9. Brian

NINE

brian

I wake in total darkness, not unusual for an underground room with no windows. I can’t remember if I was dreaming, if a nightmare pulled me up from the depths. Will I need to run on the treadmill to get back to sleep? I wait, breathing into the quiet of the room, but no memories that I need to run from surface.

I panic for a moment realizing I’m on my back, my wrists shackled to the headboard. I quickly also become aware that my legs are splayed and tied down. I sleep naked so I have the urge to protect my most vulnerable spots, but it’s not an option at the moment.

“Shhhhh.”

Even in the darkness I know it’s her. Mina. The fact that it’s her, calms me a little.

“Once you’re truly out, you sleep like the dead,” she says.

It’s true. It’s not that I’m a light sleeper. It’s that nightmares often wake me. They come less with Mina in bed beside me, but they still come sometimes.

Slowly the room becomes illuminated as she lights candle after candle. I’m immediately concerned about fire hazards, but each candle is on a flat surface inside a larger glass container. It doesn’t get much safer than that. Still I feel on edge. I don’t know if it’s the fire, being tied up, or waking so abruptly to this situation.

“You planning to set me on fire? Got a taste for revenge, now?”

She laughs and shakes her head. There’s a small amount of relief there. Maybe if Mina took me out, it wouldn’t be so bad, but I no longer fully know what to expect from her or what she’s capable of.

She’s not the same woman she was when we met. I remember that first night, after our gazes first locked almost the moment she stepped inside the house, after I took her food up to her because I just wanted to be near her again… I remember she’d wandered downstairs. I’d just shattered a mirror and bandaged my hand. I stepped out into the hallway, and there she was, frozen with prey animal stillness, like a rabbit in a wide open field just waiting to be eaten or spared.

The predator in me was on full alert, but I didn’t want her blood. I wanted something equally primal, but much more carnal. She smelled like honeysuckle and lilacs that night. She wore completely innocent pajamas, but I wanted to strip her bare and… and what? Fuck her?

That urge startled me. I sniffed her like an animal with a piece of meat and licked the side of her throat, then whispered the only word I could choke out: “Run.”

It unfroze her and she fled me. I spent the next half hour in the shower with my undamaged hand, trying not to think about how innocent and frightened she was, and how much I wanted her, and how her honeysuckle and lilac scent was still wrapped around me, taunting me even under the shower’s spray.

That woman and this one are worlds apart. There’s a new confidence in her. She’s wearing some of the sexiest black lingerie I’ve ever seen. She must have ordered it to surprise me when I came back. I wonder how long it sat in the box, while I was gone far longer than I should have been.

The bra is cut out around the nipples, and the panties are crotch-less. It’s the most naked a woman can be and still be wearing so much. She wears a matching garter belt, stockings—which I bet has those seams down the back. And black high heels—the Louboutins I bought her for Christmas. Black shoes with red soles. The ones that make her feel like she’s walking on money.

A sheer black robe completes this look. My gaze is drawn to the collar I had made for her when I first bought her. It’s platinum with a filigree design in some of the metal and glimmering black stones.

She drops the robe and slinks toward me like a cat. She glances down as if assessing and determining if I meet with her approval. I take in a sharp breath when her red fingernails skim feather-light over my chest, my abs, and then over my now rod-hard cock.

“Mina,” I gasp out. “What are you doing?”

In answer, she straddles me and sinks down on my cock. She’s so wet, but still, it’s a tight fit. It must hurt her a little, and that idea excites me. I didn’t notice so much when we were in Matsumoto’s rental dungeon. I was too shocked it was happening. It’s obvious I’m the first man she’s fucked in a very long time, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold out long like this.

She leans closer, her hands wrapping around my wrists as she stares down into my eyes and rides me. If another woman attempted this suicidal seduction, she’d be in bags in the incinerator the next morning. The intimacy of this moment is so intense, I don’t think I could share it with anyone else and allow them to live to hold the memory of it.

“What are you doing?” I ask again. “We’ve talked about this… Fucking from me is not a compliment.”

Her reply is smooth silk. “Then it’s a good thing you’re not the one giving the compliment.”

God, who is this woman?

“Now be good, and listen,” she says, putting a finger over my lips to hush me. She moans as I surprise her by sucking her finger into my mouth.

“I could bite it off,” I growl around the finger.

But she doesn’t buy my empty threat. She just laughs. “Come on, Brian. We both know you like me fully assembled.”

