Chapter Four
Sero stared at the bear on the television as it lumbered down to the stream and sank its paw into the current.
The documentary was narrated by a man with a voice like warm honey, which was soothing, and involved animals catching fish, which was less soothing because Sero kept flinching every time the bear's paw came down.
Apparently his nervous system was still recalibrating after the previous day with Trevor.
He shook his head and ate another strawberry.
It was late afternoon, over twenty-four hours after the session, and Sero was in the recovery state he'd come to think of as the afterglow, though that term felt insufficient for what his body was doing.
His back was a topography of tender stripes that flared when he changed positions on the couch.
His thighs ached. His cock was so oversensitive that even his loose cotton shorts were almost too much.
He'd shifted twice since getting home. Once before work.
Once after he got home just before sunrise.
Both times the transformation had smoothed the welts slightly, knitting the surface damage while leaving the deeper ache intact.
By the next day the visible marks would be gone. The memory of them would take longer.
He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it.
Not the orgasms, though those were certainly occupying a section of his brain that would probably never fully recover, but the space.
The place Trevor had taken him. Sero had spent twenty-six years in a body that treated pain as background noise, and in one hour Trevor had turned the volume up until the noise became music.
He hadn't known that was possible. He hadn't known there was a frequency between pain and pleasure that only became audible when someone pushed hard enough and precisely enough to find it.
He'd also been thinking about the way Trevor had looked at him afterward.
Not the arrogance, not the cocky grin. The wonder.
The genuine, unguarded amazement of a man who'd found something extraordinary and couldn't quite believe it was real.
No one had ever looked at Sero like that.
Not the gecko, who'd been fascinated by bats for approximately eleven days.
Not the pronghorn, who'd wanted a passenger for his death-wish road trips and hadn't cared who was in the seat.
Trevor had looked at him like he was the only remarkable thing in the room.
Sero ate three more strawberries and told himself to stop being a sentimental idiot.
It was sex. Very good sex, extraordinary sex, possibly, but sex.
Trevor was a sadist who ran scenes at a kink club and had been with at least two other men on Halloween night alone.
The odds of Sero being special to him were approximately the same as the odds of the bear on TV being a shifter.
The bear had the eyes of a creature that wanted fish. Sero changed the channel.
He found a documentary about deep-sea creatures, anglerfish, giant squid, and things that lived so far down that light itself gave up on reaching them. That was more his speed. Dark places, quiet creatures, the comfort of the deep. He pulled a blanket over his legs and settled in.
His phone buzzed on the coffee table. He glanced at it expecting the casino's scheduling bot, but it was a number he didn't recognize.
Hey. It's Trevor. Got your number from Amani. Hope that's okay. How are you feeling?
Sero stared at the message for a long time. He hadn't given Trevor his number. He hadn't expected Trevor to want it. The fact that Trevor had gone to Amani, had specifically asked for it, made the sentimental-idiot part of his brain light up like the Strip at sunset.
He typed: Sore. Good sore. The documentary kind of evening.
Three dots appeared immediately. What are you watching?
Deep sea stuff. Anglerfish.
The ones with the light on their head that eat everything?
That's the one.
I respect that. Using a pretty light to lure prey. Very cat energy.
Sero smiled at his phone. Pretty sure anglerfish and cats have nothing in common.
We're both ambush predators who use deception and charm. I rest my case.
You're comparing yourself to a deep-sea nightmare fish.
I'm comparing myself to a SUCCESSFUL deep-sea nightmare fish. There's a difference.
Sero laughed. Actually laughed, out loud, alone in his apartment.
The sound surprised him. He couldn't remember the last time a text message had made him laugh.
The pronghorn's texts had been functional at best, at the casino, back by 10, don't wait up, and the gecko had communicated primarily in emojis that Sero had never learned to decode.
He typed: Are you always this ridiculous?
Only when I'm trying to impress someone. Is it working?
Sero bit his lip. Maybe.
A pause. Then: I was thinking about you. About yesterday. I've never had a session like that.
The sentimental-idiot part of his brain was now fully operational. Same.
