The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction (9 page)

Yes, you can. To stay together. In the face of that, what’s a little object rape among brothers?

Dougie barked out a single, strangled laugh. Jesus fuck, he was going insane. The Dougie who’d dropped the nightstick in defiance of Madame their first day here might as well have never existed.

He slicked the plug until lube dripped over his hand and onto the stage. Set the tube down. Looked to Madame, although fuck knew what he was expecting from her. Mercy? Reprieve? Ha-ha, just kidding, you can go home now?

She nodded.
Now, boy.

He moved forward, putting a steadying hand on Mat’s lower back. Mat was chilled and sweaty, and under Dougie’s palm, he trembled. He didn’t know what was going to happen to him. Hadn’t seen what Dougie had chosen.

I am so, so sorry.

Dougie leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the center of Mat’s back. Mat’s body heaved with a shudder and a gasp.

I’m sorry, Mat. I’m so sorry. But I can’t live without you, and if it means doing . . . this . . .

Dougie kissed one trembling shoulder, wrapped an arm around Mat’s waist from behind, and drove the plug inside him.

Mat lurched against Dougie’s arm, cried out, short and sharp, and then went quiet and still.

Dougie had never been so grateful in his life that he couldn’t see his brother’s face.

“Open it,” Madame said.

It took Dougie a moment to parse that, and when he did, fresh horror washed through him. Mat probably
looked
still to the sea of faceless . . . what, buyers? . . . seated in the house, but this close, Dougie could feel him trembling, hear him panting, smell his sweat and taste his desperation, his humiliation.

No matter, though. None of it mattered. If this was to be their life, he needed to make sure they could live it together.

He let go of Mat’s waist, gripped the base of the plug with one hand, and turned the key with the other.

Mat
roared
. His whole body arched, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go, no way to run from his own flesh. The plug was inside him, locked
into him, and getting bigger and bigger.

“I’m sorry!” Dougie cried. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Every turn of the key, “I’m sorry!”

The audience gasped as one behind their frozen white masks, a few hands rising to their false mouths. Dougie looked to Madame, pleading silently, but she just made a spinning motion with her hand.
Keep going.

He turned the key again, tried not to hear Mat’s screams, tried not to picture how agonizingly fucking
enormous
the plug must be by now, tried not to think what a mistake he’d made in picking it, that maybe the battery would’ve actually been kinder, that—

“Stop!”
Mat cried, half incoherent, totally choked. “Please,
please
, I can’t, I ca—” He trailed off on a coughing cry, body so rigid Dougie genuinely feared he might snap something. He was drenched in sweat, more than could be explained by the hot lights glaring down on them.

The crowd leaned forward in their seats, watching rapt with their hollow black eyes.

Dougie turned the key again, and choked down a surge of bile. Mat’s begging turned wordless, but no less fervent for it. More, even. Awful. The worst sounds Dougie had ever heard.

He turned the key again.

Nearly fainted with relief when Madame reached out and stilled his hand with the tips of her fingers.

“I think that’s enough,” she said. “We don’t want to damage the merchandise, remember?”

Dougie looked up at the rivulets of blood flowing down Mat’s arms from beneath the cuffs.
Much too late for that.
He only partly meant Mat’s wrists, though.

“Although I certainly do appreciate how well you take to torturing your brother. I don’t think I’ll be able to look at you the same again. I don’t think
you’ll
be able to look at you the same again. Your brother
definitely
won’t.”

He’ll understand
, Dougie thought fiercely.
I understand. And fuck you for trying to drive a wedge between us.

“But that’s all part of the growth process, after all. Isn’t that right, ladies and gentlemen? See how well he learns? See how well they learn
together
?”

Together.

He collapsed to his knees in absolute relief even as Mat moaned in abject misery.

Madame turned to her adoring audience, basking in their rapt attention. “We’ll start the bidding at three hundred thousand dollars for both, ladies and gentleman. Three hundred thousand dollars.”

