Bought and Paid For

Jade woke stiffly to the sound of his alarm clock. The buzzer blared in his ears for a minute or so before he could muster the energy to roll over and shut it up. Everything hurt and he suspected that when he managed to get out of bed and inspect the damage, he’d have some pretty impressive bruises from Davey’s fists.

Waves of images of the previous night rolled through his mind no matter how hard he tried to turn his thoughts away from them. The nightmare formal dinner, and the second wave of meeting and greeting that had followed that, with everyone bombarding him with questions about Hunter’s personal life. Their early departure, Hunter hustling them out through a back door, with his erection barely concealed in his pants, and the speedy drive to the five-star hotel he had a room at. The degrading experience of being stripped and fucked until he came from the unwanted pleasure Davey was forcing upon him, and the disgust in himself that had caused. Hunter standing next to them, watching the show in silence before pushing Davey aside and forcing himself into Jade’s spent body in his usual violently animalistic way. And the way Hunter had fallen asleep soon after he had spurted hotly into Jade, leaving Davey hard and unfulfilled, and absolutely livid about it.

The physical reminders of Davey’s revenge, administered with vicious quietness in the hotel bathroom, were now brutally exhibited in Jade’s flesh. He remembered the cold kiss of the tiles as Davey alternately stroked his frustration in his hand and laid angry punches into Jade for stealing his climax. He remembered Davey standing aggressively over him, his fist wrapped around his own cock, bruised and red from pounding into Jade's body and jerking in a desperate, angry way, devoid of eroticism. He had come silently over Jade's flinching stomach as Jade had stared up, unseeingly, at the underside of the toilet bowl. He remembered cringing as Davey had stepped over him, leaving him behind on the bathroom floor like a soiled Kleenex.

And then being abruptly ordered to dress and gather his belongings, and being shoved up the stairs to the roof where Hunter’s little helicopter was waiting to take him straight back to the house: he wasn’t even allowed to spend the night with them. Jade had stumbled in to his room just before dawn and, after scrubbing Davey’s dried come off his stomach, and tending to his raw ass, had collapsed into bed, too tired to notice the full extent of the damage Davey had inflicted.

But by god, he was noticing it now. Grimacing at the protests from his body, Jade prised himself out of bed and staggered to his bathroom, running a hot bath and adding generous amounts of bubbles and soothing salts. Steam rose and filled the room as he stared at his battered reflection in the mirror, taking in the deep black and purple bruises discolouring his ribs and thighs, the swelling on his jaw from a savage kick.

He turned away from the mirror, disgusted by the broken weakness he saw there, and cautiously lowered himself into the scalding water of the bath, letting the sharp pain of the heat distract him from the numbing ache of his injuries. Slowly acclimatising to it, he forced his body to relax and tried desperately to stop the endless whirling of his mind.

This has to stop. A small part of him nagged, repeating itself over and over at the back of his thoughts. This can’t continue. It has to stop. But how? He was contracted to stay with Hunter for the rest of his natural-born life. And he certainly couldn’t afford to end the contract. A product demanding severance was required to pay back three quarters of all wages paid to him. And, though Jade hadn’t seen a penny of it, he was sure the money had already been spent. And it was highly unlikely that Hunter would decide to get rid of him; not after the money he had cost. The man may be rich but Bios products signified a huge chunk of anyone’s capital.

Breach of contract. Non-consensual damage. His mind thrilled in triumph but reason soon quashed it. No, he had never complained, he had never refused to do something or asked them to stop. And so, in the eyes of the Bios committee, he had consented to his treatment. His own passive weakness had tied him into this nightmare. What a fucking pathetic excuse of a man he was: too feeble to live in the real world, too helpless to cope as a whore.

Unbidden, the image of Evelyn’s business card kept floating into his mind’s eye, and the harder he tried to thrust the thought away, the more insistently it tugged at him until, in a daze, he hauled himself out of the bath and padded, naked and dripping to his closet, searching for the card.

Just as a fresh wave of panic was building when he couldn’t see the tie he had hidden it in, his fingers closed around it and he wrenched out the printed cardboard, clutching it in shaking hands. He sat on his bed and stared at the card, ignoring the dampness he was spreading to the bedclothes, and the chill that settled upon him as he air-dried. All that mattered was the card. That one rectangular spark of hope in his hand.

Pros and cons chased each other round his head: He could get out. But it might be a trap. Even if it wasn’t a trap, he’d be on the run from one of the most powerful men on the planet. But Evelyn had her fair share of wealth too, she’d protect him. But why would she? She’d only met him once! He’d risk everything. But sooner or later, Davey or Hunter would kill him. On purpose, or an accident in a scene, or just by being neglected, but eventually it’d happen. But it might not, and he was cared for here, mostly. And trapped into a nightmare.

The opposing viewpoints screamed at him from all sides and he screwed up his eyes, his fists clenched, willing for them to just make a decision and shut the fuck up. A phone’s dialling tone rang in his ear and he jolted back into consciousness with the handset to his ear, his finger pressing the last digit of Evelyn’s cell phone number. His blood rang cold as the phone rang, and he tried desperately to marshal the coordination to hang up before it was too late, getting as far as jerking his head away from the earpiece when he heard the ring abruptly cut off and a tinny voice question a greeting.

Shaking, he pressed the phone back to his ear, holding his breath. “Hello?” Evelyn’s voice asked, sounding so wonderfully familiar his eyes welled up with tears. “Hellooo? Can you hear me?” He opened and shut his mouth, apparently having forgotten how to speak. Words deserted him. “Hello?” She sounded annoyed now. “Look, this was fun, but I’m gonna hang up now.” He heard movement, she was fumbling for the disconnect key. Panic surged through him.

“No!” His throat thickened on the word and he coughed. “Wait! Hello? Hello?” He listened, desperately hoping she hadn’t gone yet.

There was a gut-wrenching pause. “Hello? Are you there?”

She still sounded annoyed but he didn’t care, relief flooding through him even as adrenaline pumped through his body from the danger of what he was doing. “Yes, I’m here. I’m here.” He struggled to remember what he wanted to say.

“Who is this, please?” She sounded different, more formal, and Jade realised this was her business-voice.

“Please; please can you help me?” Jade couldn’t keep the sob out of his voice, it was too late now; if this was a trap he was already condemned.

“Who is this? Are you okay? What’s going on?” He could hear the concern in her voice even through the poor cell-phone connection.

“It’s… it’s…” He took a deep breath. “It’s Jade. Hunter’s… Hunter’s Jade. Please. Please help me.”

There was a second of silence during which Jade’s heart sank. She wouldn’t help him, he was stuck here forever. He had been so incredibly stupid to call; now he’d ruined everything. He heard her inhale, her voice gentler now. “Oh god; Jade honey… what have they done to you?”