Pet: A Governor Trilogy Novel Read online

  But looking back, I guess I’m still in denial at this point. What I have with Carter can only work if Elsa is somehow the glue between us.

  Right?

  I mean, isn’t that why I craved Carter’s hands on me and his cock in me when I’d never even thought about being with a guy before? Because it pleases her for me to do so?

  Used to please her, I suppose.

  But those first two weeks without Carter here were brutal hell, not going to lie. I couldn’t stand it.

  I need him.

  I need the gentle, loving, positive reinforcement he always gave me, which Elsa never does.

  Neither do any of her other “pets.”

  She pushes up and, from the sound of her voice, I know she’s circling the bed. “You have already gone under the knife once for me, so I know you are dedicated. That is the only reason I am even giving you this chance to atone. But this transgression is serious and I am not so certain you are truly penitent.”

  The zhip! of a crop reaches my ear just before a stripe of fire burns across the sit line at the top of my thighs. I try to hold back my cry of pain, but I’m not gagged and don’t have a pillow to bite down on.

  If she wants to beat me, then I’ll take it. Anything to atone for my transgressions.

  Anything to remain in her good graces.

  If I lose her… I don’t want to even contemplate that.

  By the time she finishes beating me with the riding crop, I’m begging her to let me atone, in any way she deems fit.

  She rips the blindfold off of me and leans in. “If you wish to remain mine, your new name will be delta, and you will be fourth in line. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Mistress!”

  “I suppose I have no way of forcing you to not see that piece of garbage who walked away from me, but I do have a way of reminding you that you never forget who you are or who you belong to.”

  “Anything for you, Mistress!”

  She cruelly smiles. “You will wear a mark then?”

  I nod as much as the restraints will allow. “Yes, Mistress, please!”

  “The Greek letter for delta is a triangle.” She looks up. “Alpha.” She gives him a command in German.

  Apparently, this was already arranged. Out of the corner of my eye I catch him leaning in and feel something cold splash on my lower back, right at the base of my spine. The sharp tang of rubbing alcohol hits my nose a second later.

  Elsa grabs my head in her hands and those ice-blue eyes stare into mine. “Ask Alpha to carve my new name for you into your flesh. You will take it, or I will free you right now and you will never see me again.”

  My tears already flow as I speak. “Alpha, please carve my new name into my flesh.”

  This scream Elsa muffles with her hand over my mouth as the other men pin down my legs and arms and she grins.

  * * * *

  I stumble out of there an hour later with my back fucking hurting like hell and my ass gaping and full of cum. She let the other three fuck me in order, Alpha first. They each took me twice.

  No condoms.

  I suspect I’m also an example to them of why pissing Elsa off is never a good idea.

  The things she says to me while she’s letting them fuck me leads me to believe she wants Carter to see my wound.

  She absolutely delights in the thought of making him upset, and she tells me I’m free to do whatever I want with him from this point forward, as long as it doesn’t interfere with her orders for me. I think maybe she wants to try to coax Carter back into the fold through me, but I have a feeling that’s a lost cause.

  Also, I’m not allowed to be with anyone outside of her approval other than Carter.

  Except for Alpha, beta, and gamma.

  They’re allowed to use me however and whenever they want.

  So over the next several days, my late-night visits to Carter continue after the three men have their way with me after work.

  And boy, do they use me. I think I preferred the other group sex encounters Elsa always set up for me because these guys act like they aren’t allowed to come unless it’s by using me.

  They also don’t speak to me during sex, except to remind me I’m at the bottom of the food-chain, and they never offer so much as a word of comfort or praise.

  I’m not allowed to pleasure myself for now, either. Apparently, that’s a privilege I’ll have to re-earn, and Elsa gives me no clue how that process will happen, either. My assumption is that I must follow all her orders to the letter if I hope to even have a chance of doing that. She says Carter can make me come if he feels like it, but I can see that would be…problematic.

  I never ask Carter to do anything to me. I don’t take off my clothes around him, either, because I don’t want him to see the healing wound on my back. Instinctively, I know he’d be enraged about it and would likely do something that would get him and possibly me both tossed out of the Army.

  He might have a future ahead of him in some other field, but without the Army, I literally have nothing to look forward to except a future of low-wage, dead-end jobs, and I’d rather not go that route, thank you very much.

  Apparently, the colonel likes his new playtoy, because I’m not sent to him. Elsa doesn’t contact me, either. My orders now come from Alpha.

  The next Saturday morning, Alpha texts me an address in town and says to meet him there at noon. When I arrive, I realize it’s a seedy bar. He leads me inside and a guy standing guard over a door in the back lets us pass into a dark hallway of red and black walls and a rough concrete floor.

  Our destination is a tiny room near the end of the hall, with nothing in it but a low stool and two holes on opposite ends of the room from each other.

  Alpha speaks, his English choppy and thickly accented. “You service every cock all day. Jerk yourself off while you do. I come back for you at midnight.”

  That’s…literally twelve hours from now.

  Then he points at the holes in the wall, and the way the stool is positioned between them…and I realize what they are.

