The Flesh Cartel #9: Trials and Errors

that’s enough even for you to learn your lesson and be sorry.” Nikolai fiddled with his watch a moment, then took it off and laid it on the table next to the machine. “You have an hour. If you don’t finish by that time, the privilege I have recently—and very generously—bestowed upon you to visit with your brother will be taken away. You won’t see him again until after you’ve left here, and you won’t leave here until you’ve proven your worth. Understood?”
    “Yes, sir. Let’s get on with it, sir.”
    “Ah, such bravado. There’s my fighter back.” Nikolai reached out and ruffled Mat’s hair, then started the countdown on his watch. “Begin.”
    Mat didn’t hesitate for even a moment. He jabbed the button.
    And jerked so hard he fell off the damn chair.
    Holy fuck . That . . . was not fun.
    “Get up,” Nikolai said. Calm, but no mistaking the edge in his voice. He’d lost his patience with Mat but good.
    Mat climbed back into the chair. The second he was sitting again, Nikolai knocked his legs apart and checked the leads on the plug, jiggling it miserably against still-spasming muscle. Fuck, he was so fucking raw already.
    “I’m waiting,” Nikolai said, but when Mat moved to press the button again—much more hesitantly than last time—Nikolai actually smacked his hand away.
    Oh. Right. It was probably a good thing he was in a little too much pain to roll his eyes. “Thank you for correcting me, master.”
    Nikolai nodded and gestured toward the box.
    Dougie , Mat recited to himself like a prayer, clenched his jaw against the scream he knew was coming, and pressed the button.

    The dog had tenacity, Nikolai had to give him that.
    Shock after shock, and he took each and every one, even after his muscles began to twitch involuntarily, even after he bit his lip until blood welled up, even after his face was soaked with tears. He’d pick himself back up and cast his eyes to the timer with grim determination, do some calculation in his head— twenty seconds to rest and recover, twenty more to catch his breath and his pride enough to say thank you, ten to build up the courage to push the button again —and keep going.
    Nikolai’s little fighter. His champion. Half of him wanted to throttle the man for the measures he’d forced him to take, the concessions he’d forced him to yield. But the other half of him simply marveled.
    He’d begun to resent the fact that he couldn’t break Mathias properly, that he’d had to go against everything he knew and believed about his work and its purpose, but this hour had done much to convince him that this kind of alternate training might be the only way to do a man like Mathias justice. A modern gladiator, meant to bow only under the whip and die in blood and glory.
    If only that fate didn’t require Nikolai to make compromises with regard to Douglas.
    No matter. Mathias would get his meeting, and Nikolai would get his use of it. Perhaps it wasn’t the way he’d initially planned to advance Douglas’s training, but it would suit that all the same—it might even be more effective than his original choice—and it would suit Mathias’s, too, for all that the man thought he was winning something here. After all, Nikolai was an artist, not a factory worker. Artistry required improvisation.
    Go where the clay leads you.
    When Mathias’s punishment was finally over and Nikolai had been thanked, breathless and tear-choked, for the fiftieth shock (with an impressive three minutes to spare), he kissed Mathias on the forehead with renewed appreciation and helped him to his bed.
    Removing the plug proved a challenge, thanks to Mathias’s still-spasming muscles, but they managed it together, and afterward Nikolai sat on the bed, stroking Mathias’s sweaty back as he shuddered and moaned into his pillow.
    “I’ll send Roger to help you bathe and bring you more food. When you have your strength back—then and only then—I will let you see your brother.”
    “Thank you, master,” Mathias murmured, and though the response was probably just rote by now, for the first time ever, Nikolai detected not a single trace of insincerity in those words.

The next month passed in blissful peace, everything according to plan and pattern. Mathias dutifully tended himself, appetite rushing back and strength soon following. He worked harder than Nikolai had ever seen him work before, and though sometimes Nikolai worried he might be pushing too far too fast,