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  His.

  I remember begging Him to change it for me with a blade, to cut me because I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself. How that was the one thing He always refused me because He worried He might harm me, or that it might get infected because of sweating our asses off in the desert and how we had to carry our battle rattle.

  This man’s voice drags me back to the present. “You’re a smart guy, Eddie,” he says. “With a smart mouth. How has someone not shut you up before now?”

  “Many have tried.” I drop into a Monty Python accent. “None shall pass.”

  Again, I’m starting to think what little sense of self-preservation I used to possess has totally fled my body.

  That.

  Goddamned.

  Chuckle.

  I’ve obviously amused him. Sounds like he’s smiling and I can’t help wondering what he looks like, what color his eyes are.

  If they’re brown, like His. “I’m sure they have.”

  The finger disappears, leaving me with the ghost impression on my scalp where he touched me.

  I shiver.

  Fuck.

  He walks behind me, so the space I’m in can’t be so tiny that there’s not room to move around in. Considering it’s December and likely cold outside, it’s moderately insulated in here.

  I flinch again when his hands come to rest on my shoulders and he squeezes in a way that warns me there is likely more torture in my immediate future. I hope he can’t hear the way I suck in air as my left shoulder painfully sings under his hand.

  Well bring it and let’s dance, motherfucker. I’m tired of this foreplay.

  No, I’m smart enough I don’t say that out loud. I don’t have that much of a death wish, and this isn’t the good kind of pain.

  “I have to admit,” he says, “the faked nuclear material was genius. The question is, did you do it to fuck them over because you knew they were idiots and you took advantage of the situation, or did you do it because you were desperate, since you bit off more than you could chew with the contract in the first place?”

  Shit.

  That means he knows more about me than I’m comfortable with. I wonder who he got to and who gave me up.

  I opt to dig for a little information in return. “What’d they tell you?” I ask.

  “Unfortunately, by the time I arrived on the scene, they were all dead.” The hands disappear and I draw in a relieved breath as the pain eases just a smidge in my shoulder. “That’ll teach me to hire cheap help on Craigslist.”

  The braying laugh escapes me despite myself. If I wasn’t likely minutes from dying, I’d probably enjoy having a drink with this guy.

  Maybe more, depending on what he was down for. He definitely sounds like a Top.

  He stands on my left now, leaning against the table, uncomfortably close again but I don’t lean away.

  I also force myself not to lean toward him.

  “You’ve made a few lists over the years, Eddie. But it appeared you retired, and attention shifted away from you. People forgot about you. Then, out of the blue, you go active again. You take this job and two others right before it in quick succession, and apparently landed yourself squarely on someone’s radar.”

  Fuck.

  I’m already instinctively tensing in preparation of an impending blow as I speak. “Did I leave someone off my Christmas card list? Sorry. My bad.”

  Instead of hitting me, he laughs again.

  Fuuuuuck.

  That’s worse than his chuckle.

  A hell of a lot worse.

  The unmistakable snick of a large folding knife being opened makes it to me through the hood and I wonder if he’s going to slit my throat. That would suck, but at least it’d be fast. As long as he does it right and doesn’t botch it, meaning he gets the veins and arteries on both sides of my throat so I bleed out and lose consciousness quickly.

  I should know.

  In fact, I do know.

  It sucks when you have to perfect a technique like that, but it’s frequently too difficult to smuggle and use a gun somewhere. You can find a knife in nearly any kitchen and don’t need a special permit to buy one. If desperate, you can break a glass jar or bottle and use a shard of that for the work.

  He roughly wrenches my chair back and away from the table, and I’m certain this is it. But what he does next takes me by surprise—he catches the back of my collar with what I assume is the knife’s gut hook and roughly tugs down, cutting my shirt along the back. I don’t resist as he completely cuts my shirt off me in pieces without removing my restraints.

  I hear him close the knife and I assume he puts it away because I don’t hear him lay it on the table.

  “Oooh, that must hurt, the way it’s bruised and swollen.” His finger digs, hard, into the front of my left shoulder, right at the joint, and I can’t stop the cry of pain before it leaves my mouth.

  He chuckles, confusing the hell out of my cock.

  Maybe I’m already dead and this is some weird version of Hell? Being tortured in a bad way by a guy who sounds exactly like the man who used to torture me in all the good ways?

  I laugh despite myself, until he withdraws his finger and I can drag in shaky breaths.

  I’m too old for this bullshit. I really am.

  If by some miracle I do manage to get myself out of this, I’m done. Lesson learned, Universe. Stay home, stay bored, and stay alive.

  My little flat in Berlin is deceptively mundane and middle-class. I prefer it that way because then I’m not a target or attracting attention, like I would be if I was flashy and wildly spending my hard-earned, ill-gotten gains. Most people assume I’m just a lonely old pensioner hanging around before making my way to God’s waiting room.

  I mean, in that way they’re not wrong, exactly.

  I couldn’t even tell you the names of my neighbors. I make a point of doing nothing more than nodding to them if I pass them in the hall or lobby as we all come and go. If I don’t talk to them and don’t engage, I don’t have to remember any stories I’ve told them.

