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PROLOGUE
“Get out, you fucking whore!”
Mina scrambled to wrap herself in the bed sheet. She dove for the ground as a vase smashed, dumping shards of glass into her long dark hair.
“If I’m a whore, it’s only because you threw me down on my knees in front of your friends, chortling about what a good little submissive slut I was!”
Shut up. He’s going to kill you if you don’t shut up.
She was still bleeding from Jason’s whip. Why rile him more now?
“You dare speak to your master this way?”
She cringed as he raised his hand. “I-I’m sorry. Please.”
He wasn’t her master. He wasn’t her fucking anything. It was a game they’d played. A game she’d played with other men before him. And it always ended here. How could this be right? How could this be normal if it always ended in abuse?
Surely Jason had cured her of the last vestiges of whatever fucked-up sexual fantasies swirled inside her head. This could never be real.
The people she knew in the lifestyle—they were all liars. They must be. What pain were they hiding behind a mask of perfect submission and the ideal dominant who seemed kind yet always in command?
In public anyway. When the parties were over and the doors closed, didn’t the masks come off to reveal the twisted truth beneath?
Most relationships weren’t ideal. Didn’t everybody wear a mask? Wouldn’t conflict be that much more explosive inside this type of dynamic? How screwed up was she that she wanted to make herself so vulnerable to the people who always hurt her no matter how much she begged for kindness?
Next week would someone see one of her newest scars? Would Mina insist it was consensual? All to cover up the fact that somehow she’d allowed herself to become this… thisthing.
“You’re not a real sub,” Jason bellowed, as he ate up the space between them in two long strides. His face was red and contorted in rage. The official insult of abusive dominants everywhere:You’re not a real sub.
How many times had he said this now? How many times had she forced herself to stay to try to prove to him that she was good? That she was real. That she was worth more.
His large hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing. And for a moment, everything that had ever happened in her life rushed out in a sprawling pointless vision before her. One long fucked-up slide show of pleasure and pain.
“I want you and all your shit out of my apartment. If I come home from the gym tomorrow and I find any of it or you still here, what happened tonight will look like a romantic candlelit dinner. Do you understand me?”
“I don’t have a job. You made me quit. I have nowhere to go.” Was she begging him to keep her?
Oh God. She was. There were nothing left of her. One small piece at a time had been traded out while she’d hardly noticed… and now… she didn’t recognize any of it. She didn’t recognize herself.
“Maybe you should have taken your role with me more seriously. I’m sure you’ll find a new dick to suck by tomorrow evening.”
He released her throat and moved to the opposite end of the room as if he couldn’t trust himself mere feet from her. Mina trembled as she tried to keep herself covered. Maybe it was shock. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that no matter how many times he’d seen her naked, she couldn’t stand to let him see her again—not when he was like this. All she felt when he looked at her now was shame.
“I was honest,” she said. “I told you what I needed, that I was looking for someone gentle. I didn’t hold anything back.”
Jason jerked open a drawer and threw clothes at her. She struggled to catch them before they hit the ground.
His expression turned dark. “I don’t give a fuck what you need. You agreed to be mine. There’s something inside you, Mina, that makes people want to hurt you. You’ll never find a man who’ll be gentle.”
1
Ten Months Later
Gainful employment had been the easy part. The hard part was trying to live with herself and the memories of the things she’d allowed Jason and those before him to do to her. Maybeallowedwasn’t right. What power had she had with him so much stronger than her? Especially all the times he’d tied her down—as if the power differential wasn’t frightening enough without ropes or chains.
Mina sat on a sofa outside her therapist’s office on the tenth floor. He’d given her the codes so she wouldn’t have to wait outside in the frigid cold.
She’d been chain-smoking for the past fifteen minutes waiting for him to arrive. She’d found Dr. Lindsay Smith while looking for a kink-friendly therapist. She’d been searching for someone she could talk to about all of this, someone who might reassure her that she wasn’t broken beyond repair. She’d wanted someone who would make her believe that kink was okay—she’d just been unlucky with her partners.