  The Arctic chill howls through me, blunted by the sound and warmth of Carter’s voice.

  “You are my good and perfect boy.”

  Next thing I know, I’ve punched Alpha. He sprawls on the floor and looks up at me in horror, blood trickling from his smashed nose and split lip.

  I jab my finger at him. “Fuck you, and fuck her. You do it, you goddamned prick.”

  I turn and walk away, breaking into a run and pushing my way past the bouncer and fleeing until I’m several blocks away and crying.

  That’s when my burner phone rings.

  It’s her.

  When I answer, I cut Elsa’s scream off before she can get more than a word out. “Fuck you, you goddamned cunt. Karma is a real fucking bitch, and one day, it’s going to do to you what I just did to that little fucking prick.”

  I hang up and immediately block her number.

  The shakes hit me then. I stumble over to a nearby park bench and collapse onto it, numb, terrified.

  Broken.

  When I next become aware of my surroundings, it’s after eight p.m. and I have to pee like a goddamned racehorse. There’s no one around, so I step behind a bush and let loose.

  On the burner I have missed calls from numbers I don’t recognize, but no voice mails.

  No texts.

  I block all those numbers, and the numbers for Alpha, beta, and gamma.

  The only reason I don’t destroy the burner is that Carter has the number, and I can’t remember if he has my personal cell number.

  Then I stare up at the sky, throw back my head, and scream.

  * * * *

  Carter and I haven’t done anything together other than my nightly cuddles since I severed contact with Elsa, because I’m terrified he’ll see the mark on me. Then when our orders to deploy to Afghanistan come through only a couple of days after my rebellion, I suspect the timing is not coincidental. Elsa has two pets who’ve left t
he fold?

  Two pets with dirt on a certain colonel?

  Yeah, I smell bullshit.

  The night before we’re deploying, I go to Carter and finally confess everything except about the mark.

  I’m certain he’s going to hate me, because it’s obvious I’m the reason we’re being sent to the desert.

  But instead, he tightens his grip on me. “Shh, pet. It’s not your fault. The colonel offered me a private deal outside of Elsa, and I turned him down.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.” He tells me all about it and I can’t help but feel a little jealous that the colonel wanted him so badly.

  “Why didn’t you take it?”

  He cups my face in his hands and kisses me. “Because no fucking way am I abandoning you. I told you—you’re mine.”

  Carter doesn’t see the fresh scar on my back until our first night at our assigned FOB in Afghanistan. We’re sharing a “room,” if you can loosely call it a room.

  And when he pulls me into his arms to kiss me, I soon find him stripping me, I’m stripping him, and then he’s fucking me on my back on the floor where it’s quieter, facing him and staring into my eyes as he whispers the things I crave from him.

  “Who’s my good pet?”

  “Me, Sir!”

  He smiles and kisses me. “Yes, you are. My very good boy.”

  Once we’re done—and he jerks me off before finishing inside me—I wince as I feel where my barely healed mark rubs against the floor and he scowls.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I start to shake my head but his hand clamps around my throat and squeezes. “Tell me.”

  I…can’t.

  Shaky and ashamed, I climb to my knees, turn around, and I’m already crying as I drop into the Worship position in front of him, my ass facing him, so he can see.

  He sucks in a sharp breath as his fingers touch me. “Oh, buddy…”

  I cry myself to sleep in his arms that night as he tightly holds me. The last thing I remember him saying before I crash into oblivion is that, one day, somehow, he will make Elsa pay for what she’s done to me.

  For what she’s done to His perfect pet.

  Chapter Five

  Now

  What can I say about my life? I don’t even know where to begin.

  It’d be a lie if I said I ever imagined myself here, right now. Younger me never would have dreamed where my path eventually led me, or the paths I’d cross along the way.

  One thing I became very skilled at over the years is willfully engaging in disassociation. I didn’t realize, at first, that it had a name. I thought it was connected to subspace, and floating the endorphins and dopamine and adrenaline high playing gave me.

  I also didn’t realize I did it with Elsa, and rarely with Carter, unless it wasn’t just me and Carter. That was back before Carter and I both left her, obviously. I never did it after that with Carter.

  I always did it with the colonel.

  Apparently, I did it a lot as a kid, to shove my emotions aside and pretend to be functioning so I didn’t draw more attention to myself.

  What I do now, as the man with the Virginian accent begins to interrogate and torture me in earnest, is detach my mind from my body and think about Carter.

  I’m aware of my pants being cut from me, leaving me in nothing but my briefs.

  The man is an expert in using pressure points and I suppose that helps me untether from the here and now, because Carter was, too. It was an easy and effective way for him to drive me into subspace when we played and couldn’t risk being overheard by anyone else while we were stationed in the desert. He could gag me with dirty briefs or a sock or even a belt, and quickly shove me into the headspace I needed and craved, just with a press of his fingers, and doing no actual harm to me in the process.

  No idea how long any of this goes on before the man transitions to using his fists. Guy’s skilled with that, too. I know now I’m very likely never getting out of this situation, but if I roll over and tell him everything he’s trying to learn, he’ll just kill me quickly.

