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 scribbled 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.