by Kitty Thomas
“Mina, are you all right?”
“Oh she’s peachy. Don’t you know the sound of a scream of delight when you hear one? Oh, no, I guess you don’t.”
The doctor glared. “Just let me talk to her in my office. Perhaps I should speak with you as well.”
Brian’s nostrils flared. “Absofuckinglutely not! No! You will not get in the middle of this—analyzing and making notes about us. You are done seeing me, and from now on you are done seeing Mina. No more digging in either of our heads. I don’t want you in the middle between us!”
In the midst of his tirade, he set Mina on her feet so he could more effectively invade Lindsay’s personal space. She gripped the wall to steady herself, contemplating running—not that she’d get far. Between the electronic bracelet and the tracking device in her collar, escaping him even for a short while was futile. And enraging him more wasn’t on her top list of things to do right now.
Brian slammed Lindsay against the wall, and the naked girl fled into the doctor’s bedroom. “No more fucking head shrinking! No more games and notes and psychoanalysis bullshit. She is MINE! Do you understand me? Do you?”
“B-Brian, I promised her. I swore to her that I would keep seeing her, that I would check in with her and make sure she was okay.”
“And if she wasn’t? Who would you send as enforcer? How would you protect her from me, you fool?”
“You said you wouldn’t harm her.”
“And have I? Have I harmed her? Have I laid a finger on her?” Brian rounded on Mina, and she shrank back. “Tell the good doctor here. Have I hurt you? Beat you? Raped you? Anything horrific?”
How could she answer such a question? She’d literally been alone with him five minutes before he’d been called away to torture some poor girl. And the way he was behaving now didn’t show much promise.
“N-no, Master,” she stammered, even though what she wanted to say was, “Not yet.” A tremble spread through her limbs, and she couldn’t stop it.
“She’s terrified of you,” Lindsay said.
“She was terrified of me from the moment she first laid eyes on me. So nothing’s changed,” Brian retorted.
“Please listen to reason. It will go so much easier if you’ll just let me treat her. And you, too. We can make this work.”
“No! Do not interfere with us, or you will beg me for death by the time I’m finished with you. Are we clear?”
Lindsay nodded quickly, and Brian backed off. He grabbed Mina’s hand and dragged her to the main level, past curious stares, and down to the dungeons.
Once inside his room he shoved her onto the bed. The anger rose off him, threatening to materialize and strangle the breath from her.
“I’m going to take a shower. You’d better still be here when I get back.”
He slammed the bathroom door, and a few moments later the water began to run. The betrayal swamped her. Now more than ever she needed to know how much money it had taken for the doctor to pretend this was okay. She believed Brian would kill Lindsay if he didn’t stay away, and a dark part of her felt satisfied at the thought. Because this was the man who’d subjected her to Brian, the one person in this house she’d prayed to safely avoid until she left this place.
Brian’s room wasn’t much different than many of the other rooms at the house. There were shackles on the wall above the bed, but that was no different than her tower room. A fireplace stood against one wall, making the space feel almost cozy.
It was only the fact that it was underground and its close proximity to the dungeons that made the room feel malevolent and remote.
Besides the bathroom and the closets, there was another door she hadn’t noticed. It was locked with no window or peep hole to see what was behind it. Just a locked door.
She sat on the bed and hugged her knees to her chest and watched the black clock on the wall. Fifteen minutes passed. Any moment he would come out of that bathroom and whatever horrible thing he had planned for her would begin in earnest. But then another fifteen minutes passed and no Brian. The water kept running.
It was a long time to take a shower. She got off the bed and moved closer to the door. Had something happened to him? God, she hoped so. Please let her be lucky enough for him to have stroked out or had a heart attack right there in the bathroom. Please. Please.
But when she pushed the door open, she heard crying. No, it wasn’t crying. This was deeper and more profound. This was gut wrenching sobbing—the kind of grief expressed when the love of your life dies.
As she stepped inside, the sobbing stopped. But he didn’t turn around. The anger and fight seemed to have deflated out of him. At least for now. Brian sat in the glassed-in shower, his knees drawn to his chest, his back to her. The water must be freezing by now.
Something drove her on, pushing her closer, despite the clear danger he posed to her—the danger he posed to all living things. She let out an audible gasp when she saw his back. It was striped with scars as bad as hers. A few perhaps worse. Who could have ever done something like this to him?
The scars were old and stretched. That was when she realized. He’d only been a child. Growth spurts had stretched the scars, making them appear even more grisly than they might have, had they been created on a grown man.
Was this why he was the way he was?
The fear and instincts to fear fell away, and everything seemed to crystallize in front of her bright and clear like the answers to the universal questions had been elegantly written out for her in the drops of water still coming from the shower. It wasn’t about her anymore. All she felt in that moment was compassion. This was nothing like Jason. This was something different.
Brian heard the door creak as she slipped in—then her gasp when she noticed the mangled scars on his back. If another person had seen him like this, they would’ve been met with swift violence, but not Mina.
