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Just inches from Daniel’s face, Mr. Foster unzipped his pants and pulled his half-hard cock out through the fly. “Go ahead,” he said. “Beg me to suck my cock. Tell me you want it.”

“Eric . . .”

Tim. Daniel had actually forgotten he was here, and his relief at the reminder was so powerful that every thought but one fled his mind: Tim would stop this, Tim would—

“I said beg me, slave.”

“Come on, Eric, don’t—”

“Damn it, Tim, I don’t tell you how to do your job, do I? So kindly be quiet or wait outside.”

Mr. Foster turned back to Daniel and slapped him hard across the side of the head. “Let’s go, prettyboy. Convince me you want it. Convince me you’ll behave.”

He wanted to, God, he wanted to. He wanted to make Mr. Foster happy, he wanted to please his master, he wanted this basement hell to be over and done with, and yet he just . . . couldn’t. If Mr. Foster were to grab Daniel’s head, shove his dick down Daniel’s throat . . . well then, fine, Daniel would take it, endure it. But to give away freely his desire—the one single thing that was his alone to control, that was tied so deeply to his memories of Victor, to love and attraction and happiness and pleasure—to taint those thoughts and feelings forever and pretend to enjoy it? No. He hadn’t been able to do that for his master and he couldn’t make himself do it now, either.

Maybe Mr. Foster was right; maybe he was too proud for his own go—

A shock prod jolt ripped the rest of that thought away, pain searing from his toes to the tips of his fucking hair. He screamed out his anger and his helplessness and his shame, and when the world came back, he was slumped between the two supervisors, still at Mr. Foster’s feet, the business end of the shock prod still jammed warningly into his hip.

Mr. Foster grabbed his chin and jerked his head up. “Say it,” he demanded, his cock brushing across Daniel’s clenched lips.

Daniel could smell him—soap and musk and expensive cologne and the faint scent of wool. And he knew then, with a sad and terrifying clarity, that Mr. Foster would have to break him before he’d give this last little part of himself away.

Another mind-ripping jolt of pain, and for a moment, he hated himself almost as much as he hated Mr. Foster—for not rolling over, for not giving in to the inevitable without suffering so damn fucking much. Because it was inevitable, he knew that. NewWorld’s will always was.

Mr. Foster squeezed his chin again, and the man’s cock, fully erect, slapped against his cheek. “I said beg for it, Daniel.”

Daniel tried. He thought the words, pictured them in his mind, imagined the feel of his lips and tongue shaping them. But when he opened his mouth, no sound came out. Only a whispered, “Please,” a small, watery sound full of terror and regret. And then he was screaming again, screaming, and even through the agony of the prod he was aware of another pain, the supervisors’ steel-trap grips on his arms, holding him in place so sickeningly tight that the bruises wouldn’t fade for weeks.

“God,” he choked out when it ended, half-stunned, half-praying, and then, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” because really he was, and not just because it hurt so damn bad, even now, even after the last shock had faded.

Mr. Foster took a prod from a supervisor’s hand and touched it to Daniel’s cheek. Daniel whimpered and jerked—they weren’t nearly as safe to use above the waist, surely he wouldn’t—but he couldn’t escape the touch. When the agony he was expecting didn’t come, he released his sucked-in breath and said again, “Please . . .”

“You bring this on yourself, Daniel.” And yes, all true, but knowing that didn’t solve his problem. Mr. Foster ran the tip of the prod down Daniel’s jaw, his neck, along the curve of his shoulder, down his side. “All you have to do is ask. Tell me you want me. Tell me you want to lick my dick like a fucking lollipop and I will stop”—zap!—“hurting you.”

When Daniel stopped screaming this time, he was shaking, choking back tears, desperate to give Mr. Foster what he wanted, but still wholly unable to capitulate.

The prod dropped to his nuts and he closed his eyes in weary, horrified resignation, wondering just how stubborn he really would turn out to be.

Daniel was a deeply focused person, well accustomed to reducing his world to a single issue, a single set of facts, a solitary, quiet existence where a problem or puzzle drowned out all else for hours. This time pain swallowed his mind instead of logic, roaring noise instead of quiet—Mr. Foster’s demands, his own screams, and the endless stream of desperate, teary words spilling from his lips: please and I’m sorry and stop, God, stop—but the focus was the same. That familiar, unbreakable intensity he was known for, or maybe cursed with. The prod went off again, and he thought, God, what I wouldn’t give to be someone else right now. Anyone else. Anyone at all.

“Come on, Daniel,” Mr. Foster snapped. “I’m not asking you to eat puppies or fuck your mother; all I want is for you to do what you were bought for. That’s not so unreasonable, is it?”

Maybe it’s not, he thought. Maybe he was the one being unreasonable.

“Sit him up.”

He’d slumped over, ass beside his heels, chin to his chest. The supervisors hauled him back to his knees, fingers digging into pressure points in his biceps and armpits, and it hurt, fuck it hurt, and he wanted it—needed it—to end.

“Aren’t you tired, Daniel?” Mr. Foster asked, eminently reasonable, his dick—long gone soft—still hanging out of his pants.

“Yes,” Daniel whispered, because he had no voice left for proper speech, and because Mr. Foster had asked him a question and not answering would mean more pain.

“There’s a nice, soft bed waiting for you back at your master’s apartment, you know. You can have it, you can sleep the whole day if you want—but first you have to prove to me you deserve it. That you’ll be a good little appliance and do what you’re supposed to do. That this foolish, unwarranted pride”—Mr. Foster grabbed his chin again, jerked his head up—“that somehow seeped into your little slave head has disappeared and will not come back. Just a few simple words, Daniel. Tell me you want me.”

“I . . .”

“That’s it, Daniel.” The hand on his chin slid to his cheek, his temple, stroked once through his sweat-damp hair. “You’ve almost got it.”