The Flesh Cartel (2 page)

Love seemed to come so easy to Nikolai; why was it so hard for Dougie? He’d felt it for a moment last night, he was sure of it—an instant of clarity, transcendence, his heart light and full. And yet now it was just . . . gone. Slipped away.

He’d found it once in Nikolai’s arms. Maybe he could find it there again.

The last time he’d been a good boy for Nikolai, he’d woken in those arms. And this time? He reached out, searching by feel, not ready yet to pull back the covers and actually face the light of the outside world.

The bed was empty.

Alone, then.

But why? Hadn’t he been good enough? Had Nikolai sensed he was a fraud? Nikolai had promised to help Dougie be who Nikolai wanted him to be. He’d
promised
. Dougie couldn’t do this without him, he knew that now, just as surely as he knew he couldn’t
not
do this and stay alive in this place. Strange how he felt no more fear about that, no more fear about changing, becoming something else—though the lack of fear itself did frighten him a little. But what frightened him most was the possibility that Nikolai had lied. That he
wouldn’t
help. That Dougie would be thrust back to the dark days of endless pain and need and terror and uncertainty and never, ever get to be at peace again.

Had it all been another mindfuck, one he didn’t yet comprehend? God, what was about to happen here?

Regardless, he couldn’t stay under the covers much longer, because this wasn’t a lazy Sunday. Lazy Sundays were for free men. Not their pets. Not their
slaves.
He should get up. Do something. Show Nikolai he deserved to be a cherished pet, not a kicked and broken one. Trust that this wasn’t a mindfuck—that Nikolai had meant all the things he’d said—or that if it
was
a mindfuck, it was all for the best.

Trust Nikolai. Be the person Nikolai wanted him to be. Which started with waking up.

Except the room spun when he threw the covers back, and his limbs felt strange, heavy, not quite under his control.

“Easy, easy, it’s all right, Douglas. Don’t get up.”

Nikolai. Soft voice, then softer hands at Dougie’s shoulders, urging him back down. Fingers stroking his cheek. Petting his hair. Relief so profound he could’ve wept—
he’s not mad at me he hasn’t abandoned me he won’t hurt me.
Objectively, he knew he shouldn’t feel that way. But in his heart, he couldn’t change it. Didn’t
want
to change it. Not when the alternative was going back to how things were before. Or going to a monster like the man who’d hurt him yesterday. No. He’d take this, grab what Nikolai was offering with both hands and never let go. Nikolai would show him how.

“I just went to fetch you some breakfast. I was hoping you wouldn’t wake while I was gone; I didn’t want you to think you were alone.”

Nikolai’s smile could’ve soothed a wailing baby back to sleep. Dougie focused on it, tried to match it with one of his own. Tried to feel something more than . . . than what? Gratitude, perhaps. A lessening of fear. Tried to recapture the affection he’d felt last night, when he’d taken Nikolai into his mouth and sucked him and it hadn’t been a chore at all.

For a moment, Nikolai became two Nikolais, then coalesced back together. Dougie rubbed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Nikolai was sitting beside him, leaning in close, still smiling that soothing smile. He brushed the hair off Dougie’s forehead and followed his fingers with a brush of his lips. “You were quite restless this morning. I gave you something for the pain. Perhaps that’s why you look so confused now.”

No judgment in those words. Mild amusement instead. “Th-thank you, sir,” Dougie managed. He sounded like he’d swallowed a frog.

No, just Nikolai’s cock,
spat some quiet little voice in a far corner of his mind. Dougie shoved at it, pushed it farther into the darkness and slammed a door on it. He couldn’t afford to listen to that voice anymore.

Nikolai handed him a glass of orange juice.

“Thank you, sir,” he said again, and made a show of taking a sip.
Thank you
was easy. Gratitude was easy. And maybe gratitude wasn’t a far step from affection. Maybe that was how all love began. Mothers took care of their babies, and their babies loved them for it. Maybe he just needed to be patient.

Nikolai was watching him closely, but that soothing smile was still on his lips, in his eyes. Crinkling the bridge of his nose, even. He was so handsome when he smiled like that, like he meant it. “Do you think you can sit up?”

Dougie nodded. Nikolai took the juice from him and propped pillows behind Dougie’s back so he could lean against them. Brought over a tray with short legs from the table and placed it over Dougie’s lap. Breakfast in bed? When was the last time
anyone
had brought him breakfast in bed? Pattie, maybe, back when he was . . . fourteen? When he’d caught bronchitis and missed two solid weeks of school. When he’d wept inconsolably for his dead mother and Pattie had tried so, so hard to fill her shoes.

