yet, when his hands were on her, they brought pleasure or comfort, not pain.
“Your room is set up,” Shannon said. “Come on back when you’re ready.” Her eyes seemed to light at the prospect of causing Brian’s slave pain—as if Mina were a proxy for her master, as if somehow it would bypass her nerve endings to reach his instead.
Mina started to follow her back but Annette’s hand on her arm stopped her. “I’m sorry about Shannon. I can’t believe he’d send you to her.”
“I can.” It was obvious he wanted to strip away all her illusions. He didn’t slink in the dark doing what he did. He did it in the open, leaving the evidence spread out proudly for all to see. He hadn’t hidden the girl he’d punished the other day. He hadn’t cared that Mina had seen. It was as if he wanted her to see—as if he dared her to challenge him or cringe from the truth.
Annette shrugged. “The only thing he doesn’t do is lie.”
Small consolation. Because lies were about shame or avoiding consequences. There were no consequences for Brian in this house, and he had no shame. So what was there to be dishonest about? How could it be a virtue when it cost him nothing?
“Mina?” Annette pressed.
“Yeah?”
“If I were you, I would take whatever good I could find in him. You shouldn’t have to recoil even from a gentle touch just because of who delivered it. I’ve never seen him be kind to anyone. If he’s really being that way with you, I’d do whatever I had to do to prolong it.”
Annette had read her mind.
***
Brian was running on the treadmill when Mina entered the gym. She wore the same gym shorts and t-shirt the other girls wore for workouts and lounging around the house. When their eyes met, she looked away quickly, and he knew it wasn’t just a submissive reflex. Shannon had probably given her an earful in the spa. Good.
He stepped off the machine and intercepted her near the door. The others watched. Half the girls seemed to be waiting to witness Mina punished for something, and the other half appeared jealous he’d give attention to anyone that wasn’t filled with rage.
“Come with me.” He guided her to the gym’s dressing room. “Clear out!” he shouted. “Now!”
The girls—all in various states of undress—scattered out into the main gym. Brian put a chair in front of the door.
“Show me.”
Mina pretended confusion, but she knew what he wanted to see. He raised a brow and sat on a bench.
“Show me,” he repeated.
He watched as she let the shorts and her panties fall to the floor.
“Lift the shirt.”
She did, revealing a smooth curve of skin.
“Hmmm,” he said, watching her squirm. “I need a better look. Sit and spread your legs wide for me.”
A lovely blush crept up her neck as she stepped fully out of the shorts and sat, spreading her legs. She wanted to obey him. He saw it in her eyes. She wanted to give him everything.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes, Master.”
“I’m sorry.”
Weirdly, in a way, he was. The waxing was for his personal aesthetic and the joy of running his tongue over smooth bare flesh with no obstruction to her enjoyment or his. The pain was an incidental cost, not the point of the exercise. “Did you make another appointment?”
“Yes, Master. In five weeks.”
“Good. You’ll get waxed regularly for me. You will never miss an appointment.”
“Master?”
“Yes?” His gaze was still riveted to the space between her legs, staring at it like he’d just seen his first cunt.
“Shannon said you left those scars on her.”
His eyes snapped to her face. “And?” he challenged. This was exactly the kind of bullshit he’d feared—that he might be coaxed to care what another being thought about him or his actions, that the one freedom he’d had in his life… the freedom of just not giving a shit, could be so easily torn from him. If it could, he was no better than the sniveling boy he once was, crying and cowering locked under the stairs. The only freedom was not giving a shit. And yet, Mina made him care about something beyond his own sadism. Fuck her for that. But even as the anger welled up, it turned his stomach again and then quieted down.
“N-nothing, Master.”
“Nothing is right. You do not question me or my actions. You are not in a position to judge me or control my behavior. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
She started to cry. Brian stood and closed the distance between them. He carefully ran his tongue over the tears on her cheek. He needed to taste her pain. Then he held her close.
“Mina, you didn’t choose this. You didn’t choose me. This isn’t your fault. You are just a puppet on my stage, and when I say dance, you’ll dance.”
