Choices Read online

  “Good.”

  “He’s not moving much anymore. Mostly just sits huddled up in the corner like a rodent. Should be good and ready for you by the time we get there.”

  “Good. And the other?”

  Roger sighed the sigh of a man who didn’t get paid enough to put up with this shit. Which was kind of true, because Roger didn’t get paid at all. Unless you counted room and board and Nikolai’s approval, and of course the privilege of being allowed to live after getting too old for his prior master’s tastes.

  “Frustrating?” Nikolai prompted.

  “You could say that, Sir. Utterly uncooperative. Tried to seduce me. Me!”

  Nikolai allowed himself a laugh at that.

  “So frankly, I’ll be happy to be rid of him, Sir. No offense. I just think he needs a firmer hand than mine, and these guards you hired are good at roughing him up, but that’s about it. Maybe next time you could send me with a staff of gorillas.”

  “I know. But this one needs the mistreatment. You’ve done well. Thank you.”

  Roger sighed in absolute, exquisite pleasure. The pleasure of a man who knew how much his master’s thanks was worth. “I love you, Sir.”

  And I you. “See you in an hour.”

  Mat woke to the RV switchbacking up a steep hill, the crunch of gravel under its tires. He was still strapped facedown to the bed, but nobody was touching him now, and it was easy enough to see out the opposite window. Trees. Endless trees. Familiar trees: mixed stands of poplar and hemlock, rhododendrons, and the occasional black walnut. Verdant and mountainous. It reminded him of home—their old home, before the UFC, before Vegas—of the narrow Appalachian corridor through West Virginia.

  Two of the heavies were missing. Up front, perhaps, with his not-ally; he heard voices there, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying over the noise of the straining engine and the tires on the road. The third heavy looked half asleep, slumped in a chair at the little kitchen table, chin propped on one hand and lidded gaze on Mat. Not that Mat could take advantage; the last three days had taught him how unbreakable the straps were.

  Mat looked back out the window instead. Hoping for a road sign, a landmark, anything he might be able to navigate by when they escaped.

  All he saw was more mountains and trees. Not a crossroad, not a sign, not even a building or a driveway that might lead to one. They were truly in the middle of goddamn nowhere, on a single gravel roadway cutting through the wilds.

  The nothing went on so long he got sleepy watching. Then again, he was so worn out and hard-used, he sometimes got sleepy in the middle of being raped, on the rare occasions a guard was gentle about it.

  But this did not bode well for their escape.

  Another turn. The RV slowed. A driveway. A house—no, a mansion. Well, a sprawling, log-sided chalet, anyway, the sort of thing you’d expect of a ski lodge or a lakeside resort. A beautiful vacation home for rich freaks who bought people, then? He supposed it made for a good place to hold your sex slaves captive; no place to run, no neighbors to hear the screaming.

  As the RV drew nearer, a lean, tall figure emerged from the glass-fronted home and onto the wraparound deck, then practically glided down the stairs. Male, definitely. Strong, confident—the kind of carriage Mat recognized in other fighters, in men who knew how to take care of themselves and felt no fear. He held himself as regally as Madame had. Almost certainly their new “owner.” Then the RV turned, and he fell out of Mat’s field of vision.

  A moment later it drew to a stop, and the sleepy guard roused and poked him.

  The other two joined him a moment later, and they unstrapped him and dragged him to his feet. His not-ally came out a moment later and left the RV. The guards—and by extension, Mat—followed.

  Somehow, Mat was both horrified and not at all surprised to see his not-ally walk up to the waiting man and sink to his knees at his feet.

  The waiting man flashed him the briefest of smiles, stroked an idle hand through his hair, and dismissed him with a gesture. Then he turned his focus to Mat.

  Sharp gray eyes set in an equally sharp face. Late thirties, maybe early forties. Almost but not quite model handsome—high cheekbones, full lips, elegant brow, shortish brown hair styled back—but closed off somehow, too mighty for scrutiny. Something about the force of his gaze discouraged Mat’s own; Mat found himself looking down at his own bare feet.

