The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

know that was impossible?
    “I can’t,” he moaned, tear-choked and terrified anew. “I’m sorry, Madame, but I can’t promise that, he’s so stubborn and I don’t know how—”
    The fingers in his hair tightened, pulling him upright, nails pricking his scalp. “You can and you will. I saw you with him on the loading bay floor. A word and a look was all it took to bring your stubborn brother to his knees to lick an entire procurement team’s cum from your hole.”
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    He shuddered at the reminder, nausea surging. But it was true. She was right. He’d gotten Mat to do that. Just like he’d gotten Mat to put down the razorblade without even so much as shaking his head. Maybe he could make Mat behave out there after all. Maybe he did have it in his power to save them.
    He’d thought he’d lost Mat once, all those years ago when they’d sent him into foster care, when Mat had been “unfit,”
    and it had been like all the light in the world had gone out, all happiness and meaning drained away like blood down a sink. And now, here, with everything else gone from them, possibly forever . . . He drew the pad of his thumb up the vein on the inside of his wrist, tracing the unbroken line.
    Never again. “You’re right, Madame. I’ll find a way. He’ll be good. We’ll both be good. I promise.”
She popped the last of the fudge square into her mouth and dusted her hands. “All right then, little pet. You have yourself a deal.”
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chapter
five
    ne by one, the other captives around Mat were O taken from their cages and led through a door to God-knew-where and not returned. Sometimes it took a long time before someone came in to get the next person.
    Sometimes it only felt like a minute or two.
    It seemed pretty soundproof in here, but every once in a while, when the door at the end of the long room opened, Mat thought he could hear the sound of anticipation—a crowd’s worth of murmuring, charged excitement, like he’d hear from the changing room before a fight.
    Then as now, the wait was interminable, never mind that he didn’t know what he was waiting for. Didn’t know if he wanted to know.
But as long as he could, he held Leslie’s hand.
When they came to take her away, Mat gripped tight as her fingers slipped from his. Clipboard Guy had to slam the edge of his clipboard into both their hands to make them let go.
He waited alone then, huddled on the floor of his cage, knees drawn up tight for lack of space, nursing his throbbing hand and trying not to think about what would happen next. He thought it’d be his turn then—they’d taken the others out in order so far—but when the guards returned, Clipboard Guy leaned in to whisper to them, and they walked right past Mat’s cage and took the Asian twink instead.
45
    “Hey, you assholes! What about me? Where are you taking all these people? Where are they going? Hey! Hey! Look at me, damn it!” But they all ignored him, going about their business with organized single-mindedness.
    That left Mat alone in a sea of empty cages. Had they changed their minds, then? Were they not taking him with the rest? Would they kill him now?
    And where was Dougie? His stomach flip-flopped, terrible scenarios running through his head like HD movies. Maybe Leslie was right.
    Maybe they were killing them all. Making them fight to the death. He’d heard of stuff like that, underground rings where the fighters were unwilling, debased and dehumanized, pumped up with drugs and fed dog food until there was nothing left of them but rage and violence. Maybe this was something like that. He’d heard that sometimes the fights devolved into sexual violence, too. Men raping their unconscious opponents in pure animal victory, or using rape as another way to hurt each other. Maybe this was an arena where that was the point. To watch the weak beaten into submission and taken by the strong.
    Well, Mat wouldn’t do it. They’d have to kill him. They could stick him with a cattle prod until his heart stopped, but he wouldn’t step into the ring and hurt someone weaker.
    Not Dougie, not Leslie, not that Asian twink in the green makeup. They may have made him look like some kind of ultraviolent thug, but he wasn’t. And he’d die knowing it. He just hoped he’d get to see Dougie again before that.
    Just once. It’d be enough. 46 Dougie waited in the sitting room, kneeling right where
    Madame had left him, for a long time. He tried to focus on the taste of chocolate