He pressed two fingers inside her and reveled in her exquisite wetness, then he knelt between her legs and licked the smooth, freshly waxed skin until he felt her succumb to him. Her fingers threaded in his hair, and she moaned.
“Louder,” he said. “I want them all to hear you surrender to me.”
Her whimpers and groans grew more intense until he was sure there could be no doubt what was happening in the dressing room. When she finally shuddered and came, he stood smoothly.
“Get dressed, and get on the treadmill. I want a thirty minute run out of you, then we’ll hit the weights.”
He left the dressing room to let her get herself together. The girls in the gym gaped at him, but as he met each of their eyes, they turned quickly away. The bitter hatred was painted starkly across their faces. He could practically hear the thoughts in their heads: Why is Mina so special?
He wanted to take them to his dungeon for private one-on-one sessions until they each admitted they were filthy entitled trash just like his stepmother, until they begged him to forgive them for daring to think they were worth his protection or care.
Chapter Nine
The music’s too loud. It was the signal things were about to go bad. It meant they were all downstairs waiting for her. Jason and his friends. Would it be less horrible if it was only him? She should have left already. But now, she was trapped at least for the night. They’d take her and tie her down. There would be no going anywhere until they’d each had their turn.
“Mina,” Jason called her. “Come out come out wherever you are.”
His voice drew closer. God, why hadn’t she left this afternoon while he was out? And go where? And do what?
She was running out of places to hide in his house. He always found her.
The closet door opened and coats were shoved back. He dragged her out as she held on to the door frame, her fingernails digging into the wall.
“Don’t be a tease.” He grabbed her hand and pressed it against the front of his pants. “Don’t you feel what you do to me? This is what you do to all of us. We’re all hard and ready for you. We need you. You know you want to be our good little whore.”
“No, no no no. Please stop. Please,” she sobbed, knowing Jason wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop talking or dragging her down the stairs to the other waiting men. He liked the tears. And the begging. It turned him on.
“Shhhh shhhhh. It’s just a dream.”
The arms that had felt restraining were more gentle now. Brian. He’d woken her from the dream, rescued her from Jason. But what good would that rescue be if he simply dragged her farther
into a different nightmare?
Jason had taken her from herself, but now she was with a bigger monster. There was no question Brian was the bigger monster. But he was holding her and rocking her and kissing her hair, whispering “shhhhh”… soothing her. As if she could be soothed anymore. As if there were any pieces of her that could ever fit back together again.
It was a lie. It had to be a lie. It had to be the game they all played to make her trust before they pulled it all away. But she couldn’t help melting further into his arms, sagging against him, releasing the heavy weight she carried even for just a minute until reality sharpened in front of her—the reality that Brian didn’t have the capacity to save anyone. She’d seen it in his hard flat stare. He was stone in there. Why did she keep looking for someone to save her? To protect her? To dominate her in some fantasy gentle way that if it existed could never exist for her?
Brian steadied her as her breath moved back to a normal cadence and her tears began to dry. Slowly his hold on her loosened, and he untangled himself from the sheets. She tried not to look at him, tried not to want him. He’d wreck her worse than Jason. He put on sweatpants and tennis shoes. Then he dropped a t-shirt, gym shorts, and shoes on the bed for her.
“Get dressed.”
“W-what? Why?”
“Why, Master.”
She flinched as if he might punish her for the slip, for talking to him as if they were roommates instead of property and owner. But no retribution came.
“Why, Master?”
“I can’t hit you, but you need pain.”
She scrambled back, shaking her head violently. “No.” She couldn’t bring herself to say “you promised”. What did his promise mean? She’d known it was empty from the beginning. She’d just hoped his mercy might stretch longer than this.
His voice turned soft. “That’s not what I meant. I would never… You need catharsis. You need something physical to unwind this thing inside you that’s eating you alive. I know this.” He took her hands in his. And she believed he knew exactly where she’d been. He’d been in the same dark place somehow.
“You need to run,” he said.
The word sounded much as it had in the corridor that first night. And it carried the same urgency now that it had then. It made everything inside her unfreeze. It made movement possible. It made breathing possible.
