Chapter 10 Nikolai
Chapter Ten
NIKOLAI
My skin remembers.
The electrodes are gone, removed with the same clinical precision that applied them, but my nerve endings haven’t received the message. They continue to fire in phantom patterns, ghost signals racing along pathways that were overloaded beyond their design specifications.
My thighs twitch. My stomach muscles flutter beneath the thin fabric of my smock. The places where the pads were attached feel raw, hypersensitive, as if the air itself is too rough against them.
I should feel violated.
I do feel violated.
But that’s not all I feel, and the not-all is what’s making me sick.
My body came. Under duress, under restraint, under the hands of a man who was using me for something I still don’t fully understand—my body betrayed me completely. And for one fraction of a second, in the moment before the shame crashed over me, there was something that felt like relief.
Like surrender. Like finally stopping the fight I’d been losing since the first time he touched my face.
I hate that fraction of a second. I hate it more than I hate him.
The amber light glows soft and warm above me. He chose this light. He selected the specific wavelength, the precise intensity. This is not the harsh fluorescent assault he used in the early days. This is mercy made visible.
The Monster is compromised.
And I am compromised too. We are both becoming something wrong.
I close my eyes and let my body process the residual sensations. The orgasm he extracted from me was ripped from my nervous system through sheer overwhelming input. My stomach churns when I remember it.
What kind of creature am I becoming?
Nikolai Petrenko is dead. Buried in an empty box in Moscow while his father pretended to weep. What remains is something simpler. Something that watches the door and counts the seconds and waits for the sound of footsteps in the corridor with an anticipation that makes me want to vomit.
I asked him to leave. I told him I couldn’t look at him. And now I’m sitting here, straining toward the door, desperate for him to come back so I can hate him to his face.
Or worse—so I can stop hating him.
When the footsteps finally come, the relief is physical.
It crashes through me like a drug. My heart rate spikes. My breath catches. My hands clench against the restraints, not in fear but in anticipation.
He’s coming back. He didn’t leave me alone.
The lock disengages. The door opens.
Alexei steps through the threshold and pauses, his pale eyes finding me in the amber glow. He’s carrying a tray again: cleaning solution, fresh bandages, a cloth, a bottle of water.
Maintenance. He’s here to maintain me.
The thought settles into my chest like something wounded. He’s going to touch me again. He’s going to put his hands on my skin and clean the places where he hurt me.
He approaches without speaking. The silence between us has developed its own texture, heavy with things neither of us has acknowledged aloud.
He begins with my thighs, where the electrode pads left faint red marks on the sensitive skin. The cleaning solution is cool against my flesh. His gloved fingers work with practiced efficiency, but I notice the way he’s careful not to apply pressure.
“The shell companies,” I say, breaking the silence. My voice is rough from overuse. “Did I give you enough? Or do you need more?”
He doesn’t respond immediately. He finishes cleaning one thigh and moves to the other.
“The intelligence you provided is being verified. If it proves accurate, it will be sufficient for Ivan’s immediate requirements.”
Ivan. The name is a bucket of cold water.
“And if it’s not sufficient?”
“Then additional sessions will be required.”
Additional sessions. The words should terrify me. Instead, I feel something twist in my stomach that might be anticipation.
I’m disgusted with myself.
He moves to my stomach, where the electrodes produced the most intense sensations. The cleaning solution stings slightly against skin that’s still oversensitive, and I hiss between my teeth. He pauses, his hand hovering above my abdomen.
“You don’t have to be so gentle,” I say. “I’m not going to break.”
“Tissue damage requires appropriate recovery time.”
Clinical. Always clinical. As if he wouldn’t have called a medic if efficiency were truly his priority.
He reaches across my body to adjust the headrest. The motion brings his arm close to my face, and as he leans forward his sleeve rides up, exposing several centimeters of his inner wrist.
I see the scar.
It’s not subtle. It’s raised and irregular, the kind of scarring that comes from a wound that was opened more than once. The tissue has healed badly.
The scar isn’t an accident. It’s too deliberate.
He notices me looking. His arm freezes in place, the sleeve still raised. I watch his face and see the micro-expression that flickers across his features before he can suppress it.
Shame. The Monster feels shame.
He pulls his arm back and adjusts his sleeve, but the motion is too quick. The mask has slipped.
“The Kennel,” I say.
The word falls between us like a stone dropped into still water. He goes completely motionless.
“I don’t know what that is,” I continue, watching his face. “But you mentioned it once. You said you recognized my father’s methods from your training.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Did they do that to you?” I nod toward his covered wrist. “The people who trained you?”
Nothing.
“Or did you do it to yourself?”
His eyes snap to mine. The blankness is gone, replaced by something I can’t immediately identify.
“Why would you think that?” His voice is controlled, but there’s a tremor underneath it.
“Because I would,” I say. “If I’d been trained the way I’m guessing you were trained, I would have needed to know if I could still feel anything. If there was still a person inside all that conditioning.”
Silence.
“I’m guessing you cut yourself to see if it hurt. And it did. And that was either the best thing you’d ever felt or the worst, and maybe you couldn’t tell the difference anymore.”
His pulse is visible in his throat.
I have found something. I have reached through the armor and touched the creature that lives inside it.
“The Kennel,” he says finally, “was a training facility. It no longer exists.”
