Flesh Cartel, #8: Loyalties

strain in Dougie’s body eased at those words, and he darted a glance up to Nikolai, no longer lip-locked with Roger. No, now that mouth was turned to Dougie, formed into a swollen but approving smile. Dougie’s muscles went downright noodly at that. His jaw and wrist were sore. He hadn’t even realized. “Tell me, Douglas, what I’ve taught you to do after you service your master.”
    A simple question he could answer. His mind settled at that. Cleared. No more panic. “Clean and attend him, sir.” Nikolai nodded, but said nothing more, and the panic began to creep back in. “But . . . But you were . . . I mean, I didn’t want to—”
    “Interrupt?” Nikolai punctuated his question with a kiss to Roger’s earlobe. Roger’s eyes drifted shut.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “That was very smart of you to realize. No man wants to be pulled from kissing to answer a slave’s questions. If you find yourself in such a position in the future, where it’s clear you’re not needed for the moment, you may go to fetch a washcloth and fresh clothes for your master without waiting for permission. But don’t dawdle; if he wants you and turns to find you’re not there, it will not end well for you.”
    Why did it seem like almost everything held the potential to end poorly for him? It hardly seemed fair. How could he know what to do when the master might want one thing or might want another thing but didn’t always want the same thing and couldn’t be bothered to tell him? He wasn’t a mind reader. He needed orders . Clear, no-interpretations-required orders. He’d fill them to the last, and happily, but all this uncertainty made him downright queasy.
    “Do you have something to say, Douglas?” His master’s expression dared him to lie.
    “I just— God, I’m sorry, sir, but sometimes I feel like it’s just a lose-lose situation.” And his unloved erection, hanging heavy and burning between his legs, didn’t exactly help with that.
    Nikolai shrugged. “Sometimes it is.”
    “Wh—”
    “Sometimes it is a lose-lose situation for a slave. That’s the nature of your place in the world.”
    My place. Dougie couldn’t help it, he shuddered at that. Because his place , which had seemed so comfortable, so safe just a moment ago, suddenly seemed so fucking terrifying again. And even worse than the fear of being beaten for no fucking reason at all at any fucking time without any fucking way to predict or stop it was the fear that that fear might make him backslide. That it’d strip the thin veneer of civility and comfort from the life he was building here and remind him afresh of the ugliness underneath. And sure, he knew there was ugliness, but he’d been finding ways to live with it, hadn’t he? Ways to be happy with it, even—or at least happy despite it. But it was fragile, still—so fucking fragile—and he didn’t want to lose it. Couldn’t. Getting it back again would be too hard.
    Nikolai studied him as he processed, as the fear in his head no doubt disseminated across his features. Roger was watching him too, silent and sharp. Nobody was judging him, he could tell that much, but beyond that, he couldn’t read either of them, and that uncertainty in the men who were supposed to be his rocks, his anchors, just made everything worse.
    It was Nikolai, of course, who finally broke the silence. “But consider this: if a master is of a mood that he wishes to punish you for something you couldn’t predict or prevent, then perhaps taking the punishment is the best way to serve him, after all?” Dougie had no idea what to say to that, wasn’t really even sure what to make of it. But Nikolai took pity. “Think, Douglas. Haven’t you ever been so angry or so frustrated or wound so tight that you just wanted to hit something?”
    Ah. Yeah, that made all kinds of sense. Just, a normal person threw their pillow at the wall, not their fist at a slave’s face. But the kind of men who owned men, well, they weren’t normal people, were they?
    “Sometimes your master will be looking for an excuse to let out that aggression, perhaps without even knowing for himself that that is what he really wants. You will give in to him, and you will serve him, as happy in your suffering as in your pleasure when he takes your ass.”
    Dougie nodded, trying to ignore the shame he felt at the wetness in the corners of his eyes.
    “Just look at Roger.”
    Roger leaned back into Nikolai’s chest, sated eyes closed, completely