Nikolai rolled his eyes behind his mask as Madame stepped between the two brothers—the pretty one on his knees and the fighter, legs gone out, writhing and moaning in his shackles—and said, “We’ll start the bidding at three hundred thousand dollars for both, ladies and gentlemen. Three hundred thousand dollars.” She took hold of the fighter’s hips and spun him around to expose his exquisitely muscled back and cruelly stretched anus to the audience, then gave a little flourish with one arm and bowed to the crowd. Well, she always did have a flair for the dramatic. She certainly deserved her substantial share of every sale that happened here.

Nikolai pulled his eyes from the tense line of the fighter’s back and cast them to the tablet in his lap. He’d stay out of the bidding for now. No one came to this auction house with tight purse strings—if you wanted cheap stock in Madame’s region, you went to Reno, not San Jose—but two-thirds of them at least would fall away once the bidding broke half a million. They simply didn’t have the reputations to sell a seven-figure product.

Still, hopefully this auction wouldn’t get as out of hand as he feared it might. As they sometimes did with spectacles like this.

Four hundred thousand. Five. Five fifty. The numbers were climbing unpleasantly quickly. Six ten. Seven. Seven fifty. A moment’s lull. Seven sixty. Seven eighty. Eight ten. Only three buyers left. A pre-emptive bid at a million flat.

The fighter alone shouldn’t have gone for more than a hundred thou, maybe one fifty on the outside.
Damn brother.

Silence. Three . . . two . . . one . . .

Nikolai jumped in at one million fifty thou.

The screen of his tablet blinked red as Madame called out, “One million fifty-five thousand.” Whoever was still in with him had made a sad little attempt here. Close to their limit? Or testing him? Nikolai was quite certain he could wrangle at least three million from his client for just the right finished product, not even counting the pretty brother—he wouldn’t hit his limit for some time. Perhaps a preempt of his own. He keyed in a million and a quarter.

This got a gasp from the crowd. It had been at least a year since raw stock had gone for quite so much in this house. Especially raw stock with
baggage
. The pretty one on his own should have topped out at seven or eight hundred thousand. The fighter should have been the sort you found with a forced heroin addiction, going for less than the price of a fancy car down in that meat market in Reno.

But
together
.

Green flashing on his screen now.
Going once. Going twice.
Madame echoed it from her perch on the stage.

“Sold!” she announced a moment later with a dazzling smile, and applauded the audience with all the sweet poise of a runway model at the end of a fashion show.

Congratulations!
his screen chirped at him. And then,
This is a cash-only auction. Payment must be made immediately and in full. Please fill out the following form carefully. We hope you enjoy your purchase and thank you for your patronage.

The form that followed was familiar enough. He quickly typed in his payment information and delivery instructions. Special requests, hmm. He’d have his own men escort them home—Roger had become almost as good at that as he himself was—but he was perfectly content to have Madame oversee their care while he flew back to prepare.

Separate them for shipment. Debase the fighter in whatever way Madame deems most fit for his character, but keep him fed and strong. Put the pretty one into complete isolation. Freeze him. Water only, no food. Have him hear no one, see no one, touch no one until my own men arrive for transport. Make him feel abandoned. Like the last man on Earth.

Nikolai slumped in his seat, huffing a breath and feeling, strangely, like he’d just run a marathon.

And to think, his work with these two had only just begun.

The Flesh Cartel, Episode #3: Choices
.

Bookended

With Violetta Vane:

Mark of the Gladiator

Galway Bound

The Druid Stone

The War at the End of the World

Hawaiian Gothic

“Salting the Earth,” a short story in the anthology Like It or Not

Cruce de Caminos

Harm Reduction

The Saturnalia Effect

Power Play: Resistance, with Cat Grant

Power Play: Awakening, with Cat Grant

Master Class (Master Class, #1)

Sublime: Collected Shorts (Master Class, #2)

Counterpoint (Song of the Fallen, #1)