The Flesh Cartel #9: Trials and Errors

Riptide Publishing
    PO Box 6652
    Hillsborough, NJ 08844
    http://www.riptidepublishing.com
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
    The Flesh Cartel, #9: Trials and Errors
    Copyright © 2013 by Rachel Haimowitz and Heidi Belleau
    Cover Art by Imaliea, http://imaliea.deviantart.com
    Editor: Sarah Franz
    Layout: L.C. Chase, http://lcchase.com/design.htm
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com , or at [email protected] .
    ISBN: 978-1-937551-98-8
    First edition
    August, 2013
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    With a wedge at last driven between Mat and Dougie Carmichael, courtesy of Nikolai Petrovic’s expert manipulations, the brothers must each accept their new path forward: Dougie, a perfect slave, sweet and obedient and loving. Mat, a tightly reined dog, snarling and snapping but never allowed to bite.
    Unfortunately, no transformation, however well planned, is without its growing pains. Mat’s leash is so tight it’s choking him. Dougie is tormented by a little voice inside his head—a fragment of his former self—that he cannot silence.
    And Nikolai’s most difficult tests for the brothers are still to come.
    The critical question isn’t whether they can pass those tests, but whether they even want to. Without each other to lean on and live for, a bleak future has become bleaker still. But Nikolai’s too good to let his slaves slip through his fingers—by death or by despair.
    A noose, a nighttime sky, a shared lover, an unexpected friend. A foreboding forest cabin. A lavish party with all the debauchery Nikolai’s clientele could want. It’s all coming in season 3 of the Flesh Cartel .

“I’m ready to do what you want. I’m ready to be who you want.”
    Nikolai peered down at Mathias—the source of so much frustration these last weeks, the source of Roger’s recent pain—and read the sincerity in his face. In his body, too, weakened and thinner than before, naked, a near perfect picture of submission. Not capitulation, not by any means. But obedience, at least. No attitude he could detect. No anger, either—they’d have to work on getting that back, but how hard could that be? The man looked almost casual, but for the glint of determination hardening his eyes and jaw. He suspected Mathias was trying to hide that, though, trying to appear unfazed. It was a farce Nikolai was willing to let him cling to, at least for the moment.
    “If you’re sincere,” Nikolai said, “then your first step is to return to my good graces. I think you know what that means.”
    Mathias’s tongue darted out to lick at cracked lips, and his eyes went to Nikolai’s crotch. Then he blanked his face— it’s all good, look how cool I am with this —and nodded. “But just so you know,” he said, and the absence of the “sir” at the end of that statement was more pointed than the words he’d spoken, “I’m not doing this for me or you. I’m doing this, all of