Page 27 of Designation Prey

“Very good, Daniel.”

The comment is a surprise. “I’m not doing anything,” he says uncertainly.

Liam squeezes his leg. “You are, sweetheart. Opening your legs when your Dominant touches you, that’s a good instinctive response. My jacket is in the bag on the back seat. Grab it and use it for a pillow.”

“I can stay awake.”

“You don’t need to. It’s a bit of a drive still and you’re exhausted.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have a cabin. If I’m not on base then I’m there.”

Daniel takes Liam’s jacket, touches it carefully, then lifts it to his nose and breathes it in, biting back the moan he was about to make. Fear slams through him, as if he did screw up and is about to be punished. That’s what he’s used to, after all. It’d be nice if he could just enjoy the freedom of being with a Dominant. Experience it with enthusiasm and be uninhibited.

What will happen once they get there?

“I think we should talk about what’s going to happen,” Liam says, as if he can read Daniel’s mind, which is a strangely erotic thought. What if Liam could read his mind? How would that work? The fantasy is there instantly.

Liam would be aroused, wanting to fuck him, and Daniel would say no, hell, he could even mean no, but that wouldn’t stop his Dominant. He’d know Daniel could take it. If he tried to leave, just ran, Liam would come after him, press him down to the bed, force him?—

“It’s your first time, your first mounting, and it can be overwhelming. Especially with your background. I’m concerned about how much you’ve been denied in the past. You have some strongly learned behaviors. A resistance to submission.”

He waits, wanting Daniel to respond. What is Daniel supposed to say? “That’s true.”

Liam keeps waiting.

“But I don’t want that to get in the way. Stop you, I mean.” That probably sounds wrong. “The experience. The truth is that I’ve had denial, medication, therapy, you name it, all with the intent of making me other than what I am. I’m tired. I’m tired and I’m… curious. With you, anyway. When my father is well, this will end. So just do whatever you want to do to me, and let’s see how that goes. It can’t be any worse than what everyone else has done to me.”

Liam glances over at him and then away. “That’s not a ringing endorsement. And it’s a very passive response. There isn’t a lot of agency or desire in ‘sure, go ahead and do your worst.’”

“No, but—” He takes a breath, unable to articulate what needs to be said.

“Which might normally be a massive red flag, but your designation is prey.”

Daniel looks out the window, trying to keep his breathing even.

“A willingness to surrender to pain, to bad things, is hardwired into your DNA. I assume you’ve told your father how much you don’t want to be a Dominant, right?”

“My father wants to send me to Montana and put me in the ground. If the doctors run out of possibilities to fix me, that’s what will happen. If you think General Burrows is willing to let his son be a submissive whore, meat for any soldier who wants him, you’re an idiot. None of this has anything to do with me. Hell, my whole life hasn’t had anything to do with me. I should have run. Maybe that’s why I’m prey. Maybe, when they put me in that chamber and started fucking around with my DNA, I shouldn’t have been thinking?—”

His voice breaks and he has to stop talking. Jesus fucking Christ. He did not need to say that.

“Very few submissive soldiers want to be submissive. I’d imagine most men go into it thinking, ‘please don’t let me become submissive’ or ‘Dominant, Dominant,’ again and again. In fact, I’ve heard that from a number of submissives over the years. What happened to you and what you became wasn’t a result of you or some weakness inside of you. Do you think that someone who is exposed to carcinogenic chemicals is responsible for what those chemicals do to them?”

“Of course not,” he says when Liam is silent so long it’s clear he’s waiting for an answer.

“Then don’t blame yourself. Trillions of dollars have been spent over the decades to manipulate DNA in this way. It’s messy and imprecise. The military puts down three percent of Dominants every year. That’s the official number. Unofficially, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was closer to ten percent. Accidents, missions gone wrong, other reasons being listed as cause of death; it’s shocking that these experiments are still going on. It’s glorified eugenics.”

“Why don’t people stop it, then?” Daniel asks.

“Because they can’t. Have you heard of Operation Sea-Spray?”

“No.”

“In 1950, the military sprayed bacteria over San Francisco. It looked like fog. They said that they thought the bacteria was harmless, but it wasn’t. There were illnesses, even one death, and health complications, but people accepted it. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is another example of what civilized society allows. So long as there is a group of people that others are willing to let be harmed, the experiments will go on. Now people can say we signed up. We knew what might happen. We got paid for it. We deserve this. And occasionally something they do to us can become a useful gene therapy, and so everyone celebrates that their chances of dying might have gone down because ours have gone up.”

“So I guess you’re not recording this part of our time together,” Daniel says.

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