And now Nikolai was here, filling Mat’s shoes.

And just as with Pattie, Dougie would do his best to let him.

Nikolai didn’t have to tell Dougie to eat, not anymore. Even though he wasn’t hungry at all, he dug into the omelet on the tray, trying to look appreciative as he did so. He told himself that his willingness to choke down food was out of gratitude for Nikolai’s kindness and not out of fear of his wrath. But Dougie remembered all too well what had happened the last time he’d refused to eat.

I can’t let myself be afraid of him anymore.
Maybe love and fear could coexist—because what were abusive relationships, if not that exact combination?—but he had a feeling that for that to happen in nature, the love had to come first. And it hadn’t for Dougie and Nikolai, which meant . . . Dougie was sure the fear had to go, even if that meant it had to be surgically excised. Subtract fear. Add love. Nikolai would know the math, have the right prescription.

“You know,” Nikolai said, and though his voice held the same gentle amusement as his smile, Dougie still jumped. “When I was first brought here, I didn’t eat for almost a week.”

Brought here? Nikolai?
“I . . . You . . .?”
Intelligent, Dougie. Really intelligent.
He put his plastic fork down, looked into Nikolai’s eyes. “
Brought
here, sir?”

Nikolai picked up the fork, cut off a bite of omelet, and held it to Dougie’s lips. Dougie’s mouth knew what to do all on its own: open, accept, chew, swallow. God knew he’d done it enough, with whatever was pressed to his lips. Nikolai smiled; Dougie felt a warm little shiver travel down the back of his neck. That was good, right? He’d pleased him, and Nikolai’s pleasure had pleasured Dougie in return. A step in the right direction, surely. Maybe Dougie could do this after all.

“Yes, brought to this very house, actually.” He speared a cube of cantaloupe and fed it to Dougie. “I was five. I came with my mother. Didn’t speak a word of English.”

“Your mother?” It was hard to imagine Nikolai having parents like a normal person, even though it had to be true. This was the real world, even if it didn’t feel like it anymore; Nikolai hadn’t been decanted. He hadn’t risen fully formed from the shadows. He was . . . just a man. And all men had once been boys.

“A miserable woman,” Nikolai said with a nod. “Until . . . Well. My mentor was her mentor as well. He took care of us both. Made us into our best possible selves.”

Dougie nearly gagged on the bite of toast Nikolai was feeding him. A
five-year-old
? Here? Being . . .
Ugh.
He shuddered, swallowed hard. No wonder Nikolai was—

“You misunderstand, Douglas. I was like you, but not. I suppose I could have wound up a slave, had the dice rolled differently for me, but as it was, my mentor was a specialist, like I am now. He had no interest in training a child into service. He did, however, have great interest in raising an heir. I think sometimes perhaps that’s the only reason he acquired my mother at all.”

Swallowing his toast became easier, but not by much. God, to be five years old and ripped from your world, from everything and everyone you knew. Well, not everyone—Nikolai had had his mother after all—but after how things had gone down with Dougie and Mat, Dougie wondered if maybe it was better to be alone. Nikolai had always been so sure of the fact that Dougie and Mat’s relationship couldn’t survive their training. Had he spoken from experience?

“So, um, your . . .”

“Mentor?” Another gentle smile, an arched eyebrow. Had Nikolai always looked so warm and inviting when he was happy? Had Dougie just failed to notice before? Or had he just not managed to make Nikolai happy before today? Nikolai didn’t say anything after that, merely sat there smiling, waiting for Dougie to finish.

“Was he . . . I mean, was he very patient with you, sir?” Dougie didn’t know how else to phrase it. Being any more blunt when talking about a child—even a child who’d grown up to be Nikolai—made him want to be sick.

Nikolai nodded. “Always. Though he wasn’t a man accustomed to repeating himself. Or dealing with children, I don’t think. When I refused to eat for a time, he grew very cross because he
worried
for me, you see. He didn’t want me to fall ill. I understand that now, training boys of my own. I know now, in my heart—” he flattened his hand to his chest, patted twice “—how wretched the worry can be. How deep one’s love can go. How very much you
ache
for the best in life for your boys. He no sooner wanted me to suffer than I want you to suffer. But, like any good guardian, he was unafraid to punish me to protect me from myself. And for a long time I couldn’t understand that. So I feared him. I even hated him. I tried to run away. I picked fights. I said terrible things.”

