These Monstrous Deeds

by T. J. Hamel

  Nathan puts Carter in his usual place for dinner, having him keep his cock warm like the rest of the slaves. The men are nearly all at the table already, house slaves beginning to bring the meal in.

  “Hey boss, you hear about Miller?” Jason asks from his spot to Nathan’s left, 2 chairs down.

  “Is there recent news on Miller?” Nathan asks.

  “He’s attending the event this weekend.”

  Nathan internally rolls his eyes while keeping his outward expression impassive. As if he wouldn’t know that. “Yes, he is.”

  “Are we planning something?”

  “Not as of now.” Nathan crooks a finger at the closest house slave, saying he wants his usual night drink. He looks down at Carter next, not bothering to meet Jason’s eye. “All of you will be informed if that changes.”

  Nathan raises his gaze, scanning the entire table now as he declares in a cold, dangerous voice, “No one will provoke or initiate any sort of action unless specifically told, understood?”

  The men nod vigorously, some giving him verbal confirmation.

  Thankfully, Benny shows up before Nathan has to deal with the idiots any longer. He slides into his seat directly to the right of Nathan’s and passes Nathan a small slip of paper without looking at him. Nathan brings the paper to his lap, tilting it away from Carter’s view, and reads it.

  Check-in by 2200.

  Nathan squeezes the paper in his hand and stuffs it into his pocket, giving Benny a slight nod. He skipped his check-in last night with Maison, wanting to avoid the topic of a meeting that’s happening tomorrow, and he knows Maison’s probably pissed. It’s not the first check-in he’s missed, it’s not until 3 in a row are missed that anyone panics, but it’s different now that Carter’s in the picture. Funny thing is, Carter’s the whole reason Nathan hadn’t wanted to check-in.

  Todd Henley is coming for a visit tomorrow.

  Just the thought of it makes Nathan sick to his stomach.

  Carter’s hand cups the back of Nathan’s calf, giving it a gentle squeeze. Nathan looks down at him in question, watching as the boy gives him a comforting smile around his soft cock, as if he knows the paper bothered Nathan and he wants to make it better. It should be concerning. Nathan should shut that shit down. It’s not good for the boy to be able to read him so well, and it’s certainly not okay for the boy to act like they’re lovers or some shit like that.

  Yet, that little smile makes Nathan’s chest feel lighter, air filling his lungs for the first time in far too long, and Nathan can’t get himself to stop that. With everything he’s dealing with, surely he can give himself this one thing, right? A guilty pleasure of sorts. Carter feeling safe, Carter being happy, will be Nathan’s guilty pleasure.

  As long as he keeps it in check, of course.

  ◆◆◆

  After finishing his dinner and feeding Carter the slave's meal, sir brings Carter to the bedroom. Despite his naps, Carter is still wrung out and exhausted. He can’t help but perk up when they get close to the bed, deflating when sir walks him right past it.

  Sir chuckles. “Thought you were going to bed, sweetheart?”

  “Yes, sir.” Carter looks at sir sheepishly. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You’ll be able to sleep soon.” Sir pauses, turning to face him. He cups Carter’s face in his big hands, giving Carter a soft smile as his thumbs stroke along his cheekbones. “I’d just like to clean you up first.”

  Carter blushes as he takes stock of his body, realizing cum is dried on his stomach, he’s sticky between his ass cheeks, and sir’s cum has dripped down his thighs from around his plug. If sir notices his sudden shyness, he doesn't point it out. He just guides Carter into the bathroom, instructs him to use the toilet, and begins running a bath. Carter can smell the oils he puts in, humming in appreciation. They're something else today, not the same as before, but they smell just as divine.

  When they get in the tub, sir pulls Carter close right away, pasting Carter's back to his chest, their legs and arms tangling. It feels strangely intimate.

  It feels nice.

  “Tell me something about yourself,” sir requests, just like he had last time when they had argued about Carter being lucky despite his circumstances.

  Carter echoes the past as well, asking, “Like what, sir?”

