Broken Contracts, page 18
He flexed his hand, turning it over like he thought he might find an explanation written on his palm.
Nothing.
“I . . .” he said, but Godfrey just clapped him on the shoulder.
“Been partaking in the party, have you? That didn’t take long.”
“No, I . . .” Slate couldn’t stop staring. Had he somehow managed to heal himself? He didn’t have that power. He was sure of it.
Godfrey was grinning at him. Behind his shoulder, the Gestalt was giving him a curious look.
Had the angel healed him?
From all the way across the room?
Why?
“Did you . . .?” Slate started, but Godfrey interrupted him.
“Can’t trip sit you tonight, friend. I’ve got plans. But hey, this one’s yours, right? Give him up, Walter.”
Walter. Why did that name ring a bell—
Slate turned, slowly, to where Godfrey was tugging on Anthony’s shoulder, pulling him off a familiar guest.
Walter Cunningham.
“Not to break up the love fest, but your owner needs you tonight,” Godfrey said, as Anthony stumbled to his feet. He was dressed for the solstice in high deerskin boots and a short skirt of ivy that left little to the imagination. His bare torso and face had been painstakingly painted with flowers—paint whose smeared patterns made it clear what he’d been up to.
Anthony was staring at him with wide eyes, and there was a blush rising beneath the clematis that climbed across his cheekbones.
“Of course,” he stammered. “How can I . . .?”
He trailed off, glancing back at Walter as if waiting for him to say something. A strange emotion twisted deep in Slate’s belly, something sharp and hot. He let it leech into a wide smile.
“Don’t let me interrupt your evening,” he said to Cunningham, ignoring Anthony completely.
“I . . .” Cunningham said, looking like he’d gotten his hand caught in the cookie jar. “He’s, uh . . .”
“Arabelle knows her business,” Slate said, pushing his hands into his pockets, the picture of nonchalance. “Enjoy the new and improved version, I have no use for him tonight.”
He turned, trying not to feel the eyes of his guests on him as he strode back toward his suite. In his pocket, he touched his thumb to each of his fingertips, verifying the sensation. There was no pain. No ice crackling through his bones. If anything, his skin felt . . . warm.
He kept his composure as he walked down the hallway. The sigils carved into his doorframe recognized him, and the door swung open, then shut behind him. The lights rose, illuminating the coverlet, buried under the books he’d been reviewing before the ceremony tonight. Sighing, Slate pushed them aside, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed.
He was somewhat surprised to find his cell phone in his hand. He stared at it, watching himself scroll through contacts, until . . .
There it was. Plant, Christopher.
Christopher would love to know about this.
He could just call. Offer the olive branch. There was no reason he couldn’t.
Except Christopher wouldn’t answer. Slate was sure of it. And if he did . . . Slate wasn’t sure Christopher wanted to hear anything his former friend had to say.
He stared down at the name on the screen, waiting for his hands to move on their own, to make the decision for him like they had at the gateway.
The screen went dark.
He dropped the phone onto the coverlet, then raised his hand closer to his face, studying it again.
It looked . . . completely normal. No sign of the damage he’d seen in the basement. No magical transformation, no sign of anything having happened at all.
He was fairly certain the Gestalt hadn’t healed him—the angel wouldn’t have even known to heal him.
Maybe the damage was proximal? Or, rather, not damage at all, but a change of state, brought on by exposure to the source, that dissipated as he moved further in time or distance from that contact . . .
Slate lost a good few minutes considering the ramifications of such a possibility . . . but it didn’t seem likely.
Lying back on his bed, he let his mind wander, going over the spell, what had happened . . . what had happened after . . . what had happened after.
Fuck.
What the fuck had he been thinking?
You were thinking you were out of options, a mean little voice offered, and he sneered—but it wasn’t wrong. He had a deadline now—there was no way he was going to get the gateway fixed without the Gestalt, and the Gestalt had an expiration date.
His phone buzzed, and he resisted the urge to throw it across the room. What the fuck did someone want now?
It was Godfrey.
How had Godfrey even gotten his fucking number?
Godfrey had sent him a photo. Sighing, Slate opened it.
It was the Gestalt, looking significantly worse for wear. A thick black cloth was knotted around his eyes, and a thick trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. A knotted scar ran up the side of his throat, half-healed.
He says he’s sorry for lying to you, came the text a moment later. He promises not to do it again.
Slate laughed despite himself.
At least someone was having a worse day than him.
Sighing, he dialed room service, ordering a bottle of something old and smooth. He considered having them send him someone to fuck.
He shouldn’t have left Anthony with Cunningham. It was the bigger thing to do, but who knew what promises that little slut was whispering in his ea—
Slate froze, that hot, sharp little emotion twisting again.
He was getting an idea.
August 2014
Micah’s shoulders were killing him, and it was making it hard to count.
It wasn’t as bad as the solstice party; he could fail here, and failing was sort of the point . . . but it wouldn’t help him, and it would ruin the show.
Reaching thirty, he rose up onto his toes, taking some of the pressure off his arms.
