SCAR_A Dark Military Romance

by Loki Renard

  “She stole a car.”

  I clear my throat. “She left it at my home. It is unharmed.”

  “Nevertheless, she stole a car.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “She did.”

  She purses her lips and looks at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ma’am?” My heart sinks. What is she sorry about? Sorry she’s going to recommend Mary be cancelled out of the program? Maybe trade her to Russia? Or some of the other interested parties?

  “You made us aware that she was a high risk inmate, and unfortunately she appears to have been handled in a lax manner in your absence. I know the work you’ve put into her, Ares. This is a setback you didn’t need. I think you should move to on-site quarters until her breaking period is complete.”

  I can’t believe it. The Head is apologizing to me. I thought I was going to have to basically beg for Mary’s life.

  “You still want her in your program?” I try not to let my shock show, but fail.

  “I’m aware of the condition Miss Brown is in,” she says. “I’m also aware of how she came to be in that condition. She has rare qualities, Ares. They make her difficult to handle. I’m sure for many, utterly impossible. But you have formed a rapport and you have demonstrated control over her in a number of ways. We don’t deal with easy people here. We keep the challenges. The drop outs from other units. We keep the people who are too much trouble for others. Because they can do things other don’t - like break out in the middle of the night and take my car.”

  “Your car.” Oh fuck. Her car. Of course it had to be her car.

  “Yes, Ares. My car. I trust it will be returned in the same condition it left.”

  “Yes ma’am, of course.”

  “You’re dismissed, Ares. I suggest you go make it abundantly clear how unacceptable this evening’s activities were.” Her eyes twinkle. “By any means necessary.”

  Holy hell.

  I have a newfound respect for the Head. I don’t know her well, and that’s by design. Nobody does. But she’s the kind of woman who can provide a space for me to actually deal with Mary, and not throw her out because she’s trouble. I appreciate that more than I can say.

  “Oh, and Ares?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “When you’re finished with her, send her to me.”

  MARY

  I’m locked up again. Oh well. I guess I didn’t really lose anything in the escape. Except for whatever remaining shreds of trust Ken might have had in me. It’s a weird feeling to be locked up again. It was nice to see Tom even though he fucked me over. That’s the thing about the Ares Brothers. They play it straight. They don’t bend the rules. Not ever. Definitely not for me.

  I got my hug though. Worth it.

  Suddenly, the door opens. Ken is standing there. He has a cane in his hand. Of course. It’s the only thing he uses on me these days.

  I stand up and face him, and before he can say anything, I drop my pants and turn around. He wants my ass. He can have it.

  I hear him grunt and the door closes.

  He walks around me, looks me in the face. It’s been a while since I really looked at Ken, saw how handsome he still is. How much passion and intelligence is held in his gaze. When he looks into my eyes, I feel a connection which remains unbroken, no matter what.

  The cane rises between my legs. He presses the cool length of it between my lips along my slit. I stand stock still as one of the little ridges of bamboo nudges against my clit.

  “You fucked up, girl,” he says, his voice dangerously cold.

  I’m more turned on than I have been in a very long time. If this is what happens to me when I fuck up, I’m going to fuck up every damn day. This cane against my clit feels incredible - until it moves away a couple inches, then returns in a swift stroke right between my thighs. The pain bursts across my pussy lips. I scream and try to close my legs, but he jams his foot between mine and prevents them from coming together.

  “Keep your legs open,” Ken growls.

  His hand slides up, closes around my neck. His fingers hold me at my throat as he whips the cane back and forth between my thighs, catching my pussy over and over again with short little strokes which find my lips and clit and inner thighs. It’s like being stung repeatedly by an angry hornet, and there is no escape from it because he has me by the throat and I can’t breathe if I fight his grasp. The only way to keep getting oxygen is to keep my legs open and let him whip my cunt into a hot, sore, swollen state.

  “You’re mine,” he growls, drawing me close, pushing the ridge of the cane against my tender pussy. “Don’t ever fucking forget that, Mary. I don’t care what happens in here. You’re going to get out again, and you’re going to be mine and I’m going to have you however I want.”

  He pushes me back and spins me around. The cane meets my ass in a hard cracking stroke. It burns like hell fire, and it’s joined by another one almost immediately.

  Six of the best is the usual dose of the cane. Ken gives me twelve. Twelve times that hard rod whips through the air and terminates across the fullest part of my ass. I am not going to sit for a very long time. I am not going to touch my pussy for a long time. He has turned my ass and cunt against me, the sensitive skin so impossibly sore I try to escape the cane’s subsequent strokes by dropping to the ground, writhing in front of him as he follows me down and keeps applying pain.

  “Don’t you ever think about pulling this shit again,” he growls in my ear as I lie on the floor, gasping for air.

  “I won’t, sir!” I cry the promise. The cold floor feels so good against my caned little clit. I roll over and face him, wailing as my ass meets the floor, but he holds me there anyway. Makes me feel every bit of it. His eyes sweep over me and find mine.

  I am totally at his mercy. I feel that to my core. And I don’t ever want to cross him again. No matter what. The pain isn’t worth it. I can see something else in his eyes. Determination. He didn’t want to do this. But he will do it again if he has to.

