Bucks on the Block
The slave market was barely awake. The vast hangar echoed hollow in the early light, rough wooden platforms rising from stained planks, steel rafters overhead catching the first gray of dawn. The air hit with the force of a solid wall: sour sweat, old blood soaked so deep into the wood that no amount of scrubbing would ever lift it, the sickly-sweet rot of yesterday's cum, and far off, the scorched tang of hot iron from the forge where they branded hide and hair. Somewhere behind the back walls a broken slave lowed softly, half pain, half habit, and the sound carried, thin and animal, before it died.
Buyers were scarce this early. A handful of owners drifted between platforms with their hands in their pockets, unhurried, barely glancing at the stock. Overseers leaned against posts or squatted by the blocks with whips coiled at their belts, drowsy and mean, pinching a nipple here, slapping a set of balls there, squeezing the goods with the idle focus of a man checking fruit for ripeness. Mostly the morning was quiet. The real business would come later.
Cody stood on the auction block in a line of dripping slaves. They'd been led up on a lead chain, shoulder to shoulder, then unclipped one by one and positioned for display. Water still trickled down the inside of his thighs from the hosing, chill, crawling slow over skin that flinched at every drop. The wet leather collar gripped his neck, rubbing the spot under his jaw raw. His nipples had hardened to stiff pink points in the morning chill and his shaft had shriveled to a pitiful knot between his legs, the head hiding under his foreskin, desperate to crawl back inside his body. Beside him Jax was the same and worse: tall, skinny, ribs jutting so sharply you could count them, shaggy dark hair plastered to his forehead. But that pole hung between his thighs even soft, thick and veined and obscene, longer than a man's palm. Cody caught himself staring at that stranger shaft again and swallowed hard. He looked away and felt the heat crawl up his neck.
Same shit, no stripes, he told himself. You're a soldier. You stood at attention while sergeants screamed in your face. This is the same thing. Hold position.
But in the army there had been a uniform. Brotherhood. A code. Here he was naked with water dripping from his asshole onto the planks, his cock and balls hanging in the open air for anyone with cash to grab. The blush started at his ears and rolled down his chest, a wave of liquid fire.
"Step lively, stock!" an overseer barked, prodding the line with the butt of his whip. "Legs wide, hands behind your heads, cocks forward, backs straight. Don't pussy out, fresh meat!"
Cody obeyed. Legs apart, arms up, chest open. The pose was not so different from standing at attention, just wider, more exposed, but the muscle memory was there. He locked his jaw and held it. The slaves around him froze into the same shape: legs spread, arms locked overhead, eyes down, cocks out. Some had been doing this for weeks. Their bodies had the slack stillness of livestock surrendered to the stall.
Jax copied him, barely. His lips were moving in some silent prayer or curse, Cody couldn't tell which. Jax's skinny body quivered with the fine tremor of a cold dog. An overseer's whip handle tapped his thigh without heat: "Steady, goat. Slaves don't shake." Jax locked his knees and went still. The two of them had arrived together, led on the same chain, hosed in the same group. Instinct kept them close. They were the only familiar faces in this hell: two young bucks, wet and shaking, virgins both, and neither one ready to admit it.
Dawn stretched slow over the market. The overseers hosed down the platforms in lazy sweeps, water jets lashing across sweating bodies, washing dust and dried blood and old cum into the cracks between planks. Slaves lowed and flinched under the icy spray, cocks shrinking, balls clenching close, holes clenching against the chill. Then the jets moved on and the slaves stood dripping, and the market kept waking.
From the block Jax could see the whole floor. Far off to the right the adult slave platform held a row of mature bodies standing statue-still: big men with hairy chests and low-hanging balls, cocks half-flaccid but packing a force and weight that young stock didn't have. Broken men who had stopped fighting years ago. Their eyes were empty and calm, feet planted wide, arms locked overhead without a tremor. They know service, Jax thought, watching them. No fight left. Just yield. They give the body and the head goes somewhere else. Something hot and shameful twisted in his gut. Fuck. I want that. I want to be broken that fast, that clean. No pain, no shame, just done.