It was difficult to breathe this way. With his arms tied behind him, wrists tethered to the ceiling, he already had trouble inhaling all the way. Well, that, and the toy he couldn’t get out of his mouth. The thick, veined dildo came straight down from above, and even when he stood with his feet flat, he couldn’t duck out from under it without dislocating his shoulders. And when he stood on his toes, like he was now—
Focus. Breathe. Count.
Micah closed his eyes behind his blindfold, willing his mind to keep the metronome steady, even as his calves and throat begged him to hurry up, to give them a break.
Whatever wasn’t happening always seemed easier to bear. It was a lie, an illusion, and Micah was above it.
Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight.
Reaching thirty, Micah let himself drop. Immediately, the torsion in his shoulders began to burn, the stinging matched by the other toy—the one buried between his legs. It buzzed intermittently, but weakly, the extra sensation easy to ignore in the cacophony of everything else. The toy’s taper, though, that was significant, even in the bare few inches that standing on his toes bought him.
Micah couldn’t help the gasp of breath that escaped his mouth as he sank back down onto it, feeling it stretch him even after how many times—
No. He didn’t count how long it had been.
He was here, focusing on inhaling with his arms torqued behind him like this. He was focusing on keeping his balance as he rose onto his toes, the spreader bar keeping his stance uncomfortably wide. He was focusing on staying relaxed around the toys from above and below, knowing that being tense would only make it worse. He did not count these transitions.
He did not need to know how many there had been.
He would be here until his owner grew tired of it, and there was no way to know how long that would be. Speculation could only let him down.
That was where Anthony failed. Anthony couldn’t stop trying to make plans—
Micah felt a stab of worry for the other slave. He hadn’t come home when Slate had returned from the inn, not for weeks now, and—
And Micah had lost count.
He immediately stifled the little voice begging him to just call it thirty, to sink down and take the weight off his burning calves—
But that was the weak way out. It was the same voice that told him he didn’t need to work out today, he’d be fine if he skipped just once. It was a voice that lied. Accepting one excuse would open the door to accept more, and Micah couldn’t afford to tolerate that behavior. God knew no one else was going to.
Micah started the count over from one.
The floorboards creaked behind him, a subtle brush of footfall on the bedroom’s plush carpet. Micah tried not to flinch as his owner took his hand.
When Slate let go, there was a hard metallic ball left behind in Micah’s palm. Micah moaned gently. The ball only weighed a pound or two—but he’d needed to grip the strappado rope to keep his balance when he went up on his toes. With his hands full, he had no choice but to stay down, his twisted shoulders screaming out a protest as the rope and the weight pulled them in different directions.
With the silicone toy in his mouth, he couldn’t even grit his teeth. He settled for squeezing the ball as hard as he could. His finger slid into a divot, and he realized he recognized it. It screwed onto a hook.
So he likely had that to look forward to.
No, Micah thought, clenching his eyes behind his blindfold. Later was later’s problem. He had to focus on getting through now.
Now was bad. He wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t. But now never got any easier by trying to suffer later’s problems, too.
There were hands on him now, stroking his chest, his shoulders, the sides of his throat. The touch took him by surprise, and his flinch nearly took him off-balance. He wished he could lean forward, even a little bit—but it wasn’t going to happen with this thing in his mouth.
Slate laughed, low and easy.
“Don’t worry. I’m just admiring.”
His touch traced down the line of Micah’s jaw, twisting lightly in a loose strand of hair. Micah let out a breathless moan. The touch would feel good, if it weren’t for everything else.
The warmth vanished, reappearing at his hips.
“I’ve been thinking of having you tattooed,” Slate mused. His thumb dug into Micah’s hipbone, opposite Arabelle’s signature. “I was thinking of my initials. Right here.”
Micah let out another weak sound, this one not entirely faked.
Slate was going to put initials on him?
Why?
Micah had to be reaching the end of his time here. It had been more than two years. Surely Slate was getting bored with him by now. Micah’s novelty had long since worn off . . . or was that why? Was Slate trying to do something different, to keep Micah interesting?
It’s not your job to figure it out, stupid, Micah chided himself.
The hands slid lower now, and Micah’s heart sank as a single fingertip slid down the shaft of his cock. He whimpered in what he hoped came out sounding like pleasure.
“Not too big a fan of this position?” Slate asked, fake concern dripping from his voice. He cupped Micah’s soft junk in his hand, fingers moving like he was testing their weight.
Please don’t squeeze, Micah thought wildly. His palms were sweating, and without his fingertip shoved into the divot, the metal ball would probably have fallen to the carpet. Oh fuck, please, please don’t squeeze.
His body was doing everything in its power to try to jerk out of Slate’s grip, and Micah felt like he was having to hold every muscle in check, one at a time. He tried to inhale, trying to find any sensation that felt good—or at least, not bad.
Right now, that was . . . Slate’s hand on his hip, as the other idly played with his dick. Either of those.
Micah could do this, he could. It didn’t matter how much it hurt; this was what he did.
He began to harden in Slate’s hand, the fondling feeling marginally better as he flushed.
Good, he could work with that, he just needed to focus on that sensation, that one feeling, and he could—
Slate’s hand vanished.
