Lisinthir sighed, relieved. “I was hoping you’d say so.”
Jahir quirked a brow. “Were you?”
“I would hate to have wasted this knife,” Lisinthir said, pulling him. “You have not seen it yet, cousin. It is glorious.”
Jahir shuddered. “Well, far be it from me to waste a knife.”
“Just so.”
They passed in silence through the living room to the bedchamber, where Lisinthir set the bag on their bed so he could retrieve the other items he’d bought in preparation for this interlude, the items he’d spent so long in the choosing, wanting them to be right. Nothing less than a ceremony would pull them both through this, and he wouldn’t deny that he, as much as Jahir, needed it: to separate it from what he’d experienced in the Empire, to lift it above those sordid memories. Once he’d set that package on the bed alongside the knife’s box, he stripped his coat off and started on the shirt. The boots came next, though he left the pants on. Enough to lose the sense that he was suffocating, that his skin was starving for the air.
“So,” Jahir said. “All this is….”
“Instrumental to our pleasure,” Lisinthir said. “Cousin, sit, please.”
“Shall I shed my clothing as well?”
The hesitance… so beautiful, that vulnerability. How dearly he wanted to honor it. “As much as you’re comfortable with. We will not be lunging into the throes of bloody embrace yet.”
“Talk,” Jahir guessed with a sigh as he began disrobing.
“What else? You are what you are, yes?”
“And you aren’t,” Jahir observed, eyeing him over his arms before lifting them to pull off his shirt. “So what is it that we must discuss?”
How to ask? Lisinthir thought of foreplay, thought of testing, thought of gentleness… discarded all of it. “I would ask if you wish to be flogged.”
Jahir froze in the act of reaching for his boots, so completely Lisinthir could see the gooseflesh along his sides and wonder if it was arousal or cold or horror.
“That is… an astonishing question,” Jahir said at last, resuming motion. Lisinthir watched him undo the buckles with swift flicks of his fingers and then sit to peel the footwear off. “I assume there is a reason you ask.”
“Several. The most important of those reasons would be that among lovers who enjoy this form of lovemaking, what we would call the whip is highly prized. So much so that I simplify matters by using the word we would recognize; in the bedroom its variations are broad and are enjoyed for their nuance, and their ability in skilled hands to hurt without destroying.”
That construction brought his cousin’s head up, as he’d thought it would. Squinting, Jahir said, “A safe way to be hurt.”
“You’ll observe I no longer press on your jaw when we kiss?” Lisinthir said. “I have been informed it is unwise to stimulate the nerves so directly. They can become sensitized, or worse, remain irritated.”
Jahir’s eyes lost their focus. Then he shuddered and shook his head, hair swaying around his shoulders. “No. I don’t imagine that permanent irritation of that nerve would be pleasing. Although I miss it, cousin.”
“Do you?” Lisinthir asked, careful of the words, the tone. The Harat-Shar siblings had told him how rare it was to find such extremes enjoyable.
“Oh yes.” Jahir’s smile was rueful. “You will wonder at it when it was literally blinding agony. But that was part of the attraction… because your kiss drew me out of it, re-assembled the pieces of me from the chaos.” He trailed a hand over his jaw, as if remembering. “You brought me back.”
Lisinthir’s breath caught. Could his cousin have planned words better calculated to incite his every need? More importantly—had he? But no, all Lisinthir saw in Jahir’s face was his absolute faith, and witnessing it, his heart shivered like frangible glass. Voice husky, he said, “If it’s in my power, cousin… I will always bring you back.”
“I know.” Jahir sighed, let his hand fall off his face. “And if you can’t… I promise I will bring myself back.”
“Thank you.”
That smile was winsome and sweet. “It is the least I owe you, and everyone else who loves me.” Squaring his shoulders, he continued, “So… you ask if I am willing to be flogged because it would allow you to give me what I need with the least risk.”
“Yes. And I ask because I have no idea if it’s possible.”
