The Flesh Cartel (5 page)

“How do you feel, Douglas?” Nikolai asked, mostly just to drive the point home.

“It’s a little strange. But thank you, sir. Really. Thank you.” He came forward, then, and at Nikolai’s inviting nod and opened arms, straddled Nikolai’s lap. Leaned in close, and when Nikolai simply waited, expression gentle and open, kissed him chastely on the mouth. Half real gratitude, half fake-it-’til-you-make-it. Nikolai, pleased as punch with both halves, ruffled the boy’s hair and kissed him back on the tip of the nose.

“These clothes are yours to keep, my gift to you, but you must only wear them with my permission. Now, I bet you’d like some sunshine, fresh air, and exercise, yes?”

Douglas’s smile of gratitude practically exploded into a grin of hope and excitement, lighting up his whole face. He bounced off Nikolai’s lap, onto the balls of his feet. “Outside, you mean?”

How utterly adorable. Nikolai couldn’t help his chuckle. “Everyone in this house may orbit around me, but I cannot help you make vitamin D. Yes, outside. Now come.”

Dougie wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d last seen the world beyond his own bedroom door. He followed Nikolai now, quick and quiet down the narrow, sumptuous hall in shoes that felt strangely too heavy for his feet.

All of the clothes felt off. They fit him perfectly—of course they did, they’d taken his measurements at Madame’s—but it was like his body was seeking to find fault with them. The sleeves of his sweater were too long. The fabric of his socks bunched. His jeans were too tight around his thighs. The lace of the panties scratched his sensitive, freshly waxed skin.

Really, the only things that felt normal and familiar were the plug and cage, a fact that initially filled him with disgust in himself and anger at the world, and then, conversely, hope. Hope that it meant he was truly changing into the pet Nikolai wanted him to be. The slave he
needed
to be to survive, to have any kind of hope of a life worth living.

Except that’s
not
a life worth living,
some part of him said. That voice he’d slammed the door on before, locked away in some dark closet. He pushed it back again. It was quieter now. Weaker. He could ignore it. He
could
.

Nikolai led him up a staircase, into a richly appointed foyer, pausing only to unlock and relock the doors at the bottom and top of the stairs. So many doors. So many locks. Dougie might as well have been living in the middle of an underground maze, waiting to get eaten by the Minotaur.

Nikolai didn’t give Dougie any extra time to look around, though his scenery-starved eyes took it all in with ravenous abandon: the marble tiles, the paneled walls, the rich leather and hardwood furniture. Such a beautiful place. So different from his room downstairs. Maybe, if he was very, very good, Nikolai would let him come back here. Spend time here. He refused to let it bother him, how easily he could picture himself curled at Nikolai’s feet, anticipating his every need as he read on the couch or watched TV or did paperwork at his desk. So many opportunities to please. So many opportunities to prove himself. So many opportunities to get lost in the simple, fear-free, pain-free mindlessness of obedience.

The thought was almost . . . tempting. Soothing. Only a little panicky.

Nikolai paused, and Dougie realized they’d come to the front door. “Would you like me to cuff you, Douglas? Leash you to me?”

That felt like an honest question, not a test. Dougie wasn’t sure how to answer.

“You’re about to venture outside for the first time in weeks, Douglas. No guards. No gates. No locks. Just you and me. So I’m giving you the choice to ask for my help, if you think there’s any risk of you doing something . . . impulsive.”

Impulsive, like trying to run. And when Nikolai put it that way . . .

“I . . .” He glanced down at his warm clothes, his sneakered feet. They’d take him far. Far enough? Maybe not, but far. He glanced back to Nikolai—his captor, his torturer, his rapist. How easy it seemed these days, locked down in that basement bedroom, to forget those things. To forget what Nikolai had done, was doing. How he was changing Dougie.
Breaking
Dougie. But in the light of day, in the fresh air of the wide-open outdoors, well dressed and well fed and well aware of just how fast a runner he could be, of where he might go, of what he might be able to get away from, what he might be able to
go back to
. . .

No. Surely they were in the middle of nowhere. Surely Nikolai wouldn’t take him out if he thought there was
any
chance an escape attempt might succeed. But now that the seed had been planted and would soon be getting sunlight, he couldn’t let it go. And he knew, with sick certainty, how much it would cost him. How far he’d backslide. How
angry
Nikolai would be when he inevitably dragged Dougie back. How he’d have to start all over again, the fear and the pain and the torture and the rape, because it’d only take one single taste of his old life to sour and spoil the fragility of the new one.

He glanced at Nikolai again, who was watching him, silent, patient, and said, voice trembling, “Please cuff me, sir.” He didn’t want a collar and leash, never wanted to be dragged around like on the stage at Madame’s again. But cuffs, those would be okay. He’d almost never had his hands bound since he’d been taken. Maybe that sensation would still be safe.

Nikolai smiled, not angry at all at the unspoken admission that Dougie needed the cuffs because he couldn’t be obedient without them. “Thank you for your honesty, Douglas.” He kissed Dougie on the temple and went to a side table near the door, which had a drawer that in the normal world might contain gloves or sunglasses or mail. From this one, though, Nikolai withdrew two leather cuffs, linked together by bright metal rings.

When he returned to Dougie’s side, Dougie put his hands behind his back without being asked.

“I could cuff you in the front, if you like.”

Dougie shook his head. “No, sir.” If he had his hands, he’d have his balance. He’d be faster than Nikolai. He’d be able to catch himself if he stumbled. Too dangerous, too dangerous. With his hands behind him, he’d never forget for one second . . . A potent reminder, like the pink lace panties.