“I bet I know the problem,” Slate said, from somewhere to Micah’s left. “My mistake—this setup wasn’t built for you, and I know you like things a particular way.”
There was a mechanical clicking sound, and the toy in his ass got bigger. The stretch burned, and Micah had to fight to keep from tensing against it. It wouldn’t help.
“It doesn’t hurt enough, right?” Slate said, and Micah let out a low keen. He started trying to raise onto his toes, and almost immediately lost his balance, sinking back down onto the thick taper. He could feel tears soaking into the blindfold.
“If you wanted it to fuck you, you should have said,” Slate said amiably, and then the clicking noise was back. It didn’t get wider this time—but it did begin plunging slowly, inexorably upward. Micah was almost forced back onto his toes, but he managed to keep still, groaning as the widest part of the toy pushed deeper into him.
Just when he was sure he couldn’t handle any more, it stopped and dragged back out of him with a warm burn. A moment later it was repeating. Where before, he’d had to choose which toy he wanted a break from, now each thrust pushed him up, making him struggle to cope with being impaled from both ends.
“That’s better,” Slate said, and the voice was in front of him now. “Isn’t it?”
A new, sharp pain as one of Micah’s nipples was pinched, then rolled between invisible fingertips.
This is a lot, Micah realized, in the quarter second he had to think before the toy in his ass began its upward journey.
Had he actually fucked up? Slate wasn’t even bothering to disguise this as a “punishment,” wasn’t bothering with the game, the pretext he usually gave. Did that mean Micah had done very well, or very badly?
Micah didn’t know, but there was nothing he could do now. He was inanimate, trapped in a cage of rope and silicone. All he could do now was hurt prettily.
But, to be fair, that was all he was being asked to do.
He could do that one thing.
With an exhale, he let himself feel it, the deep ache in his shoulders, his throat, his thighs, his ass, everything hurt, and with a sob, he let himself feel all of it. It blended together into a bright white noise that left him trembling and panting.
The metal ball thumped onto the floor. Shit. He’d forgotten he was supposed to be holding it.
He didn’t try to apologize, just let his hands stay limp, focusing on breathing and not collapsing.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
A brief flicker of thought, wishing everything would just stop, and Micah shoved it down.
Everything seemed so much worse when it was happening.
Was this really, really worse than when he’d been in training, and they’d given him the lists of tasks to do each day? He’d spent months exhausted, sure he couldn’t coax another twitch out of his protesting muscles—but he could always do one more sit up. Take one more hit. Deep throat a little further. And really, was he going to die?
He could bear this a little longer.
There was a crack, and fire raced across his palm. Micah couldn’t help it; he screamed, his fist clenching.
“Do not,” Slate hissed in his ear, and Micah forced himself to relax, his fingers peeling back one at a time. Immediately, the strap crossed his palm again.
Micah focused on not biting down on the toy in his mouth. That was an important skill; it wouldn’t do to ruin the toy, and it wasn’t always a toy. Biting down on his owner or their guest would be unacceptable.
He hadn’t bitten when he was startled, and he wasn’t, now, and he held on to that as his hands tried desperately to clench. He let himself scream, assuming that Slate was probably fine with that.
Three strikes in rapid succession, and then they stopped. Micah waited, trembling, for whatever would come next.
He flinched hard as the metal ball was pressed against his sore palm.
“You can have it in your ass later,” Slate said graciously, and Micah saw a long day ahead of him tomorrow—kneeling in the corner of Slate’s office for hours, the hook held in place with a lattice of ropes around his body.
That’s what he needs from you, Micah reminded himself. That’s why he bought you.
That helped him back into himself.
Any indent could suck a dick. Most of them could handle a couple of swats with a crop or a paddle.
This was something else, something that needed someone special. That was why Micah had proof of his training inked right into his body, why he sold for so much more than the others.
Because he could take what they couldn’t.
“It hurts me that you don’t appreciate this. I worked hard on it.”
Something scratched him, right above the curve of his ass, circling around to the front of his belly. Slate had a weird fascination with the spot below Micah’s belly button. It was toned and flat like the rest of his body, nothing particularly noteworthy about it . . . but Slate loved it, pressing his hands and mouth and cock against it every time he took Micah to bed.
He’s going to have it tattooed, Micah thought, and it gave him a shiver even through the pain.
It wasn’t real permanence—people like Micah didn’t get real permanence, but even playing at it made the rest of it hurt a little less.
Micah focused on it, trying to angle his hips a little differently, and—there.
He could work with that.
Feverishly, Micah ordered his body to feel pleasure. Or at least, focus on something that didn’t hurt.
His owner needed him to love this. So that was what Micah needed to do.
The new angle made it harder to keep his balance, forcing his thighs to pick up the difference, but it didn’t matter. He could do it.
“There we are,” Slate purred at him, the scratching edge of the paddle tracing a slow line up the side of Micah’s hardening shaft. Micah’s heart rate went through the roof as his mind was suddenly consumed with the image of his owner drawing back and landing the paddle across his cock. He’d done it before.
