by Kitty Thomas
“Will you come down here ever again when I’m punishing someone, and I’ve told you to go upstairs?”
“No, Master.”
Brian untied the girl. “Get out of here, and pray my slave’s behavior improves. For your own sake.”
She slid out of the chair as if she’d turned to liquid, then she crawled on shaking hands and knees out of the room.
Mina didn’t speak as he untied her. He inspected her wrists, looking for chafing because God forbid she should suffer from something as terrible as chafing when he’d nearly turned her whipping girl into ribbons.
He led her down the hall to their room and pulled her into the bathroom. She tried to hold back the tears as he stripped her. “Sit and wait for me to call for you.” He pointed at the bathtub in the corner.
He was already peeling his own clothing off. She tried not to stare at him. He was so beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, he was a wasteland.
Mina sat on the edge of the tub while Brian got in the shower. She watched as blood spattered the walls and swirled down the drain. When he was clean, he said, “Join me.”
She was shaking when she got inside the shower. He ignored it and shackled her to the wall. He stared at her for a long time as the water ran off him. Then he began to work the soap into a lather between his hands. Then those soapy hands were on her, caressing and bathing. Instead of cleaning her body, she wished he could scrub the images of what had just happened in the cell from her mind.
He lingered over her breasts, kneading and rubbing them more than was necessary to get clean. Her body melted into his, surrendering as it always did. He spent an equally long time on her ass. Her breathing deepened as he stroked between her legs.
“Please don’t do this,” she whimpered. “Please stop making me feel things with you. I can’t handle it anymore. I can’t keep pretending I can deal with any of this.”
He gripped her throat and stared into her eyes, daring her to close them and shut him out again. But she was too smart for that now. He might not beat her, but he’d shown he had no problem choosing someone to take her place.
“If you didn’t disobey my clear orders this wouldn’t have happened. It gives me no pleasure to see you tormented, but you will not defy me. You will obey me in all things no matter how small my command. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
Even if she were perfect it wouldn’t matter. He’d still hurt others. He just wouldn’t be doing it for her disobedience. She wouldn’t be the direct cause of it. But he would do it. And she’d be forced to share a bed with him each night while he carefully stroked and kissed and licked her and she returned his favors. He would touch her as if she were hand-blown glass. Then he’d beat and fuck others like they were trash.
His lips pressed against hers in a kiss far too gentle for the anger he’d just unleashed. His hand cradled the back of her neck as he deepened it. And she let him. When his hand returned to caress between her legs, she spread them wider to give him greater access. And the worst of it was… it wasn’t because she was afraid of him. It was because she needed his hands on her. She was addicted to the careful way he touched her. She was starved for it, and no amount of soft caressing would ever be enough to sate her need to be held and cared for. To feel something like the echo of love.
Brian pushed his fingers inside her, and she bucked against him. She didn’t just open her legs for him, she opened her soul. He knelt between her legs while the water ran cold, stroking her with his tongue until she shuddered and came.
After it was over, he unshackled her and turned the water off. He wrapped a towel around his waist, and dried her off. He took her to bed and combed the tangles out of her hair. He held her forever, the only sound between them, their breathing.
“Make me come,” he said.
She sucked his cock while he cooed in her ear about what a good girl she was and how pleased he was with her and how all was forgiven now. After he came, he drifted into sleep, his orgasm acting as a sedative.
Mina slipped out of the bed and dressed. There was still a tremor in her hand as she zipped and buttoned her jeans. She winced when she opened the door and it creaked, but he didn’t stir.
Upstairs, whispers followed her as she passed through the lobby. They always followed her now, clinging to her like her shadow, refusing to ever detach and leave her in peace.
She wondered if she looked as flustered as she still felt. She felt shaky and weak, as if she hadn’t eaten in a while. She needed to go outside to get some air. A few girls were in the heated pool, but it was mostly deserted. Mina looked out to the snow-covered woods, her gaze finding the place Annette had showed her, the hidden place just inside the property line. She wanted to go there and just stay and never come back—even if she froze. She started in that direction when Annette’s voice stopped her.
“Mina, Lindsay told me what happened. Are you okay?”
Would everyone stop asking her that? No. She was not okay. And asking her a thousand more times wouldn’t remedy the situation.
Mina turned, and suddenly all the emotion she’d been holding since she’d come back upstairs, spilled out of her. “No! I am not fucking okay. I have to get out of here. I have to leave. I don’t care if the electric fence kills me. I’m going. Today. Now. I can’t spend another minute with Brian in this house.”
“I might be able to help,” a male voice interrupted.
Mina had been so wrapped up in her own drama that she hadn’t noticed the man and woman with Annette. They must be the guests Lindsay mentioned.
“This is Michael and his slave, Vivian,” Annette said.
Vivian wore a platinum collar with aquamarine stones set inside the band. It must have cost a fortune. Mina felt a twinge of jealousy. The two of them seemed happy. He probably wasn’t a psychopath. Why couldn’t Mina have that? Why did it always have to be fucked-up sadists for her?
“You’re Brian’s slave?” Vivian asked, frowning.
