by Dani René
There, sitting in the chair that was just outside of my line of sight, is Mr. Tall, Dark, and Fuckable.
Who the fuck is this guy?
He’s sitting in the exact position that he was in last night.
So it wasn’t a dream. What the fuck is going on?
“You may want to fix your towel,” he says.
I wrinkle my brow, confused by his words, and he nods toward my chest. I look down and notice that my towel is drooping, my nipple almost fully exposed. Unphased, I cover it back up before standing and wrapping the towel around me a little tighter.
“Well,” I look at the mystery man. “I think I’m just going to... go.”
I walk to the door and grab the doorknob as I hear him speak again.
“I’m looking forward to our first session later this afternoon, Brynn.”
I turn quickly at his words, and my eyes connect with his.
What is he talking about?
“I’m taking over your case from Dr. Lewis,” he says, answering the shocked and confused look that I am shooting his way.
I swear that he just eye-fucked the shit out of me.
Staring into his gaze, I narrow my eyes and purse my lips with skepticism. This makes no sense. Why would Dr. S. bring in someone that he knows I won’t be able to stay away from? Is this a trick? Are they setting me up for failure? I think about last week and how much pain I was in while in isolation. Has the punishment continued?
Is Mr. Tall, Dark, and Fuckable to be my new misery-keeper?
I’ve used pain for pleasure in the past, and I’m sure I can do it again if that is what this man has planned for me. I see the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth as he tries, horribly, to keep his smile at bay.
“Hmm.” The sound comes from my throat before I open the door and leave his office. As I walk back to my room, my body fills with excitement.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Richard
I’ve agreed to take on a few additional patients in addition to Brynn’s, as Ansel couldn’t justify bringing me out here for a single case. One of those patients is sitting across from me at the table in my new office, very still and quiet as a mouse. I have to admit that listening to Ansel recount her story brought tears to my eyes. It made me remember the things that I endured as a child; terrible, unimaginable things. I push the thoughts from my mind so I can concentrate on the strong, yet still very broken girl in front of me.
To say that she had a rough childhood would be a grave understatement. Her mother and father kept her in a dark room from the time she was three until she was rescued a year ago, at eighteen.
They raped her, beat her, starved her. Never taught her how to speak, read, write, or how to take care of herself. Her mousy brown hair was matted horribly when they found her, and she had a terrible case of lice. She was missing a lot of her teeth, and most of the ones she did have were rotten. She was covered in her own waste, and she had infected wounds around her wrists and ankles. The picture in her case file was one of the most horrific images that I’ve ever had to see in my entire life.
It’s a miracle that she’s lived as long as she has.
The young woman sitting across from me at the table looks a thousand times healthier than the little girl in that picture. Her file said that she underwent dental surgery shortly after arriving, and they replaced her teeth with veneers. They also had to stitch up a few areas on her body, inside and out. They’ve been teaching her to talk and read. It’s been slow, but she has made some progress since she got here.
“Gabriella,” I say to her.
She turns her head in my direction, but it’s as though she is looking right through me.
“My name is Dr. Dunnington.”
No response.
“It’s very nice to meet you.”
She looks away from me. I see her eyes stop on the basket of crayons that her nurse brought along with her. I stand, grab the crayons and some paper and bring them back to our table. Her eyes follow the crayons the entire way back.
“Nurse Evans told me that you like to color,” I say, sliding a piece of paper toward her. I place the basket of crayons in the center of the table and grab a piece of paper for myself.
She looks down at the paper but doesn’t pick up any crayons. I reach my hand in and grab a red crayon from the pile. I gaze up at her subtly, so it doesn’t look like I’m watching her as I begin to draw a red racecar on the paper.
Lifting her head, she watches me for a second before grabbing a purple crayon and placing it against her paper. She moves the colored wax back and forth over the page until she’s satisfied with the messy scribble that she’s created.
She looks up, and her gaze shoots to mine. I quickly move my eyes to the basket, so it doesn’t look like I was staring at her. I pull out a black crayon to give my racecar some wheels.
Replacing her purple crayon with a pink one, she scribbles on the paper once more. When she’s done, she looks up at me. This time, I let her eyes meet mine, and I give her a tiny smile.
She doesn’t return the smile, but she doesn’t look away immediately, either. She grabs a blue crayon out of the basket and scribbles again.
“Let’s see here,” I begin as I place the black crayon back into the basket. “Ah.”
Her eyes watch my hand as I pull a yellow crayon out of the basket and draw a sun. Then, I color a light blue sky. After a few minutes, she picks up another color and begins scribbling on her paper again.
We continue coloring for the majority of our session, each of us taking small glances at one another in between grabbing a new color crayon from the basket and adding to our pictures.
I place the green crayon that I am using back into the basket, and I look down at the pictures that we’ve created.
“Gabriella, do you have a favorite color?” I ask her.
