by Kitty Thomas
“I don’t have a job. You made me quit. I have nowhere to go.” Was she begging him to keep her?
Oh God. She was. There were nothing left of her. One small piece at a time had been traded out while she’d hardly noticed… and now… she didn’t recognize any of it. She didn’t recognize herself.
“Maybe you should have taken your role with me more seriously. I’m sure you’ll find a new dick to suck by tomorrow evening.”
He released her throat and moved to the opposite end of the room as if he couldn’t trust himself mere feet from her. Mina trembled as she tried to keep herself covered. Maybe it was shock. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that no matter how many times he’d seen her naked, she couldn’t stand to let him see her again—not when he was like this. All she felt when he looked at her now was shame.
“I was honest,” she said. “I told you what I needed, that I was looking for someone gentle. I didn’t hold anything back.”
Jason jerked open a drawer and threw clothes at her. She struggled to catch them before they hit the ground.
His expression turned dark. “I don’t give a fuck what you need. You agreed to be mine. There’s something inside you, Mina, that makes people want to hurt you. You’ll never find a man who’ll be gentle.”
17
Ten Months Later
Gainful employment had been the easy part. The hard part was trying to live with herself and the memories of the things she’d allowed Jason and those before him to do to her. Maybe allowed wasn’t right. What power had she had with him so much stronger than her? Especially all the times he’d tied her down—as if the power differential wasn’t frightening enough without ropes or chains.
Mina sat on a sofa outside her therapist’s office on the tenth floor. He’d given her the codes so she wouldn’t have to wait outside in the frigid cold.
She’d been chain-smoking for the past fifteen minutes waiting for him to arrive. She’d found Dr. Lindsay Smith while looking for a kink-friendly therapist. She’d been searching for someone she could talk to about all of this, someone who might reassure her that she wasn’t broken beyond repair. She’d wanted someone who would make her believe that kink was okay—she’d just been unlucky with her partners.
She’d been surprised Lindsay wasn’t a woman and had almost bolted that first meeting six months ago. She’d needed a woman to talk to—not another man—not some man who would only be kind to her until he’d managed to get inside her. But so far, Dr. Smith hadn’t made any attempts to fuck her, and his mask of kindness had yet to slip. Maybe he was her unicorn.
The front door opened. Dr. Smith wore a tailored dark pinstripe suit and seemed to glide into the building on a cloud of authority.
“Have you been waiting long?”
She gestured to the five half-smoked cigarettes in the tray, each with her siren red lipstick print on it. When she got like this, she couldn’t make it through a whole cigarette before she was snubbing it out and compulsively lighting another. She’d convinced herself that first inhalation was the best. It brought the deepest calm. After a few minutes she became impatient with anything less and lit another.
“I see,” he said, grimly. “Give me a moment.”
It was Sunday—a day he didn’t normally see patients. It felt weird to be here without the buffer of someone else in the reception area.
The doctor was in his fifties, judging by the salt and pepper gray at his temples and the lines on his face. He had a calm, commanding presence—exactly the type of man she’d fantasized about finding but didn’t think could be real. He was probably too old for her, but in shape and good looking. Mina was embarrassed to admit even inside her own mind that she’d masturbated to many fantasies of him.
Her previous masters had been closer to her own age. Maybe it was age. Maybe an older guy, someone like Dr. Smith wouldn’t be… She shook herself out of the thought. He would be like all the others. And just because he was a kink-friendly therapist didn’t mean he was kinky. Or looking for a partner even if he was.
Stop it. This is what’s wrong with you. This is why this keeps happening. Just stop!
The doctor poked his head out. “I’m ready for you, Mina.” His voice was a deep lullaby, and she found herself coaxed the few steps into his exotic, plant-filled sanctuary.
“No smoking around the orchids,” he reminded her gently.
Mina snubbed out her sixth half-smoked cigarette, reapplied her lipstick, straightened her long black pencil skirt, and crossed the threshold. Even at the emotional level she was at, she’d dressed for him. She couldn’t bring herself to let him see her in sweatpants with her hair in disarray. She was already about to blubber and cry all over him. There was no need to be even more pathetic.
His inner office was part of what kept her coming back. For all her hesitance about him not being a female doctor, his office created a safe space that few other places did for her anymore. The walls were a soothing lavender to match the orchids that lined the wall. The dark oak desk and coffee table were the only things that kept the room masculine.
Lindsay bypassed the coffeemaker and put some water on to boil in a tea kettle, then he pulled out a notebook and flipped to a fresh page.
“Another nightmare?”
Mina nodded. Her hand shook as she swiped the tears off her cheeks. Shouldn’t all this feel less traumatic by now? Instead of more? She’d been able to cope just as long as she could deny how bad it had been.
He scribbled a few notes. “Tell me about it.”
“I-it’s always the same dream. You know the dream.” She couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud again. He must have twenty pages of notes by now on just this one dream—Jason abusing her in front of his friends. He whipped her, cut her, put out cigarettes on her, then he passed her around. Each time she woke, she could feel the blood running down her back. Each time she panicked and thought it was still happening, but it was only sweat.
