Hell's Mercy

by Katherine Wyvern

  Hell paused.

  “Open your buttocks.”

  Lukan cried a little harder in his mask, but in silence.

  This was monstrous. This was more than just submitting; this was truly humiliating.

  But he let go of the wall, swaying perilously, and bent forward, his face almost touching the window panes. He must be very still, if he didn’t want his face to crash through the glass.

  This was insanely difficult, in every way.

  He reached back, palmed his own buttocks and spread them wide. Two, three, four blows fell in the soft crack, but the chunky ring of the butt plug sheltered the softest bits.

  Still, he whined desperately.

  Still, he didn’t fall.

  “Very good,” she murmured approvingly, as if he had performed a remarkable task, and she caressed the crack of his ass where she had whipped him. The touch was both pleasure and torture. He cried and then pressed back against her hand.

  “Stand,” she ordered, and he drew himself upright again, grabbing the wall. She resumed the pattern she had interrupted, down his thighs this time, left, right, left, right. The soft skin at the back of his knees got a lighter touch but was not spared. It stung the most.

  And when she was halfway down his calves, she began upwards again, and he knew that he could not stand still any longer. He gave a desperate, involuntary writhe to get out of the way of the looped leather tails, and she stopped.

  “Mh,” she said, softly. “Is that so?”

  He braced himself for a harder blow in punishment, but instead, she hugged him from behind. Even just the touch of her silk robe was like flame on his welted skin, a liquid sheet of flowing fire, constantly renewed as she rocked softly against him.

  “Come,” she said, “you did quite well.” She made him turn around. Then she took the hanging tails of the cord that bound his cock and led him like a horse to the bed. He swayed a little, and she tugged a little, not hard, but his testicles felt ready to pop out of their skin. He swallowed an urgent whine.

  “On your knees now, you deserved it.”

  And, indeed, he was grateful, so fucking grateful, to sink to his knees on a thick silvery pelt by the bed.

  It was not so much submission this time, as pure relief. He went to all fours, and laid his forehead on the silky spread on the bed, breathing deep.

  “What do you want, now, Lukan?” Hell asked softly.

  “Mercy,” he uttered through gritted teeth. He knew that she knew that mercy did not mean stop; it meant break me.

  The looped leather tails came down on his butt, left, left, right, right, left, left… Hell struck too quickly for each blow to have full force, but they came so fast over the already welted flesh that the pain quickly rose to a white-hot pitch. Then she broke the exact left-right sequence, landing blows at random on his two buttocks.

  This was much, much worse.

  Before, there had been a recognizable pattern, which had given him a chance to anticipate each impact, if only imperceptibly. Now he was indeed at her mercy. Each stripe of pain exploded in his already inflamed flesh so that all sense of space and direction vanished.

  He ceased to be a map of pain and became the throbbing heart of it.

  This was Hell’s gift to him.

  He lost himself in that crimson fire.

  He dived headlong into his own screaming flesh, and it released him into a boundless free-fall of pure sensation.

  And deep down at the core of it, stage after stage of that vertiginous descent, he found himself again stripped of all constructs, purely alive, entirely free from constraint and control.

  His knees buckled under him once or twice, and his cock grazed the silvery pelt under him. Even that soft touch added a layer of icy fire to his agony. He threw his arms on the bed to hold himself up.

  Tears ran past his mask into his mouth, and theirs was the taste of release. He cried harder. All that unnamed grief he carried, locked away, denied, burst out of him in great, gasping, unashamed sobs. He owned his grief, and it was a blessing. He screamed it without inhibitions.

  Hell’s whip went down the length of his body, kissing him with agony and, on the other side of agony, something not far removed from illumination.

  Then she got to his ankles, and stopped. She pinned one ankle down with her boot, between the high heel and the vault of her foot, and the tawse sang out again—no, actually a strap this time—on the very sole of his bare foot. It came down again and again, each time hotter, sharper, harder, until he screamed and screamed. Then she released his foot, and immobilized the other one, relentless. This time, he lost control and howled out her name. She stopped, and he almost begged her to make an end to it. But then he didn’t, and the strap bit him again.

  The pain raged inside of him, burning out his grief, and he let the ashes fly and scatter, out of him into the darkness beyond the wall of fire.

  ****

  When she stopped in the end, he came back to the present moment and the quiet room, and found himself grasping the bedcovers with both hands, like clenched claws. The silk was damp with tears and sweat, and it had been twisted and mangled in his throes, but he was still on his knees, not torn to shreds on the floor, as he had imagined.

  “So very, very good,” said Hell behind him, and he wept again, but it was a soft sort of weeping, the calm after the storm.

  “Turn, my love.”

  He turned. She had shed her whip, her robe, and even her mask, and stood behind him, in nothing but her boots and a thong of leather tied around her waist.

  He sighed deep and feasted on her beauty, her impossible, dazzling beauty. After the fire and agony, it was like a glimpse of some twisted sort of perfect heaven. Pure bliss blinded him. It was a little while before the pain, the ecstasy and the tears allowed his eyes to focus.