He’d spent the last half hour mentally berating himself for yelling in front of her. It hadn’t been aimed at her. He’d only been goading the doctor. The gall of Lindsay to think he could insinuate himself between them, that he could micromanage the relationship and keep his nose pressed against the glass recording and documenting everything. Never. Lindsay had no place or business here.
Still, he’d shouted in her direction. He’d lost control in front of her, and now she was even more afraid of him if that were possible.
He jumped when the shower door opened, and a moment later her warm hand was on his shoulder. He covered it with his own, and they stayed like that for a long time.
“The water’s cold,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She reached with her free hand and turned it off. The last bit of icy water gurgled as it slid down the drain.
“Go back to the bedroom, undress, and get in the bed. I’ll be there in a minute.” It was only early evening, but he was so tired, like every last ounce of energy and life had drained from him. It had been a long day. It had been a long week waiting for her. He just needed time to prove that whatever kind of monster he was, she didn’t ping his radar the same way.
Her hand tensed underneath his but she went without a word.
When the door clicked shut, he struggled to stand and grabbed a towel from the rack. He shivered when the cool air hit him. It was so weak for him to be in here crying like this, like a baby. Like the child he’d once been. When would it stop chasing him?
She won’t tell anyone.
Even if he permitted her to see the doctor, she wouldn’t tell. He’d felt it in the energy that had passed between them. She was his in a way that went beyond collars and captivity or any amount of money. She didn’t know it yet, but he’d felt it just now when she’d left a piece of her soul in his hands.
Brian gripped the sink, steeling himself against the emotions that still overwhelmed him. He’d been hurt that she’d hidden and ignored his call. But what had he expected? She didn’t know yet that he was her protector.
It made him feel powerfu
l in a new way… instead of breaking things, holding them together. The itchy darkness that slithered under his skin was quiet and still. For now. He held no illusions that it was over, that somehow she’d saved him and pulled his soul from the brink. It wasn’t like that. The monster would call for someone else’s blood and tears, but now it demanded something more, something he’d never given to another soul and wasn’t sure he had the ability to give.
When he stepped out of the bathroom he felt her fear, and unlike the other women, it made a sick feeling knot inside his stomach because when he saw her afraid like that, all he could see was himself. Until this point in his history, the normal reaction for someone taking him back to that place under the stairs would have been anger, violence. Any reaction to make it go away. But hurting her felt like hurting himself, and he’d been hurt enough for one lifetime already.
Mina’s clothes were neatly folded in a nearby chair. She was under the covers, curled on her side facing the bathroom door. Wide, frightened eyes rose to his.
Brian took the towel from his waist and draped it over the chair with her clothes, then he joined her.
Her lip trembled, and she started to cry. Whatever bravery she’d managed to summon in the bathroom had abandoned her. She recoiled when he touched the side of her cheek.
“Shhhh. Roll onto your stomach.”
She hesitated, but then seemed to fear inciting his wrath for the hesitation and rolled over as he’d asked. He pulled the covers back, and she cringed as the air hit her.
This was the first time he’d gotten a truly good, unfettered look at her back, at what those monsters had done to her.
Monsters like you? A voice in his mind whispered.
No. In all likelihood, the monsters that had gotten hold of her were nowhere near as bad as Brian was capable of being, which made it all the more ridiculous that he thought he would somehow be better for her.
But these marks, brutal though they were, were the marks of amateurs. Unbalanced, sociopathic amateurs, but amateurs all the same. They weren’t made from the same anger and pain that had crafted Brian. They weren’t retribution. They weren’t solace. They were boredom and the basic thrill of lording power over another.
She shivered when he swept her dark hair out of the way. He trailed his fingers over each mark in turn as if he could erase them by touching them the right way. He kissed a languid path down her back. Her hands dug into the bed linens beside her.
“Relax, Mina. I will never hurt you. I have other kinds of toys for that.” He wouldn’t use a loaf of bread to hammer a nail. Why would he break something that belonged solely to him? Because she thought he was crazy. And he couldn’t blame her, given their experiences together up to this point and the things she must have heard.
While waiting for her collar to be made, he’d worried that all the time she spent in the house would give her too many opportunities to learn things which would only make it that much harder for both of them when she knew who she belonged to.
At night, he’d stood in the shadows and watched her swim. She didn’t have a swimsuit, so she’d gone naked. She’d been tentative and fearful at first, but when she didn’t see him or anyone else, she’d lost the inhibition. She’d seemed free, and now he was afraid she might never be that way again.
He pushed those thoughts away. “Don’t talk to Lindsay about us. I mean it. If you do, I’ll find out about it.”
She tensed under his hands. He didn’t like scaring her. He didn’t want to, but he needed her to keep her mouth shut around Lindsay. Letting him into their world was too invasive. He wouldn’t live under the doctor’s constant surveillance. Lindsay didn’t get to impose himself into Anton and Annette’s relationship. So why should he get to be a third party in Brian and Mina’s?
“Do you understand?” he asked, knowing full well that she did. She wasn’t a child. Still, he needed to know she’d heard the command. He felt certain that if she heard him explicitly forbid the action, she’d be too afraid to go against him.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
Brian stretched out and pulled her unresisting body against him. “I’m very tired,” he said. Or maybe he thought it. He wasn’t sure if he got the words out before sleep claimed him.
