His shudder made Nikolai snuffle in his sleep, but he didn’t wake, just pulled Dougie closer with one heavy arm. Trapped. God, they were spooning like lovers. Like they’d met at a bar and picked each other up and had a great night together, except instead of a great night it was . . .
What, exactly? How had he gotten here? Why was Nikolai holding him? Why had he stayed to sleep? He never stayed.
The master, who came and went as he pleased, had stayed.
And likewise, the master who wore his finely tailored clothes as yet another sign of his superiority . . . was naked. Or nearly so, anyway. Dougie felt smooth fabric against his ass—silk briefs, maybe—but everywhere else it was skin to skin, horribly intimate, and he wanted away so badly he felt sick with it, but was afraid to move, afraid to wake him—
I could kill him. I could roll over and strangle him in his sleep and by the time he wakes up it’ll be too late to stop me and I’ll take his keys and find Mat and we’ll run away . . .
Nikolai’s arms tightened around him again. “Going somewhere, Douglas?”
Dougie started guiltily and tried to pretend he was sleeping.
“I could feel that tension in you from across the room, pet. You must never feign sleep when your master asks something of you. We’ve shared a lovely night, Douglas; please don’t give me reason to be cross with you.”
Shared a lovely night? What the fuck was he talking about? Why couldn’t Dougie remember? He remembered pain—so much of it, too much of it—and hunger and arousal and misery and being bent over the bed and milked. Plugs and a cock cage and begging like a starving dog and . . .
Begging. He’d begged. Not to be set free, not to see Mat, nothing normal or healthy or respectable to beg for.
He’d begged to have his cock sucked. Begged to come. Begged . . . oh God. Begged for Nikolai to fuck him. Be specific, he remembered Nikolai saying. Begged for Nikolai to fuck him in the ass, please sir.
“Douglas?”
He was going to be sick.
“I don’t like to repeat myself, Douglas.”
“Get off me.” Dougie shoved at Nikolai, kicked out of bed. Stumbled to his feet and rushed for the bathroom. Dropped to his knees in front of the toilet.
Nothing came out. He’d barely eaten in days.
Just cum.
Nikolai had made him eat his own cum. Every single day. And finally he’d broken, begged—
He retched. Started to cry.
“Oh dear,” Nikolai said. Dougie whirled around, found him standing in the doorway. Hadn’t even heard him coming. “I don’t suppose you simply ate something that didn’t agree with you?”
“Yeah, you,” Dougie growled, then instantly cringed away, hand flying to his mouth. What the fuck was he thinking, saying shit like that to Nikolai?
Consequences. Consequences. He couldn’t handle any more fucking consequences. He’d break again. He knew it. “I’m sorry,” he said, breathless, retching again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Nikolai tsked, shook his head sadly. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. Oh God, sir, I am. I am. I am.” He fell forward, prostrating himself. Crawled up to Nikolai’s bare feet.
“This isn’t remorse, Douglas, it’s fear. I promise I won’t hurt you now if you just tell me the truth.” Nikolai squatted down, cupped Dougie’s chin in his hand and forced him to meet his eyes. “I want to help you, Douglas, remember?”
Dougie shook his head, blinked back tears.
“Do you remember, last night, what you said to me? You said, ‘I want to be who you want me to be. Please, sir, tell me how. Help me.’”
“No,” Dougie moaned, shaking his head, chin stubble rasping against Nikolai’s palm. “No, I didn’t, I can’t have . . .”
“I have a very good memory, Douglas. Perhaps not eidetic, but very, very good.”
Has he ever lied?
Would I even know?
Dougie pulled back, just enough to see if Nikolai would try to hold on to him. He didn’t. Dougie sat back on his heels, hunched his shoulders, folded his arms across his chest. Dougie knew the posture screamed defensive but couldn’t seem to stop himself. Or his fucking tears, either. “You pushed me,” he said, throat tight, words accusing. “You hurt me. You hurt me. What did you think I’d say?”
“Exactly what you needed to say. The right thing to say. You want to please me and make your pain end. You want to accept this. Even now, you’re wishing you could have just stayed in bed in my arms. You’re angry at yourself that you couldn’t. You’re not angry at me. You’re simply placing that anger on me because I’m the only person you have to shift those feelings onto.”
