SCAR_A Dark Military Romance Page 14

  “Precisely,” she says, her lips thinning. She lifts her voice a little. “Ares, you may come collect your material.”

  Material. I’m just stuff to this woman. Like a bag of old socks, but I don’t care because I’m free - well, sort of, and I’m Ken’s.

  I smile as he comes into the room. He doesn’t smile back. He looks at me with an expression which sends a chill right through to the very core of me. Has he stopped loving me? No. I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t have asked to keep me if he hated me. This is his professional facade. The mask he needs to wear. It’s a frightening one to be sure.

  “Come with me,” he says, beckoning me. I get up and do as I’m told. From here on out, this is my life. I literally owe him my obedience. There’s no question in my mind about doing what he says. He saved me. He saved me from those who were trying to hurt me, and in the end, he’s saved me from the destiny that was picked out for me before I was even conceived. There will be no more lies between us. I swear that to myself. I’ll never lie to him again.

  Ken and I leave the room together. I never thought I’d see him again, and now I’m right by his side. I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

  “Thank you so much, Ken.”

  “Sir.”

  “What?”

  “Call me sir.”

  Oh shit. So that is how this is going to be.

  “We’re not going back to Tom’s house, I guess.”

  “No,” he says, turning to look down at me. “This is a secure facility where you will start your training with me. This is going to be your home for the next year at least.”

  He seems so different now. Colder. Sterner. Harsher.

  “But what about Tom?”

  “I’ll tell Tom where you are.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “When you’ve earned it.”

  “What about him? What about what he wants?”

  “No more questions,” he snaps in final tones. That voice he’s using is one he’s only used on me a handful of times. It’s the voice of command. The one that tells me what I want doesn’t matter and I need to do as I’m damn well told.

  I have Ken, but I don’t have the Ken I used to have. I used to have a lover. Now I have a handler.

  11

  MARY

  It turns out that my premonitions were not entirely inaccurate. I spend the night in a cell. Alone.

  My impressions of the site is that I’m somewhere which is a cross between a gym and a jail. There are tall gates and bright lights and the atmosphere is wildly oppressive. If I hadn’t spent several months being taken apart in an experimental hospital, I might be intimidated. As it is, I know how much worse this could be and I’m grateful.

  The people here have obviously been alerted to my arrival. They have a remarkably spacious six by six cell waiting for me, complete with toilet, shower and heavy steel door. It’s not exactly homey, but once again, could be so much worse.

  Ken puts me in there with hardly a word. If Tom were here, he’d probably still read me a bedtime story and tuck me in. I get the idea that it’s going to be a long time before that happens again. A plastic mattress and pillow are all the comfort I’m getting.

  “Night,” I say softly, trying not to be weak. He’ll hate me for weakness now, almost as much as I’ll hate myself.

  “See you in the morning,” he says.

  “0300?”

  He doesn’t reply, just walks away. He saved my life again, but apparently that doesn’t stop him from being angry. Or maybe this is just how handlers treat their ‘material’. I really don’t know.

  I don’t sleep very well that night. Part of it is because I’m reflecting on the utter clusterfuck of my life. Part of it is missing home. Missing Tom. Missing Ken. I hope Ken is in a better mood tomorrow.

  I close my eyes, and what feels like a second later, I’m awake again. Ken is standing over me. I get the sense that it’s early. Whatever time it is, I’m just so relieved to see him that at first I almost forget why he’s here and what we’re doing.

  “Get up, Brown.”

  He’s not in a better mood.

  “Hello, sir,” I say, hoping the sir earns me a few points. I get out of bed too. It’s not like I’m missing much lying there.

  “Take your clothes off.”

  Usually when Ken wants my clothes off, he takes them off for himself.

  “Why?”

  He gives me a hard look. He is wearing a black sweater, pants, and combat boots. He looks ready for anything. He also looks fucking hot, as usual. I have to start seeing past how handsome he is though or this is going to be pure torture.

  Under his hard bicolor gaze, I get naked and drop my clothes in the bag he provides me.

  “If you’d done as you were told, I would have given you these,” he says, hefting a pair of overalls which he took out of the bag I put my clothes in. But, because you answered back, you get nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  He walks to the door and opens it before gesturing to me with his head.

  “Step out, Brown.”

  He expects me to walk around this facility naked? I must not be understanding him. He can’t possibly want me to be naked. Especially as he knows exactly how I feel about my body. Being seen unclothed is bad enough when you have a normal-ish body. It’s unthinkable when you look like the bride of Frankenstein.

  “Give me something to wear.”

  “You forfeited the right to clothing. Now hurry up, before the others come on duty. Unless you want to be seen.”

  “Oh fuck you.” My temper flares. This is ridiculous. This isn’t how you train people… or maybe it is. Special forces go through some real fucking hazing in their training. I bet Ken’s been through a lot worse than this. Doesn’t mean I intend to put up with it.

  “No,” he growls. “There’s not going to be any fucking, Brown. You’ve seen to that by hiding things from me and making this a matter of national security.”

