Mine

  MINE

  (A Dark Erotic Romance Novel)

  By

  Aubrey Dark

  I've been pretending my whole life, even before I moved to Hollywood. So when a businessman wanted to pay me a thousand dollars to pretend to be his wife, I didn't ask any questions. I went to the plastic surgeon's office with him. All I had to do was sit there, he said. Everything would be fine.

  He was wrong. Very wrong.

  Now I'm tied up in a serial killer's library. His new toy, he calls me. His fingers unravel me into screams, and I'm not sure anymore whether they're from pain or pleasure. He's a murderer. He kills. He tortures.

  But if I said I wanted him to let me go, I'd be lying.

  Want to read Gav and Kat’s story?

  Grab a copy of His now!

  _________

  For my husband

  _________

  Copyright © 2014 Aubrey Dark

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition: November 2014

  ISBN: TBD

  Names mean nothing, and mine most of all. Call me Rien.

  People come to me for plastic surgery, and I cut the fakeness right out of them. It’s not my fault that sometimes, when I’m done, there’s nothing left.

  I left my family a long time ago. They were bad people. Maybe worse than me, if that’s possible. But I don’t mind my past. The present is all that matters, and my life is perfect.

  Absolutely perfect.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Rien

  The man on the operating table moaned softly and stirred, his eyes still closed. A blue plastic cap covered his hair and a blue plastic sheet covered his body. The only things exposed were his face and his chest, straps holding him steady.

  “He’s almost awake,” Gav said. He was standing on the other side of the operating room table.

  “Hand me that hypodermic, would you?”

  Gav leaned over and gave me the needle. I inserted it into the man’s IV on his wrist. Now that he was strapped down nicely to the table, a gag in his mouth, I could bring him out of the anesthesia cleanly.

  It was early morning, and the operating room was dim, the way I liked it. Light jazz floated through the room from the stereo system. Mood music for murder.

  As the stimulant ran into the man’s veins, his eyes opened. He looked at me, then tried to move his arm. Of course, he couldn’t.

  “What kind of straps are those?” Gav asked.

  “Standard nylon,” I said. “I get them from the medical supply wholesaler online.”

  “Hmm. Not leather?”

  “You know, I used to do leather. It’s hard to get the blood out, though.”

  “Right. I forget that you get them here when they’re still conscious.”

  The man’s eyes flashed back and forth between me and Gav, questioning. I could see the fear beginning to come through on his face. He knew that this wasn’t normal operating procedure for plastic surgery. He opened his mouth to talk, and I tamped the gag down a bit farther into his mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This is just a friend of mine. He’s going to be here for the surgery. I hope you don’t mind.”

  The man frowned and yelled something through the gag.

  “Sorry, Bob. I can’t hear you.”

  “Is his name Bob?” Gav asked.

  “Who cares? He’ll be dead in a few minutes.”

  Bob shrieked behind the fabric. I turned back to Gav.

  “The nylon straps. I can hook you up with some if you need. If you decide to get back in the business.”

  Gav sighed and looked down at the man on the table. Bob was trying very hard to talk now, but the gag in his mouth made it awfully difficult. If I had to guess by the look on his face, I’d say he was pleading.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “But really, I’m quitting for good this time.”

  “Quitting for a girl? Say it ain’t so, Gavriel. For a girl?”

  “You don’t know the girl,” he said, smiling. He held out a scalpel, the largest one, for the initial cut.

  “Want to do the honors?” I asked.

  Gav looked down at Bob, who by this time had realized that he was not going to be getting the kind of customer service that men of his status normally got when getting plastic surgery. His muffled yelling rose even louder from behind the gag. I picked up the stereo remote and turned up the volume on the jazz. A low horn sang a dissonant melody under the steady beat of the drums.

  “I probably shouldn’t,” Gav said. His tongue licked his bottom lip, and I knew he wanted to.

  “Come on. Just a little cut. You can’t go cold turkey.”

  “Rien…”

  “It’s not even like you’re killing him. Just a cut.”

  “Okay. Don’t tell Kat.”

  “Tell Kat what?”

  “Exactly.”

  Gav twirled the scalpel in his hand and then lowered the blade to the skin. Bob’s muffled cries turned to a high-pitched scream as Gav ran the scalpel across his hairline. Blood ran down both sides of the man’s face. I pushed the gag into his mouth farther, and he choked on the scream.

  “God, that’s good,” Gav said. Beads of sweat glistened on his upper lip. He looked down at the scalpel which was dripping blood and offered it to me. I smiled and shook my head.

  “Don’t stop. We need a chest incision.”

  “I can’t do it all.” He wanted to, I could tell. Oh, he wanted to.

  “I have another couple coming in tomorrow afternoon,” I said, waving the scalpel away. “Please.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This?” I asked, holding up the saw. “Los Angeles Police-grade forensic bone saw. Jake got it for me.”

  “Is he still in the game?”

  “Everyone’s still in the game, Gav. Everyone but you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Shut up.”

