His lips pressed against hers in a kiss far too gentle for the anger he’d just unleashed. His hand cradled the back of her neck as he deepened it. And she let him. When his hand returned to caress between her legs, she spread them wider to give him greater access. And the worst of it was… it wasn’t because she was afraid of him. It was because she needed his hands on her. She was addicted to the careful way he touched her. She was starved for it, and no amount of soft caressing would ever be enough to sate her need to be held and cared for. To feel something like the echo of love.
Brian pushed his fingers inside her, and she bucked against him. She didn’t just open her legs for him, she opened her soul. He knelt between her legs while the water ran cold, stroking her with his tongue until she shuddered and came.
After it was over, he unshackled her and turned the water off. He wrapped a towel around his waist, and dried her off. He took her to bed and combed the tangles out of her hair. He held her forever, the only sound between them, their breathing.
“Make me come,” he said.
She sucked his cock while he cooed in her ear about what a good girl she was and how pleased he was with her and how all was forgiven now. After he came, he drifted into sleep, his orgasm acting as a sedative.
Mina slipped out of the bed and dressed. There was still a tremor in her hand as she zipped and buttoned her jeans. She winced when she opened the door and it creaked, but he didn’t stir.
Upstairs, whispers followed her as she passed through the lobby. They always followed her now, clinging to her like her shadow, refusing to ever detach and leave her in peace.
She wondered if she looked as flustered as she still felt. She felt shaky and weak, as if she hadn’t eaten in a while. She needed to go outside to get some air. A few girls were in the heated pool, but it was mostly deserted. Mina looked out to the snow-covered woods, her gaze finding the place Annette had showed her, the hidden place just inside the property line. She wanted to go there and just stay and never come back—even if she froze. She started in that direction when Annette’s voice stopped her.
“Mina, Lindsay told me what happened. Are you okay?”
Would everyone stop asking her that? No. She was not okay. And asking her a thousand more times wouldn’t remedy the situation.
Mina turned, and suddenly all the emotion she’d been holding since she’d come back upstairs, spilled out of her. “No! I am not fucking okay. I have to get out of here. I have to leave. I don’t care if the electric fence kills me. I’m going. Today. Now. I can’t spend another minute with Brian in this house.”
“I might be able to help,” a male voice interrupted.
Mina had been so wrapped up in her own drama that she hadn’t noticed the man and woman with Annette. They must be the guests Lindsay mentioned.
“This is Michael and his slave, Vivian,” Annette said.
Vivian wore a platinum collar with aquamarine stones set inside the band. It must have cost a fortune. Mina felt a twinge of jealousy. The two of them seemed happy. He probably wasn’t a psychopath. Why couldn’t Mina have that? Why did it always have to be fucked-up sadists for her?
“You’re Brian’s slave?” Vivian asked, frowning.
God, had everybody in the known universe heard of Brian? Mina nodded.
“We will get you out,” Michael said as if her future had been decided.
“He’d never let me go.”
As if on cue, Brian walked up. So much for a dead sleep.
“I feel you when you aren’t with me,” he said. He sounded exhausted. “Do you want me to release you?”
Why did he have to seem so reasonable right now? So hurt that she could think to go? Mina looked away as Vivian took her arm and led her to stand behind Michael.
Brian turned his attention to the man. “And you’re here to rescue her, I suppose? Is it a hobby of yours to keep women away from me?”
Mina closed her eyes and blocked it out while the two men yelled at each other. The words blended and merged together. All she could process was the anger. She thought it would come to blows until someone grabbed her. It was Brian.
“Do you want to leave with them?”
“You could be free again,” Michael said.
Brian still looked hurt. She wanted to rage at him, yell like Michael had just yelled. How dare he have the nerve to be hurt after everything he did to others. She could have loved him. She could have been there for him if it weren’t for the awful things he continued to do to people. The way he beat and fucked them and played sadistic mind games to break them.
“I-I can’t do this anymore. I-it hurts too much.”
His face darkened as if he were shutting down his emotions like one might shut off a computer. Just a press of a button. So simple.
“Fine,” he said. He produced a key from his pocket and unlocked the collar, then he put the code in the metal band around her wrist and took that as well. “Get the fuck out,” he said softly, “I never want to see you again.”
He turned and walked away. He didn’t spare her another glance as he flung the collar and bracelet against the wall and disappeared inside.
Mina stared after him. She felt numb. Jason had thrown her away just like this. Each man in her life had tormented and broken her into smaller pieces than the one before… and then they discarded her, tossed her away without a second look when they decided they’d had enough. But enough of what? Which of them had been made to suffer in all this? The men, or her?
No matter Brian’s past, he still chose what he did to people. He was the one busy making victims.
Some insane part of her wanted to run after him, beg him to keep her. Because the moments with him when she’d been able to forget what he was and what he did in the dungeon cells had been everything she’d hoped a master could be. Gentle, patient. Pleasure, not pain. But his brutal nature… even if it wasn’t pointed in her direction…
A hand gently touched her back, and her rescuers led her to her room downstairs. She wasn’t sure where Brian had disappeared to, but he wasn’t down there. She stood silently to the side while they packed up her things and took them outside to a waiting car with the aide of some of the men of the house. Despite the cold and the snow, the sun was shining. The sky was a crisp, sharp blue. She looked back to see the whipping girl standing in the doorway, seething with rage.
Vivian sat in the back of the car with her. Michael drove. That was when she snapped out of it. Wait, who were these people? Had she just lost her mind? Had she broken with reality? How would going off with strangers help anything?
“Let me go! I want to go back inside. I don’t know you!”
Vivian put a hand over hers. “It’s okay. I promise. We’re friends with the partners.”
Oh, that made it better.
“I can’t imagine belonging to someone like Brian.”
Vivian said his name with such disgust, it made Mina recoil further. Even while she agreed, a part of her couldn’t help but want to defend him and the side of him she’d seen that the others hadn’t.
Vivian started to search her, no doubt looking for wounds to bandage and soothe. Mina quickly pulled her shirt down when the woman took a peek at her back.
Vivian gasped. “Did he do that to you?”
“Do what?” Michael said from the front seat. He craned to try to see in the rear-view mirror.