Plop. Plop.

Blood dripped into the metal bucket steadily. Just small drops, but they amounted to quite a good bit. Collecting in that medium-sized bucket, filling up his nostrils with that unmissable scent.

Coppery.

It was an addiction, he was coming to admit. The need to see the man who’d harmed his wife bleed.

Suspended upside down, the naked Stavros was held in place by chains that lopped around his neck, hung down his torso to his bound wrists then continued on to his ankles. The shackles at his ankles dangled from a large hook extending from the high ceiling. Skin pale from the loss of blood, darkly purple bruises decorating his body, Stavros was soaked from sweat and blood. Aside from the occasional groan that seemed to escape him involuntarily, he remained quiet. His lips were chapped and peeling, but his eyes stayed closed, breath choppy as his face got almost as brightly colored as the blood that dripped from him.

Plop. Plop.

Daniel shifted from his position, leaning against the bars of the cage, arms folded. He nodded to the man next to him.

“Do it.”

Henan stepped into the cage and Daniel followed closely. He liked to watch these things. Make sure they were done right. The way he wanted.

Henan picked up the high-powered hose and pointed it at Stavros’ face, then he turned the power on.

Stavros jerked violently with a loud gurgle.

Daniel smiled.

Ice-cold water, directly onto his captive’s face. Stavros could twist only so much. There was no escaping that hose and the water. Daniel knew how it felt, too. Like a million tiny needles were flying into your skin at once, at top speed, embedding in your bones. Freezing you from the inside out.

Water flooded the floor, sloshing up against his boots before sliding down the angled floor and circling the drain. This cage was built for this.

He watched dispassionately as Stavros fought a futile battle to escape the hose. Failing. Every jerk caused the chain around his neck to tighten and bite deeper into his throat.

If Daniel was lucky, Stavros might even come away with a tattoo around his throat, much like the one he’d given Daniel the night he’d killed his wife.

“Enough,” he told Henan softly.

Henan immediately dropped the hose.

Daniel dropped to his knees to be face to face with a sputtering Stavros. His captive’s lips were blue, teeth chattering as he wheezed.

It was…beautiful.

“Mr. Konstantinou.” He grabbed Stavros by the chin, holding his bobbing head in place. Water dripped from his hair, streaming from his nose and ears, bubbling past his lips when he coughed long and loud.

“Ni-Nieto.” Stavros’ words trembled badly, but when he opened his red-rimmed eyes, they mocked Daniel. “Didn’t I—” His throat convulsed and his eyes rolled back in his head. His lashes dropped then lifted again. “Didn’t I say call me Stavros?”

“You fascinate me, Mr. Konstantinou. I wish to cut you open, dissect you,” Daniel murmured. “To see what makes you tick. What drives you.”

Stavros’ laugh quickly turned into a fit of hacking cough, rocking his body as it hung upside down from the hook. “D-do you read minds, Nieto?” Wrists tied together at his front, his fingers—the tips also tinged with blue—twitched. “Because I was th-thinking I’d love to finish what I started.” His gaze held a challenge even as he swung from the chains. “You know, carve your chest open. See if the tin man has a heart.”

“Get him down,” he told Henan, without taking his gaze from Stavros as he stood. “We’re not done,” he directed that last bit to Stavros.

“Hey, N-Nieto, have you noticed that you keep kneeling for me?” Stavros asked in a rush. His teeth sank into his peeling bottom lip, halting their trembling. “I like it.” Eyes swollen, teeth chattering loudly, he still managed to wink at Daniel. “You should always be on your knees.”

His defiance was just about as fascinating as his suffering. Daniel smiled. “You give excellent conversation, Mr. Konstantinou.”

“M-My bed partners didn’t keep me around for just my wonderful physique and amazing prowess.”

From what Daniel witnessed while surveilling Stavros, the Greek didn’t keep bed partners around for longer than the length of time it took to get the deed done. But it didn’t matter, so he didn’t speak on it. Instead he turned and walked out the cage.

“Don’t stay away too long.” Stavros’ halting words drifted to him. “I’ll be waiting impatiently for the next time you take a knee for me.”

* * *

He’d lost track of the last time he’d eaten. They’d served up more pain than he’d experienced in a long time, and drained him of more blood than he’d thought it possible to lose.

But the most pressing thing for Stavros at the moment was food. He closed his eyes, trying to smell anything but the waste of his own body. Countless days and nights chained up inside this cage. The sporadic feedings, and the torture. If it wasn’t for the no food or water for days thing, he’d actually like it here in this frozen, damp and dank dungeon.

Been a long time since his last vacation.

Lying on the cold floor where he’d been when they finished trying to drown him, he shifted his weight gingerly from his swollen left side to the equally swollen right. His throat burned from the pressure of the chains that had been wrapped around his neck. His ankles. His wrists. They all hurt. He wouldn’t be surprised if his fingers were broken. They were useless now from him grabbing and twisting on the chains.

