The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction (4 page)

He got pretty familiar with the guards over those following days and nights.

They worked in pairs, spread out over three shifts. The afternoon guard (or at least the shift he’d decided
felt
like afternoon), the one he’d knocked the teeth out of, was always the worst, in an unsophisticated brutal bully kind of way. At least he was fun to taunt, because he invariably got worked up, and if he managed to knock Mat out as a result, all the better. His partner must have been straight, because whenever he made the rounds, nobody got touched.
All-male wing
, Mat figured, and filed that information away just in case. It was an assumption, the straight thing, but it made a hell of a lot more sense than thinking the guy had the morals not to rape his prisoners. Yeah, right.

The morning shift preferred Dougie. So did the night shift. Actually, they all did, including the fucking janitor. His cell door was opening and closing all day long, though they all complained about not being able to fuck him. One of the morning shift guards could be called away if Mat taunted him long enough, but the other one never rose to the bait. Even advised his partner not to once, huffing and puffing and saying, “Don, you
moron
, don’t you get it? He’s trying to call you off this one. You fall for it every fucking time.” But Don was obese, with a dick that nearly disappeared under his gut, and blindingly insecure about it, so despite the warnings, he was easy to manipulate. His partner, not so much, but it was comforting to know that while Don kicked his ass, it was one less dick for Dougie.

Dougie had long since stopped trying to protect Mat the same way.
Good
, Mat told himself. He could take the punishment. Was a fucking
pro
at it. But Dougie . . . Dougie was just a kid, an academic, soft and sensitive and sweet. Whether he’d still be when they got out of here . . . How many times could you rape a boy, beat and humiliate and taunt him, before you just . . .
broke
him?

Someone was heading over there now. A night-shift guard, he thought, someone whose name he’d never learned but whose face (and fists and cock) would likely haunt him for years.

“Hey,” Mat called. He couldn’t really shout it, not anymore, after so many days of rough use and screaming, but he knew the guard could hear him. He shifted, winced, levered himself to his feet with the help of both hands and the wall. He hurt so bad he could barely think, but it wasn’t his mind they were after, now was it? “Hey,” he tried again as the sound of a key in a lock carried back to him. “I’ll make it good, yeah? I’m not all plugged up. You can fuck me. I’ll ride you. Whatever you want.” Just the
thought
of something (or worse, several somethings) going up his raw ass again made him want to cry, but fuck it, it was better than listening to Dougie cry.

Or worse,
not
cry, which he’d started doing more and more the last however many days. Just mumbled acquiescence and the noises a person made when their mouth got fucked. Sometimes a little groan of pain when he moved around. It had to be the plug he was wearing. Mat had no idea how big it was, but it didn’t matter; even something the size of a baby carrot would make you miserable if you wore it long enough. Mat didn’t envy him, though his own situation probably wasn’t any better.

They didn’t talk through the walls anymore. There was nothing to
talk about. What would they do—compare notes on their individual suffering?

The guard next door didn’t take Mat’s offer, so he switched tacks, launching himself into the usual string of abuse, the same blistering insults as always, shouting and shouting until his voice gave out.

When it was over, when the guard had grunted, “Yeah, swallow it, pig” and gone again, Dougie’s voice sounded through the wall, so soft and scratchy that Mat had to strain to hear.

“Please stop,” he said. “Please . . . please just stop that. Trying to get them to hurt you. It doesn’t work. It just makes things worse. Not just what they do to me, but because I can t-tell how . . . how . . .” He dropped to a whisper. “
Scared
you are.”

And then he went quiet.

Didn’t cry.

This time, they came for both of them. Lots of footsteps in the hall, and the sounds of keys in both doors. Dougie hadn’t been sleeping. Felt like he hadn’t slept in years. Maybe he hadn’t. Hard to with a belly full of cum and a plugged ass and a body wracked with chills and aches and a fear so pervasive he hardly noticed it anymore. His door swung open. He didn’t try
to hide himself from them. They’d just make it worse if he did.

Outside stood one of the guards, but something told him it was the wrong time of day for him to be here. Not that he had a clock or a window or anything
to track the passage of time, but still. There was something
off
about this.

Something was different.

“Up you go, little hole,” the guard said, and Dougie dragged himself to his knees, shuffled forward, let his lips part just a little so the guard knew he wouldn’t fight him.

Next door, he heard shuffling footsteps, a sound like an electric discharge, and Mat cried out and then went silent.

The guard grabbed a handful of Dougie’s hair and shook him. “You stupid slut, you think I’m here to get head from that filthy mouth of yours?” Dougie’s attention snapped back to the guard, though his mind was fighting hard to follow the sound of a body being dragged up the hall.

Is he dead? Did they finally put him out of his misery?

No. Don’t think about that. Don’t think it don’t think it don’t think it . . .

“On your feet, little hole.”

Easier said than done. The guard lost patience with his pathetic attempts, heaved a put-upon sigh, and hauled Dougie up by one arm. He barely winced at the pain, and briefly thought how proud Mat would be that he was getting so tough. Not the kid who cried when he had his arm twisted anymore, that was for sure.

He thought maybe he was going to the doctor. That was the only place he ever went when they took him out of his cell. Have the plug taken out. Brush his teeth—but no drinking the water, never without permission. Have his ass checked. Plug back in. Back to his cell. Not so bad, he supposed. The doctor certainly wasn’t a nice man, but at least he didn’t . . . didn’t . . .

