Mesmerized Read Free

with a delinquent?
    He had some suspicions. “I don’t like men like that.”
    Ellis paused and then snorted a laugh without much humor. “You all say that. Each time I hear it I’m torn between rage that you all have been so preyed upon your first assumption is that I’m out to bugger you, and amusement. I’m not after your bum, boy.”
    “Then what? What do you want from me?” He loathed the small spark of hope this man had lit in his belly. Hope was weakness.
    “Operative Haws.” Ellis spoke and a man—no, Andrei looked again at the male who’d stepped into the corridor—he’d be a man in a year or two, but he wasn’t much older than Andrei was.
    Ellis, despite being as massive as he was, still managed to appear graceful as he rolled another smoke. Andrei didn’t know what their game was, but he was smart enough to listen. Just in case.
    “Have you ever considered military service?” Ellis asked, lighting the hand-rolled smoke.
    “How about I answer you when you’ve shared those with me?” Andrei tipped his chin toward the pouch.
    Ellis’s face darkened a brief moment. “No. You’re too young. How about you answer me, or we can finish this right now?”
    Andrei clicked his teeth, clenching his jaw. His mother had told him he had good intuition, and that intuition told him Ellis would simply walk out if Andrei kept silent. His gut also told him this could be something important.
    So he gave up his words. “No.”
    “Why not? Is the idea of a real bed, a job and some credits in your pocket so terribly unappealing to you?” Ellis waved a hand at the surroundings. “This is better?”
    “It’s the same thing. I’m a prisoner either way.” He shrugged, nearly believing his reply.
    “Is it, boy?” Gone was his name, and Andrei felt . . . bereft. Anger surged that he’d care. He preferred it to the sadness.
    “What do you know about it? Sitting there with your soft hands and your medals. What do you know about struggling?”
    Ellis’s mouth tightened and then curved into a rueful smile. “Ah, the hubris of the young to imagine they’re the only ones who understand. I suppose the answer is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I know what it’s like to be chained in a cell, beaten for trying to retain my humanity.”
    It was the way he said it that broke through the anger. He snuck a look to the other one, standing, seemingly at ease on the other side of the bars. Deceiving. There was no ease in the coil of muscles and the quick sweep of his gaze around the area.
    “Why is he here?”
    Ellis didn’t bother looking back to the other soldier. “He’s got my back. It’s always good to have that. Do you?”
    When Andrei didn’t answer, Ellis simply went on. “The question—the real question—is are you satisfied with this? Are you so lazy and without vision that you’d allow yourself to be guided toward a lifetime of stints in lockup and an early, probably violent death? If you are, just say so and I’ll be on my way. I have work to do.”
    Andrei took a look at the man outside the bars.
    He made eye contact and grew very still as the soldier took him in but remained silent. Andrei was off balance and feeling cornered. Anger and frustration, his diet it had seemed, filled his veins, making him feel trapped.
    Which, he supposed, he was.
    But he sure as seven hells had no plans to willingly enslave himself to the Federation.
    “I can see by your face that you’re arguing with yourself.”
    “Look, Comandante, I don’t know you. I don’t know why you’re here. I’m no soldier. I’m just—”
    “Another kid in lockup for the fifth, seventh, thirteenth time.” The soldier outside the bars spoke quietly, intensely. “You planning to make a career out of that? That all you ever want to be?”
    “What do you know about it?”
    “Enough that I’m going to do you a favor you probably won’t believe you deserve. This is a dead end. There is nothing for you here. Nothing.