“Because I might find it repugnant?” Jahir glanced at him. “Because it is a punishment served the least privileged of our people, and invariably results in death?”
“Have you seen it done?”
“God and Lady, no.” Jahir hesitated. “Don’t tell me that you have. It’s not done—”
“Among the Seni,” Lisinthir finished. “No, I wouldn’t think so. But my parents were thoughtless and high-handed, not at all like yours. One of our servants was sentenced to flogging for theft. And died, as one does on our world. I was young, so no, I didn’t see it. I would have had to be escorted and it wasn’t the sort of thing my parents would have troubled themselves to attend in person. One does not watch one’s lessers disciplined; one renders a sentence and leaves others to do the sordid work.” Lisinthir folded his legs, resting an ankle on the opposite knee. “I learned about it some years later.”
Jahir was staring at him, aghast.
“So many things you didn’t know, ah?”
“So many things I knew happened in the abstract,” Jahir murmured. “That is a different matter from knowing of specific incidents.” He slipped his hands beneath his armpits—so the gooseflesh was probably cold—and continued. “But… there is more to it, isn’t there.”
“Of course,” Lisinthir said, raising his eyes just enough to meet his cousin’s. “Because I have been whipped.”
“The dragons… do such things?” Jahir asked, careful of the words.
Lisinthir thought of the implements in the use closet, where he’d first seen the racks, the plugs, the clamps. He had hated their application, had nearly gone insane suffering them. He had refused to use them on the Slave Queen, deplored their existence. He spoke as carefully as Jahir had, knowing that he dared not show too much of that revulsion if he wanted his cousin to make his choice free from coercion. “They prefer their own claws and fists. Wrestling is their foremost choice. But granted extended tests of dominance, they do resort to restraints and sometimes to tools. Their whips aren’t like ours, though. They were never developed to spur beasts of burden. They were designed from their inception to scar and mortify other Chatcaava.”
“I find it hard to conceive of such a thing.”
“Can’t you? We have swords, cousin. What is a sword but a more efficient tool for killing other people?”
“Or beasts!”
Lisinthir shook his head, finding some equilibrium in the discussion, some sense of himself. “In some twisted fashion, cousin, the development of the Chatcaavan whip was a form of mercy. If the choice is between death outright and torture from which one might win reprieve and even glory… then in making these tools, they have saved some segment of their population.”
Jahir’s voice was quiet. “I see my cousin and hear a dragon.”
“I am the son of the striking drake, at the last.” Lisinthir smiled, a little. “But… enough. I give you the choice because the use of such a tool is freighted with cultural contexts you might find abhorrent. I won’t flog you if in your mind it will become a punishment that corroborates your belief that you are lesser, and deserving of abasement.”
Jahir looked away, frowning. “I thought that at some level this exercise is supposed to incite such feelings.”
“Ah!” Lisinthir chuckled. “Here is where my education at the hands of the pards will stand us in good stead.” He went for the sideboard and the supplies he’d set there: the pitcher, two bottles, the small selection of spices. He poured a glass of unadulterated port first. “Different people need different things, you perceive. The reason we discuss these things b
eforehand is to prevent ourselves from blundering onto things you don’t want or need.”
Jahir’s brows lifted, but he did not reject the glass Lisinthir handed him. “You intrigue me. Do go on.”
“So, for instance,” Lisinthir said, obliging. “Having observed you, I know some of the things you don’t need.”
“This should be enlightening.”
“I trust!” Lisinthir set his finger on the underside of the glass’s foot, pushing up. “Drink.” He watched his cousin obey and then returned to the sideboard to set the pitcher on a warmer. Pouring the remainder of the port into it, he said, “You, for instance, do not need humiliation.”
“I… beg your pardon. Do some people…”
“Enjoy it? Oh, absolutely. But embarrassment makes you self-conscious, which is the opposite of what you need.”
“What do I need?” Jahir asked, bemused.
