Page 42 of Branding the Bat

The flogger dropped. Trevor stumbled forward, caught by Sero's hand on his wrist, and Sero kissed him. Not gently. Roughly, with the desperation of a man who was deep in the space and wanted another human being there with him. Trevor made the sound again, that small, startled cry, the sound of control breaking, and his free hand came up to Sero's face, and they stood in the middle of the room with the flogger on the floor and Trevor's heartbeat pounding against Sero's palm and kissed until neither of them could breathe.

"I'm here," Trevor whispered against his mouth. "I'm right here."

"I know." Sero pulled back enough to see Trevor's face. The blue eyes were wet. The careful neutrality, the earned-back composure, the armor of a man who'd been learning to be less, all of it was gone. This was Trevor without anything betweenhimself and the world. This was the face beneath the cuttlefish's colors.

"Again," Sero said.

Trevor picked up the flogger.

The final set was fifteen strikes. Sero counted them, not because he needed to, but because counting was what he did when the world became too much and he needed to anchor himself to something concrete. Each number was a foothold. Each strike was a step deeper into the space. And Trevor was there with him, visible, audible, his pulse fast under Sero's fingers.

On the sixtieth strike, Sero came.

Not from the machine. Not from suction or vibration or mechanical precision. From the flogger and the pain and the eye contact and Trevor's wrist in his hand and the accumulated weight of sixty strikes laid across his body by a man he'd chosen to trust again. He came untouched, his cock hadn't been stimulated at all, and the orgasm rolled through him like a slow, deep wave, nothing like the sharp, machine-driven convulsions of the previous sessions. This was tidal. This was the earth moving. This was his body saying yes, this, here, with him.

Trevor watched it happen. He didn't look away. He held the flogger in one hand and Sero held his other wrist and they looked at each other while Sero's body did something extraordinary and entirely, completely his own.

No vials. No tubes. No gold in a compartment.

Just Sero, in the special space, with someone who'd earned the right to watch him be there.

Afterward. The floor. Sero's head on Trevor's thigh. Grapes being fed to him one at a time. The same position as the first session's aftercare, the same quiet intimacy. But everything underneath was different.

"One," Trevor said. "In case you were wondering."

"One is plenty."

"Sixty strikes. One untouched orgasm. No machine." Trevor's hand moved through Sero's hair. "That's never happened to me before. With anyone."

"I know." Sero closed his eyes. The space was still warm around him, receding slowly, like a tide going out. "It's because I was here. All the way here. Not being pulled into the space by the machine. Choosing to go there. The difference is—"

"Everything."

"Yeah."

They lay on the floor of the room at Kinky Kritters, and the amber light held them, and the flogger lay where it had fallen, and nothing was hidden, and nothing was taken, and the quiet between them was the good kind. The kind that held something growing.

"Trevor."

"Hmm."

"The healing alchemy. The salves, the remedies. Would any of that work on flogger marks?"

"Probably. Miriam's been teaching me an arnica compound that accelerates tissue repair. Why?"

"Because right now my back feels like I lost a fight with a leather octopus, and if you're going to be making medicine, you might as well test it on me."

Trevor laughed. The real laugh, surprised, full, the one that came from below the careful surface. He bent down and kissed the top of Sero's head.

"I'll bring some next Wednesday," he said.

"Wednesday."

"Wednesday."

Chapter Fifteen

Four Wednesdays.