  “Mmm.” Sir runs the tip of his nose along the shell of Carter’s ear before nuzzling the sensitive spot behind it. “Something happy.”

  "Happy." Carter frowns at sir's right hand, which is drawing slow, steady circles against Carter's forearm. Carter isn't sure if he remembers happy. It feels like it's been a lifetime since happy.

  "A memory, perhaps," sir prompts. "A favorite book. A trip you took. A football game you attended. Something that made you happy."

  Carter can't help but sink in on himself a bit. Can't sir tell how much it hurts to talk about those things? To think about his old life at all? There are already tears in Carter's eyes as he says the first thing to come to mind. "I like fireworks."

  "Oh?"

  “A lot.” Carter swallows, hoping sir can’t hear the way his voice is trembling. “My mom – I grew up with a single mom, my dad died when I was young – she loved fireworks. She always got so excited for the 4th of July. We'd go to the big tent sales and splurge, and then we'd throw a huge party on the 3rd for everyone to come hangout. We'd cook and play yard games. We'd drink. Listen to music. When it got dark enough, we'd do the fireworks."

  Sir stays quiet for a moment or two longer than Carter would like before asking, "Is it the fireworks you love or that time together with your mom?"

  "Both, I guess." Carter shrugs. "I mean, when she died, we still kept doing it. Maison…" Carter trails off, shaking his head slightly.

  "Maison…" sir prompts, his tone far too casual.

  Swallowing hard, Carter forces the lump in his throat down to his belly, letting it sit there instead so sir can't hear the pain in his voice. "Maison always tries - tried - to make it home for the party. It wasn't really the same, though. Even when he did manage to sneak away, the party was at my mom’s best friend's house instead- they're who took me in and finished raising me. They were like sisters. We’ve called her auntie ever since I can remember. But it was different. The people. The music. The games. The food, even. But the fireworks were never different. They were constant. I guess… I don’t know. I guess I liked that."

  Carter squeezes his eyes shut when sir says nothing. “That’s stupid. I’m-”

  “Hush, now. That’s not stupid.” Sir presses a kiss to his temple, making Carter shiver. “I was just processing the information.”

  Carter wants to ask if he’s processing the information to see if he can use any of it against Maison, but he’s too afraid of the punishment it’d probably earn him. He remains silent instead.

  “How old were you when your mom died?”

  That wasn’t what Carter was expecting, the question catching him off guard. “14.”

  “And Maison was already in the military?”

  “Yes, sir.” Carter presses harder against sir, needing comfort even if it’s from the man hurting him. Sir tightens his hold and starts stroking Carter’s arm again. Carter hadn’t realized he had stopped. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed it, either. “Maison said he’d get out for me, but he had just gotten this big promotion, and I could tell he didn’t want to do it. He wanted to stay in and follow his dream. I couldn’t be the one to hold him back from that, you know?”

  “Mmm.” Sir nuzzles the side of Carter’s throat. “But the family you stayed with – they were good to you?”

  Carter nods. “Very. Aunt Lisa couldn’t get pregnant, and they never adopted for some reason, I don’t know, maybe because they didn’t have a lot of money… but yeah. They were happy to have me.”

  Sudden panic seizes Carter’s chest. He tries to sit up, but sir fights him, sending water sloshing over the sides of the tub. When he pulls again, sir lets him go, look
ing at him in confusion when Carter turns to face him.

  “Don’t hurt them,” Carter begs, hating the way his voice gives out in desperation. “P-please, sir. Do whatever you want to me, but don’t hurt them. Please don’t hurt them. They’re – they’re good people, and they’re all Maison has left and-”

  Carter stops himself, hanging his head. He laughs dryly under his breath.

  “-and I can’t believe I just told you that. The only family Maison has left, and I just fucking handed them to you.” Carter looks at sir incredulously, another laugh puffing from him. He’s nearing hysterics, though he’s not sure if it’ll be hysterical laughter or sobs at this point. “You hate Maison. Of course you’re going to go after his family that he has left. You’re – fuck. I – I can’t believe I’m such a fucking idiot.”

