Free The Flesh Cartel #6: Brotherhood by Heidi Belleau Page B

it was fuckedup love as long as it was love, was kindness, if Nikolai would protect him and care for him and not let anyone hurt him anymore.
A touch on his shoulders, and he cringed, whimpered, but it was just Nikolai, Nikolai with a blanket and stroking fingers and soothing words, Nikolai gathering him gently in his arms and cradling him to his chest, Nikolai carrying him out of this hellish place and back to his room, Nikolai laying him carefully on his belly on his bed and promising he’d be right back, he’d make him feel better, he wouldn’t leave him. Nikolai asking for forgiveness, apologizing for what that monster had done, even though Dougie knew it was true when Nikolai gently chided that it never would’ve happened if Dougie had just listened to him. Dougie promised never to do it again, to try his best to be good, always good, and this time when Nikolai kissed him it was right on the lips, chaste and paternal and loving and safe, and when Nikolai called him my good boy and gave him one last hug before stepping away to run him a bath, it didn’t feel dirty or wrong or scary at all. It felt perfectly right.
    Mat’s eyes drifted open. Tepid, pink-tinged bathwater lapped at his ears, cocooning him from any other sound, any other reality. He shivered. Cold. Not just cold. Frozen down to his bones, his organs. His head. Better that than remembering, though. Than feeling. Than thinking of Dougie.
    He stretched out a leg, teeth clenched against the pain of moving, and pulled out the stopper with his toe. Watched blood and cum and spit and piss and water swirl down the drain. Snagged the towel off the toilet lid with two bruised fingers. Covered himself with it and curled up tight. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten here. Who’d run the bath or left the towel. Roger, maybe. Couldn’t even begin to contemplate getting up. Maybe not ever again.
    What was the fucking point, anyway? He’d only get knocked down again. And it hurt worse and worse every fucking time. And there was nothing to get up for now, not with Dougie gone, with Dougie—
    Mat choked down a sob and clutched the towel closer, playing over that nightmare scene in his head. The belt. The baseball bat. The blood. That awful hope in Dougie’s eyes snuffed out, extinguished with his faith, his trust. Gone forever. Dougie would never, ever forgive him.
    What he’d broken between them could never be fixed. And he’d been punished for it, hadn’t he. God or fate or fuckall knew, but what he’d done was wrong and someone up there had been watching and they’d let . . . He squeezed his eyes closed, sucked in a breath that set every inch of bone and skin and muscle in his back and chest screaming. They’d let that monster loose on him, let him . . . let him . . .
    Don’t think about it. Just don’t.
Hard not to, though, when his body was so insistently reminding him of the punishment it’d taken. That he’d let it take. He’d sat there and done nothing, not fought back, not even resisted while that man had—
Because he’d deserved it, hadn’t he. Because fighting back meant hurting Dougie even more, maybe even meant killing him.
Because you couldn’t have won and you knew it. Not even Nikolai’s version of winning, not with that man. He’d wanted nothing but Mat’s pain, and not the kind Mat could even begin to fake.
Not that he’d had to once Nikolai had carried Dougie from the room and locked Mat and that monster in there alone together.
Another violent shiver ripped a moan from Mat’s throat. He curled up tighter. The porcelain of the tub was hard and chilly against his battered body, half brutally cruel, half icy relief. He couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to, though. Best he could manage was to roll onto one hip, take some pressure off his ass and ribs and back, where the baseball bat and the buckle of that fucker’s belt had done the most damage.
His eyes drifted closed again—his body craved sleep, needed sleep—but he