Page 5 of Lost Touch
I looked like shit, basically. Sort of familiar and sort of not, but absolutely awful no matter whose face it was. The only thing I was missing was scraggly beard growth. I had a vague memory of the warlocks doing something to me to keep me from growing a beard to save the trouble of having their prisoners shave.
Small mercies?
No, not really.
Further down, I had scars. Lines on my arms, like I’d been cut over and over again. A weird roundish one at the juncture of my neck and shoulder that looked like a bite mark, of all things.
No, I couldn’t spend more time looking at those. I couldn’t remember getting the bite-like one. Maybe that predated the experiments, since I did remember most of my time in the prison, at least in outline? But the cuts…those I could remember, and I didn’t damn well want to. Ironic, that.
Some poking at my horrifically chapped lips and prodding at my limp, greasy hair later, and I’d had more than enough of that, too. I had a real, civilized bathroom to enjoy, and dammit, I’d use it to the fullest. At least I could fix the greasy hair.
My clothes, a T-shirt and pair of boxers that clearly belonged to Drew by the way they hung on me, went into the hamper under a set of shelves holding towels and soap, and I flipped on the shower to let it get hot.
And that’s where it all went sideways.
Somehow, I’d already gotten used to the idea that I couldn’t feel pain anymore. Weird, and creepy, and fucked-up, but okay. That was my reality now.
Amazing the things you could adjust to when your reality was a horror show.
But also somehow, I hadn’t taken the next logical step and figured out that I wouldn’t really be able to feelanything.
Pissing didn’t give me any true sense of relief. That visceral pleasure from emptying a too-full bladder? It didn’t come. I knew it ought to. I could remember that from my cell. Even in that prison, I’d had that much pleasure, at least.
And now it felt like…nothing.
The pressure eased. But it didn’t feelgood.
I stared down at my limp cock in my hand.
And then I stroked it, up and down, tugging a little. And that didn’t feel good either. After a few moments of pulling increasingly hard, desperate for anything to happen, my skin reddened, and I dropped it like I’d been burned.
Not that I could’ve felt it if I’d been burned.
I couldn’t experience my hand on my dick except as a touch, as pressure. I couldn’t remember, even, if that’d been something I enjoyed before the prison, because I’d never jerked off there. I’d never had any libido at all. Maybe because they’d done something else to me…my cock hung there, flushed too pink, the damage I’d done handling it so roughly feeling like…nothing.
Nothing at all.
Drew burst through the door half a second after I collapsed to the floor, the thud of my ass hitting the tile rattling my teeth. I couldn’t feel what had to be a serious bruise. I put my hands over my face, but my ears rang and the dizziness had me reeling, so heavy I couldn’t keep myself from toppling over.
He caught me, his strong arms around me as solid and warm as they’d been in my cell.
Naked and sobbing and with my vision gone all black and sparkly, I leaned into them, leaned into him, and let my head fall against his shoulder.
His hands petting my hair, stroking my back, holding me close, didn’t register as anything but a touch. They gave me none of the sensations I vaguely knew I should’ve had from that much contact with someone so incredibly good-looking and attractive, not to mention kind.
Was I attracted to men in the first place? I really had no fucking clue.
I shook and shivered and completely lost my ever-loving shit, a stranger in my own body, in my own mind.
Drew kept talking to me, but I couldn’t focus on it. He moved me. I huddled against the wall, bereft, wishing he’d hold me again. A second later he lifted me up, cradled me against his chest, and stepped into the shower, a big, square stall with no tub—perfect for carrying someone into. Maybe he did this a lot.
I started to laugh, a hysterical hitching of my chest that was nearly indistinguishable from the sobs. The water felt hot.
It didn’t feelgood.
Nothing had ever hurt so much, in a way that didn’t affect the physical at all. Had this been the goal of their experiments? To see how much mental anguish could hurt when the body’s responses were eliminated from the equation?
Those bastards would never know, at least, since Drew and the other terrifying guy had apparently ripped them to shreds with their claws and fangs and sprayed their blood all over the concrete walls.