  When neighbors talk about me, all they’ll have to compare notes about is referring to me as the anti-social neighbor. Hell, I rarely have anyone over as a visitor. In fact, the last person who came to my flat in the past ten years who wasn’t a repair tech or delivery person was Carter, just a few weeks ago.

  The man’s voice once again pulls me back. “Tsk. Eddie, why do you want to make this hard on yourself?”

  “I’m an overachiever, I suppose. Never could safeword worth a damn.”

  He pokes my bad shoulder again. This time, I manage to force back the pained howl and wrangle it into nothing more than a grunt before it leaves my mouth.

  He’s playing with me—I can tell. He’s testing my edges instead of going right for the hardest, most painful techniques. Cat and mouse.

  Sadist and masochist.

  I’m soooooo fucking screwed.

  Chapter Four

  Then

  Elsa not only stole my heart, she ripped my soul clean out of my chest and wiped her ass with it. It’s only in retrospect I can look back and see that I was never really in love with her.

  The idea of her—the ideal of her—is what hooked me and drew me in and kept me under her spell far longer than I ever should have spent there.

  Someone paying attention to me, especially a strong female figure. I did all the emotional heavy lifting for her and handed myself to her without any struggle whatsoever.

  It’s so textbook it’s clichéd, I suppose.

  Carter was already Elsa’s pet when I met her in the bar that night. I wasn’t so clueless I didn’t think she had others ahead of or along with me, but before the night she forced Carter and I together, I didn’t realize that particular permutation would ever be on the table, or that she was involved with anyone else from my base, much less from the same barracks I bunked in.

  Except by the time we reached that point, I’m ashamed to admit I might have killed for her, I
was that desperate and hungry to remain in her good graces and keep her paying attention to me.

  Fuck my ass with a strap-on?

  Yes, Mistress. Thank you very much.

  Suck a dildo and pretend it’s a real cock?

  Please, Mistress. Let me do it for you.

  Lick up my own cum regardless of where it lands?

  I’ll do anything for you, Mistress. It is an honor to serve you.

  Bend over and let the colonel fuck me over his desk, or fuck my mouth whenever he feels horny?

  Tell me when and where, Mistress. I am happy to do your bidding.

  Looking back, I feel sorry for that kid. He went from trusting absolutely no one to unquestioning faith in a woman who was, for all intents and purposes, a complete stranger to him.

  A woman who definitely wasn’t worth any of the trust that poor, stupid kid placed in her.

  A predator who easily recognized me as ripe and juicy prey perfectly situated for a simple takedown with little effort.

  Talk about low-hanging fruit. I jumped from the branch and right into her toothy, gaping maw.

  Then she sank her teeth into me and took a bite right out of my psyche.

  I try not to think about her other victims, and that’s absolutely what most of us were—victims. I realized later not a single damn one of us were older than about twenty-three, if that. At twenty-eight, she was ten years older than me when I first met her. Having been raised with a lot of money in her family—or so she told us—she was worldly and had experiences I could only dream about. Born and raised in Germany, she was also fluent in English, French, and Italian. She held a cushy civilian job on the base with lots of contact and influence with high-level personnel and officers.

  Only later did I understand she weaponized all of that to ruthlessly cultivate ammunition and kompromat on those people to keep them under her thumb, whether they understood that or not.

  In the beginning, I believed she was my dream come true.

  Except I wanted to leave with Carter the day he blew up and walked out. I really did. I couldn’t believe after we underwent vasectomies for her, and she promised us no other pets besides us, that she’d not only bring another man into the mix, but place him over me in the hierarchy.

  Unfortunately, my fear overrode my common sense. I didn’t want to lose what we’d already gained with her, and at the time, I had not processed that it was all a web of pretty lies to begin with.

  I wanted to take Carter’s hand and let him lead me out of there.

  Frozen in terror that I didn’t know how to access any of this without Elsa turning the screws and posing us like puppets, I remained still and silent and complicit in my own impending destruction.

  I think about the things I witnessed after Carter left, how she clamped down on me in the wake of his departure, both punishing me for him leaving, and her trying to solidify her hold on me by lavishing praise on the others and promising me that if I behaved myself, and groveled sufficiently enough, I, too, could one day re-earn her affection.

  That, one day, I could be her Alpha pet.

  By that point, I honestly believed I deserved everything she threw at me.

  In the wake of Carter’s departure, it somehow manages to sink in that something huge is missing from what I thought I had with Elsa. It’s a large, Carter-shaped hole in everything, and the Arctic chill I feel from her isn’t just because she’s upset that he left.

  It’s a frigid wind that blew all along, blunted only by Carter’s warmth enveloping me and shielding me from her blasts.

  Over the following days, she asks more and outlandish things of me, sends me to “friends” to perform any number of debasing and humiliating acts with them, openly whores me out now for house parties, and yet I still take it.

  Until I can’t.

  Two weeks after Carter’s departure, I can’t handle it anymore. I spend Saturday afternoon and evening in a swanky hotel suite, tied to an ottoman and getting used by over a dozen men, sometimes several at a time. The new guy, beta, the pet she brought in and placed over me and who triggered Carter’s departure, is the one who takes me to the hotel. He opens the door for arrivals, accepts their cash, sits watching in the corner during the entire event, and then unties me at the end, leaving me there without a word. Presumably taking the envelope of cash with him to give to Elsa.