“But you still do.”
“That is... subject to interpretation.”
The admission costs him something. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens.
I want to reach for him. The wanting is so intense that my hands strain against the restraints. I want to touch the place where the scar hides beneath his sleeve.
My father’s belt. His trainers’ methods. Different tools, same result.
We are both broken things.
“Alexei,” I say softly.
He flinches. The use of his name affects him in ways that commands and pleas never could.
“Touch me.” The words escape before I can stop them. “Please. I need—I need to feel something that isn’t pain. Something that isn’t clinical.”
His breath catches. I watch his hands curl into fists at his sides.
“That would be a deviation from established parameters.”
“We’re already past parameters. We’ve been past them since last night.”
He stands frozen. The amber light catches the angles of his face.
Then he does something I don’t expect.
He reaches for my left wrist restraint and unlocks it.
My hand falls free. The sensation is disorienting—I’ve been bound so long that the absence of metal feels like floating. I flex my fingers, staring at my own hand as if I’ve never seen it before.
“If you want this,” he says, his voice low and rough, “tell me now. If you don’t, I stop. I leave. We do not speak of it again.”
He’s giving me a choice. An actual choice, with one hand free and a clear verbal option to refuse.
It’s not real freedom. I know that. I’m still his prisoner. But it’s something.
I reach up and touch his face.
His skin is warm. Slightly rough with stubble. Human. Real. My fingers trace the line of his jaw, his cheekbone, the hollow beneath his eye where exhaustion has carved shadows.
“This is inadvisable,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t care.”
“You should care. Attachment to an interrogator is a textbook trauma response.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m feeling.” I slide my fingers into his hair, gripping the short strands. “I know what Stockholm syndrome looks like. This isn’t that. This is me, choosing you, even though you’ve given me every reason not to.”
His pulse jumps against my palm.
“Kiss me,” I say. “Not as an interrogator. Not as the Monster. Just kiss me.”
Something breaks in his expression. The last remnant of the mask crumbles, and underneath I see hunger—raw and desperate and matching my own.
His mouth crashes into mine.
The kiss is nothing like I expected. It’s not clinical or controlled. It’s consuming—his tongue pushing past my lips, his hand tangling in my hair, his body pressing against mine. I moan into his mouth, my free hand clawing at his shoulder.
His other hand moves down my chest, pushing aside the thin fabric of the smock. When his fingers find my nipple, I gasp against his lips.
“Sensitive,” he murmurs. Not a question—an observation. But now that clinical attention is focused on my pleasure.
He rolls the nipple between his fingers, and I arch into the touch, my cock hardening beneath the smock. He notices—of course he notices—and his hand slides lower.
“Please,” I whisper against his mouth. “Please, Alexei.”
His hand wraps around my cock.
The sound I make is inhuman. Weeks of deprivation, weeks of having every physical sensation controlled—and now his hand is on me, stroking slowly, his grip firm.
“You’re so responsive.” His voice is rougher than I’ve ever heard it.
“Because it’s you.” I thrust into his fist. “It’s different because it’s you.”
He kisses me again, swallowing my moans as his hand works me faster. His technique is precise—optimal pressure, exactly the right rhythm—but there’s nothing cold about it. His breathing is ragged. He wants this as much as I do.
“Come,” he commands. “Come for me, Nikolai.”
I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me, different from what happened last night—this one is mine, I chose it, I asked for it. My cock pulses in his hand, and I cry out his name.
When I open my eyes, he’s looking at his hand. At the evidence of what he just did.
“That was—” He stops. He seems at a loss for words.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “It was.”
He retrieves a cloth from his supplies and cleans his hand, then gently cleans me. The aftercare is as precise as everything else he does, but there’s a tenderness to it now.
“You unlocked the restraint,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He’s silent for a long moment. “Because what happened last night—I needed you to have a choice. Even a small one.”
The admission lands between us.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” I say. “Not anymore. I’ve already seen what you are when you stop performing the Monster.”
“I am not pretending. I am the Monster. That is what I was made to be.”
“Made,” I repeat. “Not born. Made. Like a weapon.”
His eyes close briefly. “Yes.”
“And weapons don’t get to choose how they’re used.”
“No.”
“But you’re choosing now.” I hold his gaze. “You chose to unlock the restraint. You chose to give me an out.”
The silence stretches between us.
“You’re choosing me,” I say.
He stares at me. The mask is gone now, and underneath it I see pain.
“I should go,” he says. “Maintenance is complete. You should rest.”
He turns toward the door.
“Alexei.”
He pauses.
“The Kennel made you,” I say. “But it didn’t finish you. There are still pieces left.”
He stands there for three heartbeats.
Then he walks through the door and it closes behind him.
I am alone again with my amber light.
The Monster is a prisoner too. He just happens to be on the other side of the door. The Kennel built walls inside his mind that are stronger than any concrete barrier.
Until me.
I don’t know what I am to him. But I know that when he looks at me, something inside him is struggling to break free.
And I know that I want to be the one who helps him escape.
He showed me his scar. He unlocked my restraint. He gave me a choice.
That’s currency more valuable than any intelligence I could trade.
I close my eyes. The memory of his mouth on mine is warmer than the amber light.
He gave me a choice. He gave me a name. He gave me a scar.
I have three pieces of the puzzle now.
I will find the rest.