Title: Your Lips Are Venomous Poison
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Characters/Pairing: Denna/Richard
Rating: R
Spoilers: Set during 'Denna'
Warnings: Non-consensual sex
Word Count: ~3,200
Disclaimer: Legend of the Seeker (TV) belongs to ABC Studios/Disney. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.
Author's Notes: Written for my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
kissbingo card for the square 'emotion: anger'. The prompt for the fic came from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
madmguillotine, who wanted more Denna/Richard and who gave me the lyrics 'your lips are venomous poison', which apparently comes from an Alice Cooper song.
Thanks go to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aithine for the beta.
-o-
Denna is not the kind to be thankful. Gratitude is a wasted emotion, but if she were capable of such a weak and pallid thing, she thinks that she'd be grateful for the Seeker. If nothing else, he is not boring and it has been too long since she had anything approaching a challenge. Men these days break far too easily, and Denna has always been rough with her toys.
But the Seeker is something else, something new and that alone is enough to tempt Denna's jaded palate. His tears taste salty-sweet when she touches them with her tongue, and his blood tastes even sweeter. He is truly a delight for all of her senses. His cries of pain are like music to her ears, and the curses he lets fall from those broken, bitten and bleeding lips might be empty threats but they are delivered with enough vitriol to make her shiver with glee. She makes him sweat and she makes him bleed, and she can taste both in the back of her throat, a sharp, metallic tang that has her licking her lips as she watches him fall.
He falls so beautifully, figuratively and literally, curling up into a ball of pain when she releases the chains, and he's broken, so broken inside, which only makes him all the more beautiful and even more desirable. When she touches him, she keeps her fingers gentle as they trace over his broken ribs, with just enough bite to her touch to remind him of the wounds she's inflicted. He shivers and shakes, a whimper of pain escaping him, and she drinks the sound down like she drinks in the look in his eyes, lost and half-terrified.
But when she lets her fingers drift up over his chest, he leans into her touch; the look in his eyes is still lost, still afraid but it's all wrapped up in her and she knows he can't pull away, not now. Even better, she knows that he doesn't want to.
Her fingers slide downwards again, tracing along the strong, lean lines of his body. Each time her touch strokes over a bruise or a burn, each mark placed carefully by her agiel in order to enhance his beauty, he flinches or hisses out a breath. She could order him to stay still, to not make a sound; perhaps she should, perhaps he would even try to obey her. Constance would say that not to do so was weak, but then Constance lacks Denna's skill or indeed anything approaching subtlety. Constance might see the beauty in each mark but she cannot see that there's a kind grace in Richard's pain, that there's submission in the bow of his head and in the sounds he lets out when Denna presses her fingers against each sore spot.
And when Denna reaches his breeches, pressing her leather clad fingers down against the fabric, he is hard under her touch. For a brief moment, she lets her lips curl in victory. She may not have completely broken him yet, but he is becoming hers in all the ways that matter. She leans in closer and closer until her breath brushes against his face. When he turns away at first, she is patient; her fingers brush carefully over the hardness in his breeches, again and again, stroking lightly. In the end, he is only a man and they are all weak, especially in this. He lets out a sound that is caught on the cusp between a sigh and a moan and his hips move fractionally, rising to meet her touch; perhaps she's indulging him, too lenient in this too soon, but it's an indulgence that she's willing to give him. He's been so good today, so responsive with every curse and twitch and groan, and even Constance would recognise that a little reward now and then can bind a slave even more tightly to his mistress. The Seeker's form is very fair - it would be no hardship to indulge him even further, especially not when it would indulge both of them.
She moves to straddle him and finally he turns to face her. The fear is back in his eyes, although he tries - and fails - to hide it, but there are more things there as well, things that lurk below the surface. Denna, however, is skilled enough to read everything he's trying not to let show in his dark eyes - the desire for her and for her touch, and the shame of wanting it. It's heady, intoxicating to see it, and she leans in again until her lips are only a hairsbreadth from the skin of his cheek.
