I wait outside Brianne’s dorm with the engine running. Despite doing my best to convince her she needed to decide on the contract by today, somehow I ended up agreeing to take her out for mini golf. I grip the steering wheel and shake my head thinking about how differently things with her have gone. Definitely not by my original plans. Before this, no woman ever came close to occupying my thoughts as much as Brianne does. No woman ever surprised me as much as she has. And I can say with certainty no woman has tempted me as much.

She can’t be bought. And where most women fawn all over me and are eager to do whatever I say, she’s obstinate. I just can’t let her know how much I’m enjoying this. The moment she signs that contract, she’ll be in for the shock of her life. She’ll be my submissive, and I’m going to absolutely fucking love making her pay for every last time she has disobeyed me. I’ll take special pleasure in training her to be mine and to submit. I know she’s going to love it. I just need her to hurry up and realize it before I burst from my growing need.

She comes rushing out of the dorm wearing a black dress that shows off her amazing legs and cleavage. I lick my lips as I watch the way her tits bounce with each step down the stairs in front of her her building.

I get out to open the door for her and she smiles shyly at me, getting in carefully so that her dress doesn’t ride up.

I love that she can stand toe to toe with me and still be bashful like the virgin she is. It’s sexy as hell. One minute, I can tell she wants me as badly as I want her even though she’s too embarrassed to say so. The next, she’s trying to make fucking demands like she’s in charge. Just thinking about it puts a smirk on my face as I walk around to get in the driver’s seat.

“You’re sure you want to play mini golf?” I ask.

“What?” she asks. “Did you hear the rumors about how good I am? Worried I’ll beat you?”

I quirk an eyebrow. “I had no idea I was getting involved with a mini golf champion. I should’ve worn something nicer.”

She bites her lip and reaches to run her fingers down the lapel of my jacket. “I think you look great.” Her self-consciousness kicks in a split second later and she jerks her hand back “S-sorry.” Then she frowns, as if not sure why she’s apologizing.

“You know, once you finger yourself in front of a guy, it’s probably okay to touch his clothes.”

Her cheeks burn red. “Do we have to talk about that?”

“We don’t have to talk about it, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”

She covers her face with both hands and leans her head against the window. “When the paramedics come, just tell them I died of embarrassment. Okay?”

I laugh, shifting the car into drive and pulling out onto the main road. “You’ll learn soon enough you don’t ever need to be embarrassed around me. Hell, you won’t even have any secrets from me once you’re mine. You won’t want to.”

“Does that go both ways?” she asks.

I chuckle. “I’m an open book, Princess.”

Brianne laughs. “Right. An open book behind bulletproof glass.”

“My past is where it belongs. I like to keep it there.”

“Well, maybe I would be more willing to--”

She’s interrupted when my phone rings. I’m about to ignore the call when I see it’s from the Fairfield’s. Shit.

“Sorry,” I say. “Hold that thought. I have to take this.” I press the phone to my ear, pulling into a turn lane to do a U-turn. “What is it?” I ask into the receiver.

I hear a commotion through the earpiece. Raised voices. Metal screeching. A loud bang. “It’s your sister. She’s having one of her episodes and no one can calm her down.”

“I’m on the way,” I say coldly into the phone, hanging up and stomping on the gas.

“What is it?” asks Brianne.

I clench the steering wheel, weaving between cars and staring ahead. “It’s what you wanted. You’re going to get a look into my past.”

An orderly meets us out front and swipes his card, hurrying us inside. I tried to talk Brianne into staying in the car, but I knew she’d refuse, so she runs barefoot behind me, having left her heels in the car. We’re ushered up the stairs and around the corner to the double doors leading into the cafeteria. I immediately catch a glimpse of my sister in the corner with a plastic butter knife to her throat while she throws chairs at anyone who gets too close. She’s screaming something incoherent and her face is so red it’s nearly purple.

I slam through the doors, pushing past the mental patients who are either calmly eating ignoring the chaos or huddled in the corners of the room. Someone tries to restrain me and I slap his arm away, pushing forward until I catch Sarah’s eye.

I start to hum the lullaby. Our lullaby

The deep tune resonates from my chest and affects her immediately. She drops the chair, staring at me, plastic knife still pressed to her throat. Brianne slowly comes to a stop as I step closer and closer to Sarah, still humming.