Dougie’s tears dried up with every hateful word Nikolai said. “No,” he growled, and he felt stronger now, surer, because this was wrong, Nikolai was wrong and he knew it. Well, wrong about part of it, anyway. “No. I’m mad at you because you did this to me. Because you’ll keep doing this to me until I’m not mad at you anymore. Until all I see is the gentle hand and not the cruel one.” Or worse, until he believed he deserved the cruel one when it came.
Nikolai chuckled, stood, walked back into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. Stretched his legs out like a man waiting to be waited on. And Dougie fucking followed. “My poor little psychology student. You think you have all the answers, don’t you. But this is real life, Douglas. Not a textbook. Not a case study. And you are angry with yourself, and you are projecting it onto me. And the fact remains that yes, you do want to see only the gentle hand and not the cruel one, because you know you have no other options. Either you suffer and suffer like your fool brother, or you accept the gift I offer and take my gentle hand.”
Dougie was still standing—a small victory. Last night, he would have crawled. Now, he forced himself to stay standing, to fight the urge in him that called him to kneel at Nikolai’s feet, rest his head on Nikolai’s lap and beg for forgiveness. That wasn’t who he was and it wasn’t anyone he’d let himself become. Not again. Never again.
Nikolai captured his gaze, and even though it was Dougie who was standing, Dougie who was looking down on Nikolai, somehow Nikolai was the one in control and Dougie felt small. “Let me help you,” Nikolai said. “Let me care for you. Let me end your pain. I know you want that. You know you want that. Yet you cling to your old life, the one that’s gone forever, that can never be again. You cling to foolish ideals of bravery and pride, to foolish notions of winning. You worship your brother even when, in these halls, he is worse than a false god—he is a destructive god.”
Dougie closed his eyes at that, turned his head away, like not looking might somehow make that not true, or maybe make Nikolai disappear. But of course he didn’t; when Dougie opened his eyes again, Nikolai was still watching him, patient and firm.
“You cannot move forward until you see that, Douglas. Until you stop waiting for him to save you. Until you stop dreaming of your old life and accept the new.” He leaned forward, spread his arms in welcome. Smiled. Beckoning. “I’ll show you joy, Douglas, I’ll bring you happiness. But only if you let me. Let yourself have it.”
“No,” he whispered, and then raised his voice until he was practically shouting. “No, you fucking hear me? No! You say Mat is suffering right now? I don’t believe you. I don’t think you even have him. But you know what, even if you do have him and he is suffering? I want to suffer too. I don’t want anything you don’t give him. I may not be half the man he is, but maybe—” Maybe the pain can make me like him. Better the pain than where you want to lead me.
“Very well,” Nikolai said, and he wasn’t angry at all. Not even a little bit. He stood, and Dougie fought with everything in him not to stumble back at that. He actually held his ground, smiling viciously. Nikolai strode over to the chair by the table, where he’d draped his discarded suit and shirt; Dougie must’ve been too out of it last night to undress Nikolai properly. But he wasn’t too out of it to dress Nikolai now, so why was the man doing it himself? Wh
at had changed? He’d never let Dougie off the hook before no matter how much he ran his mouth.
“I can see you’re a lost cause,” Nikolai said, fingers deft at the buttons on his shirt. “You want proof your brother is here? You want to stay by his side? Fine. I’ve a client coming for him soon. Perhaps it’s best if I sell you off as well. Let another man break you. Or not. Maybe you’ll just suffer until you die. I suppose it all depends on what sort of man your new master will be. Whether he’ll care enough about you to bother, like I have. Like I do.”
Mat. I’ll get to see Mat. Stay together. Yes. Dougie said nothing, hung his head lest his expression betray him. If Nikolai thought the prospect of being sold off with Mat was frightening, all the better for Dougie.
Nikolai finished dressing, straightened his tie. He’d made a perfect Windsor knot without even looking in the mirror. “I’ll have a talk with my client. I see you trying to hide how happy this makes you, but you’re a fool, boy. You always have been.” He unlocked the door, opened it, turned around in the doorway, and met Dougie’s eyes. “And fools always learn their lessons the hard way.”
