The Flesh Cartel #3: Choices

peeled it gently away. He’d not missed the scabbing on Douglas’s scalp beneath the buckle, the sores at the corners of his mouth, the bloody cracks in his lips.
When the ball slipped free, Douglas poked a dry tongue out and tried to soothe his aching mouth. He had trouble closing it after so long held open, whimpered brokenly at the pain of trying. Nikolai stroked his cheek, cupped his chin, and helped him. Reached for a bottle of water and screwed the cap off.
Douglas’s eyes finally focused on that, huge and hungry and desperate . His lips moved, and a soft whuff of air pushed past them. No sound, but Nikolai knew what he was trying to say: Please.
“It’s all right, I’ll help you.” He cradled the back of Douglas’s head in one hand, brought the bottle to his lips with the other. Tipped it just enough to moisten his mouth. Watched Douglas’s throat work as he swallowed, watched his eyes drift closed in blissful relief and aching need. Tipped a little more water into his mouth—a mere capful, wouldn’t do to make him sick—and nudged the boy’s hands away when he tried to grasp for the bottle. “Easy now,” he cautioned. “I’ve got you.”
Whining, rooting sounds. Like a baby at the teat. Nikolai sighed in pleasure—he much preferred the role of savior to torturer.
More hungry gulps. Nikolai meted the water out slowly lest the boy’s body reject it. He was in no hurry, could happily cradle Douglas all day (well, until Mathias’s serum wore off, at least) while the boy sipped and sighed and silently begged for more, slowly reviving in Nikolai’s arms.
Too soon, the bottle was gone. Douglas practically climbed Nikolai’s body, searching for more.
Nikolai laughed as he gave him the second bottle, thrilled by the easy trust he received. No suspicion. No fight. The boy needed water. Nikolai offered it. The boy drank and was grateful. Nikolai was grateful too, for a pet so willing to eat from his hand even at this early stage. If this was what two weeks of seemingly senseless torture could bring about, what could he achieve in months of carefully administered training?
“There, there,” he murmured when the second bottle was gone, and his new boy latched onto his neck, pressing his face to Nikolai’s collar. “I’m going to take care of you now. Other people abandoned you here. I won’t abandon you anywhere. Ever.”
He felt the head pressed to his body nod, and then a full-body tremble. Sobs. Tears of happiness —he no doubt thought Nikolai was here to rescue him. He was, in a way . . . just not the way the boy was hoping for.
Nikolai shushed and petted him, and then he lifted him in his arms and carried him back to the house. Back to his own rooms, up the stairs to his en suite, where Roger had run a hot, frothy bath.
Nikolai lowered him gingerly into the water, then stripped his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Knelt at the tub’s side and began to wash him, the same way Douglas would one day beg to wash Nikolai. And Nikolai would let him. To be attended by such a beautiful, sensitive boy . . .
He hummed in pleasure, echoing the sounds Douglas made as Nikolai dragged the soapy sponge across the white expanse of his boy’s back.
At last, Douglas spoke. “They left me to die,” he rasped, staring into the shifting foam on the water’s surface. “They . . . abandoned me. My brother . . .”
“Abandoned you, yes.”
“He’d never—”
“He did. Do you blame him, after what you did to him?”
Douglas hung his wet head, droplets falling from his hair like tears. “No,” he whispered. “I didn’t have a choice, didn’t he understand? I didn’t have a choice!”
“Shhh, I know.” He kept his voice low, and smooth, and very calm. Hypnotizing. The hysterical tension drained out of his boy’s body again. “I understand. Nobody else will, but I do. I’ll never judge you for the choices you’ve had to make, or will have to make. You aren’t perfect, Douglas, and it’s cruel that people expect you to be. You’re flawed, but that’s what makes you so beautiful to me.”
He cupped the back of the boy’s head, leaned in close, and pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth. And then, because he was a weak man, and a little bit imperfect himself, he pressed another, this time right on top of the chapped, slowly moving lips.
Trying to speak. No sound coming out. The picture of acquiescence. Perfection.
But then his new boy pulled away, brow furrowed. Perhaps