After a couple rounds with that serum, Mat had no doubt that Nikolai’s threats—even ones as melodramatic as death—were not to be taken lightly. And if Mat did die, where would Dougie be, then?
Nikolai must have caught Mat’s train of thought, that silent affirmation—Yes, to save Dougie, I’d do anything, give up anything, put aside anything, even my pride, the one thing here I have left, the one thing that makes me human—because he frowned.
“I see you recognize the validity of the premise here, Mathias. Give up some part of yourself, let go of your pride, or die protecting it. But you cannot let Douglas be your only motivation. Maybe before he was your only reason for carrying on in the face of your bleak, rootless existence, but not anymore. What happens when I split you up? What—”
“You wouldn’t.” Half ordering, half begging. Mat added, “Please. Sir. Please,” to tip the scales in the direction Nikolai was more likely to tolerate, but Nikolai kept on as if Mat hadn’t interrupted.
“But I will, Mathias. I intend to. And what would you fight for then? If you didn’t have your brother to stay alive for, what would keep you going? What would motivate you to make the concessions I ask of you then?”
Good question. Mat shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. Nothing, probably.”
“So you’d keep your pride and let it kill you. Or you’d let yourself be broken.”
“I’d die before you broke me.” Fucker. And yet, Mat couldn’t help but feel like that was a lie, all bluster. Enough of that serum and who knew what kind of whimpering animal he’d become. What kind of indignity he’d reduce himself to.
“So let’s assume I accept the premise that you’d die before you let yourself be broken—which I don’t, by the way, because I have never failed to break a man once I’ve set my mind to such, and the only reason you can hope for different is because I don’t intend to break you. But since you don’t believe me, fine. Without Douglas to live for, you die.”
Got it in one.
“And what if, after a period of separation, you somehow have an opportunity to be reunited with Douglas? Wouldn’t you want to stay alive, just in case?”
Oh. Well that shifts the goalposts a bit, doesn’t it, you slippery fucker? Not that he was willing to let Nikolai know that, so he just shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“What I’m asking of you is simple, Mathias: accept that you may never see your brother again—”
“But you just said—!”
“All hypothetical, Mathias. Possibilities, not guarantees. So accept that you may never see him again, but don’t let that acceptance destroy your will to live. Find another reason. Living is more of a habit than most give it credit for. If you never see your brother again, if he die—”
“Don’t. Don’t say that.”
Mat realized he’d thrust his finger at Nikolai and forced himself to put his arm down. His hand curled into a fist, but he held himself back. Waited for Nikolai to lose his temper, punish him for interrupting for a second time.
He didn’t. Merely leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs out under the table, folded his arms across his chest. “You must face facts, Mathias. These things happen. You cannot keep living your life for a boy you’ll likely never see again. For a boy who won’t want to see you. I know you don’t believe me,” Nikolai added before Mathias could interrupt again, “but you’ll learn soon enough. You must start living for yourself, and it cannot be pride alone that sustains you because that too may be beyond your grasp someday. So you must find your own joys. Find them and share them with me that I might share them with you.”
Like hell he’d share fucking anything with this fucker.
“Or not”—Nikolai shrugged—“and live in constant misery until you break or die. Or, worse, fail to do either. But of all the things I will ever ask you to do, Mathias, this is one of the easiest.”
Nothing was easy here. This had to be some kind of trap; he just wasn’t smart enough to see it. Dougie would know, if he were here. If Mat hadn’t failed him again, lost him again.
“Anyway.” Nikolai unfolded his arms, leaned forward in his chair, pulled a felt-tip marker and a pad of paper from his inside breast pocket and slid them over to Mat. “Share whatever you’d care to share. Write down your thoughts, your requests. We’ll discuss them all, I promise. And if that seems too much for you right now, then let us begin with your training diet. Tell me exactly what you need, and my chef will see it done. Like I said, Mathias—fighting fit. I’ll never starve you here.”
Mat nodded. He’d get strong again, all right. Stronger than he’d ever been, so that when the opportunity came . . .
