Read Online The Flesh Cartel #3: Choices by Heidi Belleau - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Heidi Belleau
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over Nikolai’s shoulder, toward the door, the windows. He had to get out of here. He’d fight his way out if he had to.
“Yet it seems you’re not ready to receive them. Perhaps you need some time to ponder. Some more time in quiet seclusion, perhaps?”
That dark room. No water. No food.
He’d drunk, but he hadn’t eaten, a fact that’d grown more and more urgent as his fluid-parched body came back into itself. How long did he have before he starved?
You idiot. He won’t starve you to death, not when he can get you halfway there and desperate enough to eat from his hand and drink his cum for dessert.
He’d read about this in grad school—going crazy in the endless, dark quiet of sensory deprivation. It could break a man in days. Sometimes just hours. Had definitely broken him, at least for a little while. Between that and what’d come before it, it was a fucking miracle of the human mind that he wasn’t destroyed already.
You snuggled in his lap and drank from him like a mewling kitten.
That’s where he recognized him from. The memory came back like a fucking freight train. Hunger. Thirst. This man. Water. His strong body. Protector. Savior. In that moment, he’d been all of that and more. Dougie—reduced to a desperate, broken animal—had loved him.
From here on in, he had to be smart. This was his mind he was gambling with, and he couldn’t throw it away for some meaningless stand. Better to play along now—no matter how humiliating and horrible it was, no matter what —and keep his senses (no more dark rooms, God, please no more) so he’d be ready when the time to escape eventually came. He was halfway to a Ph.D. in clinical psychology; if he couldn’t outsmart this guy, he had no one to blame but himself.
And he couldn’t afford to fail. Mat was here, somewhere. He had to protect Mat.
“Wait,” he said, and then, kicking himself for slipping already , dropped to his knees and added, “Sir. Please. Wait.”
Nikolai folded his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. His posture screamed defensive, wary, amused, superior. But that was okay; Dougie could work with that.
“Please don’t lock me back up in the dark, sir. I’ll . . . I’m sorry, I won’t make trouble. I was just . . .” He shook his head, grimaced. He couldn’t overplay this or Nikolai wouldn’t buy it. “I was angry. Furious . I still . . . I still am. This is my life you’re stealing. That you’ve all so blithely claimed for your 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
“Yet it seems you’re not ready to receive them. Perhaps you need some time to ponder. Some more time in quiet seclusion, perhaps?”
That dark room. No water. No food.
He’d drunk, but he hadn’t eaten, a fact that’d grown more and more urgent as his fluid-parched body came back into itself. How long did he have before he starved?
You idiot. He won’t starve you to death, not when he can get you halfway there and desperate enough to eat from his hand and drink his cum for dessert.
He’d read about this in grad school—going crazy in the endless, dark quiet of sensory deprivation. It could break a man in days. Sometimes just hours. Had definitely broken him, at least for a little while. Between that and what’d come before it, it was a fucking miracle of the human mind that he wasn’t destroyed already.
You snuggled in his lap and drank from him like a mewling kitten.
That’s where he recognized him from. The memory came back like a fucking freight train. Hunger. Thirst. This man. Water. His strong body. Protector. Savior. In that moment, he’d been all of that and more. Dougie—reduced to a desperate, broken animal—had loved him.
From here on in, he had to be smart. This was his mind he was gambling with, and he couldn’t throw it away for some meaningless stand. Better to play along now—no matter how humiliating and horrible it was, no matter what —and keep his senses (no more dark rooms, God, please no more) so he’d be ready when the time to escape eventually came. He was halfway to a Ph.D. in clinical psychology; if he couldn’t outsmart this guy, he had no one to blame but himself.
And he couldn’t afford to fail. Mat was here, somewhere. He had to protect Mat.
“Wait,” he said, and then, kicking himself for slipping already , dropped to his knees and added, “Sir. Please. Wait.”
Nikolai folded his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. His posture screamed defensive, wary, amused, superior. But that was okay; Dougie could work with that.
“Please don’t lock me back up in the dark, sir. I’ll . . . I’m sorry, I won’t make trouble. I was just . . .” He shook his head, grimaced. He couldn’t overplay this or Nikolai wouldn’t buy it. “I was angry. Furious . I still . . . I still am. This is my life you’re stealing. That you’ve all so blithely claimed for your 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
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