God, had everybody in the known universe heard of Brian? Mina nodded.
“We will get you out,” Michael said as if her future had been decided.
“He’d never let me go.”
As if on cue, Brian walked up. So much for a dead sleep.
“I feel you when you aren’t with me,” he said. He sounded exhausted. “Do you want me to release you?”
Why did he have to seem so reasonable right now? So hurt that she could think to go? Mina looked away as Vivian took her arm and led her to stand behind Michael.
Brian turned his attention to the man. “And you’re here to rescue her, I suppose? Is it a hobby of yours to keep women away from me?”
Mina closed her eyes and blocked it out while the two men yelled at each other. The words blended and merged together. All she could process was the anger. She thought it would come to blows until someone grabbed her. It was Brian.
“Do you want to leave with them?”
“You could be free again,” Michael said.
Brian still looked hurt. She wanted to rage at him, yell like Michael had just yelled. How dare he have the nerve to be hurt after everything he did to others. She could have loved him. She could have been there for him if it weren’t for the awful things he continued to do to people. The way he beat and fucked them and played sadistic mind games to break them.
“I-I can’t do this anymore. I-it hurts too much.”
His face darkened as if he were shutting down his emotions like one might shut off a computer. Just a press of a button. So simple.
“Fine,” he said. He produced a key from his pocket and unlocked the collar, then he put the code in the metal band around her wrist and took that as well. “Get the fuck out,” he said softly, “I never want to see you again.”
He turned and walked away. He didn’t spare her another glance as he flung the collar and bracelet against the wall and disappeared inside.
Mina stared after him. She felt numb. Jason had thrown h
er away just like this. Each man in her life had tormented and broken her into smaller pieces than the one before… and then they discarded her, tossed her away without a second look when they decided they’d had enough. But enough of what? Which of them had been made to suffer in all this? The men, or her?
No matter Brian’s past, he still chose what he did to people. He was the one busy making victims.
Some insane part of her wanted to run after him, beg him to keep her. Because the moments with him when she’d been able to forget what he was and what he did in the dungeon cells had been everything she’d hoped a master could be. Gentle, patient. Pleasure, not pain. But his brutal nature… even if it wasn’t pointed in her direction…
A hand gently touched her back, and her rescuers led her to her room downstairs. She wasn’t sure where Brian had disappeared to, but he wasn’t down there. She stood silently to the side while they packed up her things and took them outside to a waiting car with the aide of some of the men of the house. Despite the cold and the snow, the sun was shining. The sky was a crisp, sharp blue. She looked back to see the whipping girl standing in the doorway, seething with rage.
Vivian sat in the back of the car with her. Michael drove. That was when she snapped out of it. Wait, who were these people? Had she just lost her mind? Had she broken with reality? How would going off with strangers help anything?
“Let me go! I want to go back inside. I don’t know you!”
Vivian put a hand over hers. “It’s okay. I promise. We’re friends with the partners.”
Oh, that made it better.
“I can’t imagine belonging to someone like Brian.”
Vivian said his name with such disgust, it made Mina recoil further. Even while she agreed, a part of her couldn’t help but want to defend him and the side of him she’d seen that the others hadn’t.
Vivian started to search her, no doubt looking for wounds to bandage and soothe. Mina quickly pulled her shirt down when the woman took a peek at her back.
Vivian gasped. “Did he do that to you?”
“Do what?” Michael said from the front seat. He craned to try to see in the rear-view mirror.
She felt like such a sideshow. “No. Those were already there. Brian never left a mark on me.”
Vivian seemed confused as if they must be talking about two different Brians.
“You can stay with us as long as you need to,” Michael said. He met Vivian’s eyes in the mirror, and they seemed to share some sort of understanding.
Mina looked out the back window as the large house was swallowed by the trees lining the road. And then they were driving down an old road in the middle of the woods, as if it had never existed at all.
“W-why are you helping me?” Were they helping her? Neither gave off the vibe Brian did. And neither seemed to have a personal interest in her. They were far too into each other to bring in a third. At least she hoped they were.
Mina wasn’t sure how well they’d take rejection if they wanted her to play with them. The idea revolted her now. She couldn’t do this shit again. Brian was the last one. Never again, no matter how good the offer sounded, it would always lead to this same pain. She should have chosen solitude from the beginning.
In his own way, Brian had been worse than Jason. Not just because he’d hurt someone else in front of her, but because she’d started to develop deeper caring for him, even when she knew she shouldn’t. With Jason and those before him it had been the opposite. What started as an infatuation quickly turned to fear and loathing. With Brian, what started out as fear and loathing turned into fear and… something she didn’t want to put a name to.
Mina looked back as the woods got smaller and smaller behind them. She touched her bare throat and tried not to miss the monster she’d just escaped.
Brian hid behind the broken TV. The dog whimpered nearby.
“Shut up!” he hissed. That stupid dog was going to get him found and beaten even worse for hiding from her.
