Dougie woke sprawled out in a huge, luxurious bed. And immediately wished he could go back to sleep again, except he was so hungry. And thirsty, too. And had no idea where he was, if he was safe, how he’d gotten here, if Mat was here too. He sat up. Realized he was still naked.

And not alone.

There was a man across the room from him, sitting in a chair facing the foot of the bed, a glass of water dangling from the fingers of one hand. Watching.

Water.

He . . . knew the man’s face from somewhere, the sensation more like déjà vu than actual memory. Wherever it came from, whatever it was, it whispered trust this man, so Dougie clambered out of the bed and went to him. Stumbled. Tried to catch himself on the arm of the man’s chair, but still fell to his knees at the man’s feet.

“W-water,” he said, his voice scratchy and sore. He tried to lick his lips, but his tongue was just as dry and sticky as they were.

The man held out the glass with a soft, patient smile. Dougie almost reached up to take it from him, but somewhere in his head, another voice, he didn’t know whose: You must never touch your betters. He stretched his neck, chin up, and waited for the man to place the glass to his lips. Which the man did, and didn’t hesitate to tip it back and let him drink, cool water quenching his parched throat and dribbling down his chin and naked chest.

He’s good. He’s kind.

Dougie drank and drank, his body shuddering with mingled desire and satisfaction.

And then again, as his thirst was slaked, with realization. Revulsion.

He lurched away, crabbed back until he hit the bed. Couldn’t quite bring himself to look the man in the eye, but stared fiercely at his nose and demanded, “Where am I?” It wasn’t quite, Did you buy me? but he couldn’t bring himself to say that yet.

The man sighed, disappointed. “I suppose this particular mood couldn’t have lasted forever. It never does.”

The man stood, and though his face was kind, Dougie couldn’t help but cringe. But the man just walked around him, away from him. He heard a tap running, and then the man came back, glass refilled with water. He took a long, leisurely drink of it as Dougie watched, eyes fixated on his bobbing throat. The glass was still half full when he was done.

“My name is Nikolai,” the man said. “But you must earn the right to call me that. For now, sir will do.”

So he had bought him, then. Dougie’s head pounded, but he thought he might be starting to piece the last few days back together. Madame. Auction. Apart or together. Hurting Mat. Horrible little rooms, dark and soundless. Thirst, God, such thirst. Alone. Left to die.

Not anymore, it seemed.

A few days ago, back at Madame’s, he might’ve regretted that. But he’d learned in that stifling tomb that dying could be just as bad as living.

“Are you . . .” His throat still felt so dry. He cleared it, eyes on the water glass, beading with condensation. Not in the desert anymore, then. Not in Vegas. “Are you a m-master, sir?”

Nikolai nodded, the faintest hint of a smile touching his eyes and lips. “After a sort. I’m a trainer. I’ll teach you how to be your best possible self, and then I’ll sell you on to a master who will love you and keep you if you serve him well.”

“But you don’t . . . I mean . . . You seem so kind, sir.”

Nikolai squatted down in front of Dougie and held the water glass to his lips, tipped it back so he could drink. Dougie swallowed eagerly. “I’d like to think so, Douglas. I take no pleasure from others’ pain. I’m not a rapist like those animals at the processing center.” He pulled the glass back—empty, how was it empty already?—and stroked Dougie’s cheek with gentle fingers. Dougie caught himself leaning into the touch, eyes drifting closed. What are you doing, Dougie? Stop it. “I will teach you great pleasure, Douglas. Joy. Satisfaction. Would you like that?”

I’d like to go home.

He knew what he should say, knew what this man wanted to hear—this man who hadn’t harmed him, who’d given him water, who’d touched him with affection. But he couldn’t lie about that, couldn’t pretend he wanted to stay here. The man already had his body; for all that he’d treated it well so far, he couldn’t have Dougie’s mind, too.

“Where’s Mat?” Dougie asked instead.