“To let go,” Lisinthir said, simply. He stirred the port, mixing the sugar and spices into it, and left it to the warmer before turning to face his cousin. On Jahir’s face he found the relaxed shoulders and soft, self-deprecating smile that were the signs of submission. But then his cousin looked at him and asked, “And what do you need?” and because the question was unexpected, the answer came, spontaneous and uncensored, and carried with it the roughness of too many unexamined pains and truths.
Ambassador... has there ever been something you wanted more than anything?
“To find a home.”
Of course. How could he have not known? Jahir stepped closer and naturally Lisinthir met his eyes, because he was incapable of exposing his own weaknesses without daring others to turn them into weapons. If he could face his own demons without flinching, how could his enemies use them against him? It was brilliant, and utterly like him, and did not change that they were wounds and they bled. Jahir caught his hand and kissed the fingers, willing Lisinthir to sense his sincerity as he said, in the white, “You will find your welcome in the arms of those who love you, and through them, you will have that home. I pledge it you, cousin.”
Lisinthir’s doubt seeped through their skin, so Jahir tightened his grip and said, “I mean that. You love your dragons and will find a place among them until they are done. Then you will come home.”
“To you,” Lisinthir said, and failed of the sardonic tone. “And Sediryl.”
“And Vasiht’h, who requires your services as mad uncle to his children,” Jahir said. And added, amused, “Sediryl has had two human lovers, one of each sex. Do you suppose she will find you outré?”
“Sediryl loves you,” Lisinthir pointed out, dry.
“She hasn’t met you yet.”
“And you’re the one who loves her, not me. Fortunately for her.” Jahir lifted his eyes from Lisinthir’s hand, saw his cousin flinch, grimace. “Forget I said that.”
“It is not an unfortunate thing, to be loved by you,” Jahir said, quiet.
Lisinthir sighed. “Healer.”
“To whom you promised a cessation of the mortification of your spirit, yes?”
Lisinthir chuckled softly and stroked Jahir’s fingers with his thumb. “I suppose I did. So I promise I shall endeavor, and tonight will be part of that. If you will permit me to continue the discussion?”
More talk about particulars when what he wanted was less talk about them, or more talk about this topic. Jahir sighed. “I suppose it’s necessary.”
“You suppose correctly. Am I right when I assume that your suppository came from a larger medical kit? One you packed yourself?”
That hot flush was surely visible, but how many such blushes had he awarded his cousin by now? “I might have done, yes.”
Lisinthir nodded. “Then do me the favor of going to the bathroom to fetch it. And finish undressing and preparing, if you would. I have my own work to do here.”
“Work,” Jahir murmured, feeling the word.
“Work I anticipate for the pleasure it will bring us,” Lisinthir said. “But it must be done right to ensure our safety. I prefer not to be distracted from my pleasures by catastrophe.”
“Catastrophe!”
“Or inconvenience.” Lisinthir grinned. “Go, cousin.”
Jahir rested his free hand on Lisinthir’s chest and inclined his head. In Chatcaavan, he said, “I obey.” And brought Lisinthir’s hand to his lips for one more kiss, which his cousin turned into a caress, cupping the side of his face.
The bathroom seemed far too significant a place when he stepped over its threshold, knowing that when he exited it, he would be submitting to what he suspected would be a life-altering experience. Trailing his fingertips over the counter, he avoided meeting his eyes in the mirror, not wanting to know what he would see there: desire? Shame? Anticipation? Fear, probably. All those things. He wanted to know if feeling them made him craven, or corrupt, and yet… he had nothing left in him to support such uncertainties. He had yoked himself in a bond closer than marriage to an alien; he wanted his pleasure mixed with pain, at the hands of a man; he was a mind-mage like something out of legend, who could force his feelings on others. How many other ways could he be debased… by the standards of others? And which others, when he lived with his foot in so many cultures?
Jahir lifted his eyes and looked, and saw only a great calm. His cousin had trusted him on the Chatcaavan vessel when he’d said Lisinthir was no monster. Now, he found, he trusted Lisinthir to tell him the same.
