Page 32 of Anchored

“God, I’m sorry. I just . . . I don’t even know what I’m saying. Just, just ignore me, okay?” Tim touched a wet wipe to rent flesh, and for a moment, the sting was so bad Daniel thought he would cry. It was absurd to fall to that, after all he’d been through today, and yet . . .

A hand smoothed up and down his spine, warm and gentle, trying to ease the hurt the other hand was causing. Daniel buried his face in his arms and held his breath. There was pain, sick and oily, hot and sharp like the shock prods. Then nothing.

“All set.” Tim patted Daniel on the back of one trembling thigh before rising and offering him a hand. “It doesn’t look too bad, after all. Can you stand?”

If you pull the right strings, he thought, a little hysterically, and took Tim’s proffered hand. Between the two of them, he got vertical, but Tim had to prop him against the table to keep him that way. It took only a few hits with a shock prod to make your muscles weak and your nerves misfire for fifteen or twenty minutes; Daniel had dozens of little contact marks, tinged pink like sunburn, scattered all across his lower body.

“You know, maybe we should get you checked out after all,” Tim said, eying him close. The man’s gaze fell on half a dozen marks clustered just below Daniel’s navel, slid to another cluster a few inches lower, then to the ones half-hidden by the thatch of reddish-blond pubic hair. Daniel hated the scrutiny, but he lacked the energy even to cover himself with his hands.

“I’m fine,” he said, despite the sheer, mind-boggling absurdity of those words.

Tim, God bless him, nodded once and let the matter drop, turning his focus instead to getting Daniel dressed. Daniel slumped half against Tim, half against the table, barely able to work his arms through his sleeves by himself. Everything hurt in ways he’d long since forgotten were possible. He craved sleep like he craved air, and when Tim said, “Car’s waiting to take you back to Carl’s,” he thought only of a house full of comfortable beds, of Jane and her painkilling salve, and of the master still at work for many, many hours to come. He simply would not allow himself to think beyond that.

Tim led him from the room, toward the elevator, supporting most of his weight as Daniel stumbled along.

“I asked them if you could stay awhile,” Tim said as he hauled Daniel down the corridor, “but they claimed you’d be more comfortable in a bed than on your office couch. Frankly, I’d feel better if—”

If you weren’t sending me off to be brutalized again?

“—if you were somewhere I could keep an eye on you. But they were quite insistent.”

Daniel said nothing. He was too tired to walk and talk at the same time, and anyway his throat hurt, and he didn’t know what he could possibly say. He wasn’t willing to lie for the sake of Tim’s feelings, not after Tim had left him alone, no matter how good the man’s reasons.

The quiet of the elevator ride was short-lived, and then Tim was dragging him through the NewWorld lobby, toward a waiting car. The lobby wasn’t crowded, but Daniel was still the subject of far too many stares: some curious, some pitying, some self-righteous or downright mean. Every single one of them felt like fingers on his skin, like hot breath and fresh bruises and blood. He shrugged out of Tim’s supporting grip and made his feet go faster, stumbled through the front door, and nearly collapsed into the backseat of the sedan. Tim rushed behind him, hand outstretched, but his support was far too late to be of use.

“So, um,” Tim began, hand on the car door, feet shuffling as Daniel fumbled with his seat belt. “You, uh . . .”

It wasn’t like Tim to be lost for words. Daniel blinked at him, impatient, anxious to shower and sleep and uninterested in whatever platitudes Tim might try to offer.

But in the end, all Tim said was, “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

He closed the door before Daniel could reply.

Daniel fell asleep—or maybe passed out—on the short ride to the master’s apartment. He woke up with a startled shout, huddled and cringing from the doorman’s hand. Slaves weren’t supposed to touch in public, but Daniel obviously needed help to stand.

The doorman was looking at him like he’d sprouted a third eye, probably wondering at the harshness of NewWorld Media, or maybe at Daniel’s unexpected willfulness. After all, he’d needed help inside twice now in the short time he’d been here.

Daniel somehow made it off the elevator and down the hallway by himself, and Jane met him at the apartment door with thinly disguised panic and a helping hand.

“What happened?” she asked, ducking beneath his arm and pulling it over her shoulder, wrapping her free arm around his waist. “What are you doing home so early?”

She walked him to the couch and plunked him down—he was much too big and heavy for someone her size to support for long—then gave him a careful once-over. Daniel looked down to where her gaze lingered on his hands. Finger-shaped bruises had formed at his wrists and up his arms where the supervisors had pinned him, and his left pinkie was discolored and swollen, though he couldn’t remember how that’d happened.

He blinked up at her, tired and mute. He didn’t want her to know. He wanted to be alone, wasn’t sure how to send her off without hurting her feelings.

“I need a shower,” he said, though he hadn’t meant to. Added, “I’m okay,” and then, in direct contradiction and much to his embarrassment, “Help me up?”

She held out both hands, moving slow like she was worried he’d freak, and waited for him to take them. “That looks painful,” she said, eying the darkening bruises circling his wrists when he locked his hands in hers. He nodded, but said nothing.

She helped him to his feet, steadied him when he nearly fell. “Prod?” she asked.

He nodded again, feeling his cheeks heat. If she knew that, what else might she—?

“Better use the bench, then. Don’t want you slipping and banging your head.” She smiled, a sad and gentle thing, painful to look at, and covered one of his hands with both of hers.

Whatever else she might have said then, she swallowed it when she met his eyes. He nodded once—gratitude for her silence—and let her prop him against her side and lead him to the guest bathroom.

He stripped without bothering to fold his clothes, stumbled into the shower, and curled up on the bench, staying there until the water ran cold. He lacked the energy for anything more than a perfunctory pass of soap over skin, barely enough to wash the stench of those three men away. His muscles were weak, twitchy and sore, locking on occasion into teeth-gritting cramps.