Up this close he smells of pain - of sweat and fear and hopelessness - and she breathes in deeply, holding the scents and the sight of him deep inside her, down at the core of her where everything is hollowed out, ready to be filled only with this, the sweetness of his surrender and the sweet taste of his pain. When she brushes her mouth across his, his lips part but the breath doesn't leave him in a hiss this time; instead it leaves him in a sigh, and the defeat in the sound leaves her aching, a sharp, clenching hunger between her thighs.
She rocks forward, watching as his head falls back against the bench he's propped up against, his eyes closing to dark slits. He still watches her through them, though, unable - unwilling - to look away, and this time she lets him see her smile. He shivers again under her touch, under her weight and the weight of her desire for him. He isn't hers entirely, not yet, but he will be. The inevitability of it tightens in her chest, leaving her even hungrier for the final victory.
His breath catches in his throat when her clever, nimble fingers find the laces of his breeches and slip inside, and all of the muscles in his stomach clench beneath her as he anticipates the pain that her touch usually brings. When she looks into his face - into his eyes - the fear is back in them, no longer lurking but clearly written on the surface. She smiles, baring her teeth, and he swallows, his eyes tracking across her face, looking for some hint of her intentions. She's too wily to give him any. It's always better when those she's breaking or has already broken don't expect the blows she deals. It's so much sweeter when it catches them unawares; the cries they let out are stronger, more real because of it.
He doesn't fight her touch, but he doesn't give into it either, not at first. Not until she leans forward again and sinks the fingers of her free hand into his hair. She curls her fingers until her nails press against his scalp and dig in lightly, and she turns his face up towards her. When she presses her mouth against his, his lips part more readily for her, but she doesn't take him, not yet. Instead she moves her mouth slowly over his, teasing at the edges of his lips with the tip of her tongue until the tension eases from him.
She can taste blood, and her tongue teases along the split in his lip left by her fist; the stinging has him surging up towards her and her hunger rises to meet him.
Her fingers stroke lightly against his hardness as he tenses against her, and when she slips her tongue all the way past his lips until she can explore the contours of his mouth, his breath leaves him in a gasp. She lets her hunger take her, and in turn take him, pressing her mouth firmly against him until he can barely breathe, until he's reliant on her whim; her fingers close around the hardness in her hand, stroking more firmly, and he bucks into her hold.
He's hers, she's sure of it, and she finally pulls back, her smile victorious. His eyes are closed as he pants for breath, and she twists her fingers in his hair and those curled tightly around his hardness, the skin of his cock hot and soft against her palm as she strokes him. He opens his eyes slowly, so slowly, and the look in them is glazed; it's not her he sees.
"Kahlan..." he breathes, and then his eyes fly open, widening with fear as he realises what he's said.
Fury surges through her, sudden and swirling fierce and red. She lets it take her, carry her with it, and the blow she strikes has the full force of her anger behind it. It splits his lip anew; the blood runs down over his chin, dripping onto his bare chest as he frantically struggles to find some words that will appease her.
Nothing will, not when she sees that there's something more than fear in his gaze, something that stirs sluggishly underneath his thoughts of her. Some memory of who he was before, and who he loved before Denna consumed all of his senses. It sends a spike of fear through her, some sense of loss when she has never lost anything of value, and that only leaves her even angrier.
She snarls, and the sound tears at her throat and deep in her chest, tight with fury and with everything else. He will pay for this, and he'll find the price too high; she sinks her fingers back into his hair, tightening her grip and jerking her hand back until his neck is arched, his throat bared to her rage. She could tear it out with her teeth, would sink her hand into his flesh and rip his heart out if she could; instead she takes what he should have offered to her freely, forcing her mouth savagely against his, sinking her teeth into his bottom lip and tasting his blood and his fear. She swallows down his regret and his grief for all the things she's ripped from him, and his tears don't taste sweet this time. It's a bitter, empty taste. It does nothing to satisfy her, and it doesn't soothe her anger.
But Denna is no fool, in spite of the rage still coursing through her. She is a good judge of men, knows all of their weaknesses, the points to strike to bring them down. Richard is not confessed - if he was, she'd never have managed to break him even to this point - which means that Kahlan Amnell has never taken him. There's an air of innocence about him, a naivety which makes her think no woman has.