  We look at each other for a long moment. There’s so much between us. So much unsaid. I want to beg him for just a little kindness. He wants to give it. But I just finished fucking him again and he won’t, maybe can’t. I’ve delayed his ability to love me again.

  His hand slides between my legs. He rubs my slit briefly. It’s hard to explain how it’s not a sexual touch, even though it’s on my genitals, but it isn’t. It’s one little moment of tenderness. One moment of connection. And it’s all either of us are going to get.

  “Get up and pull your pants up,” he says as he slides his hand away. “You need to go see someone.”

  “W… who?”

  “The woman you met at your intake. She runs this place. She wants to see you.”

  I whimper as I pull my pants back up. This is the sorest I’ve ever been. Actually, no, it’s not. I’ve been in much worse pain before. This is the most pain I’ve ever allowed myself to feel. Because it came from him. And because I deserve it.

  “That woman runs this place, sir?”

  “Yeah,” he says, tossing the cane on the bed. “And it was her car that you stole.”

  I sniff back the tears which are threatening to leak out of my eyes. She’s going to fucking destroy me.

  It’s very, very hard to have any kind of composure after being caned like that. I want to hide under my blankets and never come out. But that’s not how this works. When you fuck up to the level I just did, the consequences just keep coming.

  As I enter her office, I feel her eyes on me. She’s noticing how I’m walking. She probably knows exactly what Ken just did to me. I am sore and I am humiliated. Usually I’d be self-righteous about it, but somehow, when I look at this woman, I feel as though I deserve it.

  The Head, as Ken calls her, is so composed. And she has a gravitas about her which makes me feel immediately small. Small, and messy and wrong.

  “You wanted to see me, ma’am?” I address her respectfully. I do not want the consequences if I piss he
r off more. Everyone here is mad at me. An entire facility full of people were scrambled out of bed at three am because of my escape. I am not going to be popular for a long time.

  “I want to show you something, Mary.”

  This woman always gets directly to the point. She makes no small talk. She does not bother with pleasantries, or excess communication. She has said only a few words to me so far, at the beginning of my stay, when she told me I was Ken’s material. I am afraid of what she will say now.

  I wipe my eyes and nod, waiting to see what it is. Something on her desk maybe. A file or something.

  She walks over to me, stands in front of me, and lifts the bottom of the perfectly pressed blouse she’s wearing, revealing the lower part of her tummy.

  Her stomach is a scar. It runs dead across her belly button, and to one side, a big gnarled, old cross which must have been a nasty incision when it was made. I stare at it, shocked at the depth and the rawness of it. I would never have guessed a woman as elegant and poised as her could be hiding such a thing beneath her clothes.

  “I know what it is to be kept and to be hurt,” she says, her eyes locked on mine. “I know what it is to be an enemy of everyone and an ally of no-one. I know what it is to be entirely alone in the world. You are not alone anymore, Mary, and I can tell you two things for certain. Ares will not give up on you. Nor will I. But that doesn’t mean your time here can’t hurt a lot more than it needs to.”

  “It hurts a lot now,” I say, ruefully. The cane marks are not going anywhere any time soon. I’m going to feel them for days. Even the most simple physical drills are going to feel like hell.

  “It could always hurt more, couldn’t it?”

  I nod silently.

  “I’ve been where you are now, Mary. I’ve stood where you’re standing. Metaphorically. You have a choice to make. You can stay inside the world you’ve made for yourself, where you’re safe, but ultimately alone - or you can come out and join the rest of us.”

  There’s a silence. A space in which I think. I don’t entirely understand what she’s saying, but I can sense it’s important. I feel so stupid. I know there’s something I’m missing. Something I’ve been missing since I’ve got here. But nobody seems to be able to explain it to me.

  “I’m sorry I took your car,” I say, filling the space between us with words. “It’s just, it’s the only one that can come and go without question. I watched it from the top windows a few times. Noticed that they never stop it. So…”

  Her voice is calm, but cool as she replies. “If you touch a vehicle of mine again, I will make what Ares just did to you feel like a spa day in Zermatt, understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I swallow.

  She reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You have a future here, Mary. We do the things nobody else will do. We take on the people others don’t want to take on. You will have the chance to face the people who hurt you one day. But not if you don’t settle down and let the process work.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong,” I admit. “I mean, aside from escaping. I keep failing, but I don’t know how to succeed.”

  Her eyes soften a little. There’s compassion there. For me.

  “Let him do his job, Mary. You will understand soon enough.”

  KEN

  “We’re going to talk now.”

  She’s back from the Head and she’s tired. I can see it in her posture and in the dark circles under her eyes, and in the way she slumped down onto the mattress as soon as she got back here.

  I was waiting for her, of course. I’m not done with her yet, not by a long way.

  She shifts uncomfortably on the bed, looking guilty and sore. She’s probably both. I really went in on her with that cane. Not that she didn’t deserve it, but still. Intimate punishment of that nature deserves some kind of after care. In this situation, my ability to look after her is severely limited. I’ll do what I can.

