Episode 3 #6
He covered his eyes with his palm. Beside him, Rei slept curled up, one knee drawn toward his chest and his back against Sevastyan ribs. His body was a small ball of tepid warmth. He should be warmer. They both should have been. But the life was running out of them.
Time was running out. Not because there was any deadline or threat, but because they were . . .
They were burning away.
Sevastyan blinked hard against his palm, forcing back tears he didn’t dare release. He’d hoped, once, to give Rei the world. But the most he had done in all the wasted years was give Jun back to the world.
He and Rei remained at the bottom of the pit, but Sevastyan still held the power of choice. Choices that choked him. Splits in timelines that terrified him. He needed a prophecy of Odin to guide his feet, but all he had was a heart that had chosen wrong as many times as it had chosen right.
Men often thought they could reason their way to the culmination of their desire.
But human beings were the web weavers of their own worlds and not creatures of cold logic.
The stories they wove changed shape with every retelling and every listener.
One had to dance and sway to an invisible beat, not follow a road with signs and plans.
Sevastyan’s stomach clenched. His bones throbbed. He turned on his side, curling his body around Rei’s.
“Sev.” Rei’s hand moved, clutching at Sevastyan’s arm.
Tears escaped. They ran down his face and into Rei’s hair. “Little one.”
Rei arched back, cuddling closer, his other hand coming up to tangle with Sevastyan’s. “Is it time?”
“No.” Sevastyan pressed his forehead to the back of Rei’s head. “It’s early.”
Sevastyan pushed away the whispers of the future, and pressed his lips against Rei’s hair.
Someday, I’ll stop failing you.
Sevastyan
An hour or so later, Sevastyan stroked his hand down Rei’s back and kissed his forehead until the smaller man stirred. Rei kissed Sevastyan back on his chest and stretched against the length of Sevastyan’s body.
“Master?”
“Time to get up, beautiful.”
Rei blinked and rubbed his face. There was just enough light coming in that shapes and shadows were visible. All color remained muted to shades of gray.
Sevastyan sat up and checked the drawer.
Rei slid out of bed and disappeared into the en-suite bathroom.
The toilet flushed a moment later and Rei returned, shivering slightly.
He crawled up on the bed and laid himself over Sevastyan’s thighs, turning his head toward Sevastyan and pulling a pillow under his chest.
The curve of his back over Sevastyan’s legs was beautiful. Sevastyan ran his hand over Rei’s ribs and down his buttocks to his thighs. Rei breathed out, relaxing beneath the touch.
“Discipline, only,” Sevastyan murmured. “No punishment. There’s nothing to punish you for. You’ve been perfect.” He really had been. The Yadro. The airports. Alexi’s place. Anton’s. Not one slip of discipline.
“Yes, master.”
Sevastyan stroked his palm over the mounds of Rei’s ass. He squeezed gently, bringing blood to the surface of the skin, then scratched lightly with his nails. Rei’s breathing hitched. He breathed out, his body loosening even more.
This would be open palm only. No implements.
Sevastyan started slow, bringing sensation and blood to the surface of Rei’s skin.
Spanking like this was a meditation. There needed to be an ebb and flow.
The places he could take Rei when he took his time were deep.
As the slow, steady strikes of Sevastyan’s palm built across Rei’s ass, there would always be pain.
It was something Rei welcomed but also had to force himself to take.
His body could only absorb so much at once.
There was a high that came with pain, but it took time to trigger the chemical flood from the brain that changed pain to pleasure.
Thus the ebb and flow, a build up, a backing off, a return, until Rei was pliant and limp, then gasping and struggling to accept, then limp and pliant again.
As the pain crested, Rei’s breathing would change, the muscles in his back, his arms, and his legs would tense, standing out in clear lines beneath his skin, and then as endorphins and adrenaline entered his blood, the lines would disappear into smooth planes of relaxed forms.
Sevastyan kept his hands on Rei’s skin, stroking, gripping, soothing, and petting.
Adrenaline was a beautiful thing, but what he wanted right now was Rei soft and swimming in oxytocin, known in layman’s terms as the love chemical.
Alexi had explained that in a way, giving pain and safety at the same time, mixing both with intimacy, was the equivalent of injecting a submissive with opium.