But when they got to the end of the cellblock, they turned left instead of right. Through a guarded set of double doors, and then another. Into . . . a salon? Actually, it was kind of like a marriage of a salon and a dog groomer’s. There were barber chairs and sinks and counters, just like the little place he went to get his hair cut and secretly to get his eyebrows waxed, but the armrests all had leather restraints. No posters or magazines or even mirrors. It was all so . . . impersonal. Clinical. And there were tables, too, like the one in the doctor’s office, stirrups included. More restraints. Shelves, not only of shampoos and dyes and waxes, but of leather straps and steel chains and . . . he didn’t want to look. And along the back wall, three doors, two closed, steam billowing out from the open one on the far left.

The guard led Dougie to the door in the middle, and he managed to catch a glimpse through the open door on the left of a familiar head of dark brown hair. Mat! He was lying in a bathtub, head lolling on one shoulder. A woman in cartoon-character hospital scrubs knelt at his side, scrubbing him vigorously.

He’s alive.
They wouldn’t give a dead body a hot bath. They were crazy, but they were efficient. They wouldn’t give a dead body a hot bath.

The thought carried him into his own bathroom, where a man in plain blue scrubs stood waiting, watching the tub fill with water. He had a look on his face like an overtaxed medical assistant. Probably one of those people who went to a college advertised on overnight television. Well, it
had
gotten him a job.

The guard stepped outside the door, leaving Dougie swaying on his feet. The assistant squinted at him and said, “You want to get clean or not?”

Answer direct questions. Show respect.
“Yes, sir.” Dougie stumbled forward one step. Two. The assistant stilled him with a hand to his hip, held up his index finger, pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the leather chastity belt. Dougie hissed as the plug slid free, muscles flexing, ass not as sore as it had been but still not at all pleasant. Plus now he felt weirdly empty, stretched, strange, though the plug was really pretty small, two fingers wide at the most.

The assistant placed the plug on a cart in the corner, piled high with towels and soaps and God knew what else, and held out a wet wipe. Dougie’s mind blanked; bizarrely, he couldn’t figure what he was supposed to
do
with it.

“You want to soak in your own shit and lube, or do you want to wipe yourself clean?”

Oh.
Dougie sighed, relieved, and wiped his ass. Knew he should feel embarrassed about cleaning himself in front of someone else, but he just didn’t have that in him anymore. Didn’t even hesitate.

Something sparked in the assistant’s lethargic gaze as he watched Dougie.
What?
Dougie wanted to say, but didn’t.

“Wish I’d made it to your wing this week,” the assistant said. Of
course
. Why should he be any different from any of the other monsters in this horrible place? The assistant eyed him again, then checked his watch, so casual, as if deciding whether or not he had time to rape Dougie was no more momentous than picking between the tuna and the egg salad at lunch.

“Ah, well,” the guy sighed. “In the tub with you, then.”

The water was way too hot. Absolutely scalding, and Dougie wanted to yelp and recoil the minute his toes touched the surface, but he was too scared of attracting the attention of his absent guard. And who knew, maybe if the assistant had an excuse for running behind—
little hole put up a fight
—he would take it as a chance to rape Dougie, after all.

So he forced his entire foot in with a hiss, then the other foot, and then sat down hard before his body had time to really register the heat. He didn’t dare ask the assistant to run a bit more cold water into the tub.

The assistant didn’t give him any time to acclimate, either, before squeezing some fruity-smelling gel onto a sea sponge and scrubbing at the closest handy limb. Not gentle, but not particularly rough, either. Clinical, mostly, if a little impatient. He didn’t seem to be interested in Dougie’s assistance, so Dougie just closed his eyes and leaned his head back, let himself relax. Tried to enjoy it. There were so few pleasures here, after all. The heat was starting to feel good—no,
great
—soaking deep into sore muscles and weary bones, chasing away the chill he’d suffered since the moment he’d arrived here. However long ago that’d been. Long enough that most of the cuts and scratches on his skin had healed.

 The sponge was only a little
rough. Now, if only the guy would stop scrubbing so hard over his bruises. The assistant finished Dougie’s arms and legs, then swiped the sponge across his chest. One of the morning guards liked to twist Dougie’s nipples way too hard, and he was so sensitive now that the touch of the sponge made him gasp, jump, splash water out of the tub.

He flinched in expectation, but the assistant didn’t strike him, just cupped his closest pec, bent a little, and gently sucked the nipple into his mouth, flicking it with the very tip of his tongue.

Dougie didn’t dare move, despite the fact that what the guy was doing was riding some horrible undiscovered line between arousal and full-body-shudder disgust and violation.

“Those brutes abuse you,” the assistant rumbled against his nipple, gave it a little nip and
oh God stop please stop I don’t want this.
“I’m not like them.” He lifted the sponge, squeezed it over Dougie’s head. The cascade of hot soapy water made him shut his eyes. Before he could open them again, the assistant’s mouth was on his, kissing him sensually, like this was a romantic movie or something instead of whatever the fuck it really was. Still kissing him, the hand with the sponge wandered lower, down to
oh fuck no no no oh God—

Dougie’s eyes flew open as his traitorous cock began to rise, but he forced himself not to struggle. The man cleaned him gently, drifting across his shaft in a dreamy, patient way.

“Please,” Dougie managed when the guy pulled his tongue from his mouth to breathe, because he wasn’t above begging, not anymore. Then he added, lest the guy thought Dougie was asking for more, “
Stop.
Please don’t do this, I don’t want—”

The sponge mashed down hard against his nuts, nausea shooting straight into his belly. “You think you’re better than me, is that it? You think because you’ve got an expensive ass, I’m not allowed to fuck it the same as anybody else?” The man thrust his hand down between Dougie’s legs, swiped the sponge so rough over Dougie’s hole he cried out. “I was trying to be nice to you, hole. God knows why I wasted my time. Turn over.”

“Please,” Dougie said—sobbed, really, if he were to be honest—though he did as told, turning ass-up in the tub. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, okay? I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m better than you at all. You’re a man. I’m a hole. I’m sorry. I’m
sorry
.”