Nearer, on the left, the bitch block. A row of young women stood collared and naked, tits swaying with every breath, nipples dark and stiff, shaved slits pink and exposed. An overseer leaned against the platform's edge pinching a heifer's nipple between thumb and forefinger, lazy, making her spin to show the goods. Simple fun for simple stock.
Cody's eyes drifted left. He watched the bitch block from the corner of his eye, trying not to let his head turn. One of the heifers, maybe twenty-five, full tits veined under thin skin, udders swaying with every shallow breath, stood perfectly still while a fat buyer in a wrinkled suit squeezed her breast, testing the melon. The woman didn't flinch. She didn't even blink. Milk thin-streamed from the nipple between his thick fingers and splattered the planks. The buyer pinched harder, yanked down; more milk jetted white, and the heifer let out one choked sound, barely a whimper, swallowed it back, and stood.
She's handling it, Cody thought, and something cold settled in his stomach. She's already done fighting. She knows she's meat. How long did it take her? How long before I stand like that, some stranger groping my balls and me just breathing through it, enduring it as unavoidable weather?
He watched the milk drip from the boards. His cock stirred, slow, heavy, a traitor pulse of blood he couldn't stop. The shaft thickened, foreskin peeling back as the head fattened pink. Not from the tits. From the calm. From the picture of total surrender standing twenty feet away wearing the same collar he wore, and his body recognizing something his mind refused.
An owner below the block spotted it and jabbed a finger up: "Look at that pup, hard from watching udders! Craving a milk sip, fresh meat?" He laughed. "Virgin, I bet. Cock goes red as a tomato!"
Cody burned crimson to the roots of his blond hair. His shaft jerked harder, no wilt, rigid now, veined, the neat pink head exposed and shining. He hated his body. He hated the laughter. He locked his eyes on the wood and didn't move.
It started with a shout.
A young slave three spots down the line, shoulder tattoo, maybe twenty-two, built solid, broke. He'd been standing in the pose for hours, arms overhead, legs apart, face set in a mask that had been cracking since dawn. Now it ripped open.
"Don't touch me, you freaks!" He lunged off the line, stumbling forward. "I'm not yours! I'm not an animal! I'm a free—"
The overseer hit him before the last word landed. The redheaded brute in the leather harness and shorts, same one who'd hosed them that morning, buried a fist in the rebel's gut and the boy folded paper-thin. Air punched out of him in a wet grunt. He went down on all fours, mouth gaping, eyes bulging, trying to suck back the breath that had been slammed out of his body.
The whip came next.
Not the handle, the lash. It cracked across the rebel's back with the sharp crack of a gunshot, wet skin splitting open, a thin line of blood welling crimson before the next stroke landed, crossing the first into an X that bloomed purple and red. The rebel screamed. His body arched, spine bowing, every muscle locked rigid, then buckled and collapsed flat.
The overseer didn't stop. He planted a boot on the rebel's spine, pinning him chest-down to the planks, and went to work with the steady rhythm of tenderizing meat. Whip across the shoulders. Across the ass. Then the real damage: he grabbed the rebel's balls from behind, fist closing around the sack, wrenching down, and brought the whip across them twice. The sound was different there: a meaty slap, a crunch, and then a scream that spiraled up into something not quite human.
Blood ran between the planks. The rebel's cock, hard, traitor-hard, standing rigid despite everything, smacked against his own thigh with each thrash. His balls turned red-purple, swelling visible, the sack distending in the overseer's grip. He tried to crawl away and the boot ground him flat.
"Hate you!" the rebel screamed through blood and spit. "Hate your owners, your whip, your—"
The overseer gagged him. Stuffed something leather and foul into his mouth, strapped it behind his head. The screaming choked to a wet gurgle. The whipping continued, three more strokes across the back, opening fresh welts, then stopped. The overseer straightened, breathing heavily, whip dripping.