Denna will. He cannot - will not - deny her this, something that he has never shared with this woman he claims to love, who has so consumed his soul even without use of her magic that he dares whisper her name instead of Denna's. Denna will take him, will squeeze him dry of everything he still clings to until all he can think of is Denna. Whether he thinks of her with love or fear or hate matters not. It is all the same to Denna, as long as it is her he thinks of.
She slides her hand back into his breeches; her touch is rough this time, but he stays hard in spite of it, or maybe because of her. He doesn't fight her - perhaps he's not that stupid or that reckless - but his fingers settle against her forearm, a silent plea she ignores. Instead, she licks at his mouth, swipes the sweat and the tears from his face with her tongue; he closes his eyes against her, as though that will fend off her anger.
When she is ready, when she is sure she has cowed him, she doesn't bother to undress. Perhaps she would have done had he behaved, if this had been a reward and not a punishment, but instead she simply undoes the hidden fastenings between her legs, the ones in the Mord-Sith leather that let the Sisters of the Agiel relieve themselves in the field - in more ways than one. And then she sinks down onto him, taking him inside her like he'll take her magic inside him until it sinks in so deeply into him that she can turn him inside out with a word, until he's left nothing but a quivering wreck, subservient to her every desire.
She isn't wet enough, not quite in spite of the way his torment has delighted her, but she welcomes the sharp ache as his length slides into her. More than welcomes - it excites her, like the way Richard's face twists, half-pleasure and half-pain, excites her. He's losing himself in her: in the feel of her body clenching around him; in the fingers she still has twisted in his hair; in her breath, hot and greedy against his skin. His mouth is slack beneath hers, slow and sluggish to respond; she twists the fingers in his hair more tightly, yanking his head back until a pained gasp is forced past his lips. She swallows that down, like she swallows down the taste of his despair. It tastes like the blood that still oozes, iron-red and metallic, from his split lip. It tastes sweet as honey on her tongue but when she swallows it down, it settles hard and bitter in the pit of her belly.
The pace she sets is savage, and she glories in the grunts that begin to fall from his lips each time her hips drive downward. His fingers flutter along her thighs, grabbing feebly at her hips and sliding against the slick leather she still wears. She lets go of his hair and grabs one of his wrists, forcing it down against the cold stone floor, bending his hand back until the bones in his wrist grate against each other. He arches against her, whimpering as the pain hits, and his eyes are wide and hopeless. But he's still hard in her, and each time she rocks back down onto him, his hips jerk helplessly against her, driving his cock deeper into her body.
She's close and the sight of him, the lost look on his face and in his eyes, simply pushes her closer until she's teetering right on the very edge of pure pleasure. She knows what she needs to take her the rest of the way, and she knows what he needs, too. She slides her agiel from its holster, and leans in again to take his mouth. She presses in hard until she can feel the shape of his teeth behind his lips, taste the blood that seeps out as his teeth cut into his flesh. And then she jabs her agiel up into the soft skin beneath his chin, and holds it there.
He tries to scream, but her mouth muffles any noise before it can escape. His body jerks against hers, and the feel of the agiel's power tears through her, fierce and savage as a lightning strike as it vibrates through his body and through hers in turn. It surges into her mouth, sharp and glorious pain catching at her tongue, rippling all the way down into her very core. She comes and comes apart, pain and pleasure racing through her, setting all of her nerve endings alight, all tangled up until she doesn't know where one ends and the other begins. It doesn't matter that they are indistinguishable from one another, pain and pleasure - this is the way of the Mord-Sith, the only way that is real and true, and she glories in it.
When she comes down from her high, when the agiel's gift has washed through her and left her shaking and weak in its wake, she pulls back from his mouth but leaves the agiel pressed against his skin. He is still trying to scream, his back arched and his fingers curled into claws, but no sound escapes him, at least none that she can hear. There are flecks of blood on his lips and, as she watches, he half-chokes again on the sound of his own pain; more blood appears, ripped by his screams from the lining of his throat.