  He got to wear street clothes the whole time and wasn’t required to do anything else.

  No comfort offered during any of the few idle moments.

  No “good boys.”

  No comforting hand gently massaging my head.

  No forehead nuzzles.

  No “you made me proud.”

  Nothing.

  This is my rock bottom, apparently, and yet still not enough to make me swear Elsa off for good. I stumble into the suite’s bathroom, where I sit in the shower and numbly let the water wash away the cum and spit and whatever else was on me.

  I lose track of time, my body on autopilot and my mind huddled somewhere deep in my skull to protect me. When I snap back into my body to find myself standing in front of Carter’s door around midnight, my hand’s already reaching up to lightly tap so no one else hears me.

  When he opens it, his eyes widen and he reaches for me, pulls me in, and I spend the next hour or so on his bed with him, curled up and sobbing in his lap while he whispers all the comfort and praise to me that my soul desperately hungers for.

  I can’t tell him what’s happened. I don’t dare. I suspect he will confront Elsa if I do.

  Maybe this will be okay, though. I feel a thousand times better now that I’ve had my Carter fix, and that fearful, nervous part of me terrified to walk away from Elsa tries to convince me I can have it both ways.

  Serving my Mistress, and then getting my aftercare from Carter.

  That’s workable, right?

  That’s what I tell myself as I report to Elsa’s the next morning as she orders.

  There, she gives me a cold, wicked smile that does nothing to warm me like it used to. She even brushes a kiss across my lips. “Beta said you obeyed me yesterday,” she says, and I shiver.

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  “Excellent. Because I have another task for you today.”

  That night, it’s around ten thirty when I seek comfort from Carter. He doesn’t ask me what happened, or why I’m upset. He just tells me what I have to hear to survive this—that I’m a good boy, that he’s proud of me.

  That I’m His.

  Unspoken, I know if I walked away from Elsa now that Carter would absolutely stake an unbreakable claim on me, mind, body, and soul.

  And I’m terrified that I would let him do just that, a prospect that could ruin both of us and our future careers.

  It’s a risk I cannot push myself to take, unfortunately.

  The only reason I know Carter has rejected the colonel’s side offer is because Colonel Coltrane Cunningham himself tells me all about it one Wednesday evening while I stand at attention in front of his desk. I’d been called in there earlier that morning and put on my knees to give him what turned out to be a rushed and angry blowjob before he sent me out and I passed Carter on the way.

  Then, I’m called back to his office later.

  “I’ve struck a new deal with Elsa,” he tells me. “Until she can find me a suitable replacement, you’re exclusive with me. Understand?”

  I swallow hard and nod. “Yes, sir.” There’s a stinging pain there, the rejection already in place, simply waiting for another twist of fate to sweep me out of the way.

  I know he’s not that fond of me, the way he was Carter, but I guess any ass in a storm, amiright?

  It’s late, and there’s no one in this part of the building right now. He opens a desk drawer, tosses a condom and a tube of lube onto his desk blotter, and pushes his chair back from the desk. “Strip, boy. Get Daddy hard and then sit on my cock. If I remember correctly, you do know how to squeeze it pretty damned tight with your ass, so at least
that’s something.”

  I nod and start to unbutton my uniform shirt as I swallow back the darkness threatening to devour my soul. “Yes, Daddy.”

  Another week passes. The colonel sometimes puts me on my knees under his desk, for up to an hour at a time and choking me with his cock, or he fucks me from behind so he doesn’t have to look at my face. But his favorite position, if we’re in his office, now seems to be me sitting on his lap, facing away from him, and tormenting me without letting me get off while he takes his time building up his nut.

  He’s right about one thing—I do know how to squeeze a cock with my ass. It’s weird how proud I am that I can milk a man into coming just from that.

  Him fucking me always happens after hours. A couple of times we meet at a local hotel, so he can beat me and piledrive me into the mattress several times after loading himself up with blue pills.

  Sometimes, the blowjobs happen early in the morning, before anyone else has arrived in the office.

  During this time, the only contact I have with Elsa is through text messages she sends me to tell me when to go to the colonel. At least once a day, and most days twice a day.

  I end up with Carter nearly every night. It’s the only way I can function now.

  Then, that Sunday, I’m ordered to come to Elsa’s.

  Sunlight streams through the loft’s windows. The gorgeous, sunny afternoon outside is nothing like the dark storms raging in her blue eyes.

  With me tied spread-eagled and face down on her bed, she stands near the head of the bed and glares down at me while three other naked, collared, and cuffed men surround the bed.

  They were here when I arrived. She orders them to strip and bind me as soon as I walk through the door.

  Today she speaks English even though when there are other slaves present she usually only speaks German, because I am the only one who isn’t fluent in it.

  I’m guessing that means she really wants me to understand what she’s saying.

  “You have disappointed me, gamma,” she says. “The old Alpha is no longer in our lives and I learn you have been seeking him out? How disrespectful.”