It would be so simple if it were just a dream, but it had happened. The worst part was that she hadn’t left him that night. She’d stayed until he’d kicked her out months later.
“You’ve gone a while without the dream,” the doctor commented as he flipped back several pages. “What do you think triggered it this time?”
“I went on a date.”
“With someone in the lifestyle? Do you think that’s wise, given your track record with men?”
Mina looked up sharply. Was he blaming her now? It sounded like a softer echo of Jason’s words—as if it was her fault men had beaten her, like there was something fundamentally broken that lured only dangerous animals to her door.
But she didn’t have the energy to lash out. And in truth, she was afraid to. What if the doctor hurt her, too? He felt like her last hope in the world. If he turned on her, she wouldn’t be able to leave her apartment again.
“N-no. It w-wasn’t someone in the lifestyle. It was just a regular guy.”
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head. “I’m not going out with him again. He wouldn’t understand my weirdness. It wouldn’t work.” She left unspoken the fear that he might hurt her, too.
Tony had seemed perfectly nice. He hadn’t done anything to set off warning bells. And he was a cousin of a friend of hers. That made him not a totally random and unknown element.
“Maybe you should be single for a while,” Lindsay said.
“I’ve been single for ten months. I’m broken. I can’t do kink. I can’t do vanilla. I can’t be with anybody without having nightmares, but I’m so lonely I can’t breathe.”
Lindsay passed a box of tissues across the desk as her tears started to spill over again.
“What do you want, Mina?”
She looked at the crumbled tissues in her hands. “You know what I want. But it doesn’t exist. I don’t do well on my own, but I do even worse with somebody. All I want, all I’ve ever wanted is to live in a kink relationship with a gentle master. But it’s not real. They
all hurt you.” Even if it was real, she wasn’t sure if she could handle it now. Nobody was going to put up with all her fears or the emotional baggage she’d accumulated.
“That’s not true,” Lindsay said.
“Well, they all hurt me.”
“Fair enough.”
The doctor stared at an orchid across the room as if he’d entered a fugue state. Several minutes passed before his attention returned to her. He stared intently, as if sizing her up, as if trying to decide something. She looked down again.
Was he about to suggest she be with him? It would break all rules of doctor/patient relationships. It would break the trust they’d already formed. And yet, her heart raced at the idea of being in his house. In his bed.
“What if I told you I could give you the thing you’ve always craved?”
Mina felt her face flame. He was going there?
“You mean…? I-I don’t know what you mean.” She saved it at the last second. If she said something about the two of them moving into a different type of relationship and that wasn’t what he meant, she’d want to die.
He sighed. “I mean, this is not the only work I do. I could match you with someone—A master who would provide for your needs and take care of you. I could ensure he wouldn’t harm you. You’d be happy and safe.”
“Oh.” She hoped her disappointment that he didn’t mean him, didn’t show.
“Do you want to think about it?”
She should say no. She should just accept a life alone. She’d been doing better until that date with Tony.
“How would you ensure he didn’t hurt me?”
“I can’t discuss that unless you agree and we get further in the training process. For my own safety.”
The warning bells went off. The way he spoke… whatever he was suggesting wasn’t entirely legal. Maybe not legal at all.
The doctor reviewed his notes. “Would you agree to intercourse with this theoretical master?”
“I, I mean, that’s not an option is it? I can’t just opt out of that.” Even in vanilla relationships she’d known she couldn’t just opt out. She’d never liked intercourse. She liked most other sexual acts—or had liked them before Jason—but that one thing was something she just sort of got through.
She had no early rape history to blame it on. She’d never had a funny uncle. It just wasn’t something she liked, and she couldn’t believe she’d told the doctor about that to begin with. It was the kind of thing you never told anybody because everybody liked it. And if you didn’t, there must be something really wrong with you.
Mina was convinced either other women were lying and faking it, or she’d been broken somehow before anyone ever laid a hand on her.
She couldn’t come that way. And sometimes it hurt. And it always gave her a low-level anxiety she couldn’t explain. But she’d managed to eroticize the fear to cope and keep going forward. Usually. Most of the time.
Was that the root of her kink? Since the only way to do sex was to eroticize fear? She shook the thought from her head. It didn’t matter anyway.
“Do you imagine you’re the only human being on the planet who isn’t fond of that one particular activity?” he asked. “Believe me, I’ve dealt with all sorts of off-beat tastes, both in dominants and submissives. Nothing surprises me, and this is mild. I could even match you in a non-sexual master/slave relationship if that’s what you need and want.”
“What would that even look like? I mean, I don’t like to be hit. I’m not a masochist at all. Would I just be the guy’s maid?” She didn’t trust that any man who was attracted to women, who owned her would ever be able to not fuck her, let alone not hit her—going on past experience.
“There are all kinds of touch and closeness that isn’t sexual. You might be surprised by the bond that could form. It’s up to you. You tell me what you’re willing and able to do, and we’ll work from there.”
