The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction (5 page)

But the man didn’t fuck him, didn’t hurt him again. Didn’t even speak
to him again. Just scrubbed his back clean, washed his hair, dunked his head underwater to rinse off the soap and then made him turn around and sit up again. Dougie obeyed numbly, as sideswiped by relief as he’d so often been by fear. Closed his eyes when the man massaged some goop into his hair, something silky and smelling of coconuts and vanilla, then tugged a comb through it. “Leave that. Five minutes,” the man said. “Don’t touch anything.” He stood, revealing a raging erection under his scrub pants. Dougie steeled himself to suck it, but the man just left the room and shut the door.

A few seconds later, the door to the bathroom on the left opened and closed.

“You ever fuck an unconscious man’s throat?” the assistant asked as he stormed back into Dougie’s little bathroom a few minutes later. Dougie closed his eyes—
don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it.
“No, of course you haven’t. Well, let me tell you, it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Head down.” He dropped a heavy hand on Dougie’s shoulder and dunked him, scrubbing a hand through his hair to wash away the cream rinse.

And scrubbing. And scrubbing. And
scrubbing.
Dougie knew better than to fight back, but his chest was burning and the man was fucking
drowning him in a bathtub
and he couldn’t help it, he struggled and flailed and grabbed at the arm pinning him with both hands—

And suddenly he was free. Breaking the surface, no hands on him at all. Gasping for air.

The assistant was a few feet back, the guard’s hands wrapped around his wrists. “You pouty fucking queer,” the guard snarled. “You just about flushed our prize item. Just because he didn’t let you fuck his ass? He’s a fucking hole. Bend him over and just fucking
do
it. Watch this.” He looked over to Dougie. “Hole! Come here and suck my dick dry.”

Dougie was out of the tub in half a second and on his knees at the guard’s feet not long after. Dripping on the floor, still seeing spots from lack of oxygen, still panting, he reached up, undid the guard’s zipper, and pulled the thick cock out through the opening. He didn’t stop to think about it, just started sucking, licking, bobbing his head, and even moaning a little, more out of desperation than arousal.

I’m alive. I’m alive because of you. If this is the cost, so be it.

The guard seemed pleased, groaning out a long “Yeeeeeeah” and combing his hand through Dougie’s hair. Not gripping it or pulling it. Not using it to fuck Dougie’s face. Just . . . touching it.

He came not long after. Dougie swallowed it down. Every single drop. Made himself smile and lick his lips, beaming right up at the guard like a very good dog. The man hadn’t hurt him. He’d play along for that.

“See?” the guard said. “Halfway broken in already. If you’re not man enough to rein this kid in, you don’t fucking deserve to get laid. You try to kill any of the stock again, though, and I’ll put you in the cage right next door, you got it? You ain’t good-looking, but you don’t need to be to work a glory hole all day.”

“I wasn’t gonna kill him,” the man mumbled, sullen, like a spoiled teen. “Just teaching the hole a little lesson, is all.”

“Well this one’s a
prize
hole. If you want to teach it a lesson, go get its good-for-nothing brother next time.”

“I
tried
—”

“Shut up.” The guard picked Dougie up off his knees, strangely gentle, grabbed a towel off the cart and rubbed at his dripping skin. “You done here?”

“Lotion,” the assistant said. He was still pouting.

“Hurry up. Madame’s waiting.” Then, to Dougie, “Can you stand, little hole?”

Dougie nodded like a bobble head, though in truth he wasn’t really sure. He just wanted everyone’s hands the fuck
off
him, didn’t matter that they weren’t hurting him now.

The guard took him at his word, letting go of him and standing watch while the assistant smeared a frankly wonderful-smelling lotion all over his skin. It had a sort of pearlescent sheen to it, turning his academic pastiness into something shiny and precious.

After that, he was escorted out to the main room again. No sign of Mat, although there were a few other people sitting in the chairs or lying on the tables. All strapped in. They weren’t struggling. Their eyes were blank, their faces drawn and tired. One woman was crying, annoying the lady doing her makeup to no end as she kept applying foundation to the same cheek. The same practiced sweep, over and over again, immediately cut by a tear trail.

Crying. Tired. Hopeless. Soulless. Half dead.

Dougie wondered if he looked like that.

They strapped him into a chair, cut his hair and shaved his face and plucked his eyebrows, the sulking assistant standing by. Then it was over to a table, where they strapped him down again and waxed him, completely disinterested in his screams. Well, maybe not
completely
disinterested. The assistant seemed to enjoy them quite a bit, smiling whenever Dougie’s cries got particularly loud.

Chest, arms, legs, belly, cock, balls, armpits. Anywhere there was hair, it was removed with practiced efficiency. Which meant it didn’t surprise Dougie when he was unstrapped, turned over, and restrapped to have the crack of his ass waxed, too.

That was when he spotted Mat being dragged out of the bathroom, conscious enough to meet Dougie’s eyes but not to walk under his own power. He looked . . . gone. Glazed over. Totally slack. He was covered head to toe in bruises, bite marks, ugly welts from a belt or a cane or whip or maybe all of the above. God, what had they
done
to him?

Mat held his gaze for a second, maybe two, as they dragged him toward a chair. His head lolled when they sat him down. He didn’t fight them at all when they strapped him in.

Drugged. They must’ve drugged him.

Someone undid Dougie’s straps again. Helped him off the table, then sat him down in a makeup chair. He tried to peer over his shoulder at Matt, but the assistant grabbed his chin and wrenched his head around so hard he whimpered. From somewhere to his left, the crying woman started up again. He heard someone slap her and say, “Stop that bullshit
right now
or I’ll
give
you a reason to cry.”

She had
three
holes to fuck. He wondered if that made it worse.