  Then his new “owner” turned and went back into the house.

  The guards weren’t holding him anymore, just standing close, one on each side and the third behind. What was Mat supposed to do? Wait here? Follow? Go back to the RV? No, if anybody wanted him back in that RV, they’d have to fucking drag him. He didn’t want to stand out here with the heavies, either. He’d rather follow this new man, even if it was off the edge of a cliff, than stay with the guards one second longer. So he balled his fists against the pain of the plug, set his jaw, and walked.

  Besides, Dougie might be in there. They had been sold together, after all, hadn’t they? And there’d been no sign of him in the RV. Maybe they’d sent him off ahead.

  God, what could they have used that time for?

  Something in him boiled over. “Hey! Hey you!” He stormed toward the house, shouting, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, man? Where’s my fucking brother? I’m talking to you, you rich pervert!”

  If the guards weren’t on his ass yet, they would be now. He ran up the stairs toward the massive front door the man had disappeared through. Managed to get in and lock the door behind him before the guards could converge on him. That was as far as he got, though. The second he turned the deadbolt, a lance of pain shot through his abdomen and right down his ass, so painful he fell to his knees. Clinging to the doorknob was the only thing that kept him upright.

  The fucking plug.

  He’d been so angry he’d forgotten it was inside him, although God knew how he’d managed that. And now—

  He wrapped his arms around himself, clutching his gut, his moans half drowned out by the guards banging on the locked front door. He couldn’t sit, so he fell to a crouch, back to the door, and held himself. Another cramp. Another lancing, tearing pain.

  Get it out.

  He reached down between his legs with both hands, fumbling around for the base of the plug. Wrapped trembling fingers around it and gave a horrible tug. Screamed. Finally had the presence of mind to turn the key, his hands shaking so badly it took several tries and several misses for every single turn.

  Twelve turns and he could finally yank it out. He tossed it and watched, crouching and hugging himself again, hole gaping, as the plug skittered across the extravagant tile floor of the entryway, shaking off pink drops of don’t-fucking-think-about-it as it spun.

  That was how his new owner found him.

  Nikolai couldn’t have been more pleased.

  He paced into the grand foyer, the heels of his dress shoes echoing satisfactorily off the marble tiles. He stooped to pick up the steel pear—delicately, by the key, between the tips of two fingers—and turned his gaze on his new charge. The man—Mathias—was slumped against the front door, knees drawn up, arms wrapped tight around his stomach, leaned to one side so as not to put pressure on his no-doubt aching hole. “That was quite a show.”

  Mathias turned his head when Nikolai spoke. It looked like it took whatever dregs of reserve energy he had left. “Fuck you,” he grumbled. Always classy, these untrained beasts. “Where’s my brother?”

  Nikolai studied him a moment longer: pale, drawn, sweating, trembling. The hired brutes had no doubt come in through the side door by now, would be waiting in the next room—gorillas indeed, but well-trained ones; he’d used them before—but something told him he wouldn’t need them. Not just yet. Not ever, if he’d gambled right.

  And he always had been a winner.

  Mathias let his head thunk back against the door, even as Nikolai crouched down in front of him, close enough to smell the fear-sweat, clo
se enough to lick it away. But he knew better than to touch now. Soon, though.

  “My name is Nikolai,” he said, laying the soiled pear at Mathias’s feet with a deliberate click against the tiles. “Though you may call me ‘sir’ or ‘master.’” The baleful look at that, so pathetic from such a weakened body, almost made Nikolai smile. He’d not been wrong about the fire in this one. “There will be many rules in this house, but one above all others you must understand. Are you listening?”

  A slow, heavy, hate-filled blink.

  “I am not a man who threatens; I find the whole business uncouth. But in life there are choices, and there are consequences. There are always consequences. And the one I think you fear most of all is harm to your brother, am I right?”

  A wobble in that baleful glare. Ah, hello, truth.

