Page 17 of Branding the Bat

"Good. Machine now."

The dildo and the sleeve. The familiar stretch, the familiar envelopment. Trevor clicked the controller, and the vibrations began, and Sero's body remembered what it felt like and went to the pleasure space immediately. No resistance, no gradual descent, just a step off the edge into that floating, formless place where pain and pleasure were the same current.

The first orgasm hit at six minutes. Faster than last time. His body had learned the path and didn't need to be shown twice.

"One," Trevor said from somewhere outside the haze.

The second came at four minutes. The third at three. By the fourth, Sero was shaking. The sounds coming from his mouthwere not words. Trevor was still hitting him with the flogger, lighter, maintaining the pain as a constant rather than escalating it. The machine was relentless. Sero was crying again, not from sadness or even from overwhelming sensation, but from the sheer relief of being back in the space. The space he'd lived twenty-six years without. The space Trevor had found for him.

On the fifth orgasm, Trevor put the flogger down.

Sero registered this dimly, the absence of impact, the sudden silence where the crack of leather had been. The machine was still going but Trevor's hands were on him now, on his shoulders, his chest, his face. Trevor was kneeling in front of him, close, his thumbs wiping tears from Sero's cheeks.

"Open your eyes," Trevor said.

Sero opened them. The room was blurry. Trevor's face swam into focus, close, intense, his blue eyes darker than usual, his pupils blown wide. He looked wrecked. Not physically. Emotionally. As if watching Sero come apart had taken something out of him too.

"I want you to look at me for this one," Trevor whispered. "Can you do that?"

Sero nodded. He couldn't speak. But he could look.

Trevor reached for the controller and turned the vibration up. Not by much, a single increment, but Sero's over-sensitized body felt it like a shout. The sleeve pulsed harder around his cock. The dildo pressed deeper. And Trevor's hands were on his face, holding him, keeping his eyes open, keeping him in the room instead of letting him float away.

The sixth orgasm was slow. It built like a tide, not the crashing wave of the others but a rising, inevitable swell that lifted Sero from the inside. He kept his eyes on Trevor's. He watched Trevor watch him. What he saw in Trevor's face was not the clinical focus of a man running a scene or the professionalsatisfaction of a job well done. It was awe. Naked, helpless awe. The face of a man watching something he didn't deserve to see.

Sero came looking into Trevor's eyes, and Trevor made that sound again, the small cry, the sound of control breaking. Sero saw it happen. Saw Trevor's body go rigid, saw his hands tighten on Sero's face, saw the moment where the Dom who held the flogger became a man who held nothing.

The machine hummed.

Sero let his eyes close.

Afterward. The floor. Sero's head on Trevor's thigh, grapes being fed to him one at a time.

"Six," Trevor said. His voice was rough. "Down from eight. I think the eye contact slowed you down."

"Or I was savoring it."

Trevor's hand stilled in Sero's hair. "Were you?"

"Yeah." Sero opened his eyes and looked up at him. Trevor was backlit by the amber lights, his face half in shadow, and from this angle, looking up from his lap, dazed and wrung out and profoundly safe, Sero thought he looked like something out of a myth. A creature made of edges and warmth. "The eye contact thing. That was different."

"I've never done that before. I usually—" Trevor stopped.

"Usually what?"

"I usually stay at a distance during scenes. It's better for control. If I'm close, if I'm touching—" He exhaled. "I lose objectivity."

"Is objectivity important?"

"It's everything. A Dom who loses objectivity makes mistakes. Pushes too hard, reads signals wrong, misses the safe word. Control isn't about controlling the sub. It's about controlling yourself." His fingers resumed their path through Sero's hair. "With you, I keep losing it. That should scare me."

"Does it?"

"No." Trevor's voice was quiet. "It doesn't. And that's what scares me."

Sero reached up and touched Trevor's wrist. The pulse under his fingers was fast. "For what it's worth, I've never let anyone see me like that. The eye contact. I couldn't have done that with someone I didn't trust."

Trevor's hand closed over his. "I know. That's why I asked."