He will not be able to speak tomorrow, and maybe not even the day after that. The thought does not displease her; there will be no muttering of any names but Denna's, and if he does manage to say her name it will be coated with terror.
She watches him dispassionately for a moment, and then pulls the agiel away. As soon as she has released him, he flops back like a fish reeled in and dropped into the bottom of the boat. He's just as hurting, just as helpless as any lowly trout suffocating on the shore and when she pulls herself away from him, letting him slip from her body - his member is soft and useless now, even though he didn't spill his pleasure into her - he topples over to the floor, curling up in a vain attempt to shield himself from the agony still coursing through his battered body.
She rises to her feet, fastening herself back up and smoothing out any creases in her leather before she moves to stand over him, staring down at him. He shivers, trying to curl up even more tightly, tears running silently down his face. She pulls back her lip in a snarl, kicking him in his ribs hard enough to break another one in the process; the scream he lets out this time is high pitched and breathless.
She leans down, pulling his head back up by his hair, and the pained sound he lets out breaks halfway through. "You do not ever call me by her name. Do you understand me, Richard?"
He nods, seemingly beyond anything but pure animal terror. "Please," he begs when he has the breath for it, and it comes out cracked and broken, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Mistress, please..."
"Remember," she snarls and he nods jerkily. When she lets go of him and straightens up, he starts to move but he's slow and sluggish, his wits dulled by the pain, and it tries her patience. He finally shifts position, but he only manages to move far enough to lean against her leg, settling there like any good dog waiting for the whims of its mistress.
It should please her, this submission, but the victory of it tastes like ashes in her mouth, gritty and bitter. Her anger is ebbing away from her, even though she tries to cling tightly to it, and all it leaves behind are sharp, jagged shards lodged in her breast. They stab at her when she pulls away from him, putting some distance between them; his fingers slip away from her leathers, leaving him scrabbling at the floor instead to stay upright.
She's broken him, at least for now, and it should please her. Instead, there is an emptiness inside that not even the sight and smell of his blood, his fear, his longing for approval can fill. There's some part of her that feels broken, too, and she hates him for it.
The End
Author: alyse
Fandom: Legend of the Seeker
Characters/Pairing: Denna/Richard
Rating: R
Spoilers: Set during 'Denna'
Warnings: Non-consensual sex
Word Count: ~3,200
Disclaimer: Legend of the Seeker (TV) belongs to ABC Studios/Disney. No copyright infringement is intended. This is fanfiction, written solely for love of the show.
Author's Notes: Written for my
kissbingo card for the square 'emotion: anger'. The prompt for the fic came from madmguillotine, who wanted more Denna/Richard and who gave me the lyrics 'your lips are venomous poison', which apparently comes from an Alice Cooper song.Thanks go to
aithine for the beta.-o-
Denna is not the kind to be thankful. Gratitude is a wasted emotion, but if she were capable of such a weak and pallid thing, she thinks that she'd be grateful for the Seeker. If nothing else, he is not boring and it has been too long since she had anything approaching a challenge. Men these days break far too easily, and Denna has always been rough with her toys.
But the Seeker is something else, something new and that alone is enough to tempt Denna's jaded palate. His tears taste salty-sweet when she touches them with her tongue, and his blood tastes even sweeter. He is truly a delight for all of her senses. His cries of pain are like music to her ears, and the curses he lets fall from those broken, bitten and bleeding lips might be empty threats but they are delivered with enough vitriol to make her shiver with glee. She makes him sweat and she makes him bleed, and she can taste both in the back of her throat, a sharp, metallic tang that has her licking her lips as she watches him fall.
He falls so beautifully, figuratively and literally, curling up into a ball of pain when she releases the chains, and he's broken, so broken inside, which only makes him all the more beautiful and even more desirable. When she touches him, she keeps her fingers gentle as they trace over his broken ribs, with just enough bite to her touch to remind him of the wounds she's inflicted. He shivers and shakes, a whimper of pain escaping him, and she drinks the sound down like she drinks in the look in his eyes, lost and half-terrified.
But when she lets her fingers drift up over his chest, he leans into her touch; the look in his eyes is still lost, still afraid but it's all wrapped up in her and she knows he can't pull away, not now. Even better, she knows that he doesn't want to.
