Beyond Control

My hands were cuffed behind my back. The broad leather collar forced my chin up. The tug of the leash made it bite into my neck. I wasn’t even fighting it. I just refused to walk, and they didn’t care. They dragged me every single step.

A sharp, blinding sting exploded across my back, the dry crack of a crop echoing through the concrete corridor.

I hissed at the pain, because I had learned not to scream for them.

Every single sound, every tear, every reaction came with a bill that was paid one trauma at a time.

I took several steps on my own, then stopped walking again. The whoosh in the air told me they were done playing. I took the blow, feeling the fabric on my back tear. The new mark ached deeper.

Dull.

Throbbing.

Worse than the first.

I could feel the spot swell. Pictured the bruise forming, dozens of tiny vessels torn, bleeding underneath my skin.

It fit.

I’d briefly lost track of my surroundings — a mistake that might cost me, too. It scared me far more than the crop did.

Pain was honest.

Losing focus could cost a price you didn’t see coming.

The handler wrapped the leash around his fist, keeping me short, then I was shoved inside a large, grey room. Bright neon lights mercilessly flooded every single corner. There were no shadows, as if the room itself had been designed to strip away any illusion I had of somewhere to hide.

My eyes flicked up to the ceiling, searching the corners in a brief sweep along the harsh lines.

They didn’t hide the cameras here.

Black holes with unblinking red eyes, four of them alone in my direct line of sight.

I dropped my gaze.

The floor was padded with mats. Not soft. Just yielding. It was oddly satisfying to walk on them, which was an observation I filed away as something I’d have to examine later.

Three of the walls consisted of spotless floor-to-ceiling mirrors that threw my reflection back at me from all sides.

I didn’t look.

My eyes locked onto the tall, unmoving figure in the middle of the room instead.

I recognized him.

He’d bought me at the auction, where the difficult ones were presented as a special kind of entertainment.

There were buyers who got off on those of us filed as such.

The violent ones.

The criers.

The fighters.

Those kinds of auctions usually marked the end of us.

We weren’t sold any longer to be transformed into something pleasing. We were sold to be broken until nothing worth keeping was left, and what remained got disposed of.

Not efficiently.

One tear, one scream, one drip of blood at a time.

He was different.

He bought pets labelled difficult — and turned them around.

He had a reputation.

Dozens of us, broken into something buyers spent extraordinary amounts on.

He had bought me, and that terrified me more than one of the death merchants might have.

There was a certain kind of security in knowing you were on a ticking clock.

Being McNaught stock meant uncertainty.

Uncertainty meant hope.

I hated that.

Because I did not want to die.

Which was a weakness.

Weaknesses were exploited.

The handlers grabbed my upper arms, fingers gripping hard enough to bruise, keeping me upright when we stopped two or three steps away from McNaught.

He was tall, looming at well over six feet. Chestnut hair. Black uniform with silver insignia on his chest.

I didn’t recognize the organisation.

I’d been through the hands of many.

It didn’t make a difference in the end.

Same shit, different brand.

I was staring at him.

He was looking back at me.

Unimpressed.

I wasn’t here to impress him.

I was here to survive him and let him know I would.

Day Zero at a new facility meant they set an example.

What they were willing to do to break me.

Day Zero at a new facility meant proving I already knew — and didn’t give a fuck any longer.

“Dismissed,” he told the handlers.

They let go at once. The sudden release made me stagger before I caught my balance again, snapping my eyes back to his face defiantly, letting him know I wouldn’t budge.

The corner of his mouth lifted, like I’d done something funny.

“Easy rules, pet,” he informed me, not even making sure I listened.

“You do as you’re told. Fight me and expect to pay the price. Your choice. I don’t care either way.”

He paused.

“Fuck you,” I replied politely.

He moved quickly for a man as tall as him.

The back of his hand connected with my cheekbone, hard and fast, my head snapping left with the force of the impact.

His hand closed around the back of my neck, boots kicking my feet out from under me. I crashed to my knees, hitting the mat with an ugly sound.

Nothing cracked though.

I’d take that as today’s first win for me.

He didn’t sound angry.

