The Administration Series (263 page)

A cut, not a blow. Probably not much more than a scratch, but it felt so different, made a different shape in his mind, brilliant and frightening. Over it came an image of the wound itself, blood welling.

Toreth laughed, twirling the point of the knife against him. "Struggle all you like. It won't help. Shall we try that again?"

The knife drew a line of fire, a thin trail of pain from mid-chest to navel.

"No. Stop it." His unsteady voice sounded like a stranger's.

A third shallow cut, shorter, crossed the second below his ribs. His muscles, taut against the chains, held him absolutely still.

No. I want it to stop.

Even as he thought that, the knife sliced down his thigh and made it into a lie.

"Please, no." He tugged at the chains, and the pain came again, diagonally across his chest, nerves flaring into glorious life.

Safe word — there was the safe word. Two words, and it would end. The ease of the escape route, his absolute confidence that Toreth
would
stop at once if the words were spoken, forced him to accept the inevitable. Another two long, deliberate cuts, and he stopped even pretending that he was going to say it. He relaxed in the chains, waiting for the next contact of steel on flesh. His quick, shallow breathing made the wounds on his chest hurt with a vividness that brought tears to his eyes, soaking into the blindfold.

Again. Do it again.

Instead of another sweep of the knife, Toreth paused. The bed shifted as he leaned down close. His skin felt hot against Warrick's and even where they didn't touch Toreth heated the air between then.

"It hurts?" Toreth murmured into his ear. Calm voice, measured and controlled, but without the former coldness.

"Yes."

"Too much?"

"No."

"Shall I stop?"

"No!"

A soft laugh followed, then Toreth licked a slow path down his chest, following the line of the last cut. So intense, so arousing, that the pain beneath was barely there.

Toreth moved again, finally settling into place kneeling astride his left thigh. A hand slid lightly down his chest, waking pain. Over his stomach, warm and slippery — with blood. With his own blood. When it touched his cock he arched up, pulling on the chains.

"Fuck me." Not meaning to say it yet, but unable to hold it back. "Fuck me, pl — "

He felt movement on the bed, and then a hard kiss silenced him. "I will. Eventually. But for now I think I prefer this." The knife touched him again, poised. "Next one . . . "

A rapidly diminishing part of him knew he shouldn't want this so badly. "No. Please, don't."

A pause, then he felt the sharp edge laid lightly against his mouth, and he held steady.

"Quiet," Toreth said. "Quiet, or I'll gag you. Shall I do that?"

Trying not to move his lips, Warrick whispered, "If you want to." He noted, distantly, that he meant it, although in truth he was having enough trouble breathing as it was.

Yes. Yes, to whatever Toreth wanted. Trusting him to know what was right. Giving up control.

The knife lifted away without cutting him, but when Warrick licked his lips he tasted a hint of blood from the blade.

"Next one . . . here."

Short cuts, only an inch or so, were spaced over his whole body. Every slice felt separate and distinct, Toreth waiting in between until the initial pain ebbed away.

"Do you know how good you look like that? Can you imagine it? I should have done this a long time before. I thought about putting you in the cabinet. Letting you watch it in the mirror. But this is better."

Gradually cutting deeper with each stroke, Toreth teased out the minutes. The pain grew slowly worse, never quite becoming unbearable, until eventually it became unbearable for a different reason. Toreth's hand on his cock was a balancing focus of sensation, rubbing him slowly, keeping him on the edge and never quite doing enough. Caution forgotten, he twisted in the chains, begging Toreth to finish it, and knowing that he wouldn't yet.

Nothing he could do to stop it.

'He hurts you. He
wants
to hurt you. He's dangerous'.

Dillian's words from years before echoed through him, blending with the exquisite pain as Toreth flayed a tiny patch of skin from his bicep.

'Keir, listen to me. He could do whatever he wanted to you. When you're like that. He could
kill
you and you couldn't stop him. You couldn't do
anything
to stop him'.

Sometimes — afterwards — he wondered what she'd think if she knew he used it like this.

He hurts you.

He could do whatever he wanted to you.