  I suppose I can’t be surprised he’s throwing that in my face.

  “So I guess I was pretending not to be a spy, and you were pretending not to be an asshole,” I bite at him.

  “Out. Now.” He jerks his head toward the door again. I cross my arms over my chest, hiding a small percentage of the scars that marr me.

  “Or what?”

  “What part of being my material didn’t you understand girl?”

  “I might be your material, but I haven’t been given a lobotomy. Give me the goddamn overalls.”

  Now, of course, he can’t give me them. If he backs down now I win and he loses, and that’s no way to start whatever this is off on the right foot.

  Ken strides toward me, scoops me up over his shoulder, and carries me out of the cell, butt ass naked. He called my bluff alright. Jesus. What the fuck. As he strides down the hall, I start attempting to negotiate.

  “Ken, come on, I’m sorry, okay? I’ll do what you say next time. I get it. I fucked up.”

  “You’re right about that, girl. And it’s sir.”

  He sets me down in a gym. Points at a treadmill. “Start running.”

  He’s trying to humiliate me, and I don’t understand why. So I wasn’t immediately obedient. So what?

  “Start. Running.”

  I stare at him. “What are you going to do if I don’t?”

  Ken leans down, his eyes locked on mine. “You have been given one chance, Mary. One chance to be something more than what you are. To make what you did wrong right. Most people never get this chance. So how about you get on the damn treadmill and start running instead of giving me attitude.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “What?” He jerks his head back, surprised.

  He doesn’t get it. I didn’t agree to this because I wanted a second chance at life. I agreed to it because I wanted a second chance with him. If this means I can’t have him, or if it means I end up hating him, then I don’t want it. It’s just not worth staying around for.


  “If this is how you’re going to be, I don’t want a second chance. Get someone to put a bullet in me. This isn’t fucking worth it.”

  Ken swears under his breath. “Goddamn you are a pain in the ass, little girl.”

  In those two last words, I hear the love he still has for me, and I can already see the frustration on his face. He’s doing what he thinks he needs to. Apparently, being an asshole is integral to making me a good spy. Hell. Maybe it is. What do I know.

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll get on the treadmill.”

  He straightens up and watches me as I get on, still entirely naked. And I start running.

  KEN

  This is going to be even more difficult than I imagined it would be. It’s a nice morning and I would much rather be at home in bed with her than barking orders at her, but that is where we are now. The moment the Germans walked in, my life as I knew it evaporated. I can’t be her lover anymore. I can barely be her friend. Tom thinks it’s hard not being able to see her. He doesn’t understand how fucking brutal it is to be right next to her and be unable to hold her or comfort her because the process won’t work if she’s coddled through it.

  She looks good on the treadmill. A few months ago, being naked in front of me was something she could barely handle. Now she’s exposing herself with a degree of pride, wearing those scars like a badge of honor. They remind me that she’s a survivor, and even though she lacks discipline, she’s got all the strength she needs for this, and more besides.

  “It’s too late to say sorry, isn’t it,” she says as she runs.

  “Much too late.”

  There’s a flash of hurt and sadness in her eyes. I want to pull her down and comfort her and tell her everything will be okay, but Tom and I have done nothing but comfort her and tell her everything will be okay, and the result was she lied to us.

  Mary doesn’t understand kindness. It isn’t processed in her brain the way it should be. When people are nice to her, she thinks they’re weak, or stupid, or both. Her experiences have damaged her more deeply than the scars that run her body. They’ve rewired her ability to relate.

  She lied to me every moment she was with me and it was no effort at all, because lying comes naturally to her. It’s how she’s survived her entire life.

  Most people need to be trained how to behave. She needs to be trained to feel. The Head and I have discussed this a lot, formulated an approach which I hope like hell works, because I am going to have to be the villain in this.

  The alternative was to hand her over to someone else. Someone who wouldn’t understand her. Someone who would try all the tricks to break her and fail and probably get him or herself killed in the process.

  Mary is dangerous. Not in the way most people in our field are. It’s not that she’s particularly lethal in an offensive situation. But she’s proven time and time again that she is the kind of survivor you do not want to underestimate.

  I made that mistake. I thought I knew her because we were intimate. I didn’t know her at all. She was keeping everything back from me because she was afraid of the consequences of honesty.

  That is no longer an option for her. I will strip away her ability to hide and I will force her to see that I don’t abandon her even though I know who and what she is.

  Even now, on the treadmill, her breasts bouncing with every stride, she’s got an expression of self control. She thinks I want obedience. She’s wrong.

  I want everything.

  Chapter 12

  MARY

  “Faster!”

  In a world where Ken rules, the consequence of being slow is pain. Right now he has a long cane in his hand, one he whips across my ass when I miss the timer. There are six points on the floor, each of them three feet apart. Every few seconds, one of them will light up. I need to be on it within a fraction of a second, or he whips the cane against my bare ass. Because I’m naked. Of course.