  So sue me—I’d like to enjoy this as much as possible if it’s the last “scene” I’ll ever bottom in.

  It’s obvious from his questions that he only has part of my jacket, and doesn’t know anything outside of my file about my first several years in the military and spent in Germany under the colonel. He also doesn’t seem to know about many of my past activities both before and after I separated from the US intelligence world.

  Part of me is tempted to string him along, but eventually he’s going to get angry and bored, and eventually I’m going to succumb to head trauma or my growing dehydration.

  When everything stops, it’s a shock to my system as my body’s conditioned responses take over.

  Like the erection I finally realize I’m sporting.

  Whoops.

  He hasn’t mentioned it, so maybe it just happened.

  Then I’m aware of what I’m pretty sure are the only two other men helping my interrogator entering the room. They grab me under the arms while my restraints are unlocked from my ankles and my wrists. Then I’m roughly pulled up from the chair and onto my feet. I scream in agony because of my shoulder, but the American chuckles.

  “I know it hurts, buddy. Sorry. You did put up a fight, though.” He clips the wrist manacles on me again, behind my back, leaving my feet free, and I’m literally dragged out of there. My toes barely touch the ground. These two men are larger than me, probably at least six-four or taller, and feel like solid muscle.

  My interrogator has hired help, obviously.

  After a few moments of being moved, I’m unceremoniously dropped onto the floor, on my knees, and the other two men back off.

  Which is a good thing, because they both stink of cigarette smoke to the point I could smell it through my hood and was about to gag.

  The American roughly grabs my chin through the mask and yanks my head up and back. “I don’t have time to fuck around with you much longer, Eddie. You are sorely trying my patience, son.”

  It’s a lot colder out here in this much larger room, which might be a loading dock, or a warehouse space. I shiver and hope the man’s not looking at my briefs. Despite my pain, my erection’s hard and pressing against the front of them because…fucking hell.

  He sounds just like Carter. Even says things exactly the way Carter used to say them when we played.

  I’m starting to honestly believe I’m already dead and ended up in Hell after all. Because, dammit, the two men are aural twins, for sure.

  How freaky is that?

  “I’ve told you all I know,” I say. “No, I wasn’t going to sell them real nuclear material. And yes, they made that ask after I’d already agreed to the job and accepted a deposit. If they’re already dead, then I’m sorry, but I don’t have any other info about them before their paths crossed mine. I’ve given you everything I know about my arms supplier. Good luck shutting them down, because they’re backed by Orchynzki, an oligarch from outside of Moscow. He’s protected them for decades.”

  He releases me. “You sure run in shitty circles, Eddie.”

  “Guy’s gotta make a living.”

  “So why’d you really come out of retirement, hmm? Blow through your nest egg?”

  I think about saying good-bye to Carter on the sidewalk in front of the hotel a few weeks ago.

  I think about reading the report in the newspaper about the police finding Elsa dead in her apartment three days later, when neighbors reported a foul odor.

  I remember how I cried in relief, because I had wondered if Carter got it wrong. If, perhaps, somehow, she’d survived.

  I remember the relief I felt that her death was unequivocally labelled an accidental overdose, or possibly a suicide without a note, and they wrote in the papers that she’d been under suspicion of embezzlement by her employers.

  I remember lying awake and realizing that the only solid thing I’d held on to for years, my hope
of one day taking revenge on her, even though I knew I was too chickenshit to ever do it personally, was now…gone.

  It’s like something snapped inside me when that finally sank in and I processed it.

  “I’m an idiot, I guess.”

  He punches me in the side of the head, nearly knocking me over, but I somehow remain upright. The sound of footsteps walking away, toward what I guess is a doorway, and the way they echo reinforces my idea that this space is much larger than the previous one.

  I wonder how much time I have left. The only true regret I’ll carry with me is that I can’t tell Carter one more time how much I still love him. That I can’t apologize for not being able to break through my own stupid walls back then and love him back the way he deserved.

  That I realize now I wasted our chance to be together, and it’s the biggest regret of my life.

  That I frequently goaded the meanness out of him in the desert because it was the only thing my soul could accept from him, at the time.

  The only thing I felt I deserved.

  And back then, I believed he deserved a partner far better than someone irretrievably fucked up like me.

  Through no fault of Carter’s, I let my fear control me and rule my actions instead of fully trusting him to take care of me the way he promised he would and could.

  The man literally laid down his body and risked his life to protect me, and the thanks I gave him was to let him go and not follow him the moment I was released from the hospital. Instead of letting the doctors give me a medical discharge, like they wanted, I begged and pleaded and even lied more than a little about my condition and pain levels to stay in.

  Which is how I ended up transferring into intelligence work, first with the Army MIC, then, once they realized I had certain skills and personality traits they could exploit—and a lack of familial ties to worry about—I was recruited into the NSA and, later, the CIA. From there I was laterally transferred to a “civilian contractor,” which is a polite way of saying black ops, and so the rest of my career progressed until I officially left their employ when I hit thirty-nine and realized I could be self-employed and doing the exact same thing I was doing without giving up a share of the profits to someone else.