Chapter 15
Fifteen
Rook
I’m toying with Briana. I know it. I can’t help myself. It’s been three days since I last touched her. I’ve been strict with her, adding to my list of demands every day. She follows them blindly. Which makes my cock all kinds of hard.
I didn’t know this was possible. I never dreamed of meeting a girl and making her mine, but this… This is otherworldly. I feel like I’m living in a different dimension.
She’s so obedient. I crave her compliance more than I crave water and food and air. Every time I up the ante, she conforms. Sometimes it takes her a few minutes. I love watching her while she chews on her bottom lip and thinks about my demands.
She’s fucking adorable when she shifts her weight back and forth as she considers my additional rules or tasks. She will stare at my texts or notes I’ve left on her desk and run her fingers through her ponytail while she ponders her options.
Briana has choices. She doesn’t have to do this. She knows that. She could call the police. She could tell her friends. Fuck, she could confide in her brother. But she chooses me every time.
It’s clear that my princess needs me. She needs what I’m offering, craves it. She’s starving for rules and attention. Devotion.
When she hesitates, I punish her with silence. She hates that. It makes her cry. I’ve watched her throw herself on her bed and cry for half an hour on more than one occasion because she hasn’t heard from me that day.
It’s powerful, knowing I have this level of control over her. It comes with tremendous responsibility. If I’m going to be my girl’s Daddy for the rest of our lives, I will have to make life changes.
Wincing, I consider the biggest problem of all.
Her brother. He doesn’t know. I’m living two possibilities in my head.
In one, this thing with her fizzles out, and Silver never finds out about us.
In the other, I picture moving Briana into the house I share with my brothers.
That’s huge. She would live in my room with me, of course, but she would be present at meals and join us for group events.
My housemates and I have never discussed such a possibility. I don’t think any of us see ourselves as boyfriend material, let alone husband. There’s never been a reason to have a meeting to discuss what would happen if one of us met a woman or entered into a serious relationship with one.
And yet, here I am, entertaining that.
Silver.
Fuck.
He’s going to kill me. And if he does, I won’t be alive to take care of Briana anyway.
Okay, he probably won’t actually murder me.
But he’s going to want to. It’s not just because I’d be admitting to dating his sister.
Silver knows me. He knows I’m not capable of anything normal.
He isn’t either. So if he got wind that I’d even looked at his sister, he would know whatever I have with her would be sinister and warped.
And he’s not wrong. I’m a dark soul. I was formed this way through a combination of biology and environment. There’s no coming out of it. It’s who I am.
We’re all dark, my roommates and I. That’s why we came up with the freshman prank in the first place. It fills a weird need in us. Once a year, we purge our anger at society by taking it out on some sweet, innocent girl. She takes away some of the darkness.
Sure, the girls probably never fully recover from our stunts. They’re haunted. They have nightmares. They probably need counseling. But each of them only takes a small piece of the ugly blackness that lives in us. It’s as though it disperses the horror, spreads it out.
Each time we terrorize an innocent girl, we come back to the house feeling slightly lighter, as though another chunk of repulsion leaves our black souls and spreads to someone else.
It’s cruel. We know it. But it keeps us all at bay. It prevents us from committing truly horrifying crimes. It holds us in check.
We only do it once a year at the beginning of the semester. It’s a rule. We agreed upon it five years ago. We’ve all stuck to it, as far as I know.
And as far as my brothers know. They have no idea I’ve crossed all boundaries with Briana. Sure, I’m most concerned about Silver, but the others might be just as furious with me.
We are not rule breakers. It’s ingrained in us. Years of living under Master Drill Sergeant Keagan made us who we are today. Dark, soulless monsters who have learned to make the world around us believe we’re normal members of society.
Long before we aged out of that hellhole of a boys’ home, we had a plan. We’ve stuck to it for years. College was first on our list. We wanted to be better than what we came from. We never wanted to find ourselves at the wrong end of terror again. Financial security would ensure that.
All five of us got into local colleges and universities, and we worked our asses off working and going to school.
We rented for a few years while we saved.
As soon as we could, we bought a rundown house for a steal.
Brimstone House. It was after we graduated that we started the freshman prank.
The first year, we didn’t know we would do it again, but it felt so fucking good that we made it a yearly thing.
Once a year. No more. One girl. One occasion.
No actual sexual assault. No permanent physical damage.
Just terrorizing her until she fled, relieved and grateful to be alive.
We spent hours, that first time, sitting around our small living room, each of us telling our own tale. And we felt powerful. So fucking on top of the world. Those five girls took some of our hatred, our pain.
It was mean. Cruel in the worst way. We never should have done it. We definitely shouldn’t have done it again. But we couldn’t stop ourselves. We rationalize that we’re all five ticking time bombs. The sort of people who eventually snap.
We’ve discussed that, too. Every time we watch a news report where some unhinged man goes on a rampage, we see ourselves in him. Lost. Misfits. Guys who are permanently broken and will never fit in with society.