Owners had drifted closer, drawn by the noise. They watched with the lazy disgust of spectators at an already-decided dog fight. The overseer saw them and his shoulders dropped. Whip hand fell to his side. His whole body changed, from snarling brute to cringing dog in the space of a heartbeat. He shuffled back from the broken slave and stood waiting, eyes down.
The rebel lay in a puddle of his own blood and piss. Gagged, whipped raw, balls swollen to twice their size, cock still hard, still hard, glistening with blood and something else. His eyes stared at nothing.
The block went silent.
Cody's heart slammed against his ribs so fiercely he thought the slaves beside him could hear it. His legs trembled, a fine vibration he couldn't stop, the kind that came from adrenaline flooding every muscle at once. He stared at the blood running between the planks three feet from where he stood. A desperate voice whispered calm and cold inside him: He broke the rules and they broke him. Don't move. Don't flinch. You're a man. You hold the line. Hold your position.
He held. His eyes burned. He did not move.
Jax watched it from the other side and felt something he didn't want to name.
The whip strokes had landed wet and sharp; he'd felt each one like phantom blows across his own skin. His stomach clenched. His throat closed. But under all of it, low and hot and unmistakable, his cock had twitched. Not half-hard, not a stir, but a full, thick pulse that thickened the shaft and pushed blood into the head until it flushed dark pink.
Why? The question burned acid. Why does it move when the whip cracks? Why do I feel heat when that overseer crushes his sack? What's wrong with me?
He pressed his thighs together, trying to hide it. Too late. The monster shaft was already swelling past the point where thighs could cover it. Jax stared straight ahead, sweat breaking cold across his chest. Don't let Cody see. It's fear. It's just fear. Fear does this. It doesn't mean—
But his balls locked high and his skin flushed hot and the rebel's blood-soaked moans still hung in the air, and his shaft didn't care what it meant.
An overseer spotted the erection from the platform edge. The same redhead, whip still bloody. "Body ain't yours, dog! Stand still and wait for a buyer's command, whore!"
The whip cracked across Jax's inner thigh, a ring of fire that exploded white across his vision, then snapped up and caught his balls. The pain was blinding, immediate, total. Jax yelped and buckled, knees bending, but caught himself. The head of his shaft gleamed wet. His body shook in fine visible tremors and he locked his arms behind his head and stood there, and hated himself more completely than he had ever hated the overseers.
Cody saw that, he thought, the humiliation so thick it closed his throat. He saw me get hard from the whip and he saw me leak when I got hit. He'll know. He'll know what I am.
But Jax noticed something else. An owner had paused nearby during the whipping, close enough to see the blood on the redhead's lash, and the overseer had flinched. Just a flicker: whip hand dropping half an inch, shoulders rounding, chin tucking down. Then the owner passed and the brute swelled back to full snarl. Big dog with us. Kicked puppy near them. Even the overseers were owned.
So Jax set his shoulders back and thrust his cock forward, the way they'd been ordered to stand. Scrawny chest puffed out. Ass clenched. If this was what his body wanted, then let them see it. Let them see the horse-cock raging, the balls cinched high, the foreskin peeled back shining. Let them call him a stud or a whore or whatever word they used for a slave whose cock tried to fuck the air when the whip bit his sack.
Something shifted behind his eyes. Not breaking, not yet, but the first crack in the wall. A strange, ugly peace.
Owners below the platform grinned up at him. "Lusty pup! Horse-cock on a rail. That's a breeding stud if I ever saw one."
Jax's thighs quivered. His shaft drooled. He didn't look at Cody.
The morning wore on. The market woke in full.
Human cattle trade revved slow and ugly. Buyers trickled in: older men in good clothes, a few women in boots and hats, handlers with clipboards. They circled the blocks with the flat, assessing stares of people shopping for appliances. Most didn't touch. They looked, they pointed, they moved on.