Just like me with you.
Dougie picked up his second slice of toast and ate it on his own.
See? I can learn. I won’t make you worry about me.

“I was a particularly terrible teenager,” Nikolai said, and Dougie surprised himself by laughing.

“You don’t say. Me too.”

Nikolai’s grin grew expansive, mischievous. “I ran away. Packed a bag, stole a credit card from his wallet, and hitched a ride into the city.”

No way.
“Me too! Well, except I stole forty-two dollars and eighteen cents and took a bus downtown.” Dougie chuckled, shook his head at the memory. God, what a hopeless idiot he’d been. “Mat found me four hours later, nursing a soda at the diner and working through my third plate of waffle fries.” His smile faded; he finished off his toast and took a long pull on his orange juice. He didn’t want to finish the story, didn’t want to think about how it ended, and yet now that he was talking, he just wanted to get it out. Like an exorcism. “He knew exactly where I’d go. I didn’t talk to him for like a month.”

Strange, but reminiscing about Mat almost felt like reminiscing about his parents, now.

Maybe that was why Nikolai didn’t scold him. Just put an arm around his shoulder and tucked him close, let him pick at the remnants of his breakfast on his own. “Eventually I came to understand my mentor better, and the running away and the fighting and the back-talking all stopped. I realized that if all he’d wanted was a son, he could have purchased me on my own. He could have been selfish. But he took my mother as well. He not only gave me the gift of her continued presence in my life, but he also gave me the gift of seeing her
happy
. She’d never been happy in Russia. I don’t think I
ever
saw her smile there.”

“And she was happy here? Even though she . . .”

Was a slave? Like me?

“Not at first. Not for a while. But eventually. Eventually she saw the light, as they say. Saw how much more fulfilling her life could be when put to purpose. I think it helped, too, to see that her son was cared for. She never could have given me that, otherwise. We were always too poor, too afraid. Too many dangerous men in and out of her life. Animals, all of them.
We
were animals. And do you know what I saw when I ran away, Douglas? I had enough money in my pocket to stay at the finest hotels, eat at the finest restaurants, buy the finest things. And yet all I saw, all around me, were more animals. Unhappy, unthinking beasts beholden to their urges, crushed beneath the weight of the emptiness in their lives, the sheer
purposelessness.
And then I came back, and I saw my mother at my mentor’s feet, and I understood.”

Dougie didn’t understand. He wasn’t an animal. Mat wasn’t an animal. Pattie and Mike and Mom and Dad . . . none of them had been animals. None of them had seemed empty to him. They’d led good lives, hadn’t they? Happy lives. And so what if Mom and Dad had worried about money, or if Pattie and Mike had argued sometimes, or if Mat got beaten up for a living or Dougie stressed about making good grades. That didn’t mean they were stuck on a hamster wheel.

Nikolai cupped Dougie’s chin in his hand, lifted Dougie’s gaze from the contemplation of his tray to meet Nikolai’s eyes. “It’s all right not to understand now, Douglas. You will in time. Can you trust that I’ll get you there?”

Dougie licked his lips, stared into Nikolai’s eyes, and let himself search for answers—no, for
faith
—within. “Yes, sir,” he finally said. “I just . . . I don’t . . . I don’t know
how
.”

The thumb on Dougie’s chin swiped gently across his lips; Dougie parted them, let the tip graze his teeth. This seemed to please Nikolai, which raised that warm shiver down the back of Dougie’s neck again. He reached after the feeling, clung to it. Touched his tongue to Nikolai’s thumb. “That’s all right too, Douglas. Nobody springs fully formed from their father’s head, you know.”
Except Athena. She did.
“We have mentors for a reason. Trust me to be yours.”

“Yes, sir,” Dougie murmured against the pad of Nikolai’s thumb.

Nikolai’s smile turned mischievous again, and he pulled his thumb free. “So, waffle fries, eh?”

The tension popped, just like that, and Dougie laughed. Blushed. “Contraband, sir. I don’t ever remember a time when Mat wasn’t watching his diet. We never had any junk food in the house. We never went out to eat at greasy spoons. Wasn’t fair to him, Mom used to say—made it hard to stick to a strict regimen if we were waving it under his nose. So there I was, little bro, following in his footsteps, even though I wasn’t athletic in the slightest. Honestly, I’m still like that. Sneaking junk food: Red Bulls and sour cream and onion potato chips and Snickers bars. And Burger King hash browns. I know they sound disgusting, but . . .” His mouth watered just thinking about them, even though he’d just eaten more than his fill. “Actually, the night I—”