by Tiegan Clyne
“He should be fine in a week or so.”
“Enough to be used?”
“Yes, if the active partner is gentle enough.”
The Countess looked up at him with a scheming smile. “You’ll be gentle.”
His stomach tightened. “Me, Your Grace?”
“One week from tonight, I want you to bring him to my chambers, and I want to watch you fuck him.”
He shuddered inwardly at the thought, but aloud he said, “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Excellent.” She rose. “I’ll look forward to the show. I have a business trip to Millennia, another tiresome trade negotiation with Queen Justinia. I will be gone for six days. The day I return, I want you to welcome me home with a display worthy of an incubus and a golden dragonel.”
Christopher felt his cheeks darken. “Yes, Your Grace.”
She walked over to him and touched his face. “It’s good to know you can still remember your manners.” The Countess tilted her head. “You look pale.”
“I just lost three pints of blood to you,” he complained. “Of course I’m pale.”
She laughed. “You should probably lie down. Just remember - that dragonel belongs to me, not to you.”
He nodded. “I haven’t forgotten.”
The Countess turned when she reached the doorway. She looked back at Christopher, her hand on the doorknob. “Buying your soul was one of the best purchases I ever made.” She opened the door. “I’ll see you in a week.”
Sebastian awoke and was immediately aware of another body in the bed with him. He’d been dreaming about a building made of white marble and gold, and the sudden shift to the darkness of Christopher’s bedroom was disorienting. He turned his head to look at the person beside him, knowing it would be Christopher but needing to confirm it anyway.
His captor’s face was angelic in his sleep. He seemed too innocent to do any of the things that Sebastian knew he was capable of doing. He lay still and watched him, listening to his slow and steady breathing and the gentle beating of his heart.
He didn’t know what kind of creature Christopher was, and there was nothing in his face that hinted at anything but humanity. He wondered if there was some sort of magic at work to conceal his true nature, or if he had undergone plastic surgery to hide his more inhuman features.
Sebastian closed his eyes and took a deep breath, taking stock of his own body. The pain had receded into a dull ache, and he wondered if that was because of medicine, healing, or both. He was grateful in any case. He reached back and gingerly probed at his injuries, and though the contact stung, the agony was a thing of the past. He was evidently over the worst of it, and he had the man sleeping beside him to thank.
He didn’t understand Christopher. Sometimes he was kind and compassionate, and then he would go cold and imperious. His ability to affect Sebastian’s mind and responses made him deeply uncomfortable, and he hoped that he’d never do it again, even while he had to admit that Christopher’s interference had made the dinner easier to endure. He was confused.
“Master,” he whispered. “Christopher.”
His captor’s beautiful dark eyes fluttered open at the sound of his name, and he smiled sweetly. “Sebastian. How do you feel?”
“Better. Thank you for helping me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Sebastian rolled onto his side to face Christopher, who mimicked him, rolling over as well so they were face to face. It felt like an oddly intimate thing to do, and that feeling was not entirely unwelcome. They looked at one another for a moment until Sebastian had to look away, awkward and shy.
“You’re blushing,” Christopher whispered.
“I... “
“It’s charming.”
“I’ve never been called that before,” Sebastian smiled. “Well, as far as I know.”
Christopher looked at him with compassion. “It must be so difficult, having your memories erased or fuzzy. I’m sorry they did that to you.”
“They… or you?”
“They. That was Lord Ashmar’s hunters. I was not involved.”
He nodded. “More reason for me to hate Lord Ashmar.”
Christopher chuckled. “Yes, indeed.”
They lay quietly for a minute longer, and his captor closed his eyes. For a moment, Sebastian thought Christopher was going to go back to sleep, but then he opened them again. “I swear that I will never invade your mind or affect your responses again without warning you first.”
He had hoped that Christopher would say that he would wait for permission, but warning was probably the best that he could hope for. His consent to anything was completely superfluous.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m happy to hear that.”
“The times that I’ve done it have been misguided attempts to help you, first to help you enjoy the inevitability of what the dinner party would bring, the second… well, the second time was my attempt at psychology.”
“Psychology?”
“I thought that if you could be violent to someone else, it might help you feel better about the violence that had been done to you.” He lowered his eyes, and his irises vanished behind his long black lashes. “I was misguided and mistaken.”
“Yes, you were.” He didn’t think he’d be punished for speaking the truth, and he also didn’t think he could let that comment go without addressing it. “How did you do it?”
“Affect your mind?”
“Yes.”
Christopher hesitated, then sighed. “My kind excels at removing inhibitions and placing suggestions in other people’s minds, especially during sexual moments. It’s how we get our prey to do what we want… to feed us.”
He remembered the books in his room at Crown Holdings, and an essay in one of them about various creatures. The details clicked together, and he thought he understood.
“You’re a demon.”
The other man nodded. “Incubus.”
“A sex demon.” Sebastian weighed the information in his head. It would explain Christopher’s penchant for meddling with inhibitions.