  She was built like a goddess of the hunt, which was exactly what she was, long, long legs, and narrow hips, flat stomach, high breasts tipped by hard, dark nipples, and wide shoulders, too wide for a woman, although not as heavily muscled as a man’s.

  Perfect.

  Still on all fours he crawled to her and kissed her knees, just above the edge of her boots. The handle of a strap peaked out of her left boot and the tawse with the suede tassel out of the right. He kissed both implements. They were his scourge, and his blessing. Then he kissed the inside of her thighs and paused.

  “Open your mouth,” she said, sternly. “You must open wide, and beg for it.”

  He did, heedless of pride, dignity, and anything else. He opened his mouth wide, and swallowed her cock when she pushed it deep inside him.

  It was only half hard, but it filled him. He gagged feebly, but didn’t try to pull back. She stroked the base of her cock with her thumb and fingers as he worked his tongue on its shaft and it grew harder, and longer. Fully erect, unencumbered by pubic hair or external testicles, it was as impressive as the rest of her. He took it as deep inside his mouth as he could, and there was still enough for her to wrap her palm around the base.

  She left him on his knees for a minute or two, slowly fucking his mouth. He was dazed by the pain that had coursed through his body. He was drugged with it, high, unhinged. When she finally pulled back and motioned him to get up on the bed, she had to repeat her order in words.

  “On your knees,” she repeated. “Beg, darling. Ask for it.”

  He shook a little, but positioned himself on all four, obediently. There were times when this was hard on him, this final abject submission. Those times, he wished she would tie him, and take him by force, because it was a far deeper, more intimate surrender to open himself to her so freely, to ask her for this. He had never done this before Hell.

  “I beg you. Please. Please do it.”

  “Do what, Lukan?” she asked sternly.

  “Fuck me.”

  He felt her fingers between his buttocks and the plug was pulled out of him, but not quite. She played with its thick head in his sphincter, working him loose, preparing h
im for that massive member. When she pulled it out entirely and let it dangle, its weight pulled his genitals, to which it was still tied, and he could hardly bite back a scream.

  Then her glans pressed on his aching ring, slick with lube, and she pushed in, just a little.

  Even then, she waited. She waited for him to do this to himself.

  He pressed back on her, filling his butt with her length as deep as he could.

  Then she thrust back and forth, easing herself even deeper inside him, bit by bit, and he gasped and writhed and sobbed and moaned. His prostate had been stimulated for so long by the plug already, and his cock was so oversensitive that he was close to coming, so close that her thrusts brought him almost to the edge without any need for her to touch his cock. He could see its engorged glans lolling under him, and beyond that, his balls stretched by the weight of the plug. He could feel them like orbs of hungry heat at the cusp of his thighs, and he nearly wept again, with pain and need. Then Hell stopped thrusting and drew him to sit in her lap, still impaled by her cock. With his weight bearing down on it, it was very nearly more than he could take. It more than filled him. He felt close to bursting with its length and girth.

  In his near delirious state, he thought that this was really not what the ass was made for.

  But then, why did it feel so bloody right, despite the pain in his overwrought flesh, and the shame of this abject, unconditional surrender?

  He groaned, and she held him hard around his waist, forcing him to be still, to take every last inch of her and embrace the whole feeling of it. Then she took his engorged cock in hand and began stroking.

  He groaned again, writhing. It was too much too much too much.

  A moment earlier, he had been certain he would climax at the smallest touch, but now he knew it was too intense, too much to bear.

  “Please, please,” he said desperately, urgently, not knowing if he wanted her to stop or to continue, if what he was feeling was agony or pleasure.

  “Please what, Lukan?”

  “Please … release me. Please. I beg you. My love. My love. Please.”

  My love.

  That was their word. His escape. His salvation.

  When he was so far out there, so broken that he could acknowledge this, that he loved her like his life, then she had brought him where he needed to be, for himself, and for her, too.

  She didn’t let go of him. She held him impaled in her lap, as she untied the cord around his cock and unwound it, freeing first his shaft and then his testicles, and he finally did collapse, on his back, against her, in a boneless heap, as she massaged a normal blood-flow back into his genitals. He sat there shaking and moaning, utterly helpless.

  She was rock hard inside him, relishing his complete undoing, the ultimate gift, for both of them.

  “Is it enough?” she asked, finally, very calmly.

  “It is enough,” he said, shaking convulsively, and gently she dislodged him from her lap. He felt her length passing the ring of his anus as she pulled out of him, still hard.

  ****

  He sat in the middle of the large bed, his legs spread wide, his weight resting backwards on his arms, grimacing. His skin could hardly bear the touch of the silk covers.

  “There, there, my darling,” she cooed, caressing his unmasked face, and his chest and belly, the only parts of him that didn’t hurt, the only parts of him where her touch carried nothing but the most absolute, soothing tenderness.

  He finally lay on his back. His skin flared with pain for a moment, and then the pain subsided to a dull burning, slowly ebbing.

  Hell lay on her side along him, still caressing his front in long gentle strokes, throat and chest, belly and hips, and then, after a time, when he could take it, his cock.

