The lock clicked over, and he wondered if she might stay in there all day, considering it a safer cage to be in where he was concerned. But when she finished, she came back out. Her hair fell over her face as she looked down, and the trembling starting again. He didn’t say a word as he led her back to the closet and into the cage.
She didn’t go to the corner this time. Instead she chose the center of the enclosure. He could reach her if he stretched, but not as easily as when she’d been pressed against the bars. He watched while she stared at the bottom of the cage.
If he let her go, Lindsay would be furious and probably punish her worse. If he took her down to the dungeon suite, he’d have a fight on his hands with the other partners—since it had been decided without his input once again that a girl here was off limits to him.
Brian retrieved his cell from his pocket and dialed Lindsay from the contact list. The doctor answered on the first ring.
“I’m currently standing in the walk-in closet with your newest caged acquisition. She’s naked. She’s vulnerable. And she can’t get away from me. Three of my favorite things. You might consider rescuing her before I decide to get creatively sadistic. Just a thought.”
Brian hung up and waited. It didn’t take long.
Less than five minutes later, the door flung open to reveal Gabe full of puffed-up righteous indignation, as if he’d somehow been personally slighted by this.
“Lindsay said you knew you weren’t allowed near her,” Gabe said, the rage barely concealed. Let him be angry. This house didn’t function properly without Brian. Good luck getting these lightweights to enact any real discipline.
Brian raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, since when do I obey your orders? I’m an equal partner here, or have you all forgotten? I may live underground, but that doesn’t make me some low-ranking servant. You don’t get to keep any girl within these walls from me. Just because I more or less stayed away from Vivian doesn’t mean that’s the precedent we’re going to follow. If Lindsay didn’t want me near her, he shouldn’t have brought her here. Or he should have cleared his policy with me, first.”
“You can’t touch Anton’s slave,” the blond said.
“Annette has a collar. She belongs exclusively to him. I respect that claim. Mina, however, has no such collar to protect her. Tell Lindsay to leave her locked up alone anywhere in this house at his own risk.” He moved forward, invading Gabe’s space. “Have you read the contract for her?”
Gabe gritted his teeth. “I have.”
“Then know this. I will break every boundary in that contract if I find her in such a vulnerable position again. Every. Boundary.” He turned to Mina, who shrank back. “What was the crime that got you put in the cage?”
“I-I spoke without permission, S-sir.”
Brian turned back to the blond. “A rebel, this one. Certainly it was worth the risk I pose to her.”
“Isn’t it your day off?”
“It depends. If you’re leaving her in the cage, I’m playing with her. What about the remotes for her bracelet?”
Most of the trainers kept a small remote that allowed them to send a shock to a bracelet. It was an effective form of training and punishment.
“Her bracelet hasn’t been programmed that way. The remotes won’t work.”
Was that relief Brian felt?
Gabe shoved past him and input the code. “It’s all right, Mina,” he said as he helped her out.
He took a blanket from one of the shelves and wrapped her up to help stop her shaking. Brian had wanted to do the very same thing, but it would have looked strange, and he didn’t want the third degree. It was easier to play to type. He got what he wanted, and nobody thought he’d gone insane. It was better that he try to come to terms with his odd reaction to her on his own.
Brian caught Mina’s gaze. “Don’t wander alone in this house. I might not be able to keep my hands off you. Ask Gabe; he’ll tell you what I do with these hands. You and your delicate sensibilities wouldn’t like it.”
He watched as she moved closer to Gabe for his protection—such that it was. Then he turned and left Lindsay’s room and the house, trying hard to get the dark, fragile beauty out of his mind.
20
Mina watched Brian’s retreating form. Empirically he’d freed her—an obvious kindness. Yet he’d threatened her as well. But he could have acted on it before calling Lindsay. Why hadn’t he? She shook her head to clear it. She knew this. It was the same set of games Jason had played. Gain the captive’s trust with small kindnesses mixed with a touch of cruelty to keep her off guard. Find the most entertaining moment… and strike, unraveling any sense of safety she ever had.
If she’d learned these lessons with the first three men—abusive amateurs next to Jason—she might have salvaged some of her dignity and unscarred skin. But she’d learned the lesson well enough with Jason that Brian wouldn’t succeed in the same con. Though if she’d truly learned it, she wouldn’t have trusted Lindsay and come here in the first place. Surely now she was cured of any remaining remnants of her so-called kink.
Brian was devastatingly handsome, but more importantly, he was devastating. His home in the dungeon, his warning to run, his threats this morning, all gave voice to support the instinctive fear she’d felt the moment she’d first entered his presence. She didn’t plan to give him another opportunity alone with her. And she wouldn’t give Lindsay or any of the others the opportunity to lock her up and risk another run-in with Brian.
Gabe went into the main bedroom and came back with her clothes. “Get dressed and come down for breakfast while they’re still serving it. Lindsay canceled his appointments for the day. He’s on his way back.”
Mina dressed faster than she’d ever dressed and rushed to get down the stairs to a place that was more crowded, for fear that Brian might still be lurking. But he was nowhere to be found.
The scene that greeted her in the cafeteria was surreal. There were several girls, all around college age, in cliques at a couple of tables having breakfast. They looked normal enough. Kind of a mean girls vibe. Other tables were less normal. Some of the girls were naked, with men hanging all over them. Some were being touched by multiple men, fingers penetrating them while they tried to have breakfast.
She looked away.
It wasn’t that she’d never seen public sexual things. It was just that this was broad daylight, with the sunlight streaming in and a view of a pool out back. And while the kink clubs might have had nudity and bondage and whipping, there was something subtly different here. There was no sex in public at the clubs, but it seemed certain it was about to start happening here. At least at that one table.
Mina tried to quiet the urges that woke within her. Her body demanded this. But the price was too high to pay. She’d been kidding herself if she thought any kind of happy relationship lay ahead of her. Even before therapy and Lindsay’s offer, the hope of anything but loneliness and fear around men had been a fantasy—a fevered daydream she’d foolishly tried to make real. Again.
Mina got eggs, bacon, juice, and a bran muffin and sat as far from everyone else as she could get. She imagined herself a chameleon, fading into the chair so she wouldn’t call the attention either of the mean girls at the center table, or the men engaged in the breakfast orgy.