Just the fact that he was in a mental place to think something like that made him want to gag. He stared straight forward at the blank wall. Strange to be in a chair like this without a mirror, but then, it didn’t matter what he thought about his looks. They could put him in women’s makeup if they felt like it. Like one of the kidnappers had wanted to, that first night.
But they didn’t do anything like that. Just brushed some sort of powder over his face, lined his eyes with a black pencil, and ran a mascara brush through his lashes.

He thought of his friend Jeremy, who did community theater. Stage makeup. Men had to wear it too. It made their features stand out from a distance.

Somewhere over his shoulder, a razor buzzed, and he knew instinctively that they were shaving Mat’s head. To make him look like a thug. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did.

“Hey . . .” Mat slurred, and like clockwork came the sound of a fist hitting flesh and a drug-loosened grunt from Mat. Strange time for him to get vain.

“Hold his head still,” someone said, and then, presumably to Mat, “I’m about to put a razorblade half an inch from your eye, hole.
Don’t move.
”

If anything merited Dougie taking the risk of turning his head, it was that terrifyingly ominous statement. The makeup lady seemed to be done with him anyway, so he craned his neck, saw a guard gripping either side of Mat’s face in two giant hands, saw another man with a razorblade leaning in close and
oh my God what are you doing to him, stop!
Realized to his horror he’d said it out loud when the man with the razor turned to Dougie and said, “Just a little cosmetic surgery, hole.” Then he dragged the razor at a diagonal through Mat’s left eyebrow, and even drugged half out of his head, Mat clenched his teeth and growled and there was blood
everywhere
, Jesus, why was it bleeding so much?

But then the man placed the razorblade on a tray near the sink and picked up a wad of gauze and pressed it to Mat’s brow, and someone else cleaned off the blood that’d run down his eye and cheek and chin, and if Mat was still in pain, it didn’t show on his face.

Dougie realized he was tugging at his restraints, and forced himself to relax back into his chair. Nobody was paying attention to him anymore. That was good, that was the best he could ever hope for in this place. He tried to make himself small and quiet and kept his eyes on his brother, who still had a gauze pad held to his forehead while someone trimmed his nails and changed the bandages on his wrists.

The door to the—what,
salon?
—opened and Dougie shifted his gaze without moving his head, assessing the new threat. The doctor, holding the door open for that woman from the first day, the one who’d almost killed them outside the van, who’d forced Mat to— Who’d tried to make Dougie—
Fuck.
He couldn’t even say it in his own head.

And oh God, she was coming straight for him. “Is this one done?” she asked the assistant, waving a casual hand in his direction.

“Yes, Madame.”

“Get him up, let me see.”

Suddenly it was like processing all over again, like when he’d been forced to pose for those awful pictures. Except it wasn’t just
Turn left
or
Smile
or
Bend over, show me that hole
; she was
touching
him, too, shoving her fingers in his mouth, weighing his cock and balls in her hand, spreading his ass cheeks and prodding at his hole. She made a humming noise that Dougie thought seemed pleased, but when she spoke, it was with almost painful indifference. “He’ll do,” she said. “Collar him and make sure he’s ready to go. One of the attractive collars, if you would. And
don’t
let anyone touch him.”

“Yes, Madame,” someone said, and he was strapped into the chair again to wait while the woman who’d cut his hair unlocked a nearby cabinet and started rummaging through it. While he waited, Dougie craned around to see how Mat was. Still drugged to the gills, by the looks of it. The doctor was bent over him, putting stitches in his eyebrow. Three stiff black knots. He poked through a fourth while Dougie watched. Mat’s fingers were curled tight around the armrests he was strapped to, but he didn’t move.

The woman came up beside Mat, rasped a finger across the light stubble they’d left on his cheek, the heavier stubble they’d left on his head. He looked wiry and mean, fighting fit despite all he’d been through, down to peak weight and rippling with muscle. All the cuts and bruises—and especially the one they’d just made and sewn up—only served to highlight the effect:
I’m a badass motherfucker, don’t cross me.

By comparison, they’d made Dougie softer and sweeter and more delicate, like something to be handled very carefully. And if the woman’s orders were anything to go by, he actually
was
going to be handled delicately. For now, at least.

Both of them had been exaggerated to some strange sexual extreme. Two poles of the same miserable planet.

Dougie’s attention snapped back to the present when someone fastened something around his neck. Tight, like a choker, but not digging in. Cold, delicate. His hands were untied, so he touched fingers to it, traced some kind of woven chain, heavier than a necklace. At the center was a little round disc hanging off a loop, like a tag on a dog collar, stamped with what felt like one long word. He couldn’t see it, but he’d bet anything it was the number designation the doctor had assigned him at processing.

Someone was fitting a collar around Mat’s neck as well.
Literally
a collar—a choke chain, like you’d put on a savage dog. They clipped a little ring to one link to stop it from getting too loose, but it could still be pulled tight. A steel disc hung from his collar as well, an inch across, presumably stamped with his designation too.

Madame slipped a finger through the ring on the end of the chain and yanked it until Mat’s mouth fell open, hands straining against his bindings. “And this one?” she said. “Is he done?”

“Just as you requested, Madame.”

She indicated the straps on his wrists with a careless wave. “Will he bite?”

“We can gag him, Madame.”

“No. Let him speak. Stand him up.”

Mat flopped bonelessly as they unbound him, but for just a fraction of a second, he met Dougie’s eyes, and Dougie saw clarity there. The drug must’ve been wearing off. Which meant he was faking that jointless sprawl, faking his weakness as two guards hauled him to his feet and held him there while Madame circled and poked and inspected.

Don’t do anything stupid, Mat.
Please
don’t do anything stupid.

He didn’t.