He
wants
to hurt me.

I couldn't do anything to stop him.

Whatever he wanted.

He's dangerous.

Anything he wanted.

Anything
.

Submerging himself in the words, he sank deeper, drowning. Slipping away, the knife driving the real world further out of reach, until Dillian's voice was a blur, meaning lost along with even the memory of a safe word. Everything finally dissolving into an aching emptiness, bound about with pain that focused every sensation inwards.

The chains at his wrists and ankles unfastened, and he felt the blade against his throat, nestling under the collar.

"Turn over. On you knees."

Warrick had no resistance left, although Toreth had to repeat the order twice before he finally managed to obey. Blood slicked his body, making his thighs slide against each other as he turned and knelt.

Open and vulnerable.

The chain still held his head down against the mattress and the knife moved away for a few seconds as Toreth locked his wrists to the collar. Warrick moaned helplessly, links biting unnoticed into his hands as he clenched them on the chain, pulling on it.

Needing it now, so much.

Now.

Panting the words out. "Please. Toreth. Please."

The knife traced a path down his spine, barely slicing through the skin. Or perhaps it was cutting deeply and he couldn't feel it because now Toreth was in him, filling him, taking him, possessing him, strong hands controlling and directing, and nothing else mattered.

Nothing else existed.

Will and desire surrendered absolutely.

Sense of time lost along with sense of self, the ecstatic submission stretched out forever. Never-ending, pure and perfect, he revelled in it until the shock of his orgasm, forgotten and utterly unexpected, tore even that much coherence away from him.

Later — minutes, hours, days — and on the dim edge of consciousness, he felt Toreth unfasten the manacles and collar. Warrick rolled onto his side, still panting. Mess. The sheets would be a hell of a mess. He didn't want to come back to reality, to have to face the aftermath.

Hands stroked his face, and a gentle mouth kissed him back to full awareness. Surprisingly, there was almost no pain beyond the usual aches in his wrists and ankles. It didn't make sense, and he couldn't force himself to think clearly enough to work out how it might be possible. His skin tingled in places, tight and hot like sunburn, but nothing worse than that.

Analgesic on the blade?

Then Toreth kissed him again, and undid the blindfold.

He sat up and looked down at himself.

No blood, no cuts — not a single mark on his skin. Surprise washed away the remaining stupor.

I felt it. I felt the knife.

He ran his hand down his chest, still half expecting to find sticky blood. Instead, his hand slicked over oil and semen. It wasn't —

"I
felt
it," he said.

Looking up again, he found Toreth sitting facing him, hugging his knees to his chest, grinning. He looked so happy, so incredibly pleased with himself, that Warrick nearly said something stupid.

What he said in the end was, "How did you do it?"

The grin broadened. "Was it good?"

"It was incredible. How?"

"With this." Toreth offered him a long knife, with a bluish metal blade and a dark blue handle with silver inlay. Warrick wiped his hand on the sheets and took it.

It had a thick, blunt blade — so blunt that when Warrick pressed it hard against the pad of his thumb, it did nothing more than dent the flesh, not hurting at all. The handle, however, was bulky enough to conceal electronics and a power supply. He found a switch on the base, and a sliding control on the handle.

He pressed the switch, moved the control to the lowest setting, and slid the blade across his palm. An awareness of sharpness, nothing more. He increased the setting and tried again. This time he sucked his breath in — the cut felt so real that he couldn't believe it when no blood welled along the line.

Obvious, once he thought about it with a mind unclouded by desperate arousal. "Nerve induction."

"Yeah, spot on."

He didn't want to ask. "From work?"

To Warrick's intense relief, Toreth shook his head. "We don't have anything that pretty."

"From the Shop, then."

"Yeah. I asked Fran what she'd recommend for a late birthday present."

"Is it legal?"

"Technically, no, although I can't imagine even Justice getting excited over something with that sort of output." He shrugged. "I suppose if they really wanted an excuse to hold someone they could stretch it to a charge of possessing specified equipment."

"So w — " He caught himself, not quite in time. "So I shouldn't put it on display in the living room?"