Nikolai left him alone with the paper, then, but Mat didn’t write a list. He drew a shoddy picture of Nikolai’s face, stuck it to the heavy bag with some of the tape he’d been given for his hands, and beat the shit out of it until his hands and arms were so tired and sore he couldn’t even move them to take the gloves off.
But he felt better. Better than he had since this whole fucking mess had begun.
Like it or not, Mat found himself thinking about Nikolai’s question. On the treadmill. On the chin-up bar. While shadowboxing. While working the speed bag. In the shower. What were his joys? What—aside from Dougie, because that was his first answer, always his first answer—had he been living for these last however many years? What the fuck had he been doing with his life?
He got tangled up in his jump rope like some hopeless newbie and threw it down in disgust. No more plastic speed roping until he could learn to shut out Nikolai’s bullshit distractions.
He turned to grab the slower, heavier, leather jump rope instead, and the marker and paper on the table caught his eye. Again.
He sighed, wiped the sweat off his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Fine,” he sniped to the empty room, or maybe to the hidden cameras and Nikolai on the other side, watching from some monitor somewhere. “But for me, you hear? Not you.” The only way he was gonna get this out of his head was to write it down and be done with it.
He threw himself into one of the chairs—God, how nice it felt to have shorts on for once against those wooden seats—and snatched up the marker and ripped off its cap. Stared at the blank pad for a moment—how could something so innocuous feel so ominous and daunting?—and then wrote down Fighting.
Blinked at it for a second, crossed it out, and replaced it with Winning.
And then couldn’t think of a damn other thing to add. He had no other hobbies, no other pleasures. Didn’t read novels, didn’t watch TV, never even dated. (Fucked sometimes, sure, but after what he’d been through here, he doubted he would ever look at another man’s cock again without feeling physically ill.) He worked a shitty job with people he didn’t particularly like, and when he wasn’t working, he was training, and when he wasn’t training, he was doing laundry, and grocery shopping, and running errands, and when he wasn’t doing any of that, he was spending time with Dougie.
Dougie. He wrote that down in enormous letters. Underlined it. Drew a box around it.
This can’t be it. This can’t be my whole life.
He tossed down the marker and scrubbed both hands through his buzzed hair. What was he going to do when he was too old to fight and Dougie graduated and moved away?
Coach, hopefully. Open his own gym and let kids like he and Dougie had once been train for free.
That’s it. He seized the marker again, wrote beneath Dougie’s name, Help people. That’s what he was, wasn’t he—what he’d always been. The big brother. The protector. That’s what he would live for. Because obviously this whole mess was bigger than him and Dougie. Was huge. Frighteningly organized—he ran gentle fingers over his forearm, where the microchip sat just beneath his skin—and nationwide at least. Maybe worldwide. So he’d live, Dougie or no Dougie, to get out of here. To help everyone else stuck in hellholes like this one and like Madame’s to get out too. He’d be the fighter Nikolai wanted him to be.
Except secretly,
he’d be fighting for his own cause.
Dougie didn’t see anyone for a long time. He napped, mostly. There was nothing to do in the tiny room but mentally go over all the horrible things that had been done to him, or to actively suffer through the horrible thing being done to him right now—and God the plug was horrible, buzzing and pressing and buzzing and buzzing and buzzing, so bad his teeth had started chattering with need—so he slept. Ten minutes, twenty, an hour, six, there was no way of knowing, and really, what did it matter, because every time he woke up it was to the same thing. Loneliness. The vibrating plug. The cock cage. And every time he slept, he dreamed of . . . God, he didn’t want to think about it. Hands. Teeth. Cocks. Pain and ecstasy and burning need and Nikolai, Nikolai looming above it all like the world’s most polite puppet master.
And for all that he was sure he wasn’t sleeping deeply—how could he be, with sex and violence and violence and sex and burning shame filling his dreams—he’d woken up three separate times to a tray of food on the table, miraculously appeared, with no sign of who’d delivered it. So he wasn’t to be starved or deprived of water, like before—and he damn well ate it like a normal human being because clearly nothing he did or didn’t do would end his torture and he needed to feel like a person at least sometimes. He had light to go with his food and water, and his hands and his mouth free and a whole big room to pace in, and yet it didn’t seem any better than that horrible time in his dark little tomb. God, was Nikolai trying to make him lonely and horny enough that he just . . . gave in?