Her fingers slide downwards again, tracing along the strong, lean lines of his body. Each time her touch strokes over a bruise or a burn, each mark placed carefully by her agiel in order to enhance his beauty, he flinches or hisses out a breath. She could order him to stay still, to not make a sound; perhaps she should, perhaps he would even try to obey her. Constance would say that not to do so was weak, but then Constance lacks Denna's skill or indeed anything approaching subtlety. Constance might see the beauty in each mark but she cannot see that there's a kind grace in Richard's pain, that there's submission in the bow of his head and in the sounds he lets out when Denna presses her fingers against each sore spot.
And when Denna reaches his breeches, pressing her leather clad fingers down against the fabric, he is hard under her touch. For a brief moment, she lets her lips curl in victory. She may not have completely broken him yet, but he is becoming hers in all the ways that matter. She leans in closer and closer until her breath brushes against his face. When he turns away at first, she is patient; her fingers brush carefully over the hardness in his breeches, again and again, stroking lightly. In the end, he is only a man and they are all weak, especially in this. He lets out a sound that is caught on the cusp between a sigh and a moan and his hips move fractionally, rising to meet her touch; perhaps she's indulging him, too lenient in this too soon, but it's an indulgence that she's willing to give him. He's been so good today, so responsive with every curse and twitch and groan, and even Constance would recognise that a little reward now and then can bind a slave even more tightly to his mistress. The Seeker's form is very fair - it would be no hardship to indulge him even further, especially not when it would indulge both of them.
She moves to straddle him and finally he turns to face her. The fear is back in his eyes, although he tries - and fails - to hide it, but there are more things there as well, things that lurk below the surface. Denna, however, is skilled enough to read everything he's trying not to let show in his dark eyes - the desire for her and for her touch, and the shame of wanting it. It's heady, intoxicating to see it, and she leans in again until her lips are only a hairsbreadth from the skin of his cheek.
Up this close he smells of pain - of sweat and fear and hopelessness - and she breathes in deeply, holding the scents and the sight of him deep inside her, down at the core of her where everything is hollowed out, ready to be filled only with this, the sweetness of his surrender and the sweet taste of his pain. When she brushes her mouth across his, his lips part but the breath doesn't leave him in a hiss this time; instead it leaves him in a sigh, and the defeat in the sound leaves her aching, a sharp, clenching hunger between her thighs.
She rocks forward, watching as his head falls back against the bench he's propped up against, his eyes closing to dark slits. He still watches her through them, though, unable - unwilling - to look away, and this time she lets him see her smile. He shivers again under her touch, under her weight and the weight of her desire for him. He isn't hers entirely, not yet, but he will be. The inevitability of it tightens in her chest, leaving her even hungrier for the final victory.
His breath catches in his throat when her clever, nimble fingers find the laces of his breeches and slip inside, and all of the muscles in his stomach clench beneath her as he anticipates the pain that her touch usually brings. When she looks into his face - into his eyes - the fear is back in them, no longer lurking but clearly written on the surface. She smiles, baring her teeth, and he swallows, his eyes tracking across her face, looking for some hint of her intentions. She's too wily to give him any. It's always better when those she's breaking or has already broken don't expect the blows she deals. It's so much sweeter when it catches them unawares; the cries they let out are stronger, more real because of it.
He doesn't fight her touch, but he doesn't give into it either, not at first. Not until she leans forward again and sinks the fingers of her free hand into his hair. She curls her fingers until her nails press against his scalp and dig in lightly, and she turns his face up towards her. When she presses her mouth against his, his lips part more readily for her, but she doesn't take him, not yet. Instead she moves her mouth slowly over his, teasing at the edges of his lips with the tip of her tongue until the tension eases from him.
She can taste blood, and her tongue teases along the split in his lip left by her fist; the stinging has him surging up towards her and her hunger rises to meet him.
Her fingers stroke lightly against his hardness as he tenses against her, and when she slips her tongue all the way past his lips until she can explore the contours of his mouth, his breath leaves him in a gasp. She lets her hunger take her, and in turn take him, pressing her mouth firmly against him until he can barely breathe, until he's reliant on her whim; her fingers close around the hardness in her hand, stroking more firmly, and he bucks into her hold.