No sigh. No cussing. No insults. No fake disappointment.

McNaught was deadly calm.

“You run your mouth — your mouth pays. Only warning. Anything to say?”

My face stung. Fire bloomed in my cheek, shaped like the back of his hand.

My knees didn’t throb as badly as I’d expected. The mats had taken the worst off the impact.

I lifted my chin and stared back into his face, letting my mouth curve into a smile.

A gob of spit hit his shiny boot.

“Fuck you,” I repeated calmly, bracing for the next blow, calculating how many he’d deliver before finding something new to do.

They usually stopped short of damage that marred or took us out too long. A broken bone meant my face couldn’t be properly hit for weeks without risking my looks.

His hand moved.

Not the one he’d used to strike.

The one at the collar.

His thumb dug into my jaw joint, pressing past my attempt to clench my teeth harder, prying my mouth open.

Like my resistance to it didn’t even exist.

And for the first time today, the strategy slipped from my fight.

I hated losing control like that.

Hated having my body maneuvered like it was simply physics and not deeply personal.

I jerked back against the hand at my neck, jaw working hard as I tried to clench my teeth shut again. The pressure below my mandible sharpened until it turned from dull, mechanical manipulation into its own kind of pain, throbbing down to my chin, the tip of his finger lodging at the angled corner of the bone itself, blocking my mouth from closing.

I could open more.

I couldn’t get it closed.

He let me discover that, then two fingers were shoved into my mouth.

Not harshly.

Slowly, as if he wanted me to experience what “your mouth pays” meant in full.

He waited for the fight.

And it came.

I couldn’t stop it.

My whole body tried to twist away from him. My useless hands clenched into fists behind my back and I tried — really tried — to shut my mouth. To at least get one bite in. No matter the cost.

“There she is,” came his voice, not addressing me but talking to himself, and there was an undertone to it I didn’t like.

Interest.

As if he were filing away the exact moment instinct had won over strategy.

Like it was simply a data point he intended to use.

He started thrusting his fingers into my mouth in a steady, deep rhythm that hit my gag reflex every single time. He studied my face like I was a mildly interesting specimen.

The way my eyes teared up at first.

The drool pooling at the corners of my mouth.

The way I tried to suck it back and failed.

He stopped when the front of my tank top was soaked with my own spit and tears and my jaw had given out.

He pulled out.

Casually wiped his fingers against my hip.

Not my shirt.

Against the thin stripe of skin showing between the waistband of my shorts and the hem of the tank.

He let me cough and sputter, then crouched down to my level, forearms resting on his knees.

His intense blue eyes focused on my face like lasers.

I locked my gaze with his.

Unyielding.

Something almost like a smile ghosted around his lips.

Just a flicker.

His voice was low.

A gravelly rumble, almost intimate.

“Now you know exactly what to expect every single time you run your mouth, pet.”

The thing at his mouth returned.

More prominent this time.

He fisted my hair, holding my face angled toward his own.

“So every single time you run your mouth from now on, you made a choice.”

He let go and unhurriedly unfolded from the crouch. He took one step back, arms crossing, like he’d never moved.

Only the weight of his gaze had turned heavier now.

“And?”

I pondered it.

I gave it the amount of attention this decision deserved.

Relent and give him the win.

Keep fighting a fight that cost him nothing and had my jaw aching, salt drying on my cheeks and spit caking the fabric of my shirt.

His gaze flicked to my mandible.

Watched the muscle protrude like a cord when I clenched my jaw shut.

“Any harder and you’ll crack a tooth,” he calmly informed me.

My jaw stayed locked.

Something in his gaze shifted. Not like he was counting points. Just like he’d understood something about me.

The look lodged itself underneath my ribs like a knife and started scraping me raw with every single breath.

“Enough,” he said to no one in particular.

Moments later, the handlers reappeared.

“Cell four,” he instructed.

“Hose her down. She’s filthy.”

Then his focus shifted back to me.

“Think about everything you gave me about yourself today, pet,” he said.

It was an instruction.

His tone held absolute certainty that I would follow it.

He remained exactly where he had been while the handlers maneuvered me from the room.

Training Room Two.