There was no way he could get on his feet, not with the chains or the way his entire body hurt, but he suspected his legs would be useless in holding him up.

The sound of steady footsteps against the cement floor made him twitch, but he could do nothing more except lay there and wait. The smell of food hit him just as a heavy boot landed on his back.

It wasn’t Daniel.

He didn’t have to open his eyes to know the newcomer was Henan, with the anger and the snake-like quality.

“Up,” Henan barked. He kicked the back of Stavros’ head.

It hurt—what didn’t hurt anymore?—but making a sound took too much effort. Plus he didn’t want to do anything that could make the food he smelled go away. His stomach cramped, raw and painful. He rolled as much as he could onto his belly, wincing, biting the inside of his cheek. Then struggled to a crouch before lifting his head.

Henan had turned on the light above the gate of the cage, and he stood there, a plate of food in his hand as he watched Stavros. He wasn’t a tall man, that Henan. He reminded Stavros of a steroid-riddled bodybuilder, barrel-chested, back rounded off as he walked with his heels barely touching the ground. Small shaved head, face in a perpetual scowl, muscles bulging, veins protruding.

He didn’t speak much, following the orders of the man in charge. Those orders seemed to keep an otherwise unhinged Henan in check.

“Hungry, huh?” Henan’s accent was thick, difficult to cut through.

At his question, Stavros shrugged. “I wouldn’t turn down a steak.” His words emerged slurred and slow, but there was nothing he could do about that.

“You can have this.” Henan held out the plate, and Stavros’ taste buds immediately came alive, flooding his mouth with saliva when he spotted eggs and bread. “If you beg.”

Oh. Well then. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” he leaned forward, speaking softly as though sharing a secret. “But I don’t beg. Not for anything. Or anyone.”

Henan chuckled. “If you want this—” The laughter went away quickly. “You beg.”

Stavros sighed. Obviously he’d be getting no sustenance any time soon. “Listen, tell el jefe hiding out there if he wants me to beg, he can try to make me, himself. I’m not going anywhere.”

He blamed his swollen right eye for his inability to see Henan’s booted foot headed his way. The kick to his face knocked Stavros backward and as he fell, so did the kicks.

Shit.

He tried to curl into a ball, to cover his face, but the chains restricted his movement, leaving him open and more than vulnerable to the steel-toed boots. Blood flooded his mouth and slid down his throat, choking him. He coughed and sputtered, dragging his battered body along the cold floor in an attempt to get away from Henan’s insistent boot, but there was only so far he could go.

There was no fighting back, no escaping. Which meant he had to lay there and get kicked within an inch of his life. Of course, because Nieto didn’t want him dead.

Not yet.

The pain blinded him. His moans, ragged and wet, hit his ears and Stavros cringed at that sound as much as the pain itself. He hated being weak and vulnerable. This situation was the epitome of it.

No way out. No escape.

Just this, day in and day out.

A particularly vicious blow slammed his head down onto the concrete, and he must have blacked out because the next thing he knew, a hot steady stream of liquid was pouring down on him.

He groaned, lashes fluttering open. On his back, he gazed up through hazy, shifting vision to see Henan standing over him, his zipper down.

His cock out.

Peeing on him.

When the other man noticed Stavros’ opened eyes, he grinned and aimed higher.

His face.

The urine splashed onto his left cheek, getting into his nose. His mouth.

Stavros’ body refused to budge. Refused to turn away. Nothing worked except his mind and his eyes as he lay there, dreaming of all the ways he’d make Henan pay.

All the ways he’d make Daniel Nieto pay.

He faded on that cold floor, body broken, soaked in blood and urine. He faded as Henan exited the cage with the food.

He snapped awake coughing, throat and mouth so dry they felt tight, cracked. Stavros tried lifting his head and a small cry left him when pain assaulted him. He dropped back onto the floor as he panted. The mixed, arid stench of urine and blood assaulted his nostrils, burning his nose and eyes.

He dry-heaved.

Water.

He needed water.

His throat hurt, it was so dry. He didn’t have to touch his face to know layers of blood were caked on there. Again, he brought his head up, ready for the pain, but still unable to smother the snarl that ache brought to his lips. He managed a semi-sitting position and looked around.

The light was out, but a small puddle of liquid glistened over in the corner, near the drain. A tight clicking sound echoed in his ears when he attempted to swallow. The pain in his stomach went beyond hunger, beyond anything. The emptiness seemed to settle into his bones.

But water.

He needed water. So he crawled toward that small puddle, a little bigger than the size of a silver dollar. Water that must have settled there after his semi-drowning earlier. Once he reached his goal, Stavros bent and lapped at it.

It was warm.

But liquid.

Bitter with another weird taste.

