The Flesh Cartel #5: Wins and Losses

you?”
God, how simple he made it all sound. How easy. How tempting. The warmth of him, the solidity, the sure, calm confidence and the promise of . . . Of what? Of safety, protection, love. Like the father he’d lost almost half a lifetime ago. It’d be so easy to give in now—
give up what, what am I even fighting for anymore I don’t know
—to let Nikolai take his pain away, be the father he’d lost.
No I have Mike I have Mat they care for me they love me they protect me.
Except they hadn’t, had they. He was here, taken, tortured, raped, out of everyone’s reach but Nikolai’s, no help for him but Nikolai, no solace or comfort or basic human contact but Nikolai, who was still holding him, still stroking him through his pain and confusion, warm and steady and solid and—
“No.” Dougie shoved at the man, weak but effective— Nikolai didn’t stop him from rolling off his lap. “I won’t . . . I can’t . . .” He dragged himself semi-vertical, weight on one hip and two shaking arms. “You did this to me. You. Not me.”
Nikolai didn’t look angry at all. Dougie hated that. Hated how calm he always was, how fucking certain of his own rightness he was. He was a monster. “The world did this. To both of us. I am what I was made to be, and so are you.” Nikolai folded his legs, draped his forearms across his thighs. “Have you ever heard the story of the snake and the old woman, Douglas?”
Dougie shook his head. “I don’t care. I don’t want to hear any more of your b—”
Nikolai reached out, and Dougie cringed, sure he was going to be struck, but all Nikolai did was lay his fingertips over Dougie’s lips. “Quiet now,” he said softly. “There was once an old woman who came across a group of young boys attacking a poisonous snake, beating it with rocks and sticks. She shooed them away, saved the snake, took it home and loved it and nursed it back to health. The snake was very grateful, and for many a month they were inseparable, the best of friends. Then one day the woman was heading to market, and picked up the snake to take with her, and the snake bit her. And bit her and bit her and bit her, and she wailed, betrayed, ‘You have killed me! Why have you done this? I loved you. We were friends.’ And the snake looked upon her dying and said, ‘You knew I was a viper when you first took me home.’ The woman died, of course, and the snake went on its merry way, whole and healthy and happy as God had made it.”
Jesus, what an awful fucking story.
Nikolai took his fingers from Dougie’s lips, cupped them around Dougie’s shoulder instead. Dougie would’ve shaken him off if he’d had an ounce of fight left to spare, but he didn’t. He felt like he was fighting on ten different fronts already and losing them all. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Douglas?”
“That you’re a snake?” he snapped.
But not even that seemed to ruffle Nikolai’s composure. He actually chuckled a little, shook his head, and kneaded at the tension in Dougie’s shoulder. “No, Douglas. I’m saying stop trying to be anything other than what you are. Stop trying to demand I be anything other than I am. The stakes are very real here, Douglas. Playing the fool—being that old woman—will only get you killed.”
Nikolai let go of Dougie’s shoulder, rose to his feet, and held out a hand. Dougie—not a fool, I’m not a fool, you jerk—took it, let Nikolai haul him up. He was nothing but some rich man’s pet, after all, and Nikolai was the master, and Nikolai was right: pretending otherwise wouldn’t make it go away, would only get him bitten.
It hurt to stand, and Nikolai knew it. Knew, too, that Dougie was wavering on his legs, one head rush away from falling. There was no mistaking the enjoyment Nikolai got out of being the one to hold Dougie upright. Inscrutable as he usually was, it was written all over his face now. Oozing from his fucking pores.
You like me helpless, you sick fuck. You like all of this. You like me in pain and disoriented and unable to control my own body. If you could permanently . . . disable me somehow, you’d do it. You’d love if I were completely dependent on you. That’s what this is. And you’re going to get it one way or another. Today it’s a plug and cage only you can remove. What’s next, forcibly addicting me to drugs?
That was something they did, wasn’t it, to make people into sex slaves? To make them do anything? There’d be no