Page 10 of Branding the Bat

"Five," Trevor said. His breathing was heavier. The flogger strikes had slowed, not weaker, but more deliberate, each one chosen rather than automatic. He was watching Sero with an expression that was no longer clinical. It was reverent.

"Color?" Trevor asked.

"Green," Sero gasped. Or tried to. The word came out as a breath, barely audible. But with his sensitive cat ears, Trevor heard it.

Six. Seven. The orgasms blurred together, each one wringing Sero's body until there was nothing left to wring. The dry orgasms were devastating, his cock jerking uselessly inside the sleeve, his prostate pulsing against the dildo, his body clenching and releasing in waves that left him gasping and wrecked. The pain from the flogger was constant, a bright net laid over his skin, and inside that net his body was doing things he hadn't known it could do. He was crying, when had he started crying?, and it wasn't from pain or sadness, it was from the sheeroverwhelming everything of it, the totality of being used and filled and struck and held all at once.

On the eighth orgasm, Sero screamed. It was a raw, shattered sound that he felt in his bones, and as it tore out of him, he heard Trevor make a sound too, a sharp, stunned gasp, almost wounded. Through the haze, Sero registered that Trevor was gripping the edge of the table, knuckles white, his body rigid, his hips jerking once against nothing. A dark stain spreading across the front of those low-slung black jeans.

Trevor had cum. Without touching himself. Just from watching Sero fall apart.

They stared at each other. Sero was wracked, trembling, hanging from the cuffs with his knees barely holding him up. Trevor was flushed and breathing hard, one hand braced on the table, the other still holding the flogger. Between them, the machine hummed.

Trevor clicked it off.

The silence was deafening. Sero's body kept shaking for long seconds after the vibrations stopped, aftershocks rolling through him like tremors. Trevor set the flogger down and came to him, quickly, efficiently, undoing the cuffs first, then easing the sleeve off his cock with careful hands. Sero hissed, his cock was swollen and hypersensitive, and even the gentle slide of the sleeve pulling free made his hips jerk. Then slowly, gently, Trevor worked the dildo out. Sero whimpered at the loss of it, his body clenching around nothing, feeling suddenly and achingly empty.

"Easy," Trevor murmured. "Easy. I've got you."

Trevor lowered him to the floor. The wood was cool against Sero's overheated skin. He lay on his side, knees drawn up, shaking. Trevor sat beside him and pulled Sero's head onto his thigh. For a long time, neither of them spoke. Trevor's fingers threaded through Sero's hair, slow, rhythmic, grounding. Sero pressed his face against the denim and breathed in cedar andsweat and the faint musk of Trevor's orgasm. He felt hollowed out. Remade.

"Eight times," Trevor said eventually. His voice was quiet. "In case you lost track. And fifty-three lashes." A pause. "I'm a bit worried about you, honestly. You should've been screaming well before the end. Most people would have been done at four."

Sero gave a weak laugh against Trevor's thigh. "I do feel it. But that..." He didn't have a word for it. Nothing in his vocabulary covered what had just happened to him, the place he'd gone, the way his body had kept giving long after he thought it was empty. "I've never been anywhere like that. I didn't know I could go there."

"Yeah." Trevor's voice was rough, almost unsteady. "Neither did I. And I've done this a lot."

Sero felt Trevor's hand move from his hair to his neck. A light touch, fingertips tracing the line of his throat. Then a small, sharp sting, brief, precise, over in a second. It barely registered through the fog. Everything was soft and far away and warm, and Sero was floating in that vast space behind the door that had opened, and the sting was just another sensation in a body that had already been given everything it could hold.

"I just marked you with my claws," Trevor said. He didn't look apologetic. He looked like a man who'd done something he couldn't stop himself from doing. "It's a possessive habit of mine, even if this is the only time we'll ever be together. Like I've branded you as being mine."

Sero registered the words from very far away. He knew, distantly, that he'd said something about marks. About permanent. But the thought couldn't find purchase, it slid through his mind like water through open fingers, and all that was left was the warmth of Trevor's thigh under his cheek and the fading sting on his throat and the deep, bone-levelsatisfaction of a body that had been completely and thoroughly used.

"Rest," Trevor said. "I'll be here when you wake up."

Sero sank into the dark and let it take him.

***

He slept for twenty minutes, maybe thirty. When he came back, the room was the same: low light, warm wood, the faint hum of the ventilation. Trevor was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him, eating grapes from Sero's bag and watching the door.

Sero sat up slowly. Everything ached, but it was a good ache, the kind that followed extraordinary effort, like the soreness after a long flight in bat form. His back stung where the flogger had landed. His thighs were tender. His cock was sore in a way he'd never experienced, a deep, used-up throb that pulsed when he shifted his weight. And beneath all of it, like a bassline under a melody, there was a profound sense of having been reached. A part of him that had always been locked behind his pain tolerance, a room he'd never found the door to, had been opened. He could still feel the space inside it. Warm and vast and entirely new.

"Welcome back." Trevor handed Sero a grape.

Sero ate it. It was sweet and cold and perfect. "How long was I out?"

"About twenty-five minutes. You needed it. How do you feel?"

"Like I got hit by a truck that was also giving me the best sex of my life." Sero accepted another grape. "Eight times over."

Trevor laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised and pleased, without the calculated edges Sero was used to hearing from him. He liked the sound of it.

"I should get going," Sero said, though he didn't particularly want to. The room felt safe. Trevor's presence felt safe. Butthey'd used their booked time and then some, and Amani would come checking eventually.

"Right." Trevor stood and offered a hand. Sero took it and let himself be pulled upright. The world tilted briefly, then stabilized. He was standing naked in front of Trevor, marked and used and thoroughly wrung out, and he felt... good. Really good. Better than he'd felt in months.

He got dressed slowly. Everything hurt in that pleasant, well-fucked way. His jeans were harder to get on than usual, his skin was over sensitized, every brush of fabric registering with startling intensity, and pulling denim over the welts on his thighs made him suck air through his teeth. Trevor watched him dress with an expression Sero couldn't quite read. Possessive, yes, but with worry threaded through it. As if he'd found something valuable and was already afraid of breaking it.