Were they negotiating her limits? She’d never once had this conversation with a man. She’d come to believe limit negotiations were a myth. She’d tried to bring it up in her first kink relationship, but the guy had scoffed at her and assured her that he would just know if he was going too far.
Well, he had just known, and then he’d crossed all her lines anyway. And the one after him. And the one after him. And finally Jason. They’d all done it. After the first guy, she hadn’t brought up negotiations and limits because she was afraid they’d start in on some “slaves don’t get to negotiate” bullshit.
She knew some people somewhere negotiated. It was the codified rule of things on the surface. And she knew some girls who claimed they had, and that their dominants had honored their boundaries. But snakes lurking in the wood pile were all too common in a lifestyle where it was hard to tell real abuse from pretend by just looking.
“Mina… did I lose you?” Lindsay urged her back to the present. “Yes or no on intercourse? I need you to be one hundred percent honest with me, or this won’t work.”
“I mean, I can do intercourse. It’s not like I’m broken.” But wasn’t she?
“I’m marking, no. This isn’t about what you can try to cope with without becoming catatonic. We’re talking ideal situations. Let me see what I can find for you. At that point we can decide if any concessions need to be made.”
Of course concessions would be made. Why was he pretending to give her the option to opt out of the one sexual act that even vanilla society had deemed mandatory or it wasn’t real sex?
This wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t trust that Lindsay had the power to stop her from being hurt by whatever random pervert he hooked her up with. And she didn’t buy that he had access to such a man in the first place.
She took a deep breath and laid out clearly and succinctly what she wanted. “No penetration. No physical pain. Everything else is okay.” She was sure any theoretical master would ask what else could there possibly be if all of that was off the table?
She expected Lindsay to laugh at her. These things didn’t exist. Anywhere. Maybe if she built a robot, she could program him to her exact weird specifications.
“Okay. Are you serious about this? If I find someone who meets these needs for you, will you do it?”
Mina waited for the punchline, but it didn’t seem to be coming.
“I’m asking for impossible things, and… I’ve got these scars. Even if you could find some completely bizarre man who would go along with all of this, he wouldn’t want me once he saw the scars.” And he probably wouldn’t be able to deal with the drama of her emotional scars, either.
“May I see them?” Lindsay asked.
“I-I’d have to take off my shirt.”
He raised a brow and leaned back in his seat. It was a challenge. It was a dare. And a small part of her buzzed with excitement, because it was also a show. God, what the fuck was wrong with her? Even now, after everything, she was so fucked in the head.
Mina stood and turned around. She unbuttoned the silk top and let it slide off her shoulders. She’d never shown anyone her scars in full light—at least not anyone who wasn’t beating or fucking her. She’d worried that if things progressed with Tony, she’d have to insist on sex with the lights off.
He’d think she was a prude or insecure, but it would be better than him seeing what had been done to her and maybe getting sadistic ideas of his own.
Circular marks from cigarettes ran down the backs of her arms and her legs. There were whip scars and knife scars on her back. Most of it had healed enough that she didn’t look like a total monster, but the scars were definitely distracting. Mina couldn’t imagine how they wouldn’t be.
She jumped when a warm finger traced one of them.
A whimper left her throat.
“Yes, you definitely need a proper master. I don’t think this will be a problem. You’d be surprised the number of men who have a hero complex and wouldn’t mind at all. You can put your shirt back on.”
Mina’s fingers shook as she struggled t
o get the buttons back in their holes. When she sat, the doctor pressed a cup of tea into her hands.
“It’s camomile. It’ll soothe you.”
She took a sip and gathered the courage to say what she’d wanted to say since she’d stepped into his office. “Do you have somebody? A pet or slave or sub or whatever?”
Lindsay shook his head. “Between my work here and… my other work… I don’t feel I have the time or energy to devote to someone like that.”
“Oh.”
He was letting her down easy.
She stared into the cup, trying not to notice as he moved closer to her and leaned against the desk, his leg a mere inches from hers. All one of them would have to do is shift the barest amount to be touching the other.
She flinched when his hand brushed her cheek.
“Mina, look at me.”
She looked up, wishing she could bury all the vulnerability she’d allowed this man to see, wishing he wanted her because if there was a single person on the planet who could give her faith that this could work and that she could be happy, it was Lindsay.
“It’s not that I’m not attracted. I really don’t have time. I can’t give you what you need outside this office.”
She nodded and took another sip of tea to distract herself from his looming closeness.
Dr. Smith moved back behind the desk. “I’m going to call an associate of mine tomorrow to see if he’ll meet with you and if he thinks we should accept you into the program. I will warn you that he will touch you, and not in a safe, platonic way.”
Mina felt the tremble coming back into her hands and set the teacup down on the desk.
Lindsay pretended not to notice. “He will touch you. He will look at you. But he will not cause you pain, and he will not penetrate you. Do you trust me?”
“Y-yes.” She shouldn’t. She shouldn’t trust any other perverts after what had happened with the last four. But the doctor felt more solid, more stable somehow.
“If he agrees to the meeting will you go and do whatever he asks within those parameters?”