Mina lay still as Brian’s breath moved in and out in a steady rhythm against her skin. What just happened? After the display with Lindsay she was sure he’d lose control, that he’d hurt her—today. Not later.
The reality was quite different.
He hadn’t even touched her sexually. Nor had he insisted she touch him. If not for how frightening he was, she would have been attracted. She found him almost painfully attractive. She would have been more than willing to touch him and let him touch her if she could trust he wouldn’t hurt her like the others—if she could get past what he did to other women here.
He had the chiseled physique of a god, though it was more likely he was a gym rat with a level of dedication that hinted he had a touch of masochism to go with his sadism.
Even finding him sobbing in the bathroom hadn’t diminished the feeling of threat. Nor had his scars put a damper on his good looks. In fact, once she’d gotten to the bedroom to carry out his order, she’d been terrified he was about to punish her for seeing that, for intruding on his moment of whatever pain he’d been working through, and for discovering that once upon a time, he’d been someone’s cowering victim, too.
It was only eight-thirty. Her stomach growled. It had been a long day, and very little food had reached her. Brian’s breath deepened.
In sleep he wasn’t the intimidating presence he was while awake. There was no dark, intense staring to contend with. The angry lines of his face softened. The muscles of his body relaxed and melted into the bedding around him.
He hadn’t bothered turning the light off when he’d emerged from the bathroom. She wondered if he’d intended to fall asleep. Before Mina could stop herself, she reached out to trace the scars along his back.
She’d clearly lost her mind. Who knew what he’d do if he woke to find her doing this? She doubted she’d ever know the story behind them. In the week waiting under the ruse that some party outside the house had bought her, she’d heard a lot of things about Brian—how he liked to hurt women. Girls upstairs said that whoever you displeased in this house, never let it be Brian. It had been impressed upon her that if she were to upset one of the others, the best outcome was to throw herself on their mercy and take whatever punishment they would mete out. Because if they outsourced it to Brian—it would be worse.
She’d heard he only fucked women from behind, he rarely took his shirt off to do it, and sometimes he blindfolded them. At the time it had been random boogeyman trivia. It was the kind of thing campers told around campfires—ghost stories meant to scare the shit out of you right before bed.
Now those tidbits came together and meant something. He didn’t want them to see. Yet he’d already allowed Mina that close. He’d been vulnerable with her. She wanted it to mean something. She wanted it to confirm that somehow he could keep his promises—that at the very least he wanted to.
She kissed his back, careful not to wake him. She needed to know what it felt like to press her lips against his skin without coercion or fear. She wanted to experiment to see if she could handle it.
As she peppered kisses down his back, the reality proved more frightening than she’d expected. Because what she felt when she kissed him wasn’t revulsion or disgust. Brian might be the one person who could understand her pain. Even if he got sick pleasure in meting it out to others, he could understand her in a way far more intimate than Lindsay.
She didn’t know why she’d wanted Lindsay to begin with. The doctor would nod and say, “mmhmmm”. He’d make notes and pretend he understood. But all he understood were clinical labels and pet psychological theories. He didn’t get it. He knew how to file and label and categorize, but it was as if he were missing a major sense and merely faking what it must be like as he scri
bbled on the yellow legal pad.
Brian had known the moment their eyes met that first night. He’d known something more than the doctor would ever be privy to. And though she was afraid, she agreed with him. The doctor could never be allowed inside whatever this was. No matter how scary it was, how scary Brian was, there was the kernel of something inside him that felt like home and understanding. Like he’d lived on that street.
Brian slept on, oblivious. He slept deeply enough that if she wanted to, she could kill him. There was no one else in the house who had the potential to be as dangerous to her as Brian.
There had to be a key somewhere in his room or clothing that would let her inside one of the dungeons. Those cells had weapons. But even as she thought it, a coldness rushed over her, as if the house itself read her thoughts and disapproved of them.
Wasn’t this why she kept getting into such dangerous situations with men who hurt her? Because she ignored her instincts when they told her to run, because she stupidly kept walking into these situations hoping that this one wouldn’t hurt her?
Couldn’t she this one time do something smart and eliminate the threat before the threat eliminated her? But watching him sleep, his softened expression, the scars, she couldn’t bring herself to end his life. Maybe he’d be like Jason. Maybe he’d be worse. And it didn’t matter.
She was already forming that weird captive/captor alliance. If she couldn’t slit his throat right now, she’d never be able to do it, no matter what he did. The clocked ticked loudly as the seconds lurched on.
Brian rolled over, his arm moving around her, pulling her closer. It was the final nail in the coffin of her unending foolishness. There was no one in the world anymore to blame but herself.
He whimpered in his sleep, and a tear rolled down his face. God, what had happened to him? She brushed the tear away and struggled to roll back over until they were cuddled together, his body wrapped around hers. It should have felt claustrophobic and stifling, but it didn’t. He held onto her like she were life itself. After a few moments the awful sounds subsided, his breathing evened out again, and whatever had been chasing him in his dreams went away.