On the next block a young buff slave, black eye, muscles straining, legs wide, was hawking himself hoarse. His voice cracked and squeaked between syllables, a boy trying to sound like a man: "Owner, buy me! I'll be good slave..." cheeks flaring red, shaft jerking up involuntarily, "tight virgin hole, big cock, sturdy, I'll haul 170-pound sacks..." he thrust his hips forward, chest out, then dropped almost to a whisper, "just don't scrap me... I'll be loyal slave, Owner." Near tears. Self-pity gnawed acid behind his ribs but the knowledge gnawed harder: a week unsold meant a bullet in the head, body stripped for organs. The kid kept whispering, groveling, his half-hard meat bobbing in the chill air.
On Cody's block the first buyers came by in the middle of the morning.
A heavyset man in a work jacket paused at the edge of the platform, scanned the line of naked slaves, and moved on without breaking stride. He didn't even slow down. Just swept his eyes across the row of cocks and collars, dismissing them as fence posts, and walked.
Cody felt the glance slide across his body and vanish, and something inside him crumpled. Not relief; he'd expected to feel relief that the man didn't stop. Instead there was a sick hollow in his gut, the feeling of being passed over, of being not worth stopping for. His throat tightened. Fuck. Am I hoping they look? Am I hoping someone picks me? What kind of grown man begs to be bought?
Another buyer. A woman, short, sunburned, all business. She climbed the block steps and walked the line slowly, pausing at each slave. When she reached Jax she stopped and tilted her head, studying the horse-cock with a practiced eye. Then her gaze tracked up to the ribs, the skinny arms, the chest that was all bone and sinew and no mass. She snorted softly, barely audible, and moved on to Cody.
Here she stopped longer.
Her eyes went to his chest first, broad, boyish, army-hard, then to his half-swollen shaft, and then to his arms. She reached up and squeezed his bicep, thumb pressing into the muscle. Cody locked his jaw and held still. Her fingers were rough and callused and impersonal. She checked the other arm. Nodded to herself. Moved to the next slave.
She hadn't even looked at his face.
Then a different kind of buyer. A tall older man in a linen shirt, clean shoes, reading glasses pushed up into silver hair. He didn't climb the block. He stood at the platform's edge and scanned the line of slaves the way a man reads a menu he already knows, one hand resting on the railing, the other holding a folded paper. His gaze stopped on Cody. Stayed.
Cody's stomach clenched. The man was studying him, not his body but him, the set of his jaw, the width of his shoulders, the way he held the pose. Then the man turned to the overseer and asked something too quiet for Cody to hear. The overseer leaned in, answered. The man looked at the folded paper, looked back at Cody, and for three long heartbeats Cody's whole chest burned with something he couldn't name. Not fear. Not hope. The held breath before a verdict.
The man folded the paper into his pocket, nodded once to himself, and walked away. Didn't touch. Didn't speak. Just left with whatever he'd learned.
Cody exhaled and the tremor in his legs got worse. He asked. He asked about me. The thought sat hot and sick in his throat. And I wanted him to come back. I wanted a stranger to climb up here and put his hands on me because at least that would mean I was worth the climb.
Jax stood three feet away, untouched by any of them, and Cody felt the silence between them fill with something new. Not shame but fear. The cold, gutting kind of fear that lives in the belly and whispers: What if someone buys one of us and not the other? What if we're separated? What if I'm standing here tomorrow alone?
He didn't look at Jax. He couldn't.
The afternoon brought the real buyers.
A woman in a cowboy hat and expensive boots climbed the block and pointed at Jax. "Hey, horse, trot over here for inspection!"
The overseer nudged Jax to the platform's edge. Jax hesitated, then sank to his knees on the rough planks, awkward, unsure where to put his hands, thighs spread too wide then not enough, head dropping because he couldn't look at her. That impossible pole swung heavy between his legs. The woman grabbed his collar and yanked his head up. Her other hand, gloved in leather, seized his balls and crushed down. The pain shot through him like a jolt of electricity, and his shaft thickened, stiffening before he could stop it.
"Big fertile stud," she said, testing the solid weight. "Good balls. Show me the hole, boar."
Jax spun around on the dirty planks and went chest-down, all fours, skinny firm cheeks spread by his own shaking hands. His hole, pink, virgin-tight, clenching in the open air, puckered and flinched. The woman jammed a finger in without warning. The leather glove was cold and rough and the knuckle pushed past the ring of muscle with a wet pop that made Jax's balls clench against his body. His gorged shaft slapped wet flesh.
