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Her muscles might not want to respond to the danger, but her brain screamed at her, throwing all sorts of logic and common-sense sounding plans at her. Like run. And move. But still, her legs stayed frozen inside blocks of imaginary ice that refused to melt and give her freedom.
“What are you doing down here, Mina?”
While words ran through her mind like a psychotic rat darting down a tunnel, her lips refused to relay any of those words to the man moving closer to her in the confined hallway—which shrank smaller with each long stride he took.
He pressed her against the stone, his hands on either side of her, blocking her in. An unnecessary gesture.
He stared at her for a long time—minutes it seemed—his eyes roving, taking in each thread of the lounge-wear she’d gotten at a clearance sale. It had seemed modest when she’d bought it. Now she felt naked and exposed.
Then he did the oddest thing she’d ever seen a human being do. She’d only seen animals do it on nature shows, or vampires in horror movies. He sniffed her like he wanted to eat her. A moment later, he spun her around and pinned her arms above her head.
She shivered as he lifted the back of her shirt. His fingertips skimmed over her scars—running the length of the long ones, then lightly touching the cigarette burns.
She wanted to say something, anything. She wanted to struggle free of his grasp and run. The person standing with her in the dark dungeon hallway was more animal than man, and if even a man couldn’t find it in himself to be decent to her, she surely couldn’t trust the one that sent all her warning bells ringing.
He’d spoken maybe two sentences since he’d brought her food up. And he didn’t seem prepared to engage her in intelligent conversation now.
She squeezed her eyes shut as he pulled her shirt down and pressed his chest against her back, his cheek resting on her cheek. Her breathing came ragged as he held her this way, no words passing between them.
After an excruciating length of time, he released her. Her arms were sore from being held up so long.
His mouth brushed her ear. “Run.”
Her body had refused the order when it came direct from her own brain, but from his lips, it sent her scurrying up the stairs. She didn’t stop until she reached the tower, even though she felt her lungs might burst from the trip. Mina sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the door, waiting for it to open and hoping it wouldn’t, listening to the rapid thumping of her heart.
* * *
Lost in the world of dreams, Mina forgot the deal she’d made with the doctor, the long trip to the house, and Brian. She dreamed of normal things. Going to the bakery. Buying a new coffeemaker. Doing her taxes. The kind of dream so boring, its content—if it could be bottled—would cure the world’s insomnia.
Upon waking and finding herself in the tower, she had a sense of inversion, as if reality had flipped. Weren’t things like this supposed to be the dream while boring monotony was meant to be real life?
She’d read the book of rules cover to cover several times the previous night, trying to calm her heart rate, trying to focus on anything but Brian’s intense dark stare, trying to forget the sound of his voice when he told her to run.
She was no stranger to various BDSM protocols, but Jason had made it all more sinister. Somehow in Dr. Smith’s office, she’d indulged in the fantasy that with the right man Jason could be erased. In therapy she’d tried to get to the root of where her submissive feelings sprang.
They were obviously incompatible with reality. No matter what she said she wanted, no matter what she longed for and tried to articulate, gentleness was never on the menu for long when they realized they couldn’tfixher and make her want sex in thenormal way, or thenormal waywith kink layered on top. Jason had punished her the worst for the infraction of simply not liking something. He might have totally lost his mind had she told him she wasn’t fond of chocolate. Because, like intercourse, everybody liked chocolate. If they weren’t weirdos.
Now, instead of running from that lifestyle like the pestilence it was, she’d run headlong into this extreme version of it. The version where it was real—because it wouldn’t be a game. She’d really belong to someone. Actual money would change hands. The promise from someone she’d foolishly grown to trust of the one thing she hadn’t been able to find on her own had made her brain shut down its rational faculties.
Mina startled when the door opened and dropped to the floor on her knees, her head down. The rulebook had been clear that when morning came on her first day they were operating at full protocol, and disobedience would be punished. After seeing the dungeon downstairs and her close brush with Brian, she’d mentally sworn she wouldn’t break any rules. Whatever it took, she couldn’t be sent to him.
Deep down she knew nothing would keep her safe. It hadn’t with Jason or those before him. Jason had made up fake rules that she’d supposedly broken to justify punishment. Or else he claimed he had needs, and she was the slave, and she was supposed to please him. So if he wanted to spend a couple of hours beating the shit out of her and passing her around to his grubby friends, well, she should just be thrilled for the honor. Because didn’t subs like that shit? And what was wrong with her if she didn’t like it, too?
He’d gone so far once as to accuse her of being a vanilla tease, claiming she had grand fantasies but in the end withheld things. But she hadn’t. She’d given him everything he wanted, and it still hadn’t been enough because what he’d wanted was to rewire her brain as if it were his own personally-written software. She was a broken line of code he couldn’t fix. In the end he was disappointed that she was a real person instead of a fantasy in his head that followed his script to the letter.
She pushed down her revulsion as black shiny boots entered her field of vision.Please don’t be Brian. Please don’t be Brian.
“Good girl. What’s next?”
“Lindsay.” Thank God. She crawled to him and kissed his boots. It wasn’t Brian. That was enough. There was a time when every rule in the binder would have made her wet. Now she wondered if she could get excited at all. A flash of her time with Anton atDomeflitted through her mind, and she felt herself flush.
“Sir,” he barked. “In this house, everyone is Sir, do you understand?”
“Y-yes Sir.” It wasn’t as if she hadn’t read that line sixteen times. She’d just forgotten. This was a bad idea. She couldn’t be here. “Please, I-I want to go home. I-I was wrong. This isn’t for me.”
Warm hands wrapped around hers and pulled her to stand. He lifted her face to his. “You can never be set free. You’ve seen too much, and you know it. You agreed. You can’t go back on it now.”
“Please… I can’t…”