“Precisely.” He looked back into Sebastian’s face. “So, how are you feeling? How is the pain?”
“There’s aching, but nothing serious,” he answered. “Thank you.”
Christopher smiled. “You’re welcome.”
He blurted before he could consider the wisdom of his words. “You said you’d protect me. Why didn’t you?”
His bedmate looked away again, and his expression was something like shame. Sebastian wasn’t certain he should trust his interpretation.
“The caning was at the command of the Countess. There is nothing I can do to countermand her orders.”
“Because she’s your grandmother?”
“Because she’s the ruler of this city,” he answered, his tone sharp. “And because she owns my marker.”
Sebastian frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means that my soul is hers until she chooses to release it.”
He was aghast. “You sold your soul?”
“I didn’t. My mother did.”
Sebastian’s mouth dropped open. “But....don’t you have to agree to that sort of thing?”
“I was younger than the age of reason. It doesn’t matter what I agreed to or not. At that point, I was my mother’s possession to dispose of as she pleased,” Christopher explained bitterly. “She sold me to the Countess when I was three years old. Since then, I’ve been her slave, more or less.”
“You don’t look like a slave.”
“Appearances are deceiving.”
He certainly didn’t consider their situations to be similar, and before his bitterness showed too clearly, he rolled over so his back was to Christopher. His captor lifted the covers to examine his injuries.
“You’re healing beautifully. I don’t think you’ll even scar.”
“Would that diminish my value?”
The bitterness he’d tried to conceal came rushing out, and he
braced himself for a negative reaction. Instead, Christopher chuckled. “Hardly. Your true value to the Countess has nothing to do with your appearance, although your beauty certainly doesn’t hurt.”
He felt unreasonably flattered by the compliment, and he was annoyed with himself for feeling that way. He frowned and lay still, staring at the wall. His gaze fell on the portrait of Christopher and the mystery man.
“Who is the other person in that painting?”
There was a long silence, and he wasn’t sure if Christopher had even heard him. Finally, he said, “His name was Nicholas.”
“You were lovers.”
“Yes, obviously.” He threw the covers back and stood. “You’re awfully inquisitive, aren’t you?”
The bitterness showed itself again. “I have no memory of anything. Of course I have questions.”
Christopher headed toward the bathroom. “I’m tolerating your disrespect because of your injuries, but you’re healing. Govern your words more wisely.”
Sebastian glared at his back as Christopher went into the bathroom and closed the door. He heard the water in the shower turn on, and he wondered idly why the water in the shower hadn’t made his collar short-circuit. He supposed it was shielded or waterproofed somehow, since he might be exposed to some strange water-based kinkery. He wished there had been a failure with the mechanics and that it had blown his head off. Then Christopher would have had dragonel brains all over his nice white bathroom, and that would have served him right.
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. There was some aching and a dull residual pain from his injuries, but not enough to stop him from moving. He stood up and waited for his head to stop spinning before he started to walk. The bedroom was large, so there was room to pace. Sebastian was restless, but he was also exhausted and logy from all the medications he’d had pumping through his system. He didn’t know what to do with himself.
He found the light switch and flipped on the lights. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the illumination, but once they did, he started snooping. The room had sparse furnishings, just the bed, a dresser, a mirror on the wall, and an armchair. Beside the chair, a floor lamp with branching arms sported stained-glass shades, and the light through the glass cast colored shapes onto the wall. The only decoration was the painting of Christopher and the man he’d said was named Nicholas.
Sebastian considered the expressions on the faces in the portrait. The rendered version of Christopher seemed to be very much in love with this Nicholas. Sebastian wondered if demons could really feel love, and more to the point, whether someone who could own slaves as Christopher did could feel anything at all. It seemed impossible that someone capable of such heartlessness could have any deep emotions for another person. It was possible that he was judging his captor too harshly, but given all that he had experienced, he thought it was his right to do so.
His right. He had no rights, and the more he tried to accept that concept, the more it rankled. He looked at the elegant surroundings, contrasting them with the memory of the basement cell where he had first regained consciousness. The dichotomy was so striking it was enough to make him ill. He wondered if there were other men being subjected to that machine, and how long it would be before he was at its mercy again.
No.
Sebastian rifled through the dresser, grabbing clothing from Christopher’s drawers. They were of similar size, although Sebastian was broader across the chest and shoulders. He found shirts that were roomy enough to fit him, and he dressed. For the first time since he had awakened, he put on socks and shoes, and the feeling of being fully dressed for the first time made the aching in his buttocks unimportant. He listened to the shower running and decided that his time had come.
He took one last look toward the bathroom, then dared to open the bedroom door to the common room beyond. It was deserted, and the next door led to the windowed corridor. After that, it was open air.
After that, he hoped, was freedom.
Chapter Twelve
Sebastian stepped out into the hallway cautiously, looking for guards or other sentinels. There was nothing that he could see that would give him away, but he supposed he had probably thought that once before. He hoped that escaping from this estate would be easier than escaping from Crown Holdings.