Mat was running for time on a half-marathon again—nothing better to do here but get into tip-top escaping shape—when Nikolai entered the room.
No surprises like last time; he saw Nikolai the moment he arrived, and smiled savagely at Nikolai’s quickly smothered expression of surprise.
Mat had turned the treadmill to face the door.
“Making yourself at home, I see,” Nikolai called over the whirring of the treadmill’s belt.
Mat said nothing, didn’t stop running or even slow down. Just nodded once.
Nikolai clearly wasn’t happy with that. His lips tightened and his nostrils flared. “Turn that off. Your master should never have to compete for your attention, do you understand?”
Mat rolled his eyes and slammed his hand down on the emergency stop button. “Fine. You have my full attention, Master.” He picked up the towel hanging over one handle and wiped at his face. “So what are you here for? Need to take another piss and your toilet’s eyes just aren’t as pretty as mine?”
The bastard chuckled. Not what Mat had been aiming for, but better, he supposed, than the alternative.
Mat stepped off the treadmill, wiping at the sweat on his torso. “Seriously,” he said, taking his shorts off before Nikolai could punish him for them, and then sprawling, in all his sweaty-balled glory, on the bed. “What do you want?”
“Cheeky cheeky. If I hadn’t bought you exactly for this, I’d be beating you black and blue right now.”
Mat smirked. “But you did.”
Nikolai smirked right back. “I might beat you anyway. Just for, oh, let’s say, fun.”
Maybe it’d been too long since Nikolai had really hurt him, or maybe he was just feeling extra-suicidal today, but Mat couldn’t get too bothered about the idea. He shrugged. “So what, you come for a suck?” He spread his legs wide, feet dangling off the end of the bed. “A fuck? Whatever you want, just take it and get out of my face.”
“Neither of the above. I’m here to talk to you about the visitor I’m having today.”
Visitor. Scene. Hurting Dougie. Mat’s bravado flagged for barely a second, but it was long enough for Nikolai to notice and flash him a predatory smile.
“Oh, yes. I see you remember our talk. What you promised me.”
“What I was forced to promise you.” Mat sat up straight, leaning forward over the edge of the bed. “But go on then, not like I can stop you talking.”
“Or doing anything else, either.”
Well, that dig was unnecessary. Mat was perfectly well aware of how fucking powerless he was here, thanks.
Nikolai pulled out a chair from the little table where the remnants of Mat’s latest meal—mixed greens, grilled chicken over whole-grain pasta, flash-steamed asparagus, a strawberry protein shake—sat on a tray beside a never-empty bowl of fresh fruit. He picked up a spear of asparagus and popped it into his mouth, eating it in two bites. “You remember how I said I had a colleague with a very specific fetish?”
Mat didn’t want to answer him, but he did. “Yeah.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard of those gay men who fancy themselves ‘Daddies’?”
Ugh. Paunchy dudes in their fifties and sixties who’d wanted to fuck Mat when he was still young and rangy, who’d finally lost interest in him in the last few years. “Yeah, I’ve had some run-ins.”
“Well, for this particular Daddy, you’ll have to multiply that base perversity by ten, and then add in a penchant for actual incest. Imagine how enthusiastic he was when he heard I had two brothers available for him to play with.”
Oh, God. Mat . . . did not at all like where this was going. Couldn’t help but think back to that first awful day on the warehouse floor, Madame standing over them saying, Clean him. He’d gotten out of that one lightly, he knew that now, but he’d been an idiot, thinking the other shoe would never drop. “No.”
Nikolai picked up the spoon from the tray—plastic, like he thought that was somehow safer, that Mat couldn’t drive it through his eyeball if he really wanted to—and scraped it across the plate. “It’s not as bad as all that, although I must say I’ll be keeping your reaction to that possibility in mind for the future.”
Fuck. Why’d he have to go and open his fucking mouth again? How did he let that keep happening?