  This probably isn’t in any official training manual, but I can already feel what it’s doing. Doesn’t take a genius to work out that I’m being programmed to follow his cues, react to his voice, do precisely what he says, when he says it, regardless of how outwardly pointless it is.

  “Again!”

  “Ow!”

  It’s been weeks of this, and Ken has proved himself a harsh taskmaster. No sex. No intimacy. Just me bending to his will in a hundred different ways. Learning at his knee, but not over it. God I wish he’d just spank me, but he knows I want that. This cane is the closest thing he’s given me to it, and I hate it because it’s so distant from him.

  I want his hands on my body. I want to feel like I’ve earned his forgiveness and his trust. I don’t know if I’ll ever earn either of them. I was a liar for too long.

  “Too slow.”

  “OW!” The cane lands again, biting the soft skin of my ass with a painful welting stroke.

  “Keep going!” He barks the order at me harshly.

  I shoot him an angry look. He stares back, so fucking handsome, so commanding, so utterly in control. And then the lights change again, and the cane cuts down across my ass again, another thick welt of pain lighting my nervous system on fire.

  This is inhumane, but I’m not human to anyone here. I’m an animal to be trained. All stick, no carrot.

  I think it’s over between us. I think I might have lost him forever. The only thing left to lose is myself.

  I stop moving. I stand stock still. The lights flash. The cane comes down. I ignore it. I can block out pain. I still feel it, but it doesn’t touch me the way it should.

  Ken gives me two more whacks and then comes to stand over me, looming tall and imposing above me.

  “What are you doing, Brown?”

  “Giving up. It’s what you want me to do. Right.”

  “Sort of,” he says. “Not like this though.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means do as you’re told,” he growls. “You’ve missed the sequence.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the sequence.”

  His eyes flash. I can feel the intensity of his displeasure. I know he’s angry. Before he found out about my secret, he’d do something about this. He’d throw me over his knee. He’d bend me over and fuck me. He’d do something to show me who is boss.

  But he won’t do that now. Because he doesn’t care about me anymore. Because I’m a job.

  “You want to spend the next twenty-four hours locked down in your cell, Brown?”

  “Make it forty-two,” I snap back. “Hell, make it forever.”

  A cold smirk passes over his lips. “Goddamn, Brown, you’re one tough little girl, aren’t you.”

  I’m exactly as tough as I need to be. I don’t want to be tough. I want to be soft. I want to be small again and curl up with him and Tom and be held between them. But I’m losing hope of that ever happening again.

  “Start the sequence again,” he says, pointing toward the flashing lights.

  “Or what?”

  “There is no or what, Brown. There’s just doing what I say. Start the sequence again.”

  He’s utterly immovable. I barely recognize him right now. Is this really the man who used to kiss me so thoroughly I felt it all the way to my toes? Or am I just seeing the real Ken now, not the charade of the man he presented to me?

  I don’t know what’s real or what’s not. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix my many mistakes.

  He points to the lights. I move back toward them. Not because I want to. Not because I think it will please him. Just because there’s nothing else to do.

  Half an exhausting hour later, he’s finally satisfied.

  “Okay, you’re done. Go grab a shower, Brown.”

  I wipe the sweat off my brow and try a smile. “You want to join me?”

  Something flashes in his eyes. Is it desire? Is it irritation? Both?

  “Don’t test me,” he growls. His face is like granite. His bearing is so fucking staunch it gen
uinely looks like he has a stick up his ass. Pointing that out would not go well for me.

  “How am I testing you? I’m just asking if you want to get naked with me and stand under hot water?”

  I know I’m pushing my luck. I don’t really care. Having him so close to me and yet refusing to be intimate with me is killing me. I want a sign he still wants me. I want to know he’s still mine.

  He’s impossible to read now. I don’t know if he’s doing this because it’s his professional facade, or because he doesn’t like me anymore, but whatever the reason is, it hurts like hell.

  “Do you love me anymore, Ken?”

  “You have two minutes to have a shower,” he says blankly. “Every second you stand here is a second less you have to get clean. I’d get going if I were you.”

  KEN

  She wants to know how I feel. That’s natural and human. But she’s known how I’ve felt since Afghanistan and all it did was allow her to hide, and if fucking her could fix the problems she has, she would have been cured a hundred times over by now.

  To an outsider, this might seem cruel. To her, I seem like an asshole. I’m sure she is afraid that I don’t care for her anymore, but the truth is I love her more than ever and I would love nothing more than to get into a shower with her, and spend the night with her tight little body wrapped around my cock.

  Her eyes are searching my face. I see the hurt there, but there’s something else too. She’s a smart girl. She’s looking for an angle she can use to break this process down, escape the discipline.

  I wait. Seconds tick by.

  “Well, Brown, looks like you’re not getting a shower today.”

  She shrugs.

  Goddamn it. She is so fucking good at resisting attempts at conditioning. It’s no doubt how she survived the hospital, but now it’s damn near impossible to break through to her.

  My hand tightens on the cane and I swish it back and forth a few times.