  Something seems to crack in sir, emotions pouring into his eyes that Carter has never seen in him before. He seals it quickly, but not fast enough. Carter saw. There’s a human somewhere inside the monster.

  Carter has no fucking idea what to do with that.

  “Sweetheart, breathe.” Sir takes Carter’s face in his big hands, the grip tight enough to comfort and ground him without causing pain. “From the sounds of things, hurting them would hurt you more than it would Maison. I’m uninterested in hurting you in that way.”

  In that way. Such a lovely reminder that this man is interested in hurting him, he’s just picky about his methods.

  Carter can’t believe this is his life now. He can’t believe he’s found himself in this position. He truly can’t. Maybe if he just understood better…

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can I ask a question about… Maison?”

  Sir inhales deeply before blowing it out nice and slow. It’s a calming technique. Carter hates that he made sir need one of those. He doesn’t like upsetting sir. Mostly because upsetting sir makes his life harder and more miserable, but also because… well… it’s nice, in a way, to be sir’s good boy. To please him.

  "Shouldn't I be the one asking you about your brother?" sir finally asks in dry amusement.

  "I know stupid stuff. You know the big stuff."

  "Like?"

  Carter shrugs.

  "Like, I know he puts ketchup on his scrambled eggs and he's never been able to stand the color orange for some reason. You know what he does. Who he really is." Carter stares down at the bubbles that are slowly dissolving before him. "You know why I'm here."

  "I suppose you have a point there. Is that what your question is? Who he really is? What he does? Why you're here?"

  "They're all my question, yeah."

  "I'll answer one."

  Carter supposes that's fair. But what one?

  "Who is he really, sir?" Carter decides to ask. "Because he's clearly not some cookie cutter soldier, right? I mean, those guys, they don't get caught up in things like…"

  "Like…?"

  "This," Carter whispers, his voice carrying a slight tremble. "Things like this."

  Sir gathers some bubbles in his hands and begins to drag his fingers along Carter's chest and shoulders, covering him with suds. "Your brother works for an elite unit that your government will never even admit exists. To us, until recently, he was Mathew Davis from Hershey, Pennsylvania. Grew up in the foster system. No family. No collateral. No attachments. A ghost."

  "But you found out the truth…?" Carter is fishing, pushing his boundaries on the question, but he can't help it.

  Sir indulges him. "He made a mistake. He visited baby brother, not covering his tracks like he must have whenever he came to see you before. It didn't take long at all after that. We traced you and found some pictures of your brother Maison who looked slightly younger than our own Mathew Davis. When we called him and told him we knew, he tried to deny it. The moment your name was mentioned, he flew off the rails. That's how we knew for sure."

  Carter closes his eyes. "I was hurt."

  "What?"

  "The reason he came to see me. The reason he blew his cover. They found his emergency number on a slip of paper in my wallet."

  "How did you get hurt?"

  Carter shrugs. "It doesn't matter."

  “It does to me,” sir says in a slightly terrifying voice. “This never showed in your report.”

  Trying hard not to think about how sir has a ‘report’ on him, Carter says, “Some guy tried to – well, he-” Carter closes his eyes, suddenly able to feel the gritty cement of the alleyway beneath his cheek and taste vodka and blood on his tongue and hear the grunted insults from the man wrestling with him in a demand to submit. How is it possible that it’s so hard to think about when it was nothing compared to his life now? Is it harder because that happened to the Carter from before, instead of this version of Carter?

  “He…?” sir prompts.

  “I was outside of a club – a gay club – and he – this guy – he… grabbed me. Tried to… ya know.” Carter stares down at the bubbles, his eyes burning. He won’t cry. He’s tired of fucking crying. “He tried to rape me, or whatever. In an alley near the club.”

  Sir’s voice is startlingly dark and calm as he asks, “Did he succeed?”

  “In raping me?”

  “Yes,” sir growls, his grip suddenly bruise-worthy where he holds Carter.