  This process hasn’t involved a lot of talking so far, and that’s part of the problem. She’s good with language, and I’m concerned if I engage her in a lot of talking, it will just take longer to train her because she’ll talk me in circles. But after what she just did, some kind of conversation is absolutely in order.

  “You stole a car.”

  “I needed one.”

  “Tom told me what you tried to do to Stephanie. Before I came home. Back at the house. With the lighter.”

  “Okay.”

  She looks at me under her lashes. She’s still. Quiet. Holding it all in. Keeping her secrets locked as far away from me as possible. Dealing with Mary is like standing outside a high security vault. There are doors within doors within doors.

  The only time I get to see her, the real her, is when she breaks down - and that hardly ever happens. Certainly hasn’t since I bought her here. And I understand why. She’s been taught to resist. If she can do one thing, it’s lock the rest of the world out.

  But I want in. I need in. And we don’t have forever.

  “Is there a point?” She looks at me and asks the question flatly.

  “The point is, you do criminal things, Mary.”

  The corner of her lip flickers. “So?”

  “So, most people feel guilty when they do things like that.”

  She looks at me blankly, and even though I know what I’m saying isn’t reaching her, I don’t know any other way to say it. I push through, hating that I have to rely on words. I’m not a man who speaks. I’m a man who does.

  “And most people who were in your situation wouldn’t run away from a place like this. Somewhere secure. Where certain foreign intelligences can’t hurt them. Where they have a future.”

  “Most people aren’t me,” she shrugs.

  “They’re not,” I agree. I want to know her. I have to know her. But I’ll be fucked if I know the way in.

  “What do you want, Ken?”

  The directness of the question catches me off guard. She’s looking me dead in the eye, and there’s an intensity to her expression which makes me, a hardened soldier, suddenly feel a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. I’ve seen that look before. It’s the look you see in the eyes of men who have done too much.

  “I want you,” I say, crouching down in front of her and taking her by the hand.

  “You own me. I’m your material. You have me.”

  “I mean, I want what’s in here.” I press my hand to the space between her breasts, where her heart beats.

  “You want in,” she says softly. “You’re looking for something more. But there’s nothing inside me. There’s nothing left. They took it. I’m hollow now.”

  There’s an edge to her voice I haven’t heard before. She’s not sad. She’s not angry. She’s… vacant.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You’re looking for something you can’t find. Maybe that’s because it doesn’t exist.”

  “It exists, Mary. You’re still here. With me.”

  “If you say so.”

  She turns her face away from mine, breaks eye contact. Breaks me. I’ve wanted nothing more than to save this girl since the moment her profile came across my desk, but now I’m wondering if she is right. Mary might have been lost before I found her. Maybe I didn’t save her. Maybe I was too late. Maybe the woman lying in that bed was already gone.

  There’s definitely evidence to that effect. She has no impulse control. She does whatever makes the most sense to her in any given moment. She’s not stupid, but she has no interest in the long term, because in her world, there is no long term. There is only the now.

  If I’m right about that, she might always need me watching her, making sure she’s under some form of effective control, because she’s obviously not interested in, or maybe even capable of, controlling herself.

  And then I feel something. Her fingers curl around mine. She’s holding on to me. She can’t look at me. She can’t bear to show me who she really is, but there’s definitely some p
art of her that’s still here. Still wanting. Still needing. Still loving.

  I have felt this woman wrapped around me, I have seen her soul when I look into her eyes. I have touched what I need to touch.

  I take a deep breath and remind myself that the woman sitting in front of me right now is one who has had to face hell recently. When those agents walked in, a part of her walked out, took refuge at the back of her brain and left me with the faction of her which is about survival first.

  “We have something,” I remind her, my hand still between the soft swells of her breasts. “We’ve been together. Really together.”

  “It was all an act,” she says, her voice husky. “You wanted to fuck me, so I fucked you. I don’t know what love is, Ken. You should get out of here. Before I take you down with me.”

  An act? She’s one of the most blunt people I’ve ever known.

  “You’re no actress, Mary.”

  “Bullshit,” she laughs, cold. “All I do is act. I spend my life watching others. Then I do what they do. I was taught to emulate. I could be anything. Your little fuck toy, their assassin. Whatever. There’s nothing inside me. It was taken a long time ago.

  “Mary…”

  She looks back at me. She can only see me when she’s angry.

  “I was raised to be a spy. I was born to lie. There’s nothing…” she takes a halting breath. “People learn who they are when they’re young. I learned who everyone else was. I never met me.”

  That I can believe. Sleeper agents live lies. Their lives are never their own. Everything they do is a cover for something else. So maybe she doesn’t know what it’s like to be authentically her. But I do think she knows who she is and what she wants.

  I slide my hand down from her breasts to between her thighs. She draws a breath in, and the skin on her cheeks flushes red.

  “You feel me here, Mary?”

  She nods quickly, sucking her lower lip between her teeth. I squeeze lightly, knowing that it’s going to hurt a little. My cane whipped her cunt well and truly. She lets out a little whimper and begins to squirm.