Page 27 of Anchored

God, he thought, a wan smile finding its way to his face, you’re getting downright melodramatic.

Tim steered him into an over–air conditioned room four doors farther down, where Mr. Foster sat at a conference table, glaring as they walked in. Behind Mr. Foster stood two supervisors Daniel recognized from the edit bays. The room contained no whipping post, no chains that he could see; when he sank to his knees in front of Mr. Foster, it was at least as much from jelly-legged relief as it was from training.

“Please,” Mr. Foster said over Daniel’s head—to Tim, Daniel assumed. “Sit.”

Tim pulled a chair from the table and sat with the same look of loose-limbed relief that Daniel felt. But also like Daniel, his shoulders were tense; he was wary, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“This isn’t a friendly chat, Daniel,” Mr. Foster snapped. “Take your clothes off.”

Well, that shoe dropped awfully fast, didn’t it?

He stood on shaky legs and stripped quickly, anxious to avoid agitating Mr. Foster further. Yet he saw no strap, no crop, no paddle. Only the shock prods on the supervisors’ belts, which had no need of direct skin contact. Maybe Mr. Foster was just trying to throw him off-balance, embarrass and humiliate him. Or maybe he intended to set the supervisors on him with fists and feet, or to lock him down here, freezing and hungry and sleepless for days. Rarely did NewWorld damage their property like that, but they had brought in a sub, after all—clearly, they planned to incapacitate him.

He shuddered at the thought and sank back to his bare knees at Mr. Foster’s feet. The floor was hard. He stared at a clean white line of grout in the groove between two tiles and wondered if Mr. Foster would make him bleed, if it would flow along the floor to stain cold, white squares in bright, hot red.

The toe of Mr. Foster’s dress shoe butted into Daniel’s stomach, less than a kick but more than a nudge.

“I suppose you’re wondering what you’re doing here,” he said. Before Daniel could reply, the sole of that shoe slid down a few inches, pressed against his groin. “Think very carefully about the next words out of your mouth, Daniel.”

Daniel hitched in a shuddering breath and said simply, “Yes, sir.” He wasn’t going to volunteer anything on the off chance he’d been called down for a different reason. Besides, he hadn’t technically done anything wrong, and he was pretty sure Mr. Foster would hurt him no matter what he said.

The shoe dug in, and Daniel gasped, curled his hands into fists and willed himself not to flinch away.

“Let me try to put this into terms you’ll understand, Daniel.”

The condescension grated; he’d bet his freedom, if such a thing were even possible, that he was both smarter and better-educated than Mr. Foster could ever hope to be.

“A couple months ago,” Mr. Foster said, “a Mr. Carl Whitman decided to lease a shiny new fuck toy. He shopped around, did his homework, compared hundreds, maybe even thousands of companions, and decided, for some unfathomable reason, on you. But imagine his surprise, his disappointment, when the expensive new toy he waited months to get his hands on showed up defective. It’s like his toaster not making toast, or his DVD player not playing DVDs.”

Mr. Foster shifted, leaned back in his chair, and stretched his legs; the foot pressing into Daniel’s groin went from uncomfortable to sweat-inducing, but Daniel just clamped his jaw shut and took it like he knew he was supposed to.

“See, here’s the thing, Daniel. He shouldn’t have to ask his DVD player to play DVDs. He just jams one in there and hits play, and it fucking entertains him. It doesn’t matter if his DVD player doesn’t want to play DVDs. It doesn’t matter if it would rather make toast, because that’s not what it was bought to do, and good working appliances always do what they’re bought to do. He shouldn’t have to ask it to please play his goddamn movie. He shouldn’t have to order it, or force it. He shouldn’t have to feel like his fucking appliance is judging him, or resenting him, or hating him for expecting it to do what it’s fucking meant to do! And he certainly shouldn’t have to try pressing a million different buttons, or jiggling the remote, or whatever other bullshit you’ve put him through to get his fucking movie to play!”

The foot in Daniel’s crotch jerked forward, punctuating Mr. Foster’s point. Daniel hunched over with a grunt, then wrestled himself vertical again.

“So what does Mr. Whitman do? Why, he calls the store and says the merchandise is defective; he wants to return it.”

What?

Another sharp kick in the crotch, and this time when Daniel hunched, panting and nauseous, he couldn’t get back up. Return him? How had he not seen this coming? How had he gone on thinking he could slight the master over and over and still believe the man would keep him?

Easy: I didn’t want him to keep me.

Mr. Foster grabbed him by the hair and yanked him upright, his foot still mashing Daniel’s genitals. “So I say, look, I’ll take care of it. Nothing wrong here that can’t be fixed. Just a little programming glitch is all. And you know what he said? You want to know how unbelievably fucking lucky you are to be leased to a man like him? He said, ‘Don’t whip him, Eric. Not again.’ He was quite insistent, in fact. Wouldn’t agree to give you another chance until I agreed not to stripe your sorry ass.”

He what? Daniel’s eyes darted from the floor to Mr. Foster’s face and back. The man looked disgusted, pissed. He shook Daniel by the hair and gave his nuts another little kick, as if he were personally offended by the master’s imposition.

“What Mr. Whitman doesn’t seem to understand is just how above it all you clearly think you are. How spoiled. How Mr. Look at Me I’m an Anchor thinks he’s too fucking good to get down on his knees and suck some fucking cock! Well, I’ve got news for you, slave: I could sell your ass ten times a night down in Times fucking Square, and you’d suck it up like a good little boy and pretend you fucking love it. Because all this?” Another jab to his nuts that made Daniel’s eyes water, made it hard for him to see Mr. Foster waving in a way that clearly encompassed Daniel’s entire life. “All of this is at my pleasure, boy, you got that? And I will take it away and sell you each night like the fucking piece of meat you are if you do not”—jab—“get”—jab—“your fucking shit together”—jab—“right fucking now! Do you understand me?”

Daniel nodded frantically, unable to force even a simple yes around the pain bubbling up his throat. He believed Mr. Foster—believed every word. Oh, they wouldn’t pull him off a successful broadcast, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t pimp him out every night after the show. Plenty of famous slaves were put to that kind of work, and sometimes it was actually more lucrative for their owners than their day job. Hell, hadn’t he seen a story over the wire just last month about some champion heavyweight slave boxer who’d raked in over a million at auction for a single postfight night of service?

Frankly, it was a miracle that NewWorld had waited as long as they had to lease out Daniel’s ass. At least it’d only been to one man—one whose biggest kink seemed to be football, or possibly politics, or maybe just slaves with white skin. Daniel should’ve been grateful.

Probably would’ve been, if he were a better slave.

But clearly he wasn’t, because . . . Well. Here he was.

Still, Mr. Foster drawled, “Good,” perfectly civil again, his fury evaporating like so much smoke. “Good.” He took his foot from Daniel’s crotch at last—thank God—stood up, and smoothed his hands down the front of his shirt. “But just to be sure, what say we have a little practice session.”