8. Mina

EIGHT

mina

Brian has me in Cell C, stripped naked and tied to a pole in the middle of the room, facing it. He prowls around me with a single-tail whip. He’s not playing around. A shiver goes down my spine, but I can’t call forth the same fear all the others have toward this man.

I’ve slept in his bed. I’ve seen him cry. I’ve held him after nightmares and run with him on the treadmill. I’ve shared dirty filthy experiences with him and all my vulnerabilities. He’s killed for me. He’s punished for me. So even though I know this won’t be a slap on the wrist, I’m not afraid of this man.

“Tell me, Mina, what are you being punished for?”

His voice has gone to that low terrifying register that would send anyone else into a flurry of panic but just excites me.

“For being a badass?” I quip, looking over my shoulder at him.

He chuckles.

“No. For putting yourself in danger and risking your life for me.”

“You’d do it for me.”

“It’s not the same.”

I want to ask him why it’s not the same. How is it not the same? We’re the same. We share mirroring scars, echoes of each other, like energetic threads that pulled us together until our fates entwined. We’ve both been abused, betrayed, traumatized, abandoned in different ways.

But I can feel Brian closing off to me, and I know he’s finished with this discussion. He doesn’t want to talk about why it’s not the same, why I can’t risk myself for him when he’d do it for me.

I jump when the whip cracks. It doesn’t hit me, but only because he isn’t aiming for me.

“There’s the fear I like.” His whisper carries across the cell before he reaches me, then he’s there, his hand gripping around my throat, forcing me to arch back so he can lick the side of my neck. This is a signature Brian move, and with most I think he does it just to be creepy. With me it’s edged with something more intimate and animalistic.

“I could flay you open with this whip,” he whispers, dragging it up so the leather grazes over my naked body. It draws another shiver from me. “I’m going to make you bleed, but I have other plans.”

This gets my attention. I knew he’d punish me, but the idea that Brian would ever make me bleed is something I’d never truly considered. It feels like betrayal after everything we’ve both been through.

“Master?”

He smirks at my newfound respect for the power dynamic currently in play. “I knew my lost lamb was in there somewhere. So frightened and eager to please. You know what a fan I am of frightened and eager to please. You’ve heard the screams in the dungeon.” His hand trails lower, over my breasts, down my belly, finally settling between my legs.

A moan slips past my lips as he strokes me there. He continues to tease and toy with me until I’m just on the edge, until I could come with the slightest additional provocation, until I’m on the edge of begging him for it. But then he pulls his hand away.

“Master, please…” I whimper.

“Do you think we’re here to pleasure you? After what you did today?”

His voice has taken on that hard edge again.

“N-no, Master.”

I jump as he flings the whip across the room and goes to the table with all the sharp and pointy things. He notices me watching him and comes blazing back, his mouth pressed against my ear.

“Did I tell you you could watch? That would spoil everything. Close your eyes.”

I do as he commands, and a moment later he’s tied a blindfold over my eyes.

“Brian?”

“What did you just call me?”

“Master… you’re scaring me.”

He only laughs at this. He’s gone into that zone. Part of me fears he’s put me in the category with all the other bad girls he hurts. And now I am terrified.

But I’m also grateful. This real, sharp, clean, harsh feeling. It’s not muted and bubble wrapped. It’s not hidden behind layers of thick cotton. Still, I wish it was a brighter, happier feeling that pulls me from the edge of the abyss, pulling me back into parts of myself I’d lost.

I hear him leave the cell, but a few minutes later he’s back. I gasp as I feel the cold hard steel of a blade pressed flat against my back.

“Master… are you going to hurt me?”

“Is that what you need to be a good girl?”

I forgot how terrifying this man could be. I forgot just how dark when it wasn’t aimed at me. And I find myself suddenly afraid he’s gone so deep into that twisted place inside himself that maybe he isn’t fully aware of who he has tied up. Maybe right now I’m just another piece of flesh bound for him to torture and break.