  It flagged for a while and then stiffened again in her hand, and she rose to her knees to straddle his waist. She held her own cock up, and lowered herself on him. Where her testicles had been, opened the slit that the best arnist in Neu Venedig had crafted for her. He had also slightly enhanced her other attributes while he was at it, making her the most beautiful and divinely impressive human being of any shape and gender that had ever crossed Lukan’s path.

  “Please, please,” he whimpered.

  She lowered herself on him, her naked, soft, wet flesh embracing his naked hot, hard cock, and he wept with the profound, essential immensity of sensations that engulfed him.

  After all the cleansing, liberating, racking pain, this all-embracing, simple, ancient, elemental pleasure was overwhelming, almost unbearable.

  She rode him slowly, skin to skin, their bodies joined in such an intimate mating that his mind reeled out of control, over the edge of sanity.

  She took her own slow pleasure off him, apparently heedless of his now desperate urgency, masturbating slowly as she rode him.

  “Please. Please,” he said, again and again, because she had brought him so close to the final pitch at least twice already, and he feared he might go over the last edge of pleasure without an actual orgasm. She might do even that to him. It was part of the agreement. She could do just about anything. And then he’d have to spend a week, or two, or three, hungering for her, for release, for mercy.

  “Patience,” she whispered, but her hips moved with a more determined rhythm, and he felt the pleasure building, mounting, gathering into a wave that came and went, but always came a little further, a little higher, a little harder … and finally bore him away entirely. He climaxed so hard he was lost in it, his mind darkened in the blazing light, his body heaving from head to toe, every inch of him awash in the tremendous fullness of the long-delayed orgasm.

  It came out of pain as much as pleasure.

  It was deep black and yet blinding bright.

  When he came back to the present, he was panting deep, barely lucid. He moaned, and moaned and fell back, completely limp.

  Still sitting astride him, her slit dripping with his sperm, Hell was still masturbating slowly, watching his face intently, drinking in his pleasure with as much relish as she had feasted on his agony earlier. He held her deep blue eyes in his gaze as her hand moved faster along that long, long shaft, and watched her as she had watched him when she threw her head back and her semen splashed hotly on his chest and neck, and face. He took it like a holy unction, licking it when it fell on his lips.

  ****

  Later, they lay side by side, utterly spent.

  She had shed her boots and was naked except for that black thong tied around her waist. It might have looked like nothing more than a very minimal ornament, but Lukan knew quite well that she could do some very delightful or vicious things with it. Even naked, she was a charming danger. He smiled lazily, lightly caressing her long thigh.

  Neither of them was naturally inclined to cuddliness, and lying side by side like this, companionably, was pretty much all that they needed on most days, so he was astonished, almost slightly alarmed, and then overcome by bliss when she rolled towards him, and laid her head on his shoulder for a minute. He held her close, her forehead to his throat, his hand in her hair.

  “When I first met you,” she said slowly, speculatively, “you were such a haughty old bastard.”

  He laughed at this endearingly affectionate comment.

  “When I first met you were such an arrogant little boy.” She laughed, too. “You thought you knew everything,” he added.

  “I did know everything. Everything I needed to.”

  “Is that so?” he asked, smiling. “You were insufferable. A plague. I wanted to slap you for being such a clever, know-it-all monkey. And then before I knew what was happening, you grew into this perfect creature. The child of Hermes and Aphrodite…” he added pensively, and kissed her forehead.

  “I was always a perfect creature. I was always a divine child,” she said, but with a suppressed laugh trembling on her lips. “It’s just that you were so slow.”

  “Not that slow,” he whispered, seriously now. “I cannot remember a time w
hen I did not love you, in one way or another.”

  “And I you,” she said huskily.

  He swallowed painfully. She had never said that.

  “You were this sort of king in the castle. You had it all at your feet. The Council, the City, all the women in the Carnival, the whole damn planet. And your soul was shriveling inside you. Sometimes I think too much power is not good for the soul. You needed someone to save you from all that.”

  “I did. I still do.”

  “I know you do. That’s what I’m here for. To take care of you. To make sure you stay human. And me as well.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. There are days when I almost forget what all this is for.” She waved a hand towards the plug and cord that lay on the blankets like dead things on a beach after a storm. “I top them all. They book a slot, fill the form, show up at the appointed time, and get what they paid for. I do it well, I think. But there are days, especially at this time of the year, when I can’t remember why. You remind me why. You remind me why people need it. You remind me that I am doing something tremendously beautiful. That I don’t have just a talent. But a sort of gift, really. And you do that because I care about you. Because I love you. You remind me that I, too, have a soul to save, perhaps.”

  She took his face in both her hands and kissed his lips lightly before lying flat on her back again.

  After a while, when he was certain she would not speak anymore, he rolled carefully on his side to look at her. He’d never have enough of her inexplicable, unbelievable beauty.

  He had loved her at all times of her life, through all stages of her transformation, or transmutation. There had been a time when what she wanted to be, or become, had been deemed illegal by the Galactic Government. Well, fuck the law, he had said, and pulled all the strings he held in this town of his, so she could have what she wanted, be what she wanted.

  She had been one of the first modified humans to live freely in Neu Venedig since the ban.

  In a certain sense, the crazy freedom of these wild new times, had been his gift to her.