When I’m close enough to touch her, I pull her into a hug, humming and easing her to her knees as I crouch beside her, carefully removing the knife from her hand. I run my fingers through her hair, rocking her as I hum like I used to when we were kids. When we were prisoners and we didn’t have anything but each other. I close my eyes and go back to that time, back to when we lived every day in fear of not knowing if there would be food, water, or even sunlight. When sometimes even death seemed so close and alluring that we might have welcomed it with open arms.

I only stop when I feel a soft hand press against my shoulder. I look up to see Brianne. She’s making a face I can’t read, but she hugs me and Sarah tightly.

I’m about to warn her not to touch my sister, because Sarah doesn’t let anyone but me touch her. Except Sarah is still. She only looks up at Brianne curiously and back to me.

I realize the orderlies are relaxing and starting to disperse. A woman starts to come toward us, but I wave her off. “Let us,” I say. “We’ll get her in bed.”

We walk back to her room, passing through the now silent cafeteria while Brianne keeps a hand on Sarah’s back and I have an arm around Sarah’s shoulders. I’m still in awe that Sarah is letting Brianne touch her, and when we get back to Sarah’s room, I’m even more surprised when my sister doesn’t immediately retreat to her comfort zone by the window. She instead turns to face me. “Who is she?” asks Sarah.

I frown. My sister rarely ever initiates conversations anymore. “This is Brianne,” I say slowly. “She’s very special to me.”

“She’s pretty,” says Sarah offhandedly before she moves to her spot by the window and sits, staring out over the grass and trees.

Brianne gives me a questioning look and I shake my head slightly, signaling for her to stay where she is.

“Do you need anything?” I ask. I could ask her what happened back there, but I already know. It’s the same thing that got her sent before a judge and ordered to live here. It’s the same type of episode she’s been having for years now. She forgets she’s not back there in that room. She thinks she’s finally got a chance to escape or end her own life and she takes it. I’ve always been the only one who can bring her back from that place, which is partly why I’ve had to make sure she’s nearby at all times. I have special permission from the judge to have her flown outside the state or even outside the country if I have to travel for business, so we’re never more than thirty minutes apart.

“Quiet,” she says. “I need quiet.”

I move to where she sits and tuck her hair behind her ear, kneeling. “Just remember I’m here. Okay? If it ever gets to be too much or too scary, I’ll always be here, Sarah. All you need to do is have them call for me. You don’t have to let it go that far.”

She says nothing, but I see tears well in her eyes.

I kiss her on the top of the head and straighten, breathing out a long sigh. “Let’s go,” I say to Brianne, who looks incredibly confused.

“You said I was going to learn about your past,” says Brianne once we’re back in the car. “I don’t feel like I really understand what just happened, though.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” I say after a moment.

“Okay…” says Brianne a little nervously.

“I’ll tell you what that was about if you promise to seriously look at the contract tonight and give me an answer in the morning. One way or another.”

She picks at the hem of her dress for a long time, until I think she might not respond at all. “Okay. Deal.”

“I’ve never told anyone about this. Frankly, I don’t know why I feel like I can tell you. But I do.”

She puts a hand on my thigh, squeezing slightly. “You don’t have to tell me if you aren’t comfortable.”

“No. If you’re going to become my submissive, you deserve to know.” I close my eyes, gathering the willpower to start telling my story. She waits patiently until I speak. “Sarah and I were foster kids. Our parents died a couple years after Sarah was born, so we bounced from foster home to foster home for as long as I could remember. Usually we lived with at least a dozen other kids. We could’ve been adopted a few times, but we refused to be separated. The foster homes would get fed up with us because no one wanted to take us both, and they’d find reasons to move us to new homes.

“It went on that way for years. Dirty beds, barely enough food, and a long line of foster parents who always seemed to find reasons to hate every last kid in their care.

“So when a single businessman in his forties finally agreed to adopt both of us, we didn’t care about anything else. It was a way out. We were finally going to get into a real home and stop being forced to move every few months. It seemed like a dream come true.

“At first it was. He’d take us to school, buy us gifts, though most of them were for Sarah. He wanted to spend time with us and take us places. But I started noticing something was off. It was in the way he looked at my sister. The way he’d find reasons to put his hands on her in seemingly innocent ways. None of it was.

“Once I realized what was really going on, I confronted him. I told him we were going to be gone in the morning and if he ever thought about coming after us, I’d fucking kill him.”

