The Flesh Cartel by Rachel Haimowitz, Heidi Belleau Page B

be thrust back to the dark days of endless pain and need and terror and uncertainty and never, ever get to be at peace again.
    Had it all been another mindfuck, one he didn’t yet comprehend? God, what was about to happen here?
    Regardless, he couldn’t stay under the covers much longer, because this wasn’t a lazy Sunday. Lazy Sundays were for free men. Not their pets. Not their slaves. He should get up. Do something. Show Nikolai he deserved to be a cherished pet, not a kicked and broken one. Trust that this wasn’t a mindfuck—that Nikolai had meant all the things he’d said—or that if it was a mindfuck, it was all for the best.
    Trust Nikolai. Be the person Nikolai wanted him to be. Which started with waking up.
    Except the room spun when he threw the covers back, and his limbs felt strange, heavy, not quite under his control.
    “Easy, easy, it’s all right, Douglas. Don’t get up.”
    Nikolai. Soft voice, then softer hands at Dougie’s shoulders, urging him back down. Fingers stroking his cheek. Petting his hair. Relief so profound he could’ve wept— he’s not mad at me he hasn’t abandoned me he won’t hurt me. Objectively, he knew he shouldn’t feel that way. But in his heart, he couldn’t change it. Didn’t want to change it. Not when the alternative was going back to how things were before. Or going to a monster like the man who’d hurt him yesterday. No. He’d take this, grab what Nikolai was offering with both hands and never let go. Nikolai would show him how.
    “I just went to fetch you some breakfast. I was hoping you wouldn’t wake while I was gone; I didn’t want you to think you were alone.”
    Nikolai’s smile could’ve soothed a wailing baby back to sleep. Dougie focused on it, tried to match it with one of his own. Tried to feel something more than . . . than what? Gratitude, perhaps. A lessening of fear. Tried to recapture the affection he’d felt last night, when he’d taken Nikolai into his mouth and sucked him and it hadn’t been a chore at all.
    For a moment, Nikolai became two Nikolais, then coalesced back together. Dougie rubbed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Nikolai was sitting beside him, leaning in close, still smiling that soothing smile. He brushed the hair off Dougie’s forehead and followed his fingers with a brush of his lips. “You were quite restless this morning. I gave you something for the pain. Perhaps that’s why you look so confused now.”
    No judgment in those words. Mild amusement instead. “Th-thank you, sir,” Dougie managed. He sounded like he’d swallowed a frog.
    No, just Nikolai’s cock, spat some quiet little voice in a far corner of his mind. Dougie shoved at it, pushed it farther into the darkness and slammed a door on it. He couldn’t afford to listen to that voice anymore.
    Nikolai handed him a glass of orange juice.
    “Thank you, sir,” he said again, and made a show of taking a sip. Thank you was easy. Gratitude was easy. And maybe gratitude wasn’t a far step from affection. Maybe that was how all love began. Mothers took care of their babies, and their babies loved them for it. Maybe he just needed to be patient.
    Nikolai was watching him closely, but that soothing smile was still on his lips, in his eyes. Crinkling the bridge of his nose, even. He was so handsome when he smiled like that, like he meant it. “Do you think you can sit up?”
    Dougie nodded. Nikolai took the juice from him and propped pillows behind Dougie’s back so he could lean against them. Brought over a tray with short legs from the table and placed it over Dougie’s lap. Breakfast in bed? When was the last time anyone had brought him breakfast in bed? Pattie, maybe, back when he was . . . fourteen? When he’d caught bronchitis and missed two solid weeks of school. When he’d wept inconsolably for his dead mother and Pattie had tried so, so hard to fill her shoes.
    And now Nikolai was here, filling Mat’s shoes.
    And just as with Pattie,