  “No. He didn’t.” Carter runs a fingertip along the surface of the water. “I fought him. He beat the shit out of me, but he must have realized too much time had passed by the time he had me under control, or maybe he just didn’t want to risk it, or he sobered up, or I don’t know. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter. There were no signs of sexual assault at the hospital.”

  “You don’t remember all of it?”

  Carter shakes his head. “No. He knocked me out. I never would have called Maison, even if I had been… raped.” Carter’s tongue twists at the end of his sentence, finding rape such an inadequate word for what it really is.

  Then again, there really is no word that could possibly encompass what the act itself does to a person.

  “I knew that number was for life-or-death emergencies. But I woke up in the hospital, and they had already called him.” Carter shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have kept it in my wallet.”

  Sir sits with the information for a long time.

  Feeling uneasy, Carter adds, “He begged me to come stay with him for a while. He threatened to drag me with him, but I told him it was fine. There was no way that bastard was going to come after me again, and I still had finals to take. I told him I’d be more careful. No more staying out late and drinking. No more shortcuts through alleys.”

  It’s not until that moment, when the words are dissipating in the muggy air around them, that Carter realizes it.

  His eyes fall closed, his heart sinking. “That’s how you found me, isn’t it?”

  The tension that ripples through sir’s body is answer enough. “I’m not who found you, Scott Quinton did. But yes, he used that initial call as his starter point.”

  “Guess I can’t be mad at Maison after all.”

  Sir dips his hands in the water, cupping the warm liquid palm. He raises them over Carter’s chest and gently pours until the bubbles on Carter’s skin are washed away. “It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “With the resources your brother has at his disposal, he could have forced you against your will to leave campus. He knew he had been compromised with that phone call. There’s no way he didn’t know. He took a calculated risk and let you stay where you were. You didn’t get to take a calculated risk, because you weren’t given the information to calculate. That’s not on you.”

  Carter stares down at the water. With the bubbles fading, he can see their legs wound together beneath the surface. He can see his soft cock. His bruised knees.

  “I’m glad the man didn’t rape you,” sir says softly.

  A sudden flash of anger pushes Carter to snap, “Why? Because you wouldn’t have bee
n able to take my virginity in front of a cheering crowd otherwise?”

  Sir’s fingers dig into Carter’s skin for just a second before relaxing. He clears his throat twice. When he speaks, his voice is husky and low. “You were a virgin? Before I – before the auction, you were a virgin?”

  Suddenly feeling vulnerable and exposed, Carter shrugs. Then he nods.

  “Christ,” sir rasps, the words so soft Carter’s not entirely sure if he didn’t imagine them entirely.

  Carter gasps when sir turns him without warning, easily manhandling Carter until he’s straddling sir’s lap. Carter tries to hold completely still, waiting for the pain to come. He pissed sir off. Of course he did. He didn’t address him properly. He wasn’t respectful. He snapped at him. Carter deserves to be punished.

  Except… sir doesn’t hurt him. He doesn’t yell at him. He doesn’t even glare at him. No, all sir does is lift Carter’s chin with his fingers, forcing Carter to look into his warm brown eyes. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry that I happened to you. None of this was fair. It wasn’t right. I am so sorry, sweetheart.”

  “Then why?” Carter chokes, desperate to understand. “If you feel that way, then why would you do it? Why buy me? Rape me? Keep me?”

  “Because if not me, someone else would.” Sir strokes Carter’s cheek, almost looking… sad.

  In case Carter was still doubting himself, he’s sure now. He’s absolutely going crazy.

  “You could let me go,” Carter suggests, knowing it’s no use.

  Sir smiles, chuckling softly. It’s not a mean response. It’s not even angry. It’s just a fact. A sad acceptance. Defeat. “As much as I’m willing to admit here, with you, in private, that this situation sucks for you and I wish your life could be different, I would never risk my status in this world for you. I’m not a good man, sweetheart. You’re valuable to me. A symbol of power. A fuck you to your brother. A gift to offer when I need the upper hand. A thing to use for my own pleasure. Nothing more.”

  The words do something awful to Carter, each syllable digging and digging until they reach his bare soul. Everything twists and darkens.