Kushiel's Avatar

gazed at the Mahrkagir’s cupboard, a jumbled array of devices tossed here and there, leather dry and cracked, rusty iron, caked with black blood. And I bit my tongue to keep from weeping.
    “Duzhvarshta,” he said gently, freeing my hair from behind and running both hands through it. “Ill deeds. You understand?” He turned me around to face him, laying one hand over my groin. “Nothing that begets life.”
    I nodded, tears in my eyes. And to show I understood, I went to my knees before him, undoing the drawstring of his trousers and performing the languisement .
    Whatever else he might have experienced in the worship of Angra Mainyu, I do not think it prepared the Mahrkagir of Drujan for the attentions of a D’Angeline courtesan trained by one of the greatest adepts of the Night Court. I felt his entire body shudder as I took him into my mouth. Unlike his hands, his phallus was warm; rigid with blood, erect and straining. A strange feeling of relief enveloped me as his hands clamped hard on my head, fingers tangling in my hair, forcing me. I plied my art with consummate skill, working with lips and tongue, the small muscles deep in my throat, grateful for his groan of pleasure.
    Until he pushed me away, and I fell sprawling on the cold flagstones.
    “ I decide,” the Mahrkagir said, and struck me across the face with the back of his hand, so hard that my ears rang and I tasted blood. He smiled calmly, ignoring his erect phallus, so hard that the head of it brushed his belly, and struck me again, splitting my lower lip. “Do you understand?”
    “Yes, my lord,” I mumbled thickly, blood trickling down my chin.
    “Good.” He crouched over me and took my face in both hands, licking the blood from my chin and lip with one long swipe of his tongue. “Mm.”
    It shocked and appalled me more than anything I have known; and still, even now, aroused me. There are a thousand reasons I do not care to remember these nights, but that is chiefest among them, always. Not what he did, but how I responded.
    “Ill thoughts,” he whispered, and I could see my own blood spreading scarlet on his tongue as he said it, his left hand sliding beneath my gown, my undergarments. Cold, so cold! His fingers parted the folds of my nether lips, finding me moist and eager. “Ill words, whore of the gods.” With a sudden thrust, he slid two ice-cold fingers inside me. I made a helpless noise and surged forward, meeting his hand. “Ill deeds.” Deftly, his thumb penetrated me to the rear, and now with one hand, he held my entire nether region in a viselike grip. It hurt, and the force of my climax shook me. The Mahrkagir smiled tenderly at me, watching with his mad, mad eyes. “Now you understand.”
    I nodded dumbly, licking my split lip.
    “Ishtâ.” Murmuring a Persian endearment, he withdrew his hand from me. “I think you will become very, very special to me. Now take off your clothes.”
    That was the beginning.
    There was more, a good deal more. Much of it hurt. It was not that he was particularly skilled in the arts of pain. He wasn’t. I have known better-or worse, as it may be. I am not even sure myself which is true. Your gods have chosen you for defilement , he had said, and that was his gift. In time, he made me beg for what he did to me. Ill words. I did. I said all that he wished to hear. It was cold and dark and filthy, and I meant every word of it.
    And then it got worse.
    I did not see, at first, what he took from the cupboard, only that he handled it reverently. It had been some hours, I think, and my vision was blurred with exhaustion and tears, my body aching in every part from the violent commingling of abuse and pleasure. “You see?” he asked, stroking the leather straps, the thick buckles, showing me how the inside was hollow, lined with a cushion of oiled kidskin. Alone among the rest, this device had been tended with love. “A blacksmith made it for me. You see?”
    I nodded dully, a knot of terror in my belly. I saw.
    The Mahrkagir smiled, easing himself inside it, fastening the sturdy buckles. Man-shaped, the cold iron glinted, nubbed with hundreds of blunt spikes. It jutted from his loins like some terrible implement of war. “It is for you, ishtâ,” he said fondly, stroking my hair. “All for you.”
    My lips shaped the sound of my signale , no; enough, no more.
    Hyacinthe .
    He took me with it from behind, one hand shoving my face into the stained bedclothes. I do not have words to