“Where are you, you worthless little shit?” His stepmother’s speech slurred as she moved nearer. She smelled of whiskey. The switch grazed over peeling wallpaper, then screeched against the glass of old picture frames. He cringed as the thick hickory switch slammed against a chair a few feet away. Dust flew up everywhere, and he started to cough.
“There you are. The good book says that if you spare the rod, you spoil the child. This is for your own good.”
He fought and struggled against her, but she was strong for a woman, even drunk. Maybe she got stronger, drunk. Or less inhibited. The dog barked and snarled as she dragged Brian down the hallway. She kicked the dog, and he cried and whimpered and ran away. So much for canine protective urges. So much for man or boy’s best friend.
Brian flinched as the switch came down over and over until it tore through his shirt, until it made him bleed, until the switch broke in half in the bitch’s hand.
He tried to fight back, tried to get away, but she pressed him against the stairs. A cigarette dangled from her lips. It had dangled from her foul mouth since she’d started the beating. She took a long, slow drag, then twisted it out on his shoulder.
He howled as the cigarette sizzled on his skin and tried yet again to escape her. How could he be this weak? How could he let some woman do this to him? Finally, she threw him down on the ground, and he scrambled away.
“I’m going to lock you up again tonight!” she screamed after him. “Maybe the devil will come take you home. Maybe I’ll leave you there for good until he does.”
She’d already been starving him, keeping the food locked up and doling out just enough to keep him going. It was part of why he couldn’t fight her. He was slowly getting taller, and with that would come more strength if she didn’t find a way to balance it out. Starvation was only logical.
Brian ran to his room, thumbing through his mother’s old records until he found the one he needed. He sat in the center of the bed, his knees drawn to his chest. The tears rolled down his cheeks as Chopin’s soothing piano solos played.
The door opened, banging against the wall. She went straight for the record, scratching it as she ripped it from the turntable. “This same shit. Over and over and over. Don’t you get sick of this stupid music? I should have taken it a long time ago.”
He jumped off the bed to stop her. “No! You can’t. Please, you can’t take her from me! That’s all I have left.”
The photos of his mother had long been destroyed. He couldn’t remember what she looked like. All he remembered was the smell of cookie dough and these records—this music.
“Please!” he screamed as his stepmother left the room. “Don’t take her from me!”
She shoved him back and took the records outside to burn in a big trash can.
Brian bolted up in bed. He could still feel the heat of the flames from when he’d stood helpless watching what felt like his mother burning away. His hand shook as he turned on the bedside lamp, afraid he was still back there. But it was just him, alone in his room at the house.
Sleep had been much harder until he’d grown up and found the music again. It was a comfort to know that in nearly two hundred years, no fire had ever destroyed that music. It had survived. Like he had.
He’d grown bigger and stronger, ran away, gotten a job. It was only years later that he worked up the courage to face his stepmother again. By that point she seemed so small and helpless.
Hers was the first life he’d taken. After he’d finished, he’d cut her into pieces, burying them in different states. It was possibly foolish to have so much evidence scattered in so many places, but he’d convinced himself if he didn’t separate the pieces, they’d only reassemble and come after him again.
After that, he’d slept soundly for a few months. But then the itch had started, and no amount of scratching would make it go away.
He wondered if he’d cried out or screamed in his sleep tonight. Instinctively, he wanted to reach out for Mina for comfort and to make su
re she was okay… as if his stepmother could have stepped out of his dream and into hers to cause more carnage there. But he could see she wasn’t here. Why hadn’t he fought to keep her? Why had he let them take her? Michael couldn’t have done a goddamn thing about it if he’d ordered her downstairs until they left.
And now the dreams were back.
He took a quick shower and put on a T-shirt and some sweatpants and tennis shoes. The house was quiet as he ascended into the main entryway. The lights were out except for the guide lights set low into the wall. He went out to the pool as if he might find Mina waiting for him to bring her back inside.
The collar and security bracelet were still on the ground where they’d fallen after he’d thrown them. He bent to pick up the collar and inspected it under the pool light. It was undamaged, which surprised him given how hard he’d thrown it. He went back inside and placed the collar in a box in his room. He couldn’t destroy it. It was the only thing he had left of her.
When the collar was safely tucked away, he went back upstairs to the gym, put a Chopin CD in the sound system, and got on the treadmill. He didn’t give a shit if he woke the whole house. If someone came in, they’d take one look at him, turn around, and walk back out. If they didn’t, they’d wish to God they had because there was nothing he wanted more right now than to hurt someone.
When the dreams came, the only thing he wanted to do was run. Run from her, run from himself, run from everything, run from the monster that chased him, even when he was that monster. He didn’t know who or what he ran from this time. But he was afraid nothing would stop his stepmother now.
For a while, hurting others had been enough, but then Mina was required. Without her, the dreams might never go away again. Without her, how could he make them stop?
28
A week had passed since Brian released her. The dreams wouldn’t stop. Every night they grew darker, more punishing, revealing everything he’d tried to keep buried deep within his psyche. Every night he reached out to hold Mina for her protection or his comfort he couldn’t be sure. Maybe both. He became more erratic, punishing girls for looking at him the wrong way rather than waiting for them to be sent to him.