Nikolai nodded like he understood every last bit of Dougie’s logic. He probably did. “I know it’s hard,” he said as he buckled Dougie’s left wrist into its cuff. The leather was soft. Padded. Something about the snugness against his skin was almost soothing. Sensual. “I’m not taking you outside to push you, or test you, or challenge you. This is a reward for good behavior. To help you . . . acclimate.” He finished securing Dougie’s left wrist, started in on the right. The chain between the cuffs was long enough; Dougie felt no strain on his shoulders at all. “I’ll do everything in my power to make it easy for you. Whatever you need—just ask.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dougie said, less because he knew he should and more because he
meant
it. The reassurance of that left him breathless; he’d been so afraid, for a moment, contemplating the possibility of freedom, that he’d broken something far too tenuous inside him, some delicate spun-glass construction he needed to live. But no. A few cracks, maybe, but the structure was still sound. “Touch me, sir,” he blurted as Nikolai’s hands, done securing Dougie’s wrists, left his skin. Heat flooded his cheeks as Nikolai’s eyes snapped up to meet his. “I mean,” Dougie added, “I mean outside. Sir. I mean . . . Please don’t let go of me. I might . . .”
Run anyway.

Nikolai nodded once and looped an arm through Dougie’s, then opened the front door before any new doubt could crowd Dougie’s mind.

Brisk cold air, and white-hot light that burned his eyes. Dougie flinched. Fell against Nikolai for support.

“It’s a lovely day,” Nikolai said, ignoring the enormity of this moment, or maybe saving Dougie from feeling like he had to express it. “Autumn is my favorite season. I love how bracing the air is.”

“I always liked it too, sir,” Dougie said, blinking hard as he tried to get his eyes to adjust. Blue blobs were swimming in his vision, like someone had set off a camera flash right in front of his face. “Though the seasons didn’t change nearly so much in Vegas as they did back in West Virginia. Still, our morning run was much more tolerable in fall than in summer. Plus, fall was when school started.”

A tug on his elbow, and they were walking, the plug shifting inside him with every step as they descended the curving stairs that led from the front door to the long gravel driveway. Dougie didn’t remember the outside of Nikolai’s house. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever come this way. Maybe he’d gone through a garage. The hours—or maybe days—immediately following the darkness of his tomb were mostly a blur.

“You liked school,” Nikolai said, leading Dougie down the drive and toward a neatly maintained trail that branched off into the woods. It was true. The air here
was
bracing, and fresh, and cold. Dougie took a deep breath, filling every last square inch of his lungs.

“Yes, sir,” he said, feeling a little dizzy with all the oxygen, or maybe just with the sheer vastness of the outdoors—the mountains rising in every direction, the dense endless thicket of woods, the awe-inspiring
emptiness
of it all.
Sublime
, in the true Romantic sense of the word: stunningly beautiful and terrifying both. “It was my arena, my fight cage. The place where I could train hard and excel, the place where I could make—” He faltered, tripped over an exposed root, or maybe just his own two clumsy feet. Nikolai’s hand tightened on his arm, stopped him from falling, and he leaned into the touch, paused a moment to close his eyes and let it sink in.
Cuffs. Chains. Cock cage. Plug. My master. He won’t let me fall. Be good for him.

“Where you could make . . .?” Nikolai prompted.

Dougie stared down at the path beneath his feet, at Nikolai’s hand on his arm. He couldn’t look ahead, couldn’t look up at all that open nothingness, at the whole world spread out before him. “My future,” he mumbled, nearly choking on the words, or maybe his sadness, or his shame, or the sudden emptiness inside him that rivaled the vastness of the forest around him. “Where I could make my future like Mat was making his. Except mine could
last
, you know?”

Except for the part where it turned out it couldn’t. He’d never even gotten to taste it, not for a moment. Never would, either. Best just to forget about it. Focus on Nikolai’s hand on his arm, on the cuffs around his wrists, on the plug shifting in his ass with every step, and the cage stopping his cock from swelling at the stimulation. On his feet taking measured steps, one after another. On not running.

“Your future
will
last, Douglas. As many years as I can provide. And your education
will
help to make that future, just not in the way you’d initially thought. But your intelligence and schooling have tempered you, made you thoughtful and acquiescent, and those traits have served you well.”

Nikolai was quiet for a while after that. They walked in thoughtful silence up the trail, the path climbing a wooded hill. As they neared the top, he turned to Dougie and asked, “When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Dougie had to think about that, but suddenly it came to him. “A postman.”

Nikolai chuckled softly. “And then?”

“A fighter, for a little while, like Mat. But then he took me out in the yard and sparred with me and really hit me once by accident and I cried for like an hour and that was that. I think I was five.”

“And then?”

“Um . . . comic book writer?”

“And yet you chose to study social work and clinical psychology. Do you feel any grief for your postman or fighter dreams now?”

Oh,
that
was what he was getting at. “No, sir.”

“Well then. Know that your dreams of a Ph.D. will pass from you, too. You’ll mourn them awhile, and then you’ll move on, create new hopes and dreams, ones more suited to the man you’ve grown to become.”

He would. Of course he would. It would all be fine. Times changed. Dougie changed. Growing out of a dream wasn’t the same as having it just . . . die.

Or be taken from you.

Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Dougie slammed that door in the corner of his mind again, and locked it this time for good measure. Nikolai hadn’t taken him. Nikolai was just . . . showing him a new dream.

It was fine. It was all okay. Dougie would be okay. He’d survive. Thrive, even. Nikolai would give him everything he needed to go on. “Thank you, sir,” he said softly. He looked up at an old-growth poplar tree, its leaves an explosion of yellows and golds, a stunning contrast to the bright red oak beside it. Fall in the mountains was breathtaking. So different from the desert. So like his old home, back before Pattie and Mike. Back before his parents had—

So maybe Nikolai
had
taken something away, but he’d also given Dougie something so very very precious
back
. He could get used to this.