I mean it. Eight times, Sero. I've been doing this for years and no one has ever done that much. You're something else.
Sero put his phone down and pressed his hands over his face.
He was not going to read that message three more times.
He was absolutely not going to screenshot it.
He was a grown man with a job and an apartment and a bowl of strawberries, and he was not going to behave like a teenager getting his first love note.
He picked the phone back up and read the message three more times.
Thanks, he typed, because he was apparently incapable of a better response when someone said something genuinely nice to him. Then, before Trevor could reply to that inadequacy: I've never gone past two. With anyone. I didn't know I could.
You didn't know because no one ever pushed you hard enough. Most Doms wouldn't. They'd hear "high pain tolerance" and give you a few extra swats and call it a day. They wouldn't build the scene around it.
That was exactly right, and it stung a little to see it laid out so plainly.
Every Dom Sero had played with had treated his pain tolerance as a novelty, oh, the bat can take more hits, how fun, without ever asking what more actually meant.
Without ever wondering what was on the other side of the threshold they couldn't be bothered to reach.
How did you know? Sero typed. That I'd respond like that?
I didn't. I hypothesized. Cats are curious. We test things. A pause. And honestly? The way you said "harder" after the first five strikes. Most subs ask for more because they think they should, or because they want to impress the Dom. You asked because you were bored. That told me everything.
Sero smiled. He had been bored. That first set of flogger strikes had been wallpaper, visible but unremarkable. You're very observant for a housecat.
Housecats are the most observant predators on earth. We watch everything and pretend we don't care. It's our greatest strength.
What's your greatest weakness?
A longer pause. Pretty bats who ask good questions. Listen, can I come over? I have grapes.
Sero looked around his apartment. It was clean, it was always clean, but the blanket was on the couch and there were strawberry stems on the coffee table and the TV was showing an anglerfish unhinging its jaw to swallow something larger than its own head. Not exactly seductive ambiance.
Sure, he typed. Then: But I'm not in the mood for anything physical tonight. Just so you know.
That's fine. I wanted to see you. And bring you grapes. Those are the only two items on my agenda.
Fifteen minutes later, Trevor was at his door.
He was wearing a different shirt, gray, soft-looking, untucked over dark jeans.
No duffle bag. No fake cat ears. He looked more human than he had at the club, and somehow that made him more attractive rather than less.
In one hand he held a bag of large red grapes.
In the other, nothing. He'd come with grapes and himself and he'd said that was the whole agenda and apparently he'd meant it.
"Here." Trevor thrust the grapes at him. "I think they're the kind you had yesterday. At least the same color."
Sero took the bag and looked at them. They were, in fact, the same kind: large, red, seedless. The kind he bought every week. The kind he'd carried into the room between his teeth.
"You remembered what kind of grapes I eat," Sero said.
"I'm observant. We established this." Trevor leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, and waited. Not pushing in. Not assuming he was welcome. Just waiting.
Sero stepped aside. "Come in."
Trevor moved through his apartment the way he moved through everything, with a cat's awareness of space, noting surfaces and corners and the distance between objects. He paused at the TV, where the anglerfish documentary had given way to a segment on bioluminescent jellyfish. "Beautiful," he said.
Sero couldn't tell if he meant the jellyfish or the apartment or something else entirely.
They ended up on the couch. Not touching, a foot of space between them, the grapes on the coffee table beside the strawberry stems. The jellyfish pulsed blue and green on the screen. Sero ate grapes. Trevor ate grapes too, despite being a cat, and made a face at the sweetness.
"So," Trevor said after a few minutes of comfortable silence. "Are you always this quiet?"
"Yes. Are you always this talkative?"
"Also yes. Cats like to hear themselves." He angled to face Sero. "Can I ask you something?"
"You're going to anyway."
"True. What's your actual life? Outside of KK and the grapes. What do you do?"
Sero pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.
It was a defensive posture, he knew: closing off, making himself smaller.
Bat instinct. When a bat was uncertain, it folded its wings.
"I'm a blackjack dealer at one of the casinos on the Strip.
Night shift, mostly. I've been doing it for about two years. "
"Do you like it?"