  “I think we both know who among us would win in a fight. So let me make this perfectly clear right from the start. If you ever harm me in any way—contemplate biting my prick off, perhaps, or my fingers, or even so much as swat a hand at me when I choose to touch you—I will kill your brother. I didn’t buy the pair of you for him. I have no use for him. I don’t particularly have time for him. And lest you get it into your head that death is preferable, understand that I will kill him slowly. Over months. I’ll pull out every tooth, every fingernail, every toenail. Gouge out his eyeballs. Cut off his ears, his nose, his tongue, his balls, his cock. Cauterize his wounds and leave him to die of sepsis. Do you understand?”

  Mathias’s exhaustion and hatred left little room for expression, but Nikolai was an expert reader, and he watched them flash one by one across Mathias’s face: horror, fury, disgust, panic, comprehension . . . and yes, the inevitable resignation. Slowly, Mathias met his eyes and nodded.

  “Do you believe me?”

  Mathias nodded again. “So what do you want?” he gasped out. “You want me to suck your cock, is that it?”

  Nikolai backhanded him. “Next rule. Don’t speak to me that way. I may do a job that seems . . . distasteful to the untrained eye, but I am not a crass man, and I don’t abide them, either. If ever you use language like that in my presence, it will be to serve a higher purpose and it will be on my terms.”

  Another nod, as hateful as before. Not broken, simply biding his time. That was fine.

  “And as for what I want? Only to teach you. You’ll not be with me long, Mathias. A month, two, perhaps four or six on the outside. Normally I would congratulate you—I’m very good at what I do, and every one of my charges has left my care very much in love. Your brother will too, one day. A gift for him. When he’s ready, he’ll find such contentment and peace and pleasure in service as he’s never known. A purpose in life. A direction. No more rolling in his own shit with the rest of the animals out there.”

  “He already had a purpose,” Mathias growled, but his tone was belied by the shine of tears—more than mere physical pain—in his eyes. “Has a purpose. He’s gonna be a doctor. You have to . . . Please. Just . . . Keep me. I’m worthless. But not him. He has his whole life ahead of him. Please.”

  Nikolai smiled. “He does indeed. And unless you force my hand, my solemn promise to you is to make that life glorious. But . . .” He shrugged, in part to cover the rather inconvenient surge of pity he felt looking into Mathias’s earnest, aching eyes. “I regret that I cannot say the same for you. My client has particular . . . tastes, you see. Our work together these next however many weeks will be to teach you to fulfill them without breaking your spirit.” Nikolai preferred transformation and ascension to brute terms like “breaking,” but Mathias wouldn’t understand those words. Never would understand, unlike his brother.

  He reached out and swiped a single tear from Mathias’s cheek with his thumb. Gentle. No call for force yet. “He does not want you broken, fighter. Do you understand?”

  No, clearly he did not, from the confusion, the fear in his eyes.

  “He desires the appearance of danger, but not danger itself. He wishes you to fight, but he must also be assured that he can win those fights if he so chooses. A good slave learns to love service. Crave it. You, on the other hand . . . you will hate it and never stop hating it. But you will know your place. I will teach you that much.”

  Mathias blinked. Blinked again. Nikolai knew that look—that desperate confusion, that terror, that unwillingness to believe what the senses were perceiving, that fierce hope it was all a dream, that it would end soon, that they were mistaken. He reached out once more, cradled Mathias’s head in both hands, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Mathias was too confused to recoil from him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into Mathias’s ear. “But business is business, you understand. Your life will never be happy, but your time here needn’t be so harsh. I do hope you’ll let me help you as much as I’m allowed.”

  Mathias said nothing, but then, Nikolai hadn’t expected him to. He rocked back on his heels. Stood. Deliberately turned his back to Mathias, just to see what he’d do. “Now come,” he said when nothing happened. “We’ve much work to do. Best to get started.”

  He took four steps down the hall and paused again, disappointed but not at all surprised that Mathias hadn’t risen to follow him. He stopped, turned back, let his disappointment show on his face. “Passive resistance is a choice I’ll never stop you from making,” he said. Mathias blinked up at him, so very weary, so clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop. “But as I said before, choices have consequences. It will always be in your hands to decide—within reason—if the consequences are more or less distasteful to you than the order you’ve been given. But know that I will not start easy; it’s a disservice to you, you see, to keep you from understanding just how bleak the consequences can be. So I’ll ask you one more time: will you come under your own power?”