"Scrawny mutt," the woman said, twisting the finger. "Should be leaking like a bull-whore by now and you just clench. You're a wilted virgin scrap, got it? Low fuck-beast." She slapped his cock with her free hand, a sharp, ringing impact that made Jax's whole body jerk.
Jax gasped. It hit him like a wave, huge, drowning, total. She's rooting me like a filthy animal, stranger's hand inside, all of them watching, overseer grinning. He caught Cody averting his eyes entirely, the blush rising even on his friend's cheeks.
His shaft went soft. Instant, total, the plug violently pulled. The exposure crushed everything else, a heavy boot grinding down a bug. It sagged between his thighs, defeated.
The woman yanked her finger out, wiped it on her jeans, and walked away. Her hips swayed casual. She didn't look back.
Jax climbed to his knees under the stares of the other slaves. His eyes were burning. The ring of muscle pulsed on nothing, raw where the glove had been, the absence worse than the finger because at least the finger had been a fact and this was just air where a stranger's knuckle had cracked him open. His meat lay dead between his thighs. Everything that had been loud inside him, the burning, the heat, the confused wanting, had collapsed into something small and gray and used.
And the worst part, the part that made his throat close and his skin crawl with something he couldn't name: he felt empty. Not relieved. Empty. As if the finger had been filling a space he hadn't known was hollow, and now that it was gone the hollow was all he could feel. His hole twitched, clenching on the absence, and the sensation confused him so deeply that for a moment he forgot the staring and the platform and the collar and just stood there, inside himself, trying to understand why being left alone felt worse than being used.
Not ready, he thought. Can't be a real slave. Can't even keep hard when they root me. His cheeks burned so fiercely his vision swam. And why does the emptiness ache more than the finger did?
He returned to the line. Arms up. Cock forward. Shoulders pulled back. The overseer's whip tapped the back of his knee: "Wider, goat. You stand how the buyers need to see you, not how you feel like standing." Jax widened his stance and held it.
Cody's inspection came next.
A slim brunette with cold eyes and sweet perfume climbed the block and pointed. "This stud. Inspection."
The overseer herded Cody to the edge of the platform. He stood exposed and open, legs shoulder-wide, hands behind his back, back straight. His shaft sat half-thick against his thigh, blood still pooling there from the adrenaline of the last hour, and he couldn't will it down no matter how hard he clenched his jaw.
The woman didn't touch it. She stepped close, close enough that her perfume cut through the market stink, and jammed two fingers into his mouth without warning. She crushed down on his tongue, flattening it against the floor of his jaw. Cody's nostrils flared. He breathed through his nose, staring over her head, jaw locked open while a stranger rooted in his mouth, testing his teeth with equine indifference.
"Solid," she said. "Eats well." She pushed deeper, testing the back of his throat, and he gagged, deep, eyes watering.
She pulled her fingers out trailing spit and dragged them down his neck, wiping them on the thick, army-hard muscle of the young slave's chest. She wrapped her hand over his shoulder, thumb digging into the dense pectoral, testing the frame. "Can haul loads."
Her hand dropped lower and seized his cock in a wet grip. One rough stroke base to tip, and the shaft swelled rigid, the head flushing pink in her fist. "Already hard. Good, saves time." She said it with the flat tone of a clerk stamping a form. Her eyes never left the cock. Eight inches pulsing in her grip, balls clenched close, and she hadn't looked at his face once.
In the free world nobody touched you there. That was sacred. That was yours. Cody ground his teeth until his jaw ached. Now this bitch jerks me with my own spit on her fingers while the market watches. The heat in his face was unbearable. What are we?
She released his shaft and seized both nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Crushed them. Not a squeeze but a crunch, twisting with the intent to unscrew them from his chest.
"Sensitive nips," she noted, watching his face contort. "Milk easy." She gave his cheek a dismissive, dog-like pat.