“In any event, he doesn’t really want to see the two of you . . . together. He just wants to be the center of attention between you both. The father of you both. He comes home from a long day at work, sees his two sons . . . experimenting together. Decides, like any good father, to discipline you. And perhaps to . . . how shall I say, ease your curiosity with a lesson you’ll never forget? Much like the father who makes his son smoke an entire pack of cigarettes in one go, you could say.” Nikolai’s nose wrinkled, just like Mat could feel his own doing. “Yes, I know, I find it all as distasteful as you do. But it is useful. And truly, who am I or you or anyone to judge another’s kinks?”
Mat thought real-life rape and torture were pretty goddamned judgeable “kinks,” but he kept that to himself. “So I’m supposed to, what? Sit there? Let him do what he wants? Let him . . .” Hurt Dougie. Rape Dougie. Right in front of me.
“Yes. Let him do what he wants, and do whatever he asks of you. And call him Father, or Dad, or whatever feels natural to you. And you mustn’t tell Douglas any of this. Best you don’t talk to him at all, or touch him, even to say hello, unless my guest directs you to.”
Mat had to fight the urge to get up and pace. Or punch something—someone. He grabbed his pillow instead, bunched it in one fist. “And . . . and what if I don’t? What if I tell Dougie everything and get between him and your pervert friend? What if I just choke the fucker out?”
Nikolai sighed. “We’ve already talked about this, Mathias. Your brother needs you to push him away. He suffers terribly every moment you don’t. And as for my associate? Well, he would leave very unhappy, which wouldn’t be disastrous to my business—I’m much too good at what I do to be written off by anything you could hope to manage—but it would certainly damage my future relationship with him specifically.”
So?
But Nikolai had something on Mat. Something that brought a gleam to his eye and made Mat shudder. When he spoke, though, he revealed it like just one more topic of conversation, rather than his ace in the hole. “Oh, and, before you get too cocky, I should tell you that this morning Douglas demanded I treat him more like I do you. He’s quite pampered here, and rather than celebrating that or even feeling simple relief, he resents it. Resents he isn’t a martyr like you are. I think his decision is terribly unwise, but I’m willing to try anything to help his progression. So if you misbehave in that room, whatever punishment you earn, you will suffer together. Do I make myself clear?”
The serum. He’d give Dougie the serum. Give them both the serum. Just the thought of it made Mat shake. If he couldn
’t bear it, how would poor, soft, sheltered Dougie? Mat couldn’t do that to him. Ever. For any reason. Nothing this client could do to Dougie would justify it anyway. He cleared his throat, swallowing down the dread. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Nikolai plucked an apple from the fruit bowl. “Yes, what?” he said, then took a crunching bite.
Mat grimaced, but said, “Yes, sir. I understand.” Because what if Nikolai was right? What if Dougie really did need Mat to push him away? If that was the only way Dougie’s suffering could end? And even if Nikolai wasn’t right, he’d be damned if he caused Dougie any more suffering. Life here was painful enough.
Nikolai smiled, pleased. Tossed and caught the apple. “Good. Go shower and get ready, then. Leave the worrying about your brother’s welfare to me from now on. I promise you I’ll take good care of him.”
Yeah, fucker. I bet you will.
When Mat emerged from the shower, there was an outfit laid out neatly on the bed. Jeans. A thin white T-shirt. Athletic socks. High-top sneakers. And—sick fuck—a jock strap and a bright red and gold varsity jacket. Mat had earned one of those in school—two, technically, one for wrestling and one for track and field—but his was a deep purple, well-worn and smelling of his first boyfriend’s cigarettes. This one was for football. Pristine. A prop for some sick fucker’s pedo fantasy.
A fantasy you are going to play along with for Dougie’s sake, so put that shit on.
It almost felt weird, getting dressed, but not just because the clothes were creepy as fuck. Fact was, it’d been a damn long time since Mat had been allowed to wear anything at all but the pair of spandex shorts he worked out in. The clothes all fit him perfectly. With the jock, jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers on, he felt almost . . . human again. But then he put on the jacket and wanted to crawl out of his fucking skin. God, if they were dressing him like this at twenty-nine, what were they making Dougie wear? Dougie, who probably could still pass for a high school student, who’d get carded at bars until he was forty, who still had that lean-but-soft, narrow-shouldered build of a teenage runner.
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