Then music begins to play. It’s Chopin’s Nocturne number 2. I somehow know he’s got it on repeat. It’s the music he listens to, to chase the monsters away—music his mother gave him. It’s the music he gave me anonymously when I first came to the house, to help chase my monsters away.

He strokes my trembling back with his other hand. “Shhhhh. You’ll survive me.”

And then the tears come. I haven’t cried in months. About anything. The tears have all been trapped inside me. I couldn’t find a way to make them come out, but now they flow freely. Brian just touches my back gently while I cry. Finally, I take a long deep breath and blow it out slowly.

“Are you ready to begin?” he asks.

“Yes, Master.”

He drags the blade across my flesh over and over. The pain slicing through so many layers of numbness, and I can feel again, even if it may not be forever, it’s now. Now and when I fucked Brian in the dungeon in front of Matsumoto.

It takes me almost a full minute to realize, he’s not just cutting me for the hell of it… he’s making letters.

“Master, please,” I whisper around the tears. But I don’t know what I’m begging him for.

I’m so caught up in this eternal now of vulnerability and pain, that I don’t realize it’s over until he turns off the music, removes the blindfold, and presses a kiss to my cheek as though this were a totally normal thing for two people to do.

He unties me and carries me out of the cell, through our bedroom, to the large bathroom. He turns me so I can see my back in the mirror. The word Mine is carved into my skin.

I can’t stop the smile as it quirks up to one side. It’s perfect. No one but Brian could make something so macabre look like art. It’ll leave a scar—this word on my back, forever. Everything about this feels right.

“Are you all right? Do you feel light headed?”

“I’m fine, Master.”

He leaves and comes back with a small orange juice from the mini-fridge in our room. “Drink this anyway.”

I have to fight the eye roll, but I drink to appease him. Then he draws me a warm, but not too hot bath. I hiss anyway as I sink down into the water.

“Motherfucker!” I say.

He arches a brow.

“I just mean in general. Not you.” Maybe him a little bit. He is the one who caused the pain after all. “You could have gotten me branded or tattooed like a civilized person,” I say.

Brian just watches me from across the room. “It wouldn’t have been the same, and you know it.”

I lean against the tub, hissing again until I find a way to lay that doesn’t hurt and close my eyes. I don’t hear him approach. He’s silent like the predator he is. I don’t realize he’s sitting on the edge of the tub until his hand is in the water, trailing over various parts of my body, teasing me until finally he begins to stroke between my thighs.

“Who do you belong to, Mina?”

“You, Master.” It comes out on a breathy sigh as my hips rise up to meet his questing fingers.

“Who are you going to come for like a good girl?”

“You, Master.” This time, it’s a moan. I know he wants to hear that title. I’m surprised part of his punishment wasn’t for me calling him by his first name. He’d looked surprised when I’d said it earlier today, but not bothered. But I think we both know it’s better to keep up appearances at the house that this is a one hundred percent every second of every day sort of ownership, even though I think we both know its evolved into something else.

He pumps fingers inside me as his thumb strokes over my clit and I fuck myself on those fingers.

“Please…”

“I own you. I own this cunt. I own your orgasm. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Master,” I whisper.

Every time I say that word, he becomes more aggressive, more intent on pulling my pleasure from me.

“Now,” he growls.

I didn’t realize I was waiting for permission to come until he granted it. I buck harder against him, my scream filling the bathroom as the contractions of my orgasm overtake me.

After a few moments he pulls his hand from the water. “You didn’t scream that loud in the dungeon.”

He helps me out of the tub, dries me off, and puts a salve and bandages on my back, then he tucks me into bed and leaves the room.

He returns about fifteen minutes later with dinner from the cafeteria. Phyllis made Lasagna and homemade garlic bread tonight. She probably made salads as well but Brian must have decided to leave the rabbit food for the rabbits, choosing instead to bring us both the heartier fare.

We eat quietly, and watch a little TV. Then he pulls me into his arms and we sleep.