Cody's pupils blew wide. Heat flooded his chest. Tears stung his eyes and he blinked them back, jaw straining until the muscles stood out in ropes. Not a cow. Not her pet. I'm a man, I've taken worse beatings than this. But she twists my nipples like udders and they all scan the meat.
"Turn around. Bend at the waist. Grab your ankles."
Not all fours. Worse. Standing, legs straight, folded in half with his ass in the air and his face between his own knees. The body obeyed while the man inside screamed. Cody bent, gripped his ankles with shaking hands, and felt his hole spread open in the breeze. The position pulled everything taut: hamstrings, lower back, the crack stretching wide, his balls dangling visible between his thighs, shaft swinging soft now, blood draining with gravity. Pink. Virgin. Tight. Puckering in the open air and the crawling heat. Worse than all fours because he couldn't see what was behind him. Worse because it was a punishment posture, stripping away every ounce of his pride.
A gloved fingertip pressed against the rim. Not a ram. A slow, clinical push, the leather rotating in deliberate circles, testing the resistance of the muscle, a meticulous calibration of a new glove. The ring clenched, released, clenched. She waited for each release and pressed deeper, knuckle by knuckle, patient, methodical, and the patience was worse than force because there was nothing to fight, just the steady invasion of a finger that knew exactly what it was doing.
The exposure was agonizing. Cody could feel the heavy stares from the market floor burning into his bent-over body like a physical weight pressing on his spine. My balls hanging loose. Hole forced open around her finger. Taking it standing up because she ordered me to fold and I folded—
Then the second finger rammed in without warning.
Pain exploded white behind his eyes. His virgin hole clamped around the invading knuckles, the muscle spasming, tearing at the edge where the slow stretch hadn't prepared it for the sudden width. His balls jolted. His spine tried to arch but the posture locked him folded. Sweat burst across his skin. A strangled sound ripped from his throat, not a scream, something between a grunt and a whimper that he bit down on until he tasted copper.
I survived beatings and hazing before I ever wore this collar, nothing broke me. But this stranger casually roots in my ass while the world watches me spread. Two young bucks arrived proud at dawn, and now we're just holes in the wind—
He nearly lunged. Every muscle in his body tensed for the spring, then the image of the rebel flashed behind his eyes. Blood between the planks. Swollen balls. The gag. The emptiness in those eyes after the fight was beaten out of them. Cody froze. The rage burned hotter. The crawling heat burned hotter. He held.
The woman kept the fingers inside for a long moment, twisting, pressing against the walls. Then she withdrew slowly, wiped her glove on her thigh, and stepped back. She looked down at his upside-down face, her voice flat and appraising.
"Background, boy?"
The overseer's whip tapped his thigh. "Answer her, dog."
Cody forced his jaw to work. He was a combat veteran, but folded in half with his virgin hole burning and his balls dangling for them to see, all his pride evaporated. When he spoke, he didn't sound like a soldier. He sounded like a small, frightened boy being punished.
"Former military, ma'am," he choked out to the wooden planks. "Army discharge."
A pause. Cody's heart hammered against his bent knees. His hole throbbed, stretched, empty, and something sick and desperate rose in his chest — she's considering, she's actually considering, maybe she'll take me off this block, maybe —
"Soldiers break ugly," the woman said. "Two months of work minimum, and they snap at the worst times. Not worth the risk." She stepped off the platform without looking back.
Cody straightened, calves quaking. The hope that had flared for three seconds collapsed into something worse than the pain. His hole pulsed a dull fire. His shaft had wilted to a sad limp worm. His balls ached low. The identity that had kept him fighting all day — I'm a hardened man, I can endure this — had just been the reason no one wanted him.
The overseers were hauling the rebel's limp body off the far end of the platform, cursing under their breath. In the gap of attention Jax shuffled close, and his lips barely moved: "Hold, brother."
The word hit Cody somewhere below the ribs. He swallowed and nodded without lifting his head.
