Read The Flesh Cartel #5: Wins and Losses for Free Online Page A

shouted—it was unexpected, that was all. He hadn’t been prepared for it. “How does one win at this?”
By not giving you the satisfaction of knowing you’ve hurt me, fucker. By not letting it break me again like it did before. By not letting you scare me with it.
All of which was a lot easier to think when Nikolai wasn’t hitting him. It got bad fast. Very, very fast. And Nikolai wasn’t stopping this time. Maybe Mat should’ve answered him out loud. Maybe Nikolai figured Mat didn’t feel like chatting so why bother with more words. Another strike. Another. Another. Ten, twelve, fifteen. He lost count. Couldn’t think. Needed to buy some fucking time.
“You—” he gasped between one hit and the next.
Nikolai paused, thank fucking God. “Yes?”
“You outlast it.”
“Fair enough. So say your endurance outlasts my energy to hit you. What if when I’m tired I give you the serum? What if you outlast five hours of pain, and I give you another, and another? Do you win then?”
Mat didn’t know how to reply to that without conceding the point. Nikolai went back to beating his ass like the belt might somehow knock the answer out of him. God, couldn’t he hit him somewhere else? Felt like he was being fucking flayed alive. He squirmed, shifted—holding still was impossible now anyway—hoping to make the belt land anywhere but on that same patch of napalm-slick skin—
“I asked you a question, boy. I expect an answer. And while my aim is impeccable, I assure you, if you don’t hold still, I’ll end up hitting something I shouldn’t. Your spine. A kidney. Your balls. Do you want that?”
“No,” he rasped, and it was a fucking miracle he could get the word out without letting loose the scream behind it. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what then. I’d keep going, I guess. Hang on.”
Nikolai drove the belt down again, right across the brightest mass of agony on his left buttock. Mat screamed. “Like you are now? Does this feel like winning?” Another strike. Another. Mat screamed again, balled the bedcovers in his fists, ground them between his teeth. They were damp beneath his cheeks. More than sweat.
His screams must have been reply enough, because Nikolai said, softly, “Perhaps you need to reconsider what it means to win here, Mathias.”
“I can’t win,” he moaned into the bed. “That’s what you want to hear, right? That I can fight and fight and fight but you’re always going to be—”
Nikolai rubbed what he probably thought were soothing circles over the skin of Mat’s ass, his touch lighting a path of fire. Or maybe he didn’t think they were soothing at all, maybe he was only pretending they were. Mimicking kindness and acting out cruelty. Fucker. “Yes?” Nikolai asked.
And God, all Mat wanted to do was tell him what he wanted to hear, say whatever would make the pain stop. “You’re always going to be . . .” In charge. In control. One step ahead of me.
My master. He almost puked just thinking it.
Nikolai belted him again, three times in rapid succession. “Finish your sentence.”
“This game is rigged,” Mat gasped out. “Can’t fight back, can’t win. You win. Always.”
The rubbing hand came back, and Mat clenched his watering eyes shut and pressed his face into the blanket, trying not to whimper loudly enough for Nikolai to hear. “You know,” Nikolai said, “winning doesn’t always mean being the alpha dog. It doesn’t always mean fighting. Or . . .” A pause, one finger trailing musingly up his ass to the small of his back. “Or maybe you don’t know. Let me share something with you, Mathias. Something you can use when you leave here: Sometimes winning isn’t about fighting; it’s about not fighting. It’s about understanding what your opponent wants. And maybe you’ll find a way to keep it from him without him noticing, or maybe you’ll find a way to give it to him that costs you nothing. Either way, you win. You win and he doesn’t even know