"Probably not."

Remembering something, he put his hand to his mouth. "I tasted the blood."

Toreth held out his left hand, the index finger extended. There was nothing to see, but the suggestion was obvious; when Warrick looked round he spotted a pin on the bedside table. The bottle of oil stood beside it.

Yes. He'd poured the oil on himself, as Toreth must have known he would, and then he'd forgotten all about it.

So much careful planning. A gift for him, more so than the knife. Also, in another way, a reminder. This is what I can do to you. This is what you need me for.

Toreth's power over him. Frightening, sometimes. It had been so real . . .

Warrick turned the knife over in his hands and sighed.

"What?" Toreth asked.

"Nothing. Or, actually, I was thinking it's never going to be the same as it was just now."

"Why not?"

"Because I'll know what it is. I'll know it's nerve induction."

Toreth stared at him. After a moment he said, "You didn't think I'd really
do
that? With a real knife?"

"Well, no, I — " He shook his head. "Not now, no. But maybe I did when it was happening. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure."

"Fucking hell." Toreth sounded shocked. "I thought you'd guessed it was faked somehow. Why didn't you tell me to stop it?"

"I didn't
want
you to stop." The realisation of that shocked Warrick. "I thought . . . no, I didn't think anything. I just wanted more of it. It was beautiful."

Toreth laughed. "
Beautiful
?"

"Yes. No other word for it."

"Better than the suspension fucks?"

"Hm. I don't know." The act of analysis and comparison, so familiar from work, helped diffuse the unease. "No, probably not. But it's different. Not quite so overwhelming. I was aware of where I was for far longer."

Toreth nodded. "The pain isn't continuous. It gives you a chance to keep focused. Plus, there's no actual damage, so the pain isn't genuinely cumulative, either. A lot of it's psychosomatic — the nerve induction kicks it off, then your body thinks it's injured so you feel it even after any effect from the kit's worn off."

"That's probably it, yes." Toreth had an excellent mechanistic understanding of pain. Not to mention a better understanding of how Warrick's body would react to it than he had himself, which was deeply unsettling if he thought about it for too long.

Toreth shook his head. "I can't believe you let me do it if you thought it was real."

Nor, now, could Warrick. He examined the idea more carefully, then shrugged. "At the core, I must have known you wouldn't break the rules. I didn't think anything quite that coherent at the time, but that's the reason."

"I didn't know we had rules for that."

"Perhaps not as such, but I still trust you not to break them."

"Yeah, well, if you say so." The sound of Toreth becoming uncomfortable with a conversation. "I just thought you'd get off on it."

"And you were spectacularly correct." He set the knife on the table and then lay down, moving across the bed to make space. After a moment, Toreth followed suit, stretching out with a sigh and closing his eyes.

He looked tired, Warrick noticed suddenly, now that Toreth's face was still — deeply tired, the result of a long-term lack of sleep. Fit, though. He'd got back the last of the muscle definition that he'd lost during the revolt, so whatever he'd been up to over the last ten days involved exercise. Warrick reached out and traced over Toreth's stomach. Toreth smiled without opening his eyes and tensed the muscles.

On reflection, Warrick decided that now didn't seem like a good moment to start delving into Toreth's activities during his absence, and particularly not the fate of Tarin's friends. He could ask later.

He reached out and switched off the light, fingers brushing over the cool steel of the knife blade. They dozed for a while, close but not touching. A comfortable distance, after the intensity of the sex. In the end Warrick did rather more than doze, eventually awakening with a start to a crash and Toreth swearing vividly in the darkened bedroom.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Tripped over something. Shit. Mind your eyes, I'm putting the light on."

Warrick shaded his eyes, blinking at the light, then looked round. Most of Toreth's small collection of possessions were still stacked in boxes in one corner, beside Toreth's battered sofa. He made a mental note to ask Toreth whether he wanted to leave everything here for the time being.

Toreth leaned on the wall by the door, rubbing his foot, and glaring aggrievedly at a suitcase placed with booby-trap precision on the route between bed and doorway.