  Mathias met his gaze, let his head loll against the door, and closed his eyes.

  Nikolai sighed and went to fetch the guards. Well, this was to be expected, he supposed. But he’d not tolerate a wild animal in his personal living space, and he’d not tolerate disobedience either. And neither, he was certain, would his client, despite the man’s desire for a little token pushback.

  The guards were quick—and disgustingly eager—to collect his new charge. When they picked Mathias up and began to drag him bodily across the foyer, his eyes locked on the steel plug.

  Nikolai smiled mirthlessly. “No, we won’t be using that again, at least not for a while. You’re of no value to anyone with a ruined body. I have something more logical . . . and simultaneously much, much worse in mind.”

  The fear in Mathias’s eyes eased, but the man would learn to distrust his own sense of relief soon enough.

  For now, Nikolai let him keep his illusions, and they left the front hall and the wicked plug behind. The ground-level portion of the house was its public face, not that Nikolai entertained many guests: only the occasional client or fellow trainer. But keeping up the appearance of normality was necessary just in case. He hated the necessity of walking untrained animals through these halls, filthy and likely to piss on the rug as they were, but oh how he looked forward to the day when he could bring them back up again as proper pets.

  Never Mathias, he reminded himself. Mathias would go to the basement now, and would return to the ground floor only on his way out again. Never to be trusted, or loved, or brought pampered to his bed upstairs. The upstairs—Nikolai’s private rooms, his sanctuary—was locked to everyone but him and a trusted few.

  Poor bastard.

  The basement. His workspace. Accessible by all manner of hidden doors and stairwells—today’s choice a secret panel set into the wall of a small storeroom—most of them known only to him, whatever dead man had been the architect of this place, and the man he’d inherited it from. Windowless. Soundproof.

  As they descended the narrow, twisting stair, he wondered if these secret ways and rooms had always been used for the purpose he put them to now, or if it had a different pedigree. Illegal gambling? Smuggling? They
were so far from everything here, he couldn’t imagine a drug trade or import/export or the pale, disgusting shadow of his own work with unsuspecting women trafficked in from the Third World and sent to work for cheap pimps. Why had he never asked his mentor when he’d had the chance?

  Other things on my mind then, I suppose. They’d had so little time together, all things considered.

  And really, did the place’s past matter, when its present work was so important? No more than it mattered that his fighter’s brother was supposed to become a doctor. Irrelevant.

  Burn the past.

  Says the sentimental fool who buys up his old charges.

  Nikolai smiled to himself. Well, one could spare oneself the odd hypocritical indulgence.

  Downstairs, he passed by the more traditional dungeon cell and had the guards place Mathias in a basic bedroom. Bending a will as strong as his without breaking it meant walking a line as fine as spider-silk; the man would need some comforts to stay on the right side of that line. Besides, as with those fortunate souls transformed at Nikolai’s hand, carrot would come into play in Mathias’s training as well as stick. Let him have a bed.

  Even if, for the next several hours at least, he’d be chained to it.

  “On the bed, gentlemen, if you would. Just chain one ankle, no need to pin him. A little slack is fine.”

  Mathias fought like the animal he was, clearly thinking he was about to be used, and badly. A fine opportunity to test how desperate he was to protect his brother. Nikolai stepped into the fray, and sure enough, the thrashing limbs instantly stilled. Mathias looked on, face stamped with panic, horror, and said all in a rush, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you please I didn’t—”

  “No,” Nikolai said, silencing him with a gentle hand to one twitching cheek. He was so pleased he almost considered forgoing the punishment, but that wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. “You didn’t hit me. That was very good, Mathias. You’ve pleased me.”

  Panic morphed into relief, and then, a moment later, disgust. Sheer contempt, as if the thought of having done something that pleased Nikolai was fundamentally offensive to his sensibilities.