I’d thought taking her to the dungeon and punishing her would reset our dynamic. Obviously not.

She pulls her finger away and rides me more slowly now, her hands on my chest as her breathing deepens.

“Mina… do you not want… what we had? We can’t… you know I can’t…”

She glances down at our joined bodies and then back up to me. “It seems like you more than… can.” She punctuates that last word with her hips as she grinds down even harder, drawing a sharp sound from me.

“You know what I mean.”

“Motherfuck… am I going to have to gag you?”

I actually laugh at this. There is no woman on this planet with the bravery to tie me up and then threaten to gag me.

“I have a plan,” She continues. “You don’t fuck me. I fuck you. I’ll tie you up, so you can’t get out of hand.”

“But you have to untie me eventually.”

She leans close, her mouth an inch from mine and whispers. “I’ll fuck you until you’re too wiped out to do anything more.”

I groan at that. She smells now like those Red Hots cinnamon candies, the lilac and honeysuckle of the past long gone. My hips arch up to meet her. I want my hands free so I can drive into her, but I don’t trust myself. Even now I don’t trust myself fully with her.

She captures my mouth in a kiss, and now I’m sure I’m not imagining this cinnamon candy smell.

“Did you eat Red Hots?”

Mina pulls away from me and smirks. “I stole some of Annette’s leftover Valentine’s Candies.”

I hate all holidays, but Valentine’s Day is the worst, most useless holiday ever invented. Though the original pagan version, where men chased women around whipping them… I like that one.

“Promise me we aren’t going to become one of those sweet hearts and flowers couples.”

“Oh, come on, you know you want to slow dance with me while Frank Sinatra croons, My Funny Valentine.”

“I would rather be tortured to death.” These probably aren’t the wisest words to say to a woman who killed two men today and now has me chained down. She could have gotten a taste for it.

She leans down to lick the side of my throat, her hips still moving, milking me.

“Stealing my moves?” I ask.

She shrugs. “This is what I want. Sex with you, like this. Then everything else the way it was. I’ll be the good little girl and call you master in front of the others, and when we play. But when I’m on top, I’m on top. Do we understand each other?” Her voice is a low, seductive purr.

I should fight this. I shouldn’t let her have it, but the truth is, I like this wild, free side of her. I like the part of her that killed without flinching and helped me carry the bags of body parts to the car, the part that didn’t fall to pieces. The part that was there with me, fierce and strong and sexy as hell.

As if reading my mind she says… “You can still have the sweet begging side of me. I can still be the good girl, but don’t you also want me to be the bad girl… just a little bit?”

Her fingernails score my flesh as they run down my chest drawing blood, and I cry out. It’s the thing that drives me over the edge—that sharp slice of pain mixed with the pleasure—and then I’m spilling into her. She grinds against me harder, wringing me out, taking her own pleasure on the tail end of mine. And the noises she makes... When she’s had her fill, she collapses on top of me.

“Unchain me,” I say. The words come out like gravel.

“Master?”

Yeah she knows she’s in trouble.

I chuckle. “Oh, we’re back to respect now are we? You think that’ll save you? Don’t worry, it won’t be tonight, but I’ve got a running list of your infractions, and there will be consequences.”

She shivers against me as she rises to look in my eyes to see just how much trouble she’s in. Her long dark hair tickles my chest. I raise a brow at her, and she scrambles to get the key and unlock the shackles binding me. This act may be her bravest one today. Unchaining me after that is braver than fucking me in the first place. It’s even braver than what she did earlier today.

I rise slowly from the bed, but I don’t go for her. Instead I say, “Take all that off and get in bed. It’s late.”

She just nods and goes to unhook the bra while I blow out the candles and join her. In the darkness I pull her to me, our bodies entwined together. She doesn’t try to talk about her feelings or get me to talk about mine.

We’re just silent, feeling each other’s warmth and breath. Never have I been more happy to have a vasectomy. I’m pretty sure all of the owners at the house have had it done. Our lifestyle isn’t exactly a child-friendly environment. I wouldn’t scar a kid with this place. That's not even counting what a mini-me might be like. I don’t think he’d become a sociopath by way of genetics, but I’m not sure a kid could be around me for very long without turning into one in the long term. I mean, look at Mina.

This time when I drift off to sleep, it’s not a blank blackness. Instead, I dream vivid, lush, beautiful dreams of all the punishments my girl has coming. The screams, the sweet begging, her pleasure. She’ll give it all to me.