“I do care. I stayed away because I thought it would be better for you. Now everything is so broken, I can't possibly make it worse. So I'm doing things my way. To hell with everything. I don't think I even care anymore what the right thing is where you're concerned. I just want what I want. And if you think you're going to slip through my fingers and out of this life before I've had the opportunity to...”
“To what?”
But he didn't finish the thought. She thought she knew what he'd meant to say in that empty space. It was as though the thoughts were so loud that they filled up the room between them, shouting in the stillness. She thought he was going to say he wanted to fuck her. At least he was making a good show of wanting to. She just didn't know what was real anymore. All she knew was... he couldn't really want her, not when there were so many much younger women at the house he could have his pick of.
He moved closer until he loomed over her. He bent and pulled her up to stand, and he just held her for a minute. It was an awkward embrace. At least it started out that way. But then he relaxed, and somehow she relaxed, and their bodies seemed to fold into one another.
She wanted to hate him. Maybe she just didn't have the will or energy to hate anything or anyone anymore. She comforted herself with the idea that if she had the energy she'd hate him. Maybe tomorrow. After she'd slept. It would be easier then.
Tomorrow felt so distant and impossible, like it would never exist anyway, so what did it matter what happened between them in this unreal space in the middle of the night?
He led her to the far corner of the room to a large leather table with various rings attached around it for tying people down in various inventive ways.
“Take off the robe and lie on your stomach.”
“No. I-I can't do this with you. Please.” She wasn't sure if she couldn't do it because she hated him too much or because she wanted him too much—because she was afraid it would mean everything to her and nothing to him and that in the end, him pretending with her would be worse even than what Brian had done.
Brian had scarred her flesh. Lindsay could scar her soul. She couldn't let him. She couldn't let herself... want him. Not again. She'd had the stupidest crush on him when she'd first come to his office.
He backed her up against the leather table. Nowhere to run. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she could practically hear it. She couldn't think straight. She hated him. No... he was scaring her. No... God, why did he smell so fucking good? And the lack of a shirt... it was doing things to her.
He usually wore a suit. Business attire. Professional Shrink Wear. It covered up the physique he'd obviously worked hard for. She'd seen him in the gym on days off, or late in the evenings. Brian had the reputation for being the fitness buff, but Lindsay put in the time quietly without drawing much attention.
As recently as that morning, the doctor had just been there—someone she despised, but otherwise nothing special. She hadn't seen him this way since before the house. Shannon wanted to keep the more confusing hatred. This... yearning was more than she could stand.
“Why can't you do this with me?” he said with that professional practiced interest he was so skilled at.
“Because I fucking hate you.”
His hand moved to the back of her neck, threading through her hair, cradling her. He pulled her to him, his mouth covering hers in a kiss far more gentle than the danger in his eyes.
Against every normal instinct, she sighed and sort of... melted... against him. She missed this, so much. It had been so long since she'd been kissed like this—by anyone. It had been long before the house even. The last man who'd kissed her this way had been her last master. And he'd tossed her aside without a thought in the end.
You couldn't trust a kiss like this. It was a lie to lower your defenses. A trap. It could never mean all the things it promised. But she wanted to believe it. She wanted to fall into it and pretend and believe just for a little while. Would that be so wrong?
Shannon pulled away from him, and then, as if to put extra punctuation on it, she put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. “This isn't real. I don't want your pity.”
He gripped her chin and forced her to look up at him. He was so tall. Had he always been this tall? “Hear me. I want you. So get this pity nonsense out of your head. I want you. I've always wanted you. From the first moment you walked into my office. Now disrobe and get on the table like I told you to.”
The way he looked at her caused a nervous flutter to skate across her skin. Her hands shook as she removed the sweatpants and t-shirt and climbed up on the table.
Maybe this wasn't really happening. Maybe she was dead. Maybe this was hell. He would tease her and lie to her and pretend and give her the echo of something then snatch it away. Then it would play all over again. On a loop. Forever.
This couldn't be actually happening. Or maybe she was dreaming.
His hand stroking her back felt real enough. She flinched as his fingers trailed over the scars. Then he threaded ropes through the metal rings, and tied her down spread-eagled on her stomach to the table.
She watched as he went to the other end of the cell and rummaged through a big black box of punishment tools. Brian's punishment tools. It didn't even matter that the bastard wasn't down here wielding them. It felt as though a part of him clung to everything in this room. Why would Lindsay do this to her? He probably wasn't even properly licensed to practice psychiatry.
Shannon whimpered when she saw what he took out of the box. It was only one item but it was the most terrifying thing he could have chosen outside of a bullwhip or knife.
A long, flexible bamboo cane. It was sealed in plastic. Lindsay took it out of the wrapping.
“Brian keeps dozens of these. They can't be fully sterilized so it isn't safe to use the same one on many different girls. This one will be yours. We'll even put your name on it.”
“Please...”
Lindsay closed the lid of the box and returned to her with the cane. “Please what?”
“I'm sorry. Please.”
“You disobeyed me, kitten. I don't think you take me very seriously, and I can't have that.”
Half an hour ago? No, she hadn't taken him seriously at all. Now? Definitely. In another time and place, another world a lifetime removed from her now, she would have wanted this. She would have known real consequences meant she was ensconced inside the safety of an ordered world. No one else had to understand it, as long as they did.
It was what had drawn her to all of this to begin with: the sense of safety and order in a world gone mad. Knowing there was only one person you had to worry about, and everything else could fall away. It seemed to Shannon that the peculiarity that was the BDSM craving was a thing that could only fully manifest in a world that already made no sense. Stepping back from it, it all seemed so absurd, but in the middle of it, it felt like the only thing that was real—like a break from everything else.
In this world created by two wills split into a polarity of the exercise of power and the surrendering of it, nothing else needed to make sense. It felt like a pause button. That pause button on the world had been so intoxicating to Shannon once that she'd walked right into this cage, into a world that was even more chaotic and dangerous with someone like Brian within its borders.