Page 15
But he just raised his eyebrows and asked, “Well? Do you want breakfast or not?”
For a moment, Daniel stared at him, speechless, until he remembered he was making eye contact with a freeman and dropped his chin. He’d screwed up, and the man wanted to feed him? Not exactly the reaction he’d been expecting, but he got himself together enough to nod, stutter out, “Y-yes, Master, thank you,” and drag himself to his feet. God, he was sore. Sleeping on the floor sure hadn’t helped.
The master tracked him as he walked around the couch and the counter that divided the kitchen from the living room. When Daniel reached the table, the master nudged the chair catty-corner to his with his foot. Daniel wasn’t accustomed to eating with his betters, let alone right next to them; he hesitated, wincing as a spark of pain flared from his tailbone to his neck.
“Wait,” the master said before Daniel could sit.
Shit. Had he blown it by hesitating? The master stood up from the table, and Daniel clenched his jaw, waiting for the blow, but the man stepped right past him and snatched a throw pillow from the couch, then placed it on Daniel’s chair. “There,” he said, waving once toward the chair before turning his attention back to his bagel and his paper.
Daniel eyed him, then the chair (which looked significantly more comfortable to his black-and-blue ass than it had just moments ago), and then his master again. But the man was paying him no more mind.
“Sit, dear,” Jane said, placing a bagel and a glass of juice in front of the cushioned chair, “and eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
Daniel obeyed, feeling a little . . . he didn’t even know what. He was sitting in Carl fucking Whitman’s kitchen, eating gluten-free bagels on a cushioned chair at the same table as his master while wearing the first piece of clothing he’d ever actually owned.
When he tossed a longing glance at the Washington Post, still folded on the table, his master pushed it over to him without taking his eyes off the sports pages. “You don’t ever have to ask,” the master said. “Just put it back when you’re done.”
“Thank you, Master.” The words were rote, but colored with stark surprise. On the news floor, he could take whatever reading material he wanted, but that was different. That was a job. This was . . . well, he supposed this was a job too. He just hadn’t figured out his duties yet.
Daniel was halfway through A-4 when his master turned to him, nose wrinkled, and said, “You need a shower.”
He folded the paper carefully, put it back exactly where he’d found it, and said, “Yes, Master.” He almost added, I’d like that very much, but what did anyone care what he did or didn’t like?
The master’s eyebrows climbed a little. “Now?” he said, and Daniel realized his master’s words had been the order, not just a statement preceding it.
“Sorry, Master. Of course.” He stood up from the table and headed toward the slave bathroom, but his master stopped him with a hand around his wrist. He was thoroughly inured to being touched by others, and rarely gently, but something about this touch, this simple, almost hesitant touch, tripped his fight-or-flight instincts hard.
He did neither, of course. Didn’t even have time to examine his response before the master said, “Use the guest shower. Three people sharing one bathroom is a bit much, don’t you think?”
. . . No? Forty guys to a floor in NewWorld’s West Side dorm, with one midsized bathroom—five sinks, five toilets, five shower heads—between them. They’d always made do just fine. But Carl obviously didn’t want to hear that, and anyway it wasn’t like he wasn’t grateful for the gesture, so he muttered another “Thank you, Master,” and changed course for the marble bathroom down the hall.
Once inside, he stripped behind the privacy of a closed door and stepped beneath the spray.
The soaps in this shower were expensive, boutique—the kind of thing you’d buy in a little shop in the East Village for twenty dollars a bar—and he wondered if his master had such fine tastes, or if this was Jane’s hand he was seeing. He decided he didn’t care as he turned into the three-headed spray and let it run down his face, his back, and the top of his head all at once, the heat melting the soreness from his muscles. He moaned and curled his toes into the heated tile.
“Jesus,” someone choked out.
Daniel whipped around to see his master standing naked just outside the stall glass, staring with his mouth open, his cock so hard it was bobbing against his belly.
Daniel stumbled back a step, bumping the wall, and swallowed hard. Closed his eyes and held his breath as the master slid the glass door open and stepped in next to him.
Only the thought of the strapping he’d so recently endured stopped him from bolting. He’d been through so many ugly things in his life, but this, this thing the master wanted from him, had easily been one of the most nightmarish, and it was so fucking unfair after all he’d done for NewWorld, all he’d given them, how well he’d served, and was it any fucking wonder he didn’t believe in God anymore if this was his divine reward for—
A hand came to rest over his heart, and he startled so hard he hit the wall again, gasping his fear.
“Relax, Daniel. My God, you’re like one of those shivery little wet dogs ridiculous women carry in their purses.”
Daniel coughed out a frightened laugh—the image was remarkably astute. The master pulled his hand away, and Daniel sucked in a breath. A second later, the hand returned, complete with soaped-up loofah, and began to stroke across his chest.
“You keep up all this tension”—stroke—“you’re gonna sprain something.”
Yeah, maybe so. All those knotted muscles weren’t doing his welted skin any favors, and God, he’d been so tired all the time lately. The loofah moved lower, brushed over both nipples. Daniel sucked in another shuddering breath and tried to make his fists unclench.
“Hey.” Stroke. “Hey.”
The loofah left his skin, and two soapy fingers tilted his chin up toward his master’s face. Daniel pried his eyes open and made himself look, shocked to see . . . concern? in those brown eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you, you know.”