Would it work?
It scared him that it actually might. Truth was, he was sick of being alone. Sick of being ignored. Sick of waking up in fucking wet patches on the mattress like he was a twelve-year-old boy again—and how that was even happening, he had no fucking idea, because he was sure he wasn’t pissing himself in his sleep, and he certainly wasn’t getting hard in that cage. He was so sick of the pain in his cock and balls, the need coiled tight in places he’d never even known before being kidnapped, sick of his misery and his traitorous body and the endless humiliation and shame and those awful, terrifying thoughts that kept seeping in through the silence. Through the doubt. Through the cracks in the life he’d once felt so sure of.
He was going crazy. Abso-fucking-lutely insane. Felt like . . . like he was melting, reducing into some lump of desperation and fright and hatred and animal need, and he knew with horrified certainty that Nikolai, when the moment was right, would come and shape him back up into whatever he wanted him to be. Something that looked like Dougie on the outside, but . . .
Gritting his teeth against another wave of torturous, toe-curling pleasure, he dragged himself to the door and lay down right in front of it. Now, if anyone came, they’d have to wake him up. They’d have to give him at least a little bit of human contact.
Just one problem: when they finally did, what would Dougie do? And was he being a fool to think any contact was better than none? What if they hurt him? Punished him for blocking the door?
Raped him again?
Fuck, they’d made him so desperate he almost wanted that.
He groaned as he curled onto his side on the floor, feeling something leaking from his cock, thicker than piss, but not cum, either. He squeezed his eyes shut, riding out the shudder.
It didn’t matter. He’d do what he had to.
Anything to end this.
Dougie woke to fingers on his nipples. At first he thought he was still dreaming—more torture, more of Nikolai’s horrible, unwanted touches and his own horrible, unwanted need—but then he realized he was curled on the floor in his makeshift nest, lying in front of the open door to his prison, and Nikolai actually was crouched down beside him, stroking his ni—
The open door. The open door.
“Don’t bother,” Nikolai said, and pinched Dougie’s nipples so hard his eyes watered. He was so sensitive all the time now, so touch-starved and needy, even that pain seemed somehow sweet. “Where would you go?”
“Stop,” Dougie gasped as Nikolai pinched him again. Gentler this time. Terrible. His ass clenched against the plug, his cock once more trying to swell in its cage. Everything from the waist down hurt and burned and wanted so much, and now Nikolai was adding kindling, setting Dougie’s chest alight as well.
Those fingers were relentless. Dougie arched beneath them, squirmed, moaned. Tried to push Nikolai’s hands away, but Nikolai just straddled him, trapped Dougie’s wrists beneath his knees and went back to tormenting him.
“I could end your suffering, Douglas. Remove the plug, remove the cage, make love to you.”
Yes. Please, God, yes. Nikolai settled back on his haunches, ass pressing warm and firm onto Dougie’s trapped cock. Fine wool and pressure and heat and oh God I’m going crazy please let me out of this thing.
“All you need to do is ask. Say it, Douglas. Say you want me to make love to you. I won’t even make you beg.”
“No,” Dougie moaned. He shook his head, squeezed his eyes closed; a tear tracked wet and cold down the burning skin of his left temple. “No.”
“Still proud?” A pause in which he could feel Nikolai’s eyes on his. “No, on second thought, I wouldn’t call it pride. That’s your brother. Fear, maybe? Fear of giving in? Fear that you might like what I do to you?”
He would like it. He knew that, and that was worse than anything.
“Ah,” Nikolai murmured, drawing the word out like a sigh. “Not fear. Surety.”
“Please, sir,” Dougie begged. For what he had no idea—he just needed this to stop, needed everything to stop.