That flash of disappointment again, but no anger, no retribution. The hand stroking Dougie’s cheek didn’t stop, didn’t get rough. “He’s resting. I’m afraid the last couple weeks have been quite hard on him.”

“Can I see him?”

Nikolai shook his head, features sad, like it genuinely pained him to keep Dougie and Mat apart. “I’m afraid not yet. I don’t think it’d do to disturb him.”

Dougie nodded, feeling his eyes well up with tears. At least they didn’t fall. “You’re not . . . you’re not lying to me?”

“In this entire process, has anyone lied to you, Douglas?”

No. Never. They promised cruelty and dehumanization, and I got exactly that.

Nikolai didn’t wait for his reply. Maybe he saw it written on Dougie’s face. “Because we have no reason to lie. Lying to keep you compliant would mean we don’t have the power to gain the same through more direct means. But we do. We have all the power.” Somehow that didn’t sound like a threat, like it could have. Just a statement of fact, as bland as saying the sky was blue. “And my particular authority is knowing with certainty that one day, you’ll come to relish that fact. You will be transformed, Douglas. Elevated above your base instincts into the very best version of yourself.”

Dougie didn’t like the sound of that at all. It sounded nuts. Like shit a cult leader would say. Maybe this was a cult. It certainly was organized, and efficient, and everybody knew their place. Top-down hierarchy.

Was he to be brainwashed, then? Broken and reprogrammed? The thought terrified him even more than all that’d come before. Not my mind not my mind please not my mind—

“Don’t look so frightened, Douglas.” Nikolai stroked his cheek again, but this time, Dougie pulled away. Just an inch, just enough to get Nikolai’s hand off him. Nikolai dropped it back to his own knee, face unchanged. Gentle. Paternal, almost, like his foster dad would look at him sometimes. “It doesn’t have to hurt, I promise.” A small shrug then, a hint of gentle remorse, gentler humor. “It probably will sometimes—growing pains, you understand—but it doesn’t have to. You have a choice about that. You’ll have many choices here. But as I told your brother, you must understand that choices carry consequences. Some good, some bad. Those outcomes are up to you.”

“I choose to go home,” Dougie said. And, feeling brave all of a sudden, added, “And to take Mat with me.”

Nikolai shook his head. “That is the one choice I’m afraid you cannot make. There is no going home, Douglas. There’s nothing to go home to. You and your brother, you’ve fled to Mexico to escape bad debts to dangerous men. The bank is foreclosing on your house. You’ve been expelled from your program. There’s nothing left of that life. It’s harsh, but necessary. You have to let go of who you were to become who you will be. That is your first and most critical lesson in this house. Do you understand?”

Understand? How could he understand that? “No.” Dougie’s hands balled into fists. He wanted so badly to stand, but he was afraid if he tried, he’d just fall again and ruin his last scrap of dignity.

“No, you don’t understand?”

“No. No. Just no. No to everything. No. Can I choose to say no, sir?”

Nikolai’s nose crinkled ever so slightly at the tone of contempt in that “sir,” but he nodded. “You can.”

“Then no. No, I don’t believe you. No, I won’t listen to you. No, I’m not playing your sick fucking game so you might as well let me go.” Turned out he could stand after all, even if he did have to lean against the bed. “Now. Sir.”

Nikolai rose too, with a sigh. He was half a foot taller than Dougie, looked lean and wiry beneath his tailored suit, like Mat. But Mat had taught Dougie a thing or two; he wasn’t afraid, wouldn’t be intimidated by this man.

Wouldn’t be intimidated by anyone. Not anymore.

“For a moment there,” Nikolai said, the words like a mournful sigh, “I had such high hopes for you. I didn’t want you, you know. You came as baggage with your brother. But I thought I could give you my gifts nonetheless.”

Gifts? Oh Jesus, this man was insane. If this was a cult, he was guzzling the fucking Kool-Aid. Dougie tried to glance surreptitiously 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.