News interviews always uncover a neighbor or relative who will say, “He was the nicest man. I had no idea he was capable of something so evil. I’m just stunned.”
That’s us. That’s me, Silver, Dante, Talon, and Lucien.
We are those stereotypical fucked-up humans, living one step away from snapping. We’re intelligent fuckers with high IQs. We know how to fake our asses off for the sake of society.
But we have darkness in us that needs an outlet, and we’re able to keep it at bay through the yearly freshman prank.
The odd thing is that I feel like a different man since I met Briana. I doubt I’ll ever need to terrorize another woman. I have the better part of a year to make that decision, but I’m lighter already.
I’m still a monster. I know it. I’m taking and taking and taking from her. She’s fueling my soul. I think the blackness is a tiny bit closer to gray since I met her. She’s…inside me. Like she’s part of me.
I keep thinking this can’t last. Since that first time, I’ve thought that there was no way she could be what I needed. I didn’t even know what the fuck that was. But it’s clearer every day. I need to control someone.
I need to control Briana. She gives me energy.
A fuckton of research in the past few weeks has shown me that I’m not an outlier on this issue. The world is filled with Dominants who crave the sort of control I desire. Luckily, the world is also filled with submissives who want to turn over their power to a Dom.
It doesn’t have to be a man or a woman in either role. It could be reversed. But I’m me, and I’m a man. So that’s where I’ve focused my research. Male Doms who are looking for a female submissive.
Not just a submissive. Almost a slave. A part of me hates that term. She’s not really a slave. Not in the sense that I want her on her hands and knees kissing my feet and licking my shoes—though the visual does have its merits.
No. I’m more interested in the level of control she will give over to me. And fuck, but she’s exceeding my wildest imagination. The girl needs someone to dominate her at least as badly as I need to be that person.
She’s scared. As she should be. Every time I add something new, she doubts herself. I would be concerned if she didn’t. But she comes through. She finds the will. She gives and gives and gives to me.
With a deep breath, I lean back in my chair. I’ve been watching her this entire time. I’m obsessed. I watch her every chance I get. Even when I’m working, I keep one monitor open on the app so I can see her.
When she moves around the room, I watch her. I love how her body sways, especially when she’s happy. When she’s smiling, she nearly skips or dances. That’s not the case tonight. She’s frustrated. I understand. I’ve denied her my presence for three days.
I did it on purpose. It was a test for both of us. I wanted to know if absence really does make the heart grow fonder. I wanted to see what would happen to me if I deprived myself of her.
I still go to her house every night. I still set out her clothes and leave her lists. I stare at her while she sleeps, but I force myself not to touch her. I’m testing my own will.
Can I live without my princess?
The answer is no. And that freaks me the fuck out.
Because cutting her off would be so much easier.
It would eliminate the problem of facing Silver—her brother, my friend.
But I’m suffering from withdrawal. If I go much longer without touching her, I’ll end up punching a hole in the wall or worse.
I’m unhinged from denying myself her presence.
Briana is suffering, too. Her light is dimmed. Not the one in her room. The one in her eyes. She paces and rubs her hands together. She chews on her bottom lip. Sometimes, she throws things across the room.
That last one makes me chuckle. One day, I will punish her for her outbursts. I just need to find a way to do so without revealing that I have a fucking camera in her room.
The truth is, she’s pretty fucking subdued for someone who has been denied her Daddy’s touch for three days. She’s in the dark. She has no idea what I’m thinking, planning, or feeling. She has far less information than I do. I’ve kept her that way. Because I’m fucking warped and cruel.
I’ve been thinking all along that I need her total obedience and will accept nothing less. But she’s giving it to me, and still I continue to test her.
She does every fucking thing I ask of her. She sleeps naked when I tell her to. She wrote bad girl on her tits with a Sharpie one day and then knelt in front of her phone for half an hour with her hands behind her back so I could stare at her naked body with those cruel words on her tits.
I punish her irrationally for minor infractions because I’m always testing her. Pushing her further. Forcing her to acknowledge how dirty she is. How needy. How badly she can’t live without me.
But she passes all my tests. Her schoolwork is perfection. She studies so hard. She’s getting straight A’s. She’s eating healthy, keeps her room spotless, sleeps when I tell her.
Briana has done everything humanly possible to please me, and I keep denying her.
It’s not just because I’m evil. It’s because I’m fucking panicking. What the hell do I do next? What are the next steps?
How do I make her fully mine without causing World War III in my home?
Tonight, I will go to her. She’s not going to like what I have planned, though. She will cry.
I get perverse pleasure when I make her cry. She does it often. Every day. It’s not difficult. All I have to do is reprimand her and tears come to her eyes. Then she tries harder to please me.
She has no idea how much she pleases me. I would never fucking break things off with her. Not in a billion years. I can’t. I’m hers as much as she is mine. We’re two lost souls who need each other.
Soon, I will have to figure out our next steps.
For now, I will continue to terrorize my girl because it’s what I do best. It’s what she knows and expects.
It’s who we are.