The Flesh Cartel #3: Choices

own. You bought me like some . . .” He shook his head again, let his fury, his disgust, his helplessness show on his face. “Like some appliance, some thing. I’m not a hole ; I’m a human being!”
Silence. He waited to see if Nikolai would fill it, but the man stood unmoving, eyes fixed on Dougie.
“But if it’s really true that I can’t go back, that I can’t escape, that I’m stuck here forever and nothing will change that . . . And if it’s really true what you said, that I have choices, that it doesn’t have to hurt?” He risked meeting Nikolai’s eyes—expressionless, revealing nothing. “Then I choose not to suffer. I suffered enough for ten lifetimes in Madame’s hands. I’m done. So please, sir”—no contempt this time, none at all, though he felt it burning like fire through his veins—“tell me what I have to do. Tell me how not to suffer.”
Nikolai straightened, uncrossed his arms. A slow smile spread over his face. Pleased, then. Maybe Dougie’s ploy would work.
Just one problem with that, of course. Ploy or no ploy, Tell me how not to suffer felt like the most honest thing he’d said in his entire life.

    The boy’s attempt was woefully transparent.
That was all right. Nikolai, too, could play along and act the part, and Douglas could go on thinking he was tricking him until suddenly he wasn’t anymore, until the act became his reality. It was only a matter of time, and Nikolai was a very patient man.
Time to test his new pet’s resolve.
He reached down, catching Douglas’s chin in his hand. A momentary flinch, followed by a limp acquiescence, almost doll-like. And he was, almost. Pale as a china doll, and as fragile. A delicate jaw, hidden underneath a distasteful week’s growth of thin beard, caught helpless in Nikolai’s hand.
“No,” he said, softly. “You’re not a hole. Not to me. Never. You are a person, just a person who desperately needs my guidance.”
He’d given the boy such a precious gift in that one speech alone, but Douglas wasn’t yet prepared to accept it. Where there should have been sweet, touched affection, there was only wariness, fear, even a pale shadow of his brother’s hate.
No matter. “The key is to obey,” Nikolai said. “Fully, unhesitatingly. Enthusiastically . Always. It is not enough to serve me. You must love to serve me.”
His new boy blinked up at him with eyes as big and blue and beautiful as a Disney prince’s, gaze full of consternation. “I don’t know how,” he said.
Nikolas stroked his thumb across Douglas’s full lips, rough and split from dehydration and the gag. A hint of pressure, and the boy—smart, this one, a quick learner—parted them to let Nikolai in. Flicked his tongue across Nikolai’s fingernail, the question— Is that right? Will you not hurt me now? —clear as ink across his face. “I will teach you. It will take time. It will not be easy.” The boy’s tongue curled, a wet, hot press around the pad of Nikolai’s thumb, and Nikolai had to restrain his gasp, the urge to replace thumb with cock. “Until then,” he said, “you fake it.”
Douglas nodded around Nikolai’s thumb and tried on a moan. It sounded more desperate than pleasured, but it would do for now. No doubt the boy thought he’d always be faking it, but that was all right. Many a pet just like him had been proven wrong before.
Nikolai popped his thumb free, stroked his hand through Douglas’s hair. “Undo my fly,” he said, and when Douglas moved too quickly, too eager to play at eagerness, Nikolai steadied his hand with his own and added, “Slowly. Sensually. This isn’t mechanics, it’s worship , do you understand?” The boy blinked, nodded slightly; he didn’t understand yet, not truly, but he would in time. For now it was enough to pretend. “Don’t watch your fingers—watch my face. Your betters may wish to look into your eyes when you service them. Or they may not, but you cannot know if you do not open yourself to them. Prostrate yourself. Offer them everything—not just your mouth, but your heart and mind as well.”
Anger and disgust in those big blue eyes now, quickly smothered. No, not smothered—buried. Hidden. But that was all right too. Every boy was like this at first.
Douglas gazed deep into Nikolai’s eyes as he slowly unbuttoned and unzipped his slacks. The gaze was mostly shrouded—he was no born actor; his ruse could only carry him so far—but it would do for now. Was doing well enough, in