He's hers, she's sure of it, and she finally pulls back, her smile victorious. His eyes are closed as he pants for breath, and she twists her fingers in his hair and those curled tightly around his hardness, the skin of his cock hot and soft against her palm as she strokes him. He opens his eyes slowly, so slowly, and the look in them is glazed; it's not her he sees.
"Kahlan..." he breathes, and then his eyes fly open, widening with fear as he realises what he's said.
Fury surges through her, sudden and swirling fierce and red. She lets it take her, carry her with it, and the blow she strikes has the full force of her anger behind it. It splits his lip anew; the blood runs down over his chin, dripping onto his bare chest as he frantically struggles to find some words that will appease her.
Nothing will, not when she sees that there's something more than fear in his gaze, something that stirs sluggishly underneath his thoughts of her. Some memory of who he was before, and who he loved before Denna consumed all of his senses. It sends a spike of fear through her, some sense of loss when she has never lost anything of value, and that only leaves her even angrier.
She snarls, and the sound tears at her throat and deep in her chest, tight with fury and with everything else. He will pay for this, and he'll find the price too high; she sinks her fingers back into his hair, tightening her grip and jerking her hand back until his neck is arched, his throat bared to her rage. She could tear it out with her teeth, would sink her hand into his flesh and rip his heart out if she could; instead she takes what he should have offered to her freely, forcing her mouth savagely against his, sinking her teeth into his bottom lip and tasting his blood and his fear. She swallows down his regret and his grief for all the things she's ripped from him, and his tears don't taste sweet this time. It's a bitter, empty taste. It does nothing to satisfy her, and it doesn't soothe her anger.
But Denna is no fool, in spite of the rage still coursing through her. She is a good judge of men, knows all of their weaknesses, the points to strike to bring them down. Richard is not confessed - if he was, she'd never have managed to break him even to this point - which means that Kahlan Amnell has never taken him. There's an air of innocence about him, a naivety which makes her think no woman has.
Denna will. He cannot - will not - deny her this, something that he has never shared with this woman he claims to love, who has so consumed his soul even without use of her magic that he dares whisper her name instead of Denna's. Denna will take him, will squeeze him dry of everything he still clings to until all he can think of is Denna. Whether he thinks of her with love or fear or hate matters not. It is all the same to Denna, as long as it is her he thinks of.
She slides her hand back into his breeches; her touch is rough this time, but he stays hard in spite of it, or maybe because of her. He doesn't fight her - perhaps he's not that stupid or that reckless - but his fingers settle against her forearm, a silent plea she ignores. Instead, she licks at his mouth, swipes the sweat and the tears from his face with her tongue; he closes his eyes against her, as though that will fend off her anger.
When she is ready, when she is sure she has cowed him, she doesn't bother to undress. Perhaps she would have done had he behaved, if this had been a reward and not a punishment, but instead she simply undoes the hidden fastenings between her legs, the ones in the Mord-Sith leather that let the Sisters of the Agiel relieve themselves in the field - in more ways than one. And then she sinks down onto him, taking him inside her like he'll take her magic inside him until it sinks in so deeply into him that she can turn him inside out with a word, until he's left nothing but a quivering wreck, subservient to her every desire.
She isn't wet enough, not quite in spite of the way his torment has delighted her, but she welcomes the sharp ache as his length slides into her. More than welcomes - it excites her, like the way Richard's face twists, half-pleasure and half-pain, excites her. He's losing himself in her: in the feel of her body clenching around him; in the fingers she still has twisted in his hair; in her breath, hot and greedy against his skin. His mouth is slack beneath hers, slow and sluggish to respond; she twists the fingers in his hair more tightly, yanking his head back until a pained gasp is forced past his lips. She swallows that down, like she swallows down the taste of his despair. It tastes like the blood that still oozes, iron-red and metallic, from his split lip. It tastes sweet as honey on her tongue but when she swallows it down, it settles hard and bitter in the pit of her belly.
