The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

And he was already so bruised. Dougie stuck out a hand before he could change his mind. Pointed. The plug. I’m sorry, Mat. Please forgive me.
    The crowd practically crowed. Even Madame flashed a rare smile. She picked the plug up off the tray. Turned to Dougie. “If you think you’re man enough to choose his punishment, then you must be man enough to mete it out.
    That’s the responsibility of a master.” She pressed the plug into his hands.

    He dropped it. Hadn’t meant to. Couldn’t have helped it for all the world.

    Horrified, babbling apologies, he fell to his knees and picked it up again.
    Heavy. Cold steel. As thick across as the fattest of the guards’ cocks while still screwed tightly closed. Shaped like a spade on a playing card, with a turnkey at the bottom. Madame produced a little tube of lube from somewhere and handed it to him. “We wouldn’t want to damage the merchandise,” she said, and Dougie almost dropped the damn thing again. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t flip the cap off the lube. He couldn’t do this.
    Yes, you can. To stay together. In the face of that, what’s a little object rape among brothers?
Dougie barked out a single, strangled laugh. Jesus fuck, he was going insane. The Dougie who’d dropped the 58 nightstick in defiance of Madame their first day here might as well have never existed.
He slicked the plug until lube dripped over his hand and onto the stage. Set the tube down. Looked to Madame, although fuck knew what he was expecting from her. Mercy?
Reprieve? Ha-ha, just kidding, you can go home now?
    She nodded. Now, boy.
    He moved forward, putting a steadying hand on Mat’s lower back. Mat was chilled and sweaty, and under Dougie’s palm, he trembled. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him. Hadn’t seen what Dougie had chosen.
    I am so, so sorry.
Dougie leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the center
    of Mat’s back. Mat’s body heaved with a shudder and a gasp.
    I’m sorry, Mat. I’m so sorry. But I can’t live without you, and if it means doing . . . this . . .
Dougie kissed one trembling shoulder, wrapped an arm around Mat’s waist from behind, and drove the plug inside him.Mat lurched against Dougie’s arm, cried out, short and sharp, and then went quiet and still.
Dougie had never been so grateful in his life that he couldn’t see his brother’s face.
“Open it,” Madame said.
It took Dougie a moment to parse that, and when he did, fresh horror washed through him. Mat probably looked still to the sea of faceless . . . what, buyers? . . . seated in the house, but this close, Dougie could feel him trembling, hear him panting, smell his sweat and taste his desperation, his humiliation.
    59 No matter, though. None of it mattered. If this was to be their life, he needed to make sure they could live it together.
    He let go of Mat’s waist, gripped the base of the plug with one hand, and turned the key with the other.
    Mat roared . His whole body arched, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go, no way to run from his own flesh. The plug was inside him, locked into him, and getting bigger and bigger.
“I’m sorry!” Dougie cried. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Every turn of the key, “I’m sorry!”
The audience gasped as one behind their frozen white masks, a few hands rising to their false mouths. Dougie looked to Madame, pleading silently, but she just made a spinning motion with her hand. Keep going.
He turned the key again, tried not to hear Mat’s screams, tried not to picture how agonizingly fucking enormous the plug must be by now, tried not to think what a mistake he’d made in picking it, that maybe the battery would’ve actually been kinder, that—
    “Stop!” Mat cried, half incoherent, totally choked.
    “Please, please , I can’t, I ca—” He trailed off on a coughing cry, body so rigid Dougie genuinely feared he might snap something. He was drenched in sweat, more than could be explained by the hot lights glaring down on them.
    The crowd leaned forward in their seats, watching rapt with their hollow black eyes.
Dougie turned the key again, and choked down a surge of bile. Mat’s begging turned wordless, but no less fervent for it. More, even. Awful. The worst sounds Dougie had ever heard.
He turned the key again.
    60 Nearly fainted with relief when Madame reached out and stilled his hand with the tips of her fingers.
    “I think that’s enough,” she said. “We don’t