The medical kit was next to his toiletries. He stripped the rest of his clothes off and brought the bag, and halted just outside the bathroom. There were complex-looking hooks extending from the ceiling some distance in front of the wall, and beneath them a circle of white velvet resting upon a small wooden block. On the bed across from this, a blanket so deep a red it gathered black shadows in its folds. And the room smelled fragrantly of cardamom and oranges, and brought to him forcibly the association of safety, of countless holidays spent warming his fingers on glasses of mulled wine after vigils spent in cold chapels.
He said the first thing on his mind, brought there by his convulsive embrace of his supplies. “The white will stain, surely.”
“That is the point,” Lisinthir said. Perhaps something in his face betrayed him, for his cousin laughed. “No, my dear, I’m not intending to keep it as some proof of my virgin conquest. I bought it because I wanted another visual indicator of how much you’re bleeding.” Lisinthir glanced at the velvet. “The more warnings I can build into this, the better.”
“Because you’re not planning it to be safe.”
“No.”
Jahir stared at him, inhaled, and set the kit down on the bed. “You have not asked me for a safeword.”
“You know about them.”
“I’m not entirely unlettered,” Jahir said. And added, smiling a little, “I have known a great many Harat-Shar since coming to the Alliance. One is unavoidably educated.”
Lisinthir chuckled. “Yes, one is. It’s one of their charms. Now, ask me why I haven’t required you to give me one.”
Jahir met his eyes. “Why haven’t you asked me to choose a safeword?”
“Because,” Lisinthir said, “you’ll never use it.”
He’d needed it badly. To hear it said aloud. To know that Lisinthir knew it. The whole body shudder it sent through him was relief, or release, or both.
“I could ask you to choose one,” Lisinthir continued, bringing the knife—still hidden in its box—to the table he’d set up alongside the wall. “I could even compel your promise to employ it. But you wouldn’t. Either willfully, because you don’t want to be safe, or thoughtlessly, because you were too lost in the moment to recall it. But the extraction of that promise would lead me to believe you would use it, and that would make me complacent.” He shook his head. “No. I can’t trust you with your safety because you don’t know your own limits. And that means I will have to be vigilant and pay close attention to what I see and sense through my fingers. No safeword, thus.” He smiled, lopsided
. “Don’t tell my mentors in the art. They would be horrified.”
“I am sure there are places on Harat-Sharii where there are no boundaries.”
“I’m sure,” Lisinthir said, holding out a hand for him. “But there are reasons for the conventions we are about to flout, and I dearly wish we could use them.”
Jahir gave him his hand, watched his cousin loop the broad but colorless restraint over his wrist. To be so carefully designed, and yet so easy to overlook. He could see his skin through the strips lining the padding. “Do you?”
Lisinthir hesitated, then laughed, low. “All right. Perhaps it makes the thing more interesting, to have it be dangerous. But you do me wrong, cousin, in thinking that I am cavalier about this when your safety is at stake. I might enjoy risk-taking on my own, but some part of me does wish you would take enough care of yourself that I need not fear for you.”
Jahir gave him the other wrist. “There will always be parts of us that don’t belong to more civilized worlds, cousin.”
Lisinthir caressed the edge of his wrist, tracing the bones. “No. There would be no negotiation of boundaries on the homeworld.”
The memory of the rush of their horses through the forest swept through him. The exhilaration of it, of knowing that a broken neck awaited a single misstep, of the absolute certainty that Lisinthir wouldn’t guide them wrong. “We are what we are, and I would have it no other way.”
“Then, let us see what lies on the other side of this,” Lisinthir said, kissing his hands, now trammeled with their unassuming circlets of flexible silver. “And enjoy the journey.”
As Lisinthir led him toward the wall, Jahir said, “Will it begin with the knife, then?”
“Yours not to question, but to accept.” Lisinthir caught his wrist, stepping up onto the block and yoking it to the hook. “And on this I will brook no argument, cousin. I expect compliance from you from here on, until we are done. Anything less and we will not begin at all.”
Did his voice tremble? “I understand.”
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