Instead of speaking, she slowly places her hand into the basket, and her fingers close over a purple crayon. I lift my eyes to her.
“Purple?”
“Puh-err-ple,” she answers.
“Purple is a beautiful color,” I say just before we’re interrupted by Nurse Evans knocking on the door. I wave my hand at her, letting her know it’s okay to come in.
“Oh, my! Gabriella, your drawings are so beautiful!” she says.
She walks over to the girl and leans down in front of her, so they’re eye-to-eye. She picks one of her pictures up off of the table and looks at it like it is the most incredible thing she’s ever seen.
“You did a fabulous job,” she tells her, turning the paper around so Gabriella can see it. She studies her work for a minute and a slight smile forms.
“Are you ready for lunch now?”
Gabriella nods her head, and Nurse Evans holds her hand out for Gabriella to take it.
“Gabriella,” I say as they both stand up.
She looks over at me, meeting my eyes.
“Thank you for letting me color with you today. I had a lot of fun. Maybe we can do it again soon?”
She doesn’t nod her head or answer me with her words. She looks down at the crayons once more, and it’s almost as if I can see delight dance through them.
As they walk out of the room, I glance at my watch. It’s nearly time for my appointment with Brynn. After watching her last night, and our unexpected encounter this morning, I’ve haven’t been able to think about much of anything else. My session with Gabriella was just the distraction I needed to make the time go by.
Brynn
As my feet carry me closer to Mr. Fuckable’s office, I can’t help but think about what happened last night. It would be easier if it were a dream because I wouldn’t be forced to sit here for the next hour, across from the only outsider who has seen me break.
I rap my knuckles on his door quickly, ready to get this over with. I stand off to the side so he can’t see me through the glass panel of his office door. As I wait for him to answer, I look down at my hands, watching as my fingers cle
nch into fists and relax again.
I am Brynn Holliday.
No one scares me.
No one makes me weak.
No one can break me.
The door opens, and I look up into his dark eyes. I swallow nervously, as I feel my eyes widen slightly, with unease.
Except him.
“Hello, Brynn,” he says, his voice like butter.
I manage to compose myself and force my normal stoic personality back to the forefront before replying.
“What’s up, doc?” I ask as I step past him and sit on the sofa where I was earlier this morning.
I watch as he shuts the door and takes his seat, also the same place he sat this morning.
“It’s nice to officially meet you,” he begins. “My name is Dr. Richard Dunnington and—”
“Stop! Your name is Dr. Dick?!” I laugh loudly.
He acts completely unphased by my outburst and continues talking. I am not used to this. I am used to people being afraid of me, nervous around me, wondering if and when I am going to snap on them. It was the only thing that I looked forward to during my sessions with Dr. Lewis.
“I am going to be replacing Dr. Lewis as your therapist.”
“Aww, why? Was it something I did?” I say sarcastically.
He doesn’t answer but writes something down in his notes. I narrow my eyes at him, but he doesn’t see it.
“I’ve received your case file, and I may refer back to it from time to time, but I’d like to get to know you through conversation rather than through someone else’s notes. Although, if I’m being honest, a large portion of what I read, I found to be incredibly… intriguing.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get too excited because Lewis is a cunt and a liar.”
He didn’t even try and hold back his smug grin.
“So you didn’t,” he stands up from his chair and retrieves a thicker folder from his desk. Opening it up, he reads directly from one of the pages in it, “stand on her desk, rubbing your clit furiously until you came all over the surface?”
He looks up at me as he sits back in his chair. He is brazen, but his cheekiness doesn’t have anything on mine.
“No,” I cock an eyebrow and fold my arms together, effectively
displaying my attitude. “I squatted.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, that is quite a difference.”
He continues reading the chart.
“What about where she wrote that you threw a pencil at her face, narrowly missing her eye?”
“I was twirling it around. It’s a nervous habit of mine. I accidentally twirled it too fast one time.”
“I see,” he says, stone-faced.
“And when you,” he looks back down at the folder, trying to find something else to list.
After a moment, he snickers to himself and speaks again.
“Spiked her coffee with contraband eye drops? Was that an accident too?”
“Well… not exactly,” I answer somewhat truthfully.
“So it seems to me that, though Dr. Lewis may be a cunt, she isn’t exactly a liar?”
“Whatever, she’s stupid,” I say, like a child with a severe vocabulary deficiency. With my arms still crossed, I look around the room, bored, at everything other than him.
“It’s nice to know that I am dealing with an adult, Ms. Holliday,” he throws at me. “Shall we get down to business?”
“Jeez, so serious,” I roll my eyes at him.
“You’re twenty-three?”
“Yes,” I say with boredom.
“I’d like to know more about you, what can you tell me?”
I stare at him. This is the same shit that Dr. Lewis said to me and asked me, yet I don’t feel the same animosity toward him. Why? It unnerves me, and I don’t like it.
“I,” I start, but I don’t know what to say. Not even a smart comment comes to mind.