They stood back up. Arms overhead. Cocks forward. Legs apart. Two virgin bucks, wet, wrung out, shivering on the block while the market hummed louder around them. Their bodies were on display. Their bodies were for sale. Nobody was buying.
The hours blurred. The sun climbed, peaked, and began its slide toward the far end of the hangar. More buyers came. Most walked past without slowing. One older man groped Cody's balls absently, said "Too young," and moved on. The overseers barked corrections when a slave's arms drooped or legs narrowed: "Wider, trash! Arms up, cock out, hold it or I'll hold it for you!" The whip cracked air more than skin, but the threat never slept.
Muscles burned. Thirst dried the throat to leather. The pose that had started as an order became a punishment of its own, thighs burning, shoulders screaming, arms going numb above the head. At some point Cody stopped thinking about escape or rage or his military past and started thinking about water, about sitting down, about the simple animal relief of bending his knees. The burn of that thought was worse than the burn of being naked.
And then a stranger thought crept in, quiet and cold, slipping under the rage, water seeping under a locked door.
I just want someone to take me. Not a good owner or a fair one. Just someone. Anyone who would end this, who would say "mine" and lead him off this block so his legs could stop shaking and his arms could come down and his hole could stop throbbing in the open air. He didn't care about dignity anymore. Dignity was something free men had. He just wanted the waiting to stop.
Somewhere behind him, the next block had gone quiet. The boy who'd been hawking himself hoarse all morning, the one with the black eye who'd promised he could haul 170-pound sacks, wasn't making a sound anymore. Cody didn't turn to look. He didn't want to know what silence meant on a block where noise was the only thing keeping you alive. But something cold and practical opened inside his chest, and for one nauseating second he heard his own voice in his head, clear as a drill sergeant: Owner, buy me. Strong back, tight hole, army-trained. I'll haul whatever you need. Just don't scrap me. The words formed fully, ready, waiting at the back of his throat like vomit.
The thought horrified him. He shoved it down, buried it under the army voice, under the hate, under the memory of who he'd been yesterday. But it had been there. It had spoken in his own voice. And some part of him, the part that had been standing naked for eight hours with a collar cutting into his neck, knew it would come back.
Three slaves to his left, Jax was staring at nothing, lips cracked, eyes glazed. Cody recognized the look. It was the same thing happening behind a different face.
Late afternoon. The light turned amber and the shadows stretched long across the platforms.
Cody's hole still throbbed a dull fire. His meat sat soft and pathetic against his thigh. The defiant young buck had sunk somewhere inside himself: his lingering pride dissolved in the space between that woman's fingers and the empty air where she'd been. He stood because his body knew how to stand, and the man inside was gone.
Then something changed.
Far across the market floor, moving between platforms with the easy stride of a man who owned every plank beneath his feet, a figure. About thirty. Solid. Calm. Not browsing but reading. His gaze traveled across the blocks, skimming the headlines until something caught.
Cody's eyes found him before his brain registered why. Something about the way the man moved, no hurry, no swagger, just a quiet certainty that the world would arrange itself around him. Gray eyes. Short dark hair. Egyptian cotton shirt, plain, tucked into khaki slacks. No entourage. No whip. Just the man.
The gray eyes skimmed the unbroken pup block and lingered. On Cody. One beat. Two.
Something stabbed through Cody's chest, not pain, not fear. Power. A shield going up on the first day of battle. The same look a sergeant gives when he sees a soldier instead of a boy.
Cody lifted his eyes and met the gray stare. The world tilted. He held it for half a heartbeat, gray piercing through the wreckage, through the collar, through the aching stretched hole and the pathetic wilted shaft, through everything, seeing him, and then Cody dropped his gaze to the floor because locking eyes with that man was staring directly into the sun.
His whole body quaked. Back, arms, legs, all of it trembling. His cock leaked, not hard, not arousal, just a thin thread of something clear seeping from the slit. Tears burned his eyes.
Fuck... why does his gaze do this? Why do I want to belong to that... Master?
The man's eyes had already moved on. Cody stood on the block and shook, and didn't know if the man would come back, and didn't know why every cell in his body was screaming that he had to.
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