A powerful dominant, fully connected to his craft and his slave, would also be chemically elevated, though differently.
“The brain is a laboratory and a musical instrument,” Alexi had mused one evening, as both his current trainee, Lisa, and Rei had rested at their feet, the slaves in altered states, clinging, affectionate, and too deep in their submission to speak.
“Learn to play it right, and the submissive comes to need you the way someone who has been altered by a drug needs the drug. They will choose you over themselves because you have become their survival.”
“Is it anyone who can become dependent?”
“Not anyone.” Alexi moved his foot, stroking the side of Lisa’s thigh and moving upward.
The barely trained slave had lifted his head, his lip curling back in a growl, but he gave up quickly, sinking back to the floor, accepting Alexi’s foot on his back.
“Many can. Some will never choose to trust. Some are too caught up in the stories in their heads. Some have to be broken first, but most will then lose anything worth keeping in the process. It’s best to never take the route of breaking, at least not completely.
You never know what will be put back together.
If you find beauty in what was before, then guide it like a topiary, never break it. ”
“And what of Lisa?” Sevastyan had asked. “You said he is not like Rei.”
“Your Rei loves you. He will set aside his fear and reach for the beyond. Every time you take him on a journey, he hands you everything that he is, therefore, it’s safe and waiting for him on the other side.
Lisa . . .” Alexi had sighed. “Lisa doesn’t trust. He wants to.
For moments, when he is desperate for what he needs, he can touch it under my hand.
He needs it. Not because he’s addicted to submission, but because he can’t experience everything else without it. ”
“And Rei?”
Alexi raised his eyes from Lisa to Sevastyan, his face carefully collected and calculating.
“I doubt we will speak of this again. It’s not safe in our world.
But what you have with Rei is perfection.
I trained you, but I did not create you.
All the parts were there and seeking each other.
It’s not necessarily love, it’s need that is also love.
It’s need that bends toward each other through the desire for the other to flourish.
One might call the phenomenon a form of ultimate co-dependence.
I call it symbiosis because we, as humans, were never meant to be independent.
Your practice of pain, the dominance, the submission, the humiliation, the service, the care, those are layers that strengthen what lies beneath.
The pain, the flogging, paddling, hours in posture, those are practices to get to the center of it all.
Like flaying away flesh and bone to get to the heart and touch it with a bare hand.
Your triumph is his triumph and his pain is your pain. You both drink from the same cup.”
“Why can’t you have that with Lisa?”
“He recognizes that I don’t need him, I merely want him.
And want is not enough for him to feel secure.
He comes to me because of himself, not because he needs my need of his submission.
He will only feel secure when the one he is giving himself to is as weak to the bond as he is, as desperate as he is, as in danger of crumbling should the bond be sundered.
That’s why he runs away to your Rei, why he never bites or hurts him.
Rei is as soft as he is and would never harm him.
But you and I are wolves with goals and intentions. ”
“And your Colita?”
Alexi sighed. “Beautiful Colita. She needs me. Without me, she destroys herself. I love what she is under me and hate what she was without me. So I preserve the beauty that she can be, and she embraces the constraints I use to keep her balanced. She admires me. Her inclinations are to my continued health and happiness. But it is not in her bones. She still thinks of herself as separate from me.”
“Have you ever . . .” Sevastyan had let his question trail off. Perhaps it was too personal.
“Once,” Alexi answered. “I had what you have once. Why do you think I recognized you and made my offer? You are a good master. You could train and create beautiful slaves beyond Rei. I hope that you do. But what you have with him? If all the religions were real and all the gods smiled down on you, perhaps it would happen three times in a lifetime. Most are never honest enough to experience it once. But you are an honest man, Sevastyan.”
Sevastyan narrowed his eyes. “Take that back. Deceit is my vocation.”
“And yet you are among the most honest men I know.” Alexi laughed, not in the least rattled by Sevastyan’s rebuke.
“Perhaps one day I will tell you why I say that. You are a master of deception, my young friend. Never fear. You take pride in it and so you should. Unlike some, however, you are never lost in your lies.”
Alexi’s words had never left Sevastyan. Nor had he come to any better understanding of why Alexi considered him honest. He had been lying that very day.