“Y-yes, Doctor.”
He smirked as he withdrew his fingers. “There’s one more test I need to conduct. At some point, I’m sure you’ll wish to settle down with one man. Many husbands feel anxious about their wife’s sexual response. So we like to test that. Just so they know it’s not them.”
He rolled the stool over to a drawer and pulled out a vibrator. Mina’s breath caught when the buzzing started. Then he turned it off and came back to her.
“I’d first like you to manually stimulate yourself for me.”
The game was becoming less funny and oddly more exciting as he intently watched her hand move between her legs.
He made a show of writing notes on the clipboard while she stroked the aroused flesh between her thighs.
“Good. Now slip your fingers inside.”
Her hips bucked off the table, her feet pressing hard into the metal stirrups as her fingers pumped in and out.
“Do you feel how wet you are?”
“Y-yes, Doctor,” she whimpered, barely able to maintain a coherent conversation.
“That’s what the husbands and boyfriends want. They want you dripping wet and ready for them. I’m very pleased with your response.”
He turned the vibrator back on and pressed it against her clit. “Hold it there and come while I examine your breasts. If you climax, keep going. It’s necessary for our records.”
By this point he could say any ridiculous thing in the world and she was too far gone to giggle. He put the clipboard down and stood next to her, his hands kneading her breasts in the same impersonal way as a doctor would, but then his thumbs brushed over her nipples, and he pinched one as she came, tears sliding down her cheeks from the force of her orgasm.
He moved back to the stool and took the vibrator from her. “Touch your breasts. You need to know how to do it properly.”
She stroked her breasts as he kept the vibrator pressed against her, not releasing her until she’d climaxed several more times.
Finally, he turned the toy off and dropped it in a bin marked “sanitize”.
Mina lay there watching him as he removed the gloves and tossed them in the trash and draped the lab coat over the counter. He turned the camera off and took out the tape. He picked up the towel, draping it over her, as if protecting her modesty.
He pressed a kiss against her forehead. “Do you feel better?”
“Yes, Master.”
Mina sat in a chair beside a stainless steel island in the large kitchen behind the cafeteria. She watched while Brian retrieved milk, eggs, cheese, salt, and pepper from the fridge—then bread from the bread box. She couldn’t believe this man would ever let a carb pass through his lips.
They didn’t speak while he made toast and scrambled eggs. Her mind kept going back to the medical room and how in the still spaces with him, everything felt unbroken. She didn’t know how it was possible for someone so fucked up to make her feel not fucked up. Tonight she’d gotten the first real glimpse of the man he could have been if not for the scars that had painted a different person. He was in pieces, like her. Tonight she’d seen one of the better ones.
He put a plate in front of her and sat beside her. They ate in silence. She felt calmer after the running and the shower and the game. Brian finished before she did and left the room. Had he gone back downstairs?
Jason had never taken care of her like this. He’d never held her when she was scared or made a meal for her. It had always been about him. If she dared complain, they were back to You’re not a real sub!
So far those words hadn’t left Brian’s mouth.
He returned and dropped a piece of paper and a pen down next to her plate.
“Give me the names of the men who created you.”
Mina looked up, the calm slipping away again. “I-I’m sorry? I-I don’t know what you mean.”
He leaned in, his gaze level with hers, staring her down. “You know exactly what I’m asking for. Give me their names and any additional information that will make my search shorter.”
“W-what are you going to do?” Deep down she knew. Something violent. Maybe something fatal. “I-it was consensual.”
It wasn’t.
No matter how many times she told herself that lie. Nothing with them had been consensual except on the surface in the beginning. When she’d been sold to Brian she’d known she had no real choices, and yet when he touched her, her soul said yes to him.
“No! The response you are looking for here is: Yes. Master.” He crossed his arms over his chest and watched as she wrote down the names of the men who had broken her.
She considered making up names—unsure if she could be the cause of whatever Brian would do to them—but she was afraid she might give him names of real people—innocent people who didn’t deserve whatever he planned to mete out.
“I-I don’t know the names of Jason’s friends…”
“He will tell me.”
Mina was sure that was true. She handed the paper to Brian.
He scanned it. “Is this all you know?”
“Y-yes, Master.”
He folded the paper and put it in the pocket of his sweatpants. He put the empty plates in the sink, and they went downstairs.
Brian watched Mina undress; this time the self-consciousness had left her.
“Back in bed. You need rest,” he said.
She dutifully got back in, and he pulled the blankets over her. He crossed to the CD player and put in his copy of Chopin’s nocturnes. He put it on repeat just as his mother had once done with the records. As an adult, he’d listened to this disc many nights to go back to sleep. When he couldn’t hurt someone, when he’d run as far as his body would let him and it still wasn’t enough, the nocturnes helped. It was how he’d known they would somehow carry Mina through the withdrawal.
He’d wanted to go to her those nights, hold her, help her through it. But he was unused to putting broken things back together. He didn’t know how to comfort or soothe, and he’d wanted to delay her knowledge of the monster she’d be trapped with forever. He’d wanted everything to be perfect. The music, the collar, easing her through the ceremony. So maybe she wouldn’t fear him. He’d wanted to buy her trust. But there wasn’t enough money in the world for such a purchase.
He couldn’t begin to imagine what had come over him in the auction prep room. He’d planned to be more serious, but when he’d tested the first joke and the fear around her had melted like a block of ice exposed to sun, he just wanted to make her smile more, laugh more. He wanted to see her happy.
He changed clothes and put on sturdy boots. She watched him silently from the bed. She wouldn’t ask where he was going. She knew better than to ask.
“Sleep,” he said. “Everything will be okay.”
But would it? Could it ever be okay? Had it become okay for him?
She hesitated, then closed her eyes. He touched her face, and she leaned into him, her features relaxing. He slipped quietly out of the room and closed the door.
Brian kept a bag in his SUV for occasions like this. The last time had been official business. He’d been sent by Lindsay to stop someone from talking. But this was personal. Almost as personal as his stepmother had been.