  Gav moved down to the man’s bare chest, ignoring his screams. As he cut into the skin, I used forceps to pull back the skin and clamped down the retractor to hold the incision open. The man’s heart was beating quickly. Almost in time with the high hats in the song. Maybe with a few more cuts, we would get there.

  I waited as Gav worked his magic, cutting back the tendons and fat. He was a delicate surgeon. Almost as good as me. It was a shame he’d given up working. On one level, though, I understood it. After so many victims, sometimes you needed a break to rekindle the passion for the work, so to speak. I doubted he would retire completely, though. He was too good a murderer to give it up.

  “Here, take it,” Gav said, setting the scalpel down onto the plastic sheet. “I can’t finish him.”

  “Aw, really?”

  “Really,” he sighed.

  “This girl really has her claws in you,” I said, picking up the scalpel and twirling it between my fingers. “Making you quit cold turkey like that.”

  “She’s an angel,” Gav said. Sincerity bloomed on his face. He was such an innocent serial killer. I could read his face like a medical textbook.

  “An angel? Really?”

  “I love her. I trust her.”

  I laughed.

  “You can’t trust anyone. Even a woman. Especially a woman.”

  “She saved my life.”

  “Oh? So I have her to blame for your continued friendship.” I grinned. “When do I get to meet her?”

  Gav looked at me uncertainly.

  “Don’t you go after her, now,” he said.

  “What, to flirt with, or to kill?”

  “Either.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “Rien…”

  “I won’t! I won’t. You know I only want you to be happy.”

  “Mmhmm.”

&nbs
p; “And sometimes cutting a man’s heart out is what makes you happy. What’s wrong with that?”

  A squeal came from behind the gag.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to decide. Whether or not I need to keep on…doing what I do,” Gav said.

  “I say do whatever makes you happy. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life, you know? But if you ever need a break from being a good little boy, you’re welcome to come visit me here.”

  “Thanks, Rien. That’s really thoughtful of you.”

  I smiled.

  “Anytime.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sara

  God, I didn’t want to work today.

  The bar I worked at to make ends meet was a shitty dive on the corner of La Brea and Sunset. It used to be a spot for rising actors to hang out, and the wood walls were covered in autographed prints of movie stars and rock musicians. Nowadays, though, there weren’t any rising actors, only people who pretended they were actors while working shitty jobs on the side. It was the cheapest place to get shots in West Hollywood, and so only the cheapest people came there.

  I hated having to listen to their swaggering bullshit about how their next gig was going to be the big one. I hated acting like I cared, despite it being the only acting job I’d had in a while. Most of all, though, I hated cleaning up the puke off of the bathroom floor after all the fake Ernest Hemingways had tossed up their whiskey sours.

  “Hey Mark,” I said, swinging around to the back of the bar. I surveyed the floor. There were a half-dozen people sipping on drinks at the bar, and only two tables were full.

  “Sara, why are you here? Didn’t you get Marcy’s text?”

  “What? What text?” I dug out my phone from my pocket. “No text.”

  “Marcy, you were fucking supposed to text Sara!” Mark yelled back into the kitchen at his wife.

  “I’m busy prepping!” Marcy yelled back.

  “Prepping what? We have two tables full.”

  “Fuck you, Mark!” Marcy yelled. “How about you do your own fucking job and let me do mine?”

  “Whatever,” I said, not wanting to get them into another endless argument. “What was she supposed to text me?”

  “We don’t need you tonight,” Mark said.

  “What?” My heart sank. Had God heard me say I didn’t want to work? I didn’t mean it. I swear, God, I didn’t mean it. I had been counting on at least fifty bucks’ worth of tips to make rent at the end of the week.

  Mark shook his rag at the customers.

  “There just isn’t enough money coming in to make it worth it. You understand.”

  “Who’s gonna run the bar?” I asked, waving my hand in the air. I wasn’t completely worried, but I was close to it.

  “Me,” Mark said. “I’m running bar.”

  “You’re the door,” I said.

  “And?”

  “You need someone behind the bar. Or else how can you do door?”

  “Nobody’s coming through the door, that’s the fucking problem,” Mark said. “Anyway, the only underage beaners we get coming in, I can toss them out just as quick.”

  “Jesus, Mark.” I didn’t know whether to be more upset that he was taking my job, or that he wasn’t bothering to hide his racism from me anymore.

  “Here’s your schedule for next week,” he said, pushing the paper across the bartop to me. I scanned the page.

  “Nothing until Friday?” Panic burst up inside of me. Oh, dear God. You have such a sense of humor. I was really not going to make rent if I couldn’t work all week. “Are you shitting me?”

  “Only crowd we get is weekends.”

  “Not even Sunday? How about doing a Tuesday ladies’ night?” I said, casting about in my mind for a way to fix this. “That usually gets a crowd.”

  “That usually loses us money,” Mark said. “Nobody comes back on other nights. We can’t afford to run them anymore.”

  “Fuck,” I said. “Fuck.”

  “I know,” Mark said sympathetically. He glanced back at the kitchen door, then shuffled around behind the bar. He brought out a half-empty pint of Jack Daniels.

  “Here,” he said, pushing the bottle at me. “I’ll see you on Friday.”

