The Flesh Cartel - Episode #4: Consequences

head, drew it to his thigh. Roger didn’t question the affection or his
    purpose for being here, merely settled against his master with a contented sigh.
    “Roger here was like you once, Douglas. The very first lost soul I ever shaped on my own. He
    too was unwanted, unloved, wandering aimless and unhappy through life. Looking for meaning. I gave
    him purpose. Direction. And my heart, of course.” He smiled down at Roger, stroked his hair. Roger
    sighed again and closed his eyes, a perfect smile curling his lips. “I made him whole . Isn’t that right, Roger?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Tell the boy how you feel, Roger.”
    Without lifting his head from Nikolai’s thigh, Roger said, “I’ve never been as happy as the day
    you showed me to my new self, sir. I’m never so happy as when I’m with you. To pleasure you, sir . .
    .”
    He looked up, hopeful, one hand inching up Nikolai’s thigh. He wasn’t usually so clingy, but
    then, Nikolai wasn’t usually so permissive, and Roger knew him well enough by now to pick up on
    even his subtlest signals. Besides, this was what he’d brought him in for, so he smiled down at Roger,
    gave him a little nod, leaned back in his chair and spread his legs.
    “You see,” Nikolai said to Douglas as Roger settled between his thighs. “There’s no sadness in
    Roger’s life now. No pain. No fear at all. Only love, pride, pleasure. Look how happy he is.”
    He was happy indeed as he sucked Nikolai with such remarkable skill that Nikolai came in a
    minute, perhaps two. Nikolai let his affection for Roger shine through the whole time, though he kept
    his eyes locked with Douglas’s. See? You can have this. You can be this complete. You will love me
    and yourself. I’ll guide you.
    “This is . . .” Douglas licked his lips, unable to hide how he gawked at Roger dutifully lapping
    Nikolai’s sated cock clean. “This isn’t real love. It isn’t real happiness, either. I’m halfway through my Ph.D. in psychology—you think I can’t recognize Stockholm Syndrome? He’s brainwashed.
    You’ve . . . you abused him and tortured him and raped him and confused him until he twisted that
    around into love. Until he was so desperate for any scrap of affection that he—”
    Douglas’s face crumpled suddenly, in horror perhaps, or sadness, or fear. He’d looked at Roger
    and seen his future. Knew just enough about the human mind, no doubt, to know his own was not
    immune.
    “We are all creatures of our circumstances, Douglas. When those circumstances change, so too
    must we. Or be crushed by them. Don’t you want to be happy, Douglas? Don’t you want to live free of
    pain, free of fear?” He threaded his fingers through Roger’s hair as Roger buttoned his fly for him, let Roger rub his cheek against his chest. If men could purr, Roger would have been.
    Douglas watched all this, but said nothing. Revealed little on his face, either, his eyes shuttered,
    his lips pressed. But he was no different than the rest; Nikolai knew exactly what was going through
    his head right now.
    “You think you need not change because your circumstances will change back. You still hold
    onto hope that this life is temporary, that your old one is waiting for you to return to. And so you’ll resist, and try to fool me, and bide your time.”
    Still no reply, but a muscle twitched in Douglas’s jaw. Roger settled back on his heels, laid his
    head against Nikolai’s thigh, and rolled his eyes— Foolish child.
    “That’s all right, Douglas. Nothing will change that misconception but time. And I’ve plenty of
    that. We both do. In the meanwhile, like any good guardian, I’ll do my best to guide you, to bring you
    round to the truth, no matter how painful. Because only when you let go of the past can you accept the
    future. Only then can you truly change. And you may not believe it now, but the day will come when
    you’ll beg me to help you change. And I promise you I will.”
    Still the boy said nothing, though he looked on the verge of tears again. Processing, no doubt,
    trying to think ahead, to outmaneuver, to find the holes in Nikolai’s words. But Nikolai had been
    doing this long enough to know there weren’t any.
    “It’s a lot to take in, I know. I’ll speak with your brother; perhaps I can convince him to see you.
    Would you like that?”
    The silence stretched on so long he began to suspect Douglas wouldn’t speak to him at all, that
    perhaps this was some new tack, some new