The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

can t-tell how . . . how . . .” He dropped to a whisper. “ Scared you are.”
    And then he went quiet. Didn’t cry. 21

chapter
three
    his time, they came for both of them. Lots of T 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 o f f 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 . . .
22
“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 23 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