Maybe salt.

He jerked his mouth away.

Was he licking up Henan’s urine?

Liquid.

He’d worry about it all later, another time when he wasn’t about to faint from lack of water. He bent again, sniffing at it, refusing to acknowledge what he was doing. How low he crouched, literally and figuratively. Tongue scraping at the ground, he lapped. The moisture burning his lips and the cuts on his chin.

But…liquid. Soon it was all gone, but he stayed bent over, tongue to the floor, heaving.

Refusing to believe this was him. Stavros Konstantinou.

“Mr. Konstantinou.” The light in the cage clicked on. “You don’t look so good.”

Stavros stiffened at Daniel’s voice, but he didn’t lift his head, too angry at himself at getting like this. Even chained and bloodied, he’d had a sort of advantage. Now, it was gone.

“Nothing to say?” Daniel’s footsteps grew closer until he was inside the cage with Stavros, standing just a few paces away.

Stavros remained on his hands and knees, naked ass in the air, but he did look up into Daniel’s mocking daze. “You should kill me,” he rasped. “The sooner, the better.”

“Oh?” Daniel’s lips quirked as he pushed away from his position and crouched down next to Stavros. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I’ll kill you,” Stavros told him. “But not before I gut Henan and hang him up by his entrails.”

Daniel’s nose wrinkled. “That is very specific. But you know, Mr. Konstantinou, I’m not going to kill you. Not yet anyway.”

Stavros sat up fully, gritting his teeth at the energy that simple action took. Energy he didn’t have. “Your plan is to starve me to death slowly?”

“Henan brought you food earlier, did he not?” Daniel lifted an eyebrow. “I’m told you didn’t eat it. Something about refusing to beg for it.” He eyed Stavros up and down. “Shame.”

“You watched me, didn’t you?” Stavros asked him. “You think you know me, don’t you? When you were beating off to images of me while hiding in my bushes, did you see anything that made you think I was the one who did the begging?”

“No.” Daniel leaned over, so close Stavros could smell the coffee on his breath. “I also didn’t see anything about you liking golden showers, but here you are—” He nodded to where Stavros had been crouched not even a minute ago. “Dragging your tongue all over my floor in search of more piss.”

The laughter in his tone was hard to miss, so Stavros allowed the humiliation to wash over him for only a second. Just that, because he didn’t have the time for anything else. “We do what we have to in order to survive.”

“I agree.” Daniel cocked his head and licked his delectable lips—damn his lips—before his teeth flashed. “But I think it’s funny—in a hilarious sort of way—that you think you can survive me.”

His confidence was the most attractive thing Stavros had ever witnessed. He’d been around the most gorgeous men and women. But it was the cool and calm way that Daniel Nieto talked about killing him that had Stavros’ battered body attempting to stir.

They had moved way beyond twisted and were flirting with sick now.

Unsurprisingly, Stavros was cool with that.

“How long do you plan on keeping me here?” He’d asked the question before. He’d ask it again.

“How long do you think?” Daniel shifted, gaze mocking. “I don’t need to know anything from you. There are no questions I need answered, no information I seek.” His mouth curved even as that familiar darkness in his eyes got deeper, pulling at Stavros. “This is pleasure. I’m taking from you because you took from me.”

“To make yourself feel better.”

Pity flashed in Daniel’s eyes. Pity. For Stavros. “Nothing will make me feel better. I know enough to know that.”

Stavros brought his bound hands up and to his credit, Daniel didn’t move or even bat an eyelash when Stavros touched his chin with bloodied and broken fingers. “I like your voice,” he whispered. “Do you tell people who gave it to you?” He remembered wrapping the garrote around Daniel’s throat while he slept with his wife next to him in that luxurious California King. Fight of his life, that night. He’d been rock hard in the aftermath, so he’d gotten high, gotten fucked, coming nice and long with the memory of Daniel Nieto struggling underneath him. “You tell them the name of the man who got close enough to scar you permanently?”

Daniel grinned. And fuck him, but it was vicious. No way that grin didn’t taste the way it looked. Stavros’ mouth watered.

“I like my scars,” Daniel said softly. Succinctly. “They tell me where I’ve been. What I’ve survived. We both know you will never get the same options.” He moved away from Stavros’ touch then. “Because you will never survive me.”

Stavros wanted to punish him for that verbal mike drop, but there was nothing he could do except watch as Daniel got to his feet and motioned toward the entrance of the cage.

Henan appeared, and Stavros stared daggers at the fucker while Henan grinned back at him.

“Time for your bath, Mr. Konstantinou,” Daniel said. “You smell like hunger.” He turned away then paused, looking back at Stavros over his shoulder. “And piss.”

Son of a—

The force of the hose hit him.

Painful. Yes, of course.

But water.

So he gave a mental shrug and curled up on the floor until it was over.