  “What, you can’t give me work but you can get me drunk?”

  “Hey, if you don’t want it…”

  “I’ll take it,” I said, grabbing the bottle off of the bartop. “I’m gonna have to find another job for weekdays, I guess.”

  “I’ll give you a good reference if you need it,” Mark said. “You’ve been a good worker. All those damn illegal immigrants taking our jobs.”

  “Sure, whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes as I turned away. “See you Friday.”

  I walked down the street in a daze. I had no idea what I could do to scrounge up the cash for rent. The late fee was some bullshit like a hundred dollars, and I really couldn’t afford to pay that on top of my already shitty rent.

  “Well, fuck everything,” I said, unscrewing the top of the bottle of Jack. If I didn’t have a job anymore, at least I could get drunk.

  Sometimes I envied all of the Los Angeles crazies out on the street. They could do whatever they wanted to without pretending to be something they weren’t. I took another swig of Jack and watched as a man dressed in tights and fairy wings walked by, singing to himself.

  I’d been on the street before. It wasn’t fun, but at least it wasn’t fake. I’d made that trade a while ago.

  For a brief second, I thought about calling my mom and asking for some of the extra cash I’d already sent her way this month. But no. I couldn’t ask for it back. Last I’d heard, she was barely keeping afloat with trying to send my sister to community college.

  My little sis, getting her degree. That was good. Maybe somebody in my stupid family would make something out of themselves. It certainly wasn’t me – failed actress, failed bartender. My mom always told me how proud she was. I wished that I could do something that she would actually be proud of. But the bar was set pretty low on that end.

  My phone rang. It was Blaise. Shit. I grimaced as I put the phone to my ear.

  “Hey sweetheart, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. I got these reservations for Bertesci’s. Great place, my dad knows the owner. What do you say? Seven o’clock?”

  I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t go out on another date with him. He was a grade-A asshole, Hollywood’s finest. So full of himself that his ego was spilling out of his ears.

  But hey, it was dinner, and I needed my grocery money for rent. I summoned up the ghosts of Stanislavski and Meisner. I’d need all of my acting chops to keep from smacking him across the face before the appetizers came.

  “I’d love to!”

  “Great,” he said. “Wear something tight. Not like that last dress you wore to our date, though. This place is classy.”

  I wasn’t sure dinner was worth this. I gritted my teeth and put on my brightest, happiest voice.

  “Sure, Blaise, can’t wait!”

  Rien

  I looked down into Bob’s chest. His heart was racing; it had overtaken the beat of the song already. I looked into his face and smiled.

  “I’m sorry we can’t get to know each other better, Bob,” I said. “We haven’t even had a proper conversation yet. I would normally have a much better bedside manner, Bob. But I have another client coming in, so we really need to get this finished up quickly.”

  The man’s eyes widened and his screams turned into one high-pitched whine behind the gag. His body twisted against the nylon straps, but they held tight. Good straps. They weren’t even that expensive.

  I looked down at the heart. A tangle of thick veins and arteries surrounded the beating muscle.

  “Which one should I cut?” I asked Gav, winking.

  “Make it a show,” he said. “I haven’t seen blood in a while.”

  “Sure,” I said, bending down and findin
g the main arterial vessel. I slipped the blade underneath and flicked it up, sending a spray of thick blood into the air above the operating room table. The man’s screams faded as his blood spurted in time to the end of the jazz tune, pumping the life out of him. “Like the motherfucking Bellagio fountains.”

  “Beautiful,” Gav said. His face shone with pleasure. “Thanks for letting me sit in.”

  “Anytime, quitter,” I said. “What else are friends for?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sara

  “Hollywood is so fake, don’t you think?” Blaise leaned across the table and refilled my wine glass with whatever expensive Pinot Noir blend he’d bought to impress me this time. I was beginning to think that he just liked to flirt with sommeliers.

  “Mmm,” I murmured in assent. I couldn’t tell a Versailles Merlot from two-buck Chuck, honestly. It all tasted the same to me.

  Which was fine, because I couldn’t afford to drink anything on my own dime, two-buck Chuck or otherwise. So I smiled and nodded and let guys take me out to fancy places if they wanted to. And Blaise wanted to. I don’t think he would ever eat at a place where you couldn’t get valet parking.

  “All of these fake models and fake actresses thinking that they’re hot shit, strutting around like they’re hot shit. They’re not, not really,” he said, waving the wine bottle in the air for emphasis. “That’s why I like you, Sara.”

  Really?

  “Because I’m not hot shit?”

  “Because you don’t pretend to be hot shit,” he said. “You don’t pretend to be this skinny beautiful perfect being.”

  “That’s… pretty rude, Blaise. Insulting, really.” What was it about guys nowadays? They felt like they had to put a girl down so that she would drool over them. I hated it.

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “I saw this girl on Santa Monica today in the tightest dress: bleached blond hair, legs like toothpicks, tits out to here!” He held his hands in front of him. “Who does she think she’s impressing?”

  “She made an impression on you, didn’t she?”

  “You know what I mean. What I’m saying is, there are too many fake people in this town.”