Page 13 of Anchored

Daniel fisted both hands in his pillow and prayed those fingers would stay gone. He was breathing like he’d run a race, achingly tired but losing his grip on sleep so thoroughly that he feared he might not reclaim it at all tonight.

The master’s hand came back, and Daniel bit his tongue to keep in a whimper. For one horrifying moment, he thought he might cry. All he wanted to do was sleep, go back to his cubbyhole on the West Side and—

The hand stroked across his hip and derailed his train of thought. Probably for the best, anyway; wishing on things you could never have brought nothing but trouble. He held his breath, dreading where the exploring fingers might go next. When they skimmed featherlight down his welted ass, he couldn’t help it—that damn whimper escaped his throat.

The master’s hand froze, lifted away. “Did I hurt you?” he asked in that same soft, even tone from before.

A pause, and then, “Yes, Master.” That was technically true, but in the larger scope of things, the pain had been nothing, and certainly not the real cause of his distress.

Still, this time when the hand disappeared, it didn’t come back.

When Daniel awoke in the morning, the sun was already high in the sky, and Jane was standing over him, smiling bright.

“Good morning, darling.”

“Mmph,” was about all Daniel could think to reply. He felt logy, drugged, pain thrumming deep and hot enough to discourage full consciousness.

“Come on, then. Breakfast’s waiting. Your car’ll be here in forty-five minutes.”

“What?” Daniel pushed up in a panic, grunted, and fell back to the bed. He realized the other side was empty; his master was gone. “It’s 9:15?”

“Master left early today. He thought you could use the sleep.”

“Oh.” Daniel blinked, sat up more carefully this time. It wasn’t too bad—not nearly as bad as last night, at least—and he actually felt rested. Plus, he hadn’t woken to a cock digging into his hip. Maybe things were looking up.

“Here.” Jane stuffed a bundle of clothes into his hands once he was vertical. He shook it out to reveal a pair of navy track pants with a white stripe down each leg. They were new; the tag was still on.

“What’s this?”

“Gift from the master. He thought your jeans would hurt.”

“Oh,” Daniel said again, rather stupidly, he thought. “That was . . . Really?”

Jane nodded, grinning wide, clearly as proud of the man as if she owned him and not the other way around.

“Wow, I’ve never . . . I mean, we’re not allowed to own things at NewWorld. Causes fights, they say.”

“Well then, you just bring them back tonight, is all.” She plucked the pants from his slack fingers and folded them on the dresser, then pulled the little jar of numbing cream from her apron pocket. “Now lie back down, and I’ll fix you up, and we’ll get you on your way.”

Breakfast was fresh fruit salad and some sort of home-baked, rice-flour blueberry muffins he felt certain he could eat for the rest of his life and never grow tired of. Jane hustled him through his new morning routine and deposited him in the waiting car herself at three minutes to ten. “Be good,” she said as she closed the door, but what Daniel really heard was, “Be careful,” or maybe, “Stay safe.”

The day was long. Tim hovered, bringing him food and Tylenol and making excuses to check in, and Maxwell watched him closely enough to make him nervous. He’d lost almost two hours this morning oversleeping—time normally spent reading the day’s papers—but worked furiously to catch up, taking the lead at the afternoon production meeting and hitting the show out of the park. It was easier to bury himself in work than to think about that finger on his lips, that hand on his ass. It was easier than thinking about the track pants he changed into to go home—or, at least, what passed for home now. He missed his cubbyhole. He missed his friends back in the dorm. He missed playing chess and listening in on sports conversations he knew nothing about and stealing quick, rough, fear-laced handjobs in the bathroom with that hot black line producer while supervisors with shock prods tucked into their belts prowled the floor.

If not for Carl, he would have slept in tomorrow, gotten up at ten or eleven, jogged the circuit in Central Park with Tim, then maybe read the new issue of the Economist and watched old movies in the little lounge at the end of his hall. He would have eaten dinner in the mess with his friends and had those cookies for dessert that the slave bakers in the InfoGlobe café always snuck back for their floors. And then, if he were really lucky, he’d have found an excuse—meeting a contact, or doing background research, perhaps—to lounge in the stacks at the Barnes & Noble or maybe see some live music in one of the few West Side clubs that permitted entrance to unattended slaves.

Instead, he’d be spending his weekend doing . . . well, he wasn’t sure what, exactly, but he doubted he’d get to keep his new track pants on.

“Daniel?”

Tim. Daniel dropped the dress shirt he’d been holding and turned his gaze from the city lights out his office window to his handler.

“It’s almost ten.”

Shit, he’d been daydreaming for a long time.

“You have to go.” Tim touched a hand to his back—ow, fuck, not cool, Tim—and guided him away from the view of Central Park, shrouded in what passed for darkness in this city. “You should have left half an hour ago.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, scraping his teeth over his lower lip and staring at his sneakered feet as they carried him from his office.