7. Brian

SEVEN

brian

I’ve gotten the dungeon sprayed down and bleached, the tarp folded, the bodies chopped up, and everything that remains from two men is in about thirty heavy duty garbage bags. It’s almost like the inventors of these bags made them with body disposal in mind because I’ve been a satisfied customer for well over a decade now. Opaque. No leaks. Sturdy.

It’s always a bad sign—for the captive—when there’s a drain in the floor of the dungeon. That means someone plans for someone to bleed. This feature did make clean-up neater though.

I glance up to find Mina standing in the doorway, her hair still wet from the shower. She’s wearing black leather pants and a black corset with dark red lace overlaid.

I swallow hard against the sudden dryness in my throat. I didn’t realize she had a change of clothes. She always planned to walk away from this. I gesture to the lingerie Matsumoto made her wear. “I assume you want those burned?” I ask.

“Keep them. I want to remember today.”

She wants a trophy. That’s my girl.

I just nod. “I assume you drove here?”

“The gold sedan.”

She’s been paying attention. I nod and start hauling the garbage bags out to the car. Mina surprises me by picking up one of the lighter weight ones.

“Oh my god, what do you have in these bags? A body?”

I laugh out loud at this. I’ve known since Japan she was becoming more like me, that something irrevocable changed for her there, but I didn’t realize she’d also taken on my twisted sense of humor during this transformation.

Our dynamic has changed. She still calls me Master in the bedroom, and upstairs in front of the other girls, as though she understands we must keep up these appearances. But she doesn’t do it outside of those contexts, and I haven’t called her on it because it feels artificial to maintain such formality between us. After all, there’s no question who she belongs to. What we have outside the bedroom is something different, and nowhere is that more clear than what happened today.

A slave does not blaze in and save the day. She doesn’t get revenge. She doesn’t enact violence so unflinchingly. She certainly doesn’t straddle and ride her master of her own volition right in front of the monster she’s in the process of killing.

When we finish loading the car with her things and my bags and tarp, I shut the trunk and open her door for her.

She pauses and really looks at me. “Brian? Are you okay?”

Brian. She has never uttered my first name. There is no woman at the house brave enough to call me by my first name. It’s Sir to everyone else and Master to Mina. Officially in the kink world, this signifies a deeper relationship between us and not that she’s of some lower rank than everyone else at the house. She belongs to me and that comes with certain privileges and protection.

I nod, just staring at her. I level that hard look on her that so many before her have shrank and cringed from. This look alone has sent women to their knees sobbing and begging for my mercy—as though I have such a thing to give out.

But Mina stands there under the power of my stare, unflinching.

I grip the back of her neck and pull her close, my mouth at her ear. “When we get home to the dungeon and your punishment, you’ll be offering me a title.”

She shudders under me, but I know it’s arousal, not fear. I lick the side of her throat then pull back and practically growl, “Get in the car.”

Her gaze is filled with lust, as she slides into the seat.

The ride home is silent. She doesn’t ask about the bodies in the trunk. There are times when it feels safer to dispose of the evidence in the incinerator in the dungeon rather than leave it out in the wild somewhere to be dug up by coyotes or pulled in by a fisherman’s net.

I haven’t had a proper meal in a few days so I stop at a drive thru and get us some burgers and fries and chocolate shakes. We sit in the parking lot and eat. I don’t have any words for what happened today. And Mina seems to be equally empty of the desire to communicate.

Any other couple—and in our own fucked-up way, that’s what we are—would talk for days about this event, and their feelings, and how they planned to move forward, and how grateful they were to still have each other. They’d wring their hands about their monsters and demons as their subconscious mind took a turn at tormenting them and the nightmares came.

But Mina and I don’t deal with things like that. Probably the biggest talk about my feelings I ever had with her was on the plane back from Japan, when I declared probably the closest thing to love I’m capable of.

When we get back on the road, I finally speak. “What happened down there can never happen again,” I say.

I’m not sure if she knows what I mean. Surely she doesn’t think I think she’s going to be rescuing me and killing our enemies as a running theme. Not if I can help it.

But I decide to clarify. “You know we can’t fuck.”

We’ve had this discussion before. I’m not able to make love with a woman or even have sex with a woman. If I fuck you, it’s violent and dark and obscene. And I don’t want Mina at the other side of that rage. It’s not even the fun dark kinky kind of fucking. It’s just pure fury. I can’t do that to her.

She doesn’t reply, and I let it go. It probably didn’t need to be said. I’m sure it was a one-time event.

After a few minutes, she speaks again. “When Matsumoto sent the letter, there was a little black thing in it. He said it was a tracking device, and that he now knew where the house was and if I didn’t come, he’d send men to raid the house, kill everyone else, and take me. That’s not why I came. I was coming for that fucker anyway. It’s important to me that you know that.”

I nod and sigh. “I’ll take a look at it when we get back.” It was probably a bluff. Matsumoto didn’t bring a team with him, just the one bodyguard, but I’ll double check to make sure there’s no one else we need to take out to keep the house safe.

Either way, I need to let Gabe know, no more mail can be brought to the house. Technology has advanced too far, and shit like this could become a threat. All mail needs to be dealt with and handled off site.

The best part of the day is arriving back at the house and watching the terrified gaping faces of everyone from the girls to the trainers, to the guys, to Phyllis staring at us in shock and horror as we bring in bag after bag after bag of what they all know are body parts.

Lindsay is the only one who has words to speak, because of course he does.

“How did she get off the property? We were worried sick.”

“Sure you were, Doc.” He was worried about her ratting out the house was what he was worried about. As far as I’m concerned, Mina has earned the right to be a free-range kitty. Her security bracelet won’t be going back on. She could have run. But she didn’t. She could have just let me rot. And now she’s a felon. She’s one of us now.

Mina laughs. “You didn’t give a shit about Brian so why give one about me?”

Everyone in the house actually take a step back from her when she speaks. It’s the same fear they have around me, and it makes me ridiculously happy to see it. Even the shrink finds her threatening which thrills me all the way to the center of my black heart.

“Our girl killed two men today,” I say, flashing them what I’m sure is my most maniacal grin. “I’m so proud.”

More shock. Annette is actually hiding behind Anton. But when I look at Mina, she looks hurt that they’re reacting to her this way. I take her hand and squeeze it.

“Come on,” I say when she turns her attention to me.

A part of me wants to punish everyone here treating her like she’s a threat to them. They’re all so fragile and weak. Normal People. They can’t handle blood or pain or death. They can’t stand to look under the surface of their nice safe life. They believe whatever the people on the TV news box tells them. They believe we live in a world of justice and clearly defined good and evil. And that the good guys always win.

And they will never let someone like me or now Mina pollute or corrupt this happy delusional lie.

Mina picks up a bag and follows me downstairs to the incinerator.