The pace she sets is savage, and she glories in the grunts that begin to fall from his lips each time her hips drive downward. His fingers flutter along her thighs, grabbing feebly at her hips and sliding against the slick leather she still wears. She lets go of his hair and grabs one of his wrists, forcing it down against the cold stone floor, bending his hand back until the bones in his wrist grate against each other. He arches against her, whimpering as the pain hits, and his eyes are wide and hopeless. But he's still hard in her, and each time she rocks back down onto him, his hips jerk helplessly against her, driving his cock deeper into her body.
She's close and the sight of him, the lost look on his face and in his eyes, simply pushes her closer until she's teetering right on the very edge of pure pleasure. She knows what she needs to take her the rest of the way, and she knows what he needs, too. She slides her agiel from its holster, and leans in again to take his mouth. She presses in hard until she can feel the shape of his teeth behind his lips, taste the blood that seeps out as his teeth cut into his flesh. And then she jabs her agiel up into the soft skin beneath his chin, and holds it there.
He tries to scream, but her mouth muffles any noise before it can escape. His body jerks against hers, and the feel of the agiel's power tears through her, fierce and savage as a lightning strike as it vibrates through his body and through hers in turn. It surges into her mouth, sharp and glorious pain catching at her tongue, rippling all the way down into her very core. She comes and comes apart, pain and pleasure racing through her, setting all of her nerve endings alight, all tangled up until she doesn't know where one ends and the other begins. It doesn't matter that they are indistinguishable from one another, pain and pleasure - this is the way of the Mord-Sith, the only way that is real and true, and she glories in it.
When she comes down from her high, when the agiel's gift has washed through her and left her shaking and weak in its wake, she pulls back from his mouth but leaves the agiel pressed against his skin. He is still trying to scream, his back arched and his fingers curled into claws, but no sound escapes him, at least none that she can hear. There are flecks of blood on his lips and, as she watches, he half-chokes again on the sound of his own pain; more blood appears, ripped by his screams from the lining of his throat.
He will not be able to speak tomorrow, and maybe not even the day after that. The thought does not displease her; there will be no muttering of any names but Denna's, and if he does manage to say her name it will be coated with terror.
She watches him dispassionately for a moment, and then pulls the agiel away. As soon as she has released him, he flops back like a fish reeled in and dropped into the bottom of the boat. He's just as hurting, just as helpless as any lowly trout suffocating on the shore and when she pulls herself away from him, letting him slip from her body - his member is soft and useless now, even though he didn't spill his pleasure into her - he topples over to the floor, curling up in a vain attempt to shield himself from the agony still coursing through his battered body.
She rises to her feet, fastening herself back up and smoothing out any creases in her leather before she moves to stand over him, staring down at him. He shivers, trying to curl up even more tightly, tears running silently down his face. She pulls back her lip in a snarl, kicking him in his ribs hard enough to break another one in the process; the scream he lets out this time is high pitched and breathless.
She leans down, pulling his head back up by his hair, and the pained sound he lets out breaks halfway through. "You do not ever call me by her name. Do you understand me, Richard?"
He nods, seemingly beyond anything but pure animal terror. "Please," he begs when he has the breath for it, and it comes out cracked and broken, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Mistress, please..."
"Remember," she snarls and he nods jerkily. When she lets go of him and straightens up, he starts to move but he's slow and sluggish, his wits dulled by the pain, and it tries her patience. He finally shifts position, but he only manages to move far enough to lean against her leg, settling there like any good dog waiting for the whims of its mistress.
It should please her, this submission, but the victory of it tastes like ashes in her mouth, gritty and bitter. Her anger is ebbing away from her, even though she tries to cling tightly to it, and all it leaves behind are sharp, jagged shards lodged in her breast. They stab at her when she pulls away from him, putting some distance between them; his fingers slip away from her leathers, leaving him scrabbling at the floor instead to stay upright.
She's broken him, at least for now, and it should please her. Instead, there is an emptiness inside that not even the sight and smell of his blood, his fear, his longing for approval can fill. There's some part of her that feels broken, too, and she hates him for it.
The End