“There’s no shame in pleasure, Douglas. No call to feel humiliated or embarrassed, or to think it’s wrong or that you’re not entitled.” Nikolai splayed his hands across Dougie’s chest, cool and dry against overheated skin, and flicked both nipples with his thumbs. Dougie arched beneath him again, desperate to escape, to make it stop, to—
To come, God, to finally ease this burning ache and—
No. No. “Please,” he begged again, heedless of the tears in his voice. He had no more space for shame. Was filled to the brim with it.
“Please what, Douglas? I’m not a cruel man.” One hand left his nipple, trailed down his flank and slid between his legs to fondle his too-heavy balls. The touch was unbearable, a nauseating swirl of pain and pleasure and hunger and shame and oh God please stop don’t stop. Dougie clamped his legs around Nikolai’s hand, but that didn’t deter the man; his fingers massaged, massaged. “Ask me for something I can give you, and you shall have it.”
Dougie shook his head, but his body stopped fighting, his legs unclenching, his fisted hands going limp beneath Nikolai’s knees. He’d endure this because he had to, because despite everything he wanted to live, but he wouldn’t be complicit in his own rape. He wouldn’t.
“No, not yet?” Nikolai asked, and he was glib, not really angry at all. “Maybe tomorrow, then.”
No no no, not again. Not another day of this. No.
“No,” Dougie gasped, chest heaving.
“No, what?”
“Don’t leave me like this, please don’t leave me like this, please—”
Nikolai smiled. A wicked, terrible smile, the most unsettling expression Dougie had ever seen on his face. “Oh pet, I don’t plan to.”
Dougie wasn’t stupid enough to be relieved when Nikolai helped him up off the floor, walked him to the edge of his bed, and bent him over it. But part of him hoped. So fervently. As fervent as his need, which had, somewhere along the line in this hellish place, become as potent and all-consuming as his hatred and fear.
And then he was relieved, because he felt and heard a key in the lock at his waist. The straps fell away.
“Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you,” he moaned into the blankets. If Nikolai fucked him now, he wouldn’t mind. He’d let him. He wouldn’t fight or cry or complain. Anything to get the plug out. Anything.
Nikolai chuckled. “Don’t thank me yet,” he replied, but
Dougie felt him grabbing hold of the base of the plug. Not pulling it free yet, but God, soon, he would do it soon. Dougie moaned again, lifting his ass up, presenting himself like some kind of animal in heat, hoping the show would tempt Nikolai to move faster. Can’t fuck me if I’m plugged, sir, and I know you want to fuck me. I can feel it. He moaned again. It wasn’t for show.
Another chuckle from Nikolai. The plug torqued inside Dougie, forcing the curved nub right over his prostate, back and forth and back and forth and oh God I’m gonna come I can’t even get hard and he’s gonna make me—
Stillness, God damn him. No more movement, and no vibration for the first time in God knew how long. One more second and he would’ve . . . Would’ve what? You’d have come at your rapist’s hands and rejoiced for it? God, he disgusted himself. Couldn’t bear to be in his own skin. How was he going to survive this?
The stillness felt so strange—like a residual buzzing, a sense memory of what’d been before. The abject need dialed back a step, but he couldn’t stop clenching his ass around the plug, couldn’t stop reaching for something he’d almost had, even as the sheer relief nearly brought him to tears again.
Then Nikolai slid the plug free, and for one breathless moment Dougie knew he was going to explode—
But he didn’t, and then it was more of the same strange stillness but a thousand times worse, a needing, a reaching, a relief so strong that this time he did cry. The pressure in his nuts eased the tiniest fraction, and for what seemed the first time in days, his cock stopped trying to break its cage. He sucked in a huge, trembling breath, blew it back out slowly through pursed lips. A few more minutes of this and he might actually be able to think again.
“Absolutely beautiful.” Nikolai massaged Dougie’s ass cheeks, almost absentmindedly, like a cat kneading a blanket. “You have no idea how beautifully you suffer. Pain, pleasure. From the very first time I saw you . . .” As he trailed off his fingers swept inward, the tip of one touching just outside Dougie’s aching, twitching hole.
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