Michael had gone to college with most of them and had been asked to join their endeavor but considered the whole business distasteful. That is until he suspected his wife had a touch of the kink and wanted them to train her for his pleasure. Well, all of them except for Brian who’d been banned from the fun and games.
Lindsay looked annoyed. “No, she isn’t Michael’s.” He opened his briefcase and slid typed papers across the desk. There were several, held together by a thin green paper clip. “This is the contract her eventual buyer will sign. I made promises to her which I intend to keep.”
Brian scanned the document, raising a brow at some of the stipulations. “This is unusual, these kinds of boundaries.” It wasn’t unheard of to allow a girl to set some ground rules—if she’d earned the right—but these ground rules were atypical to say the least.
The doctor shrugged. “We’ve dealt with unusual before. I believe I can help her find someone appropriate who won’t damage her further. You can see why your particular brand of sadism isn’t going to work in this situation. From my talks with her, I think she needs very little training. It’s not as if non-sadistic masters are impossible to find. The no-penetration rule may be a harder match, but I was thinking if we found someone who has another girl or two from us, so he wouldn’t explicitly need Mina in that way… and we trusted him… Repeat buyers aren’t unheard of.”
Brian slid the papers back across the desk. “Good luck with that.” Lindsay got far too close to his patients—especially the ones he brought to the house. The doctor’s unhealthy interest in this girl would bring nothing but chaos. It was a bad business decision. Those boundaries meant she wouldn’t go for much at auction, which meant she was hardly worth the cost of training and housing.
“What was it you wanted?” Lindsay asked, distracted.
“I wanted to inform you that I’m taking tomorrow off. I’ve got some errands to run in the city and need to get out. I haven’t had a day off in six months.”
“All right. We can do without you for a day.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“Brian? Are you sleeping?”
He shrugged. How many times was Lindsay going to harp on his sleep patterns? They’d batted this issue back and forth for years now.
“I can prescribe you a sedative.”
“No drugs. I’m not doing that shit again. It fucks me up.” Worse.
“Just a mild tranquilizer. It wouldn’t have the same side effects.”
No, they’d be different and new and exciting side effects.
“No,” Brian practically growled.
The doctor held his hands up in surrender. “Fine. But you need more sleep. You’re getting run down.”
“Give me someone to punish. I’ll sleep like a fucking baby. Otherwise, stay out of it.”
Brian stopped by the kitchen when he left the doctor. A tray had been prepared with covered leftovers and a glass of water.
“I’ll take it up to our guest. Thanks, Phyllis.”
She cringed but nodded.
He wasn’t sure what compelled him to take Mina’s tray up, but he wanted to see her close up and alone. He wanted to smell her shampoo again. He wanted to breathe in the scent of her fear when there was nobody there to protect her from him. If Lindsay kept too strict an eye on things, this might be his only opportunity before she slipped through his fingers entirely.
When he reached the tower, he knocked with three sharp raps.
“Just a minute,” came a soft reply.
When she opened the door, her face was scrubbed of make-up. She wore casual pajamas—the kind popular both with college freshmen and old ladies. Her feet were bare except for some glittery purple polish. When she looked up to see his face, she took several steps back.
Brian stepped into the room and set the tray on the desk. “Mina, I brought your dinner.”
“T-thank you.” She was still backing up.
He wasn’t sure if she was aware of her continued retreat. She took another step back and tripped over her suitcase. Brian didn’t know why, but he rushed to help. In her fall, her shirt rode up, displaying vicious scars. They were on her back and wrapped around to her side.
He couldn’t resist the urge to run his hand over one of the puckered marks.
For a moment time stopped. She froze as he lingered over the scar that was visible to him, his fingertip caressing back and forth.
Mina seemed to snap out of it and jerked away. She struggled to pull the shirt back down as he helped her stand. He’d wanted to scare her. The predatory instinct had awakened to her fear downstairs. And yet, now… Brian couldn’t articulate how he felt, even in his own mind. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d helped one of the girls if they’d fallen or gotten hurt. He was more likely to laugh or to use it as an excuse to punish them for their clumsiness. But his protective reaction to Mina’s tumble had been instantaneous and instinctive.
She watched him with those wide, frightened green eyes, her arms crossed over her chest in a defensive pose.
He didn’t speak another word. He’d wanted to intimidate her, threaten her, revel with sadistic glee in her fear, but all he could do was turn around and leave. He berated himself as he went down each flight of stairs all the way to the lowest level—to the dungeons. It was physically the farthest he could get from her, but it was also where he lived.
There were a few small dungeon rooms underneath the west wing of the house that the other trainers used, but this set of rooms was all his.
He stomped down the long, dimly lit hallway, past doors to the cells he used to correct bad girls’ behavior. At the end of the hallway was the door to his suite. He slammed it behind him and peeled off his shirt.
A full-length antique mirror stood on one end of the room. He turned on a nearby lamp and twisted to look at his back, running his fingers over old scars. A few wrapped around his sides. Just like hers. He and Mina were matching macabre portraits of other people’s wrath.
The mirror shattered as Brian’s fist connected with it. He sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his bleeding hands, and cried. Sobbed, really. He was thankful he hadn’t left any of the girls in the dungeon cells tonight, thankful no one could hear him down here.
A memory pushed itself through one of the normally-locked doors in his mind. He kept seeing it, over and over, his stepmother whipping him with the switch, screaming at him for letting the dog pee on the floor, then locking him under the stairs without dinner. It wasn’t as if he could control the old dog’s bladder. She’d thrown the terrified dog in as well. Brian had woken the next morning in a pool of the animal’s urine with flea bites all over him and wounds that got so infected from the filth he’d been left in that he’d almost died. He’d only been nine that time, but it hadn’t been the first beating, nor had it been the last.
He tried to push the images out, tried to remember his mother instead. She’d been so kind. She was taken too early—in a car crash. He remembered her smell, and feeling safe and loved. But what he remembered most about her was the music. She’d played old records of Chopin at night to help him sleep as he fought through the fears small children feel—before he knew the real monster who was coming.