“Don’t think too hard about it,” he says. “Anything, little or big.”
He sits patiently while I try to root around in my mind for a piece of information about me. Why is this so fucking hard? Just make something up if you can’t think of anything!
“I don’t know! Can’t you just ask me questions?”
“Sure, we can do it that way, I just wanted to give you the opportunity to speak freely.”
“Well, that’s different,” I mutter under my breath.
“What’s different?”
“Being able to speak freely.”
“Is it not allowed here?” Dr. Dick looks around his office, jokingly, as if he’s searching for a microphone or video camera that’s been hidden there.
I outwardly express the fact that I find his joke funny, but I do giggle to myself on the inside.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that anytime I would speak freely in a session with Dr. Lewis, she would get angry and tell Dr. S, then I would get into trouble. It’s why I never opened up to her. She didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”
“Could it be that what you had to say was derogatory toward her?”
“Of course, it was! She’s—”
“A stupid cunt. I know.”
This time I can’t keep the small smile from appearing on my face. Dr. Dick’s face mirrors my own, and it tugs at my heartstrings a little bit. The feeling is foreign, and it shocks me, removing my smile before I meant to.
“Okay, so,” he clears his throat. “I read a little about what landed you in here. Do you want to talk about that?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, just know that we will eventually get there. You will need to talk about it sooner or later.”
I nod in agreement as he begins to ask the next question.
“Let’s start at the beginning then. Where did you grow up?”
I take a deep breath and groan loudly because I don’t want to talk about this either.
“Is that a sore subject?”
“Uhh, yeah, kind of!”
“I understand. I don’t like talking about my childhood either, but this is a safe space, Brynn. I want you to be open with me. I meant what I said last night. I want you to trust me completely.”
His eyes flash dangerously when he says ‘completely,’ and I don’t know whether or not to be scared or turned on. I think back to how I felt last night down in isolation. I was weak, and he saw me break; that part scares me. But the pleasure I felt when I looked into his eyes as I came apart was powerful.
I don’t remember ever feeling that way before. There is more to Dr. Dick. There is a reason for the delicious darkness in his stare, and I’m going to find out what it is.
Richard
“Fine.” she starts, and I am a little surprised that it was that easy.
I know full well that I am going to have to draw the answers I need from between her delicious lips, but I’ll gladly do it for as long as it takes. She’s going to be proud of herself at the end of this hour, thinking that she’s stopped me from digging into her past. But she is in for a rude awakening. I’m going to take pleasure in making her stay until I say she’s free to go.
“I was born and raised in a small, piece of shit town in Massachusetts. I ran away from home when I was fourteen and haven’t gone back.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
She rolls her left shoulder slightly and uses it to rub her chin. A nervous tic?
“Next question.”
“Do you,” I stare at her, pointedly, and continue, “have any brothers or sisters?”
She looks at me like I slapped her, and fuck, I want to. I want to haul her petulant brat ass over my knee and spank the shit out of it before sticking my fingers in her pussy like she did last night.
She rolls her shoulder again and cracks her knuckles before pulling her legs up onto the sofa. She is nervous and upset. Watching her squirm and upsetting her are two completely separate things. I don’t enjoy making her feel this way, but I will get her to open up to me, and I will revel in watching her bloom.
&n
bsp; “I used to.”
“Used to?”
“That’s what I just said, Dick.”
I shouldn’t let her call me that, but every time she says Dick, mine twitches to life a little.
“What happened?”
She rolls her eyes as well as her shoulder and breathes in and out loudly. The annoyance written all over her beautiful face doesn’t go unnoticed. I wonder why she isn’t fighting me like she did with Dr. Lewis? I make a small note of it.
“I used to have a half-sister, but she… she died.”
“I’m truly sorry to hear that, Brynn,” and it’s the honest truth. I can feel the pain emanating from her body floating in the space between us
“What happened?”
She begins bobbing her left knee up and down, another nervous tic. She looks down at her hands and begins inspecting her cuticles. I am about to ask again when she finally answers.
“My mother’s boyfriend beat her for protecting me.”
“Protecting you from what?”
More silence, but I am going to give her the time she needs.
“From him and my mother,” she explains, painfully.
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen,” she whispers.
“How old was your sister?”
“Seventeen.”
“What happened, Brynn?”
“They were drug addicts, always fucked up on something. They would beat on us both, touch us both. One day, he had me in his sights, and Emmaline picked up a kitchen chair and threw it at him. He was high as a kite, so it didn’t even phase him. He chased her down and threw her to the ground. He straddled her and started punching. I tried to stop him, but my mother held me back. She finally let me go once she realized that Em was hurt so badly. Blood was splattered everywhere; there was no doubt that she was gone. Both she and I had a small bag ready to go if we needed to get out of there quickly. While they were scrambling, trying to figure out what they were going to do, I ran into our room, grabbed my bag, and climbed out the window. And I never looked back.”