He walked quickly down the window-filled corridor that connected Christopher’s apartments with the outside world. The sun was starting to go down, which was in his favor. It would be easier to run under the cover of darkness. He let himself out through the garden door and stepped into an evening heavily scented with sage and lavender from the little garden. He took a deep breath, enjoying the clean air, before he turned and hurried down the path.
There was a car parked in a circular drive not far from the herb garden, and he prayed there would be keys in the ignition. There weren’t, of course, but in a corner of his mind, he was certain that was no impediment. He reached under the steering column and pressed his palms against the casing, and the engine leaped into life. Sebastian hoped he knew how to drive.
A man emerged from the other wing of the house, a rifle in his hands. The red laser sight bounced off the rearview mirror, nearly blinding him, and he gunned the engine, squealing the tires as the vehicle leaped into motion. He had no idea where he was going, but he didn’t care. They could blow his head off for all it mattered to him. He only knew he had to leave.
He heard a gunshot, and then the car lurched. One of the back tires exploded, filling the air with the stench of burning rubber. Clearly the guard was not using conventional bullets, and it was anyone’s guess what that ammunition would do to living tissue.
Sebastian wasn’t going to hang around to find out. He abandoned the car and started to run. His body, depleted by too many days of drugs and starvation, was less than up for the task, but he pushed as hard as he could anyway. The gunman behind him fired once more, but he avoided the shot. He careened around the corner of a barn and hid while voices shouted near the house. A female spoke to him from the barn he was using for cover.
“They’re going to kill you.” He looked around but couldn’t see the speaker. She said, “Up here.”
He looked up. The blue dragonel from the party was standing at a barred window high above his head, her hands grasping the iron.
“How do I get out of here?” he asked.
She looked at him with pity. “You don’t.”
He heard running feet and yelling men approaching, and he left her, running down the length of the barn. A trio of gunmen appeared in front of him, and a truck filled with more guards screeched up, boxing him in.
One of the guards had a remote control in his hand, and he pointed it at Sebastian. The dragonel turned on him, nearly wild with desperation.
“Do it!” he shouted. “Blow my head off! I want you to!”
Another car pulled up, and the back door opened to disgorge Lord Ashmar. Sebastian trembled at the sight of the cruel man and his black uniform.
Lord Ashmar had something in his hand, and the sight of it made Sebastian afraid. He couldn’t remember what it was, but a part of him did, and he turned, trying to find a way to climb the wall to the relatively safety of the roof. The uniformed man reached him and grabbed him by the collar, hauling him down from the wall and throwing him on the ground. Sebastian held up his hands defensively, and Lord Ashmar batted them away. He pressed a button on the unit in his hand, and the collar around Sebastian’s’ neck sprang into life. He screamed in rage, fear and pain as electric shocks flashed through his body, shaking him like a doll in a giant’s fist.
“Stop!”
It was Christopher’s voice, and Lord Ashmar rose, his thumb coming away from the button on the remote control.
“He was trying to escape.”
“I know, but that collar will kill him. Do you want to explain to the Countess why her prized stud is dead?”
Sebastian winced at the words prized stud and battled for breath. Lord Ashm
ar backed down.
“You can’t protect him forever,” he spat. “You know the Countess’s rules about escape attempts.”
“You know I do.”
Christopher came into view, fully dressed. The two men stared at one another, and Lord Ashmar blinked first. He smirked.
“One day, I will destroy him. When he’s done his duty for the Countess, and when you don’t need him or his troublemaking anymore, I’m going to make a belt from his hide.”
Sebastian didn’t doubt that he would.
Christopher was less impressed. “That day will never come, but you can content yourself with your fantasies if you like.”
He reached down and grabbed Sebastian, pulling him from the ground and onto his shoulder so quickly that Sebastian couldn’t follow the motion. Lord Ashmar grabbed Christopher’s arm around the bicep and held it tight.
“Your Countess won’t let you protect him forever. If he runs one more time…”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he carried Sebastian quickly back toward a waiting car. He loaded Sebastian into the passenger seat and belted him in. When he climbed in behind the wheel, Sebastian found his voice.
“I…”
“Shut up.”
Christopher scowled fiercely as he drove away from the barns at speed. To Sebastian’s surprise, he went past the main house and out through the gates, which he opened with a remote built into the vehicle’s controls. Once they were on the open road, he jammed his foot onto the accelerator and tore off toward the east.
Sebastian’s body was one giant cramp, and he tried desperately to keep from making a sound despite the way the muscular contractions were making him twist and writhe. It took hours for the effects of the collar to wear off, and Christopher drove the entire time.
When he was still at last, exhausted and well aware of how hungry and thirsty he was, Sebastian looked at Christopher’s immaculate profile. It was after dark now, and the only lights were the blue illumination from the dashboard and the occasional streetlamp that stood along the road. There were no other vehicles in sight.
“Where are you…”