“Oh my God,” says Brianne. “How old were you?”

“Fifteen,” I say. “I went toward our room to get Sarah and tell her to pack her things. But he hit me with something in the back of the head. I still don’t know what it was, but it knocked me unconscious before I even hit the floor.

“When I woke up…” I shake my head, feeling my face contort in anger and desperation to remember it. “We were trapped. He had apparently gone and knocked Sarah out right after me. The window was boarded up. He removed the doorknob and put a lock on the outside with a latch only he could get to. Four walls, no blankets, no pillows. That was it. Just me, Sarah, and the clothes on our backs.

“He’d usually slide food and water under the door, but not enough for both of us. We were always hungry and always thirsty. I think maybe he was hoping I’d give Sarah my share and just die. That way he wouldn’t have to do it himself. I probably would’ve too, but Sarah wouldn’t eat or drink unless I did.

He didn’t let us go to school. He didn’t let us out. And… He’d try to come in sometimes to take Sarah, but I always fought him off, even when I felt so hungry and thirsty I thought I might collapse. Eventually, he gave up trying to take her and just kept us. He wouldn’t talk or listen when we begged to be let out.

“We were in that room for a year. He would reward us every few months for good behavior by letting us into the room across the hall where we could sit on the bed and look out the window. I think that was the only thing keeping Sarah going.

“I don’t know why, but one day he came in our room at night. He tried to be as quiet as possible, but I heard him. He was creeping in the room with a hammer in his hand. He moved beside me where I was sleeping. It was too dark for him to see my eyes were open, I guess, because he stood there a long time, looking down at me.

“So he didn’t see it coming when I snatched the hammer from him and…” I trail off. Red flashes in my mind and I hear the sound. I still can’t eat eggs unless someone else cracks the shell, because the noise always reminds me…

Brianne shakes her head. I can see tears sparkling in her eyes. “You don’t have to go on,” she says. “My God. I’m so sorry, Jackson.” She leans across the seat to hug me, resting her forehead on my shoulder.

“I can finish,” I say, swallowing. “I thought I killed him. So I dropped the hammer beside Sarah and got down to wake her up so we could get the hell out of there. But she grabbed the hammer and pushed me out of the way. I had just stunned him, and he was reaching for me, face bloody and pale like something out of a fucking nightmare.

“Well, Sarah let out a lifetime of frustration on him. She let every fucking ounce of anger out on that man until I couldn’t look anymore. We got picked up by the cops a few days later and they traced it back to us. We had to stand trial, but there was no one interested in really making a case against us, so the judge agreed to put us back in the system.”

Brianne leans back in her seat, eyes blank as she looks out the window. “I can’t believe you two went through so much. You were so strong to protect her like you did.”

“No. If I had been strong she never would’ve had to pick up that hammer. She never would’ve had to carry that fucking burden. It should have been mine.” I gesture towards the mental hospital. “That’s my fault. My burden. I put her there.”

“That’s not true,” says Brianne. “You did what you thought was right. You tried your hardest. And you’re still doing the right thing by taking such good care of her now.”

I’d like to believe her. The truth is I’ll always wonder what I could have done differently to keep her from the pain she’s in. If I had just finished the job. If I hadn’t confronted him before trying to leave with Sarah. The list never seems to end. It was easier to bury myself in work. To keep my head down and my mind focused on success and women. When I discovered BDSM, it was like a godsend. Maybe the time I spent out of control gave me an abnormally strong thirst for taking control. I’m not sure. All I know is nothing gets my blood flowing and my cock stiff like domination does. Finding the right woman and earning her submission is the greatest pleasure I’ve found on this earth.

That makes me feel like shit, too. My sister wound up in a mental hospital because of what we went through. What did I get? A fucking sexual kink. Yeah, I’d really like to believe Brianne, but I don’t see how I’ll ever be able to.

“Why don’t we reschedule dinner for tomorrow night. I know you got all dressed, but--”

“It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. I’ll look over the contract tonight and let you know in the morning. First thing,” she adds, biting her lip.

Despite everything, her perfect angel face is able to bring me out of the darkness of my past and straight into the moment. One look at her soft, flawless skin and full lips and I can almost forget. The desire to dominate her and bring her into my world is so strong that it pushes back even the darkest parts of my past.

For now.