Trickster Read online

  I forced an inhaled breath.

  Then an exhale.

  I didn’t hurt you too badly, did I?

  The question confused me at first.

  My mind provided images, memories from when we first came into the room.

  The seer hadn’t been gentle, it was true. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, of physical battery. Seers could be aggressive when they fucked, especially when they were in pain. Terian had been in pain. I had been in pain, too, which likely affected the other male, as well.

  But I had more or less expected him to do what he did.

  Terian demanded a level of light and body subservience from me, but that had only turned me on more.

  Truthfully, my mind and light wanted to relive that again now, and I found myself remembering us together on the floor, what Terian had done with his light, using it in ways I had never experienced before, using it through his cock, his fingers, his tongue, even his teeth…

  The combination turned me helpless. Utterly compliant.

  Terian seemed to like that, as well.

  I fought to get my equilibrium back, turning more tightly to my side.

  The physical pain in my body immediately rose back to my awareness.

  It disappeared almost as quickly, replaced by an altogether different kind of pain. I didn’t try to answer the other seer with words, but fought instead to control my light, then my breathing.

  I wouldn’t call this shyness exactly, but something lived there, some combination of nerves and adrenaline that sent my heart pounding in my chest, even as I winced against that other, more visceral pain in my body.

  No, I answered belatedly, and more or less truthfully. No, you didn’t hurt me too badly.

  I fought against the impulse to struggle, to free myself of the other man’s body and arm. I knew that wasn’t the impulse precisely. The impulse itself had less specificity to it. It was more a flush of aggression that wound into the separation pain that had somehow worsened in me while I slept, if that were even possible.

  You want to fuck again? Terian asked.

  I did, but I didn’t want to say it.

  You want to hurt me back, maybe, brother? Is that it? To do to me what I did to you?

  My pain keened upwards, making my hands clench into fists where they lay on the mattress in front of my chest.

  Yes, I admitted softly.

  Terian chuckled, then released my chest and shoulder unexpectedly, rolling his body away from mine. Sighing, he rested his back on the mattress, looking up.

  I felt the absence of the other’s flesh and skin keenly.

  I felt it strongly enough that my pain worsened.

  When he continued to not touch me, it worsened to the point where I could no longer force myself to be reasonable about it. Something in my light only turned more aggressive, the harder I fought to control it. That aggression grew more personal, too.

  My mind was working again, though… more or less.

  Jesus, what the fuck was I doing?

  How had I let myself forget who this was?

  It’s not as if Terian lied to me.

  The other male made it crystal clear that he had no compunction about dragging whatever one of his subordinates to his bed that he desired, however much of a whim that entailed.

  He hadn’t even bothered to spend much time on seduction in my case. Terian had multi-tasked that part, while briefing his field agents for their upcoming op. He’d demanded that I undress pretty much the instant the door of his sleeping quarters closed behind us.

  He’d demanded a lot of things, and clearly expected me to give them to him.

  Just what number was I, exactly, in the long line of Terian’s subordinates he must have bedded over the years?

  Or hell, months?

  There was no ethical dilemma here, not according to the culture of the Org.

  The Org treated their network infiltrators like adults, not like confused children.

  No one cared who or how many the network officers seduced, no matter if they targeted inferiors under their charge, or their superior officers. Occasionally, there would be a political blowout of some kind around someone’s sexual or emotional preferences––usually a seer going apeshit after another attempted to poach a partner or mate––but that was about it.

  Anyway, that kind of thing happened everywhere with seers.

  It had nothing to do with authority or abuse of the same.

  Regardless, I knew with a sudden blast of certainty that I was about to get kicked out of this particular seer’s bed.

  I imagined that I’d felt the impulse in the other’s light already, turning into a list of excuses Terian would soon begin to politely (or impolitely) verbalize to get me out the door.

  I imagined I felt the other’s disappointment in me, too, a duller sense of boredom, that boredom strengthened by the fact that I had been conquered so easily, had gone compliant so easily, yet still hadn’t managed to live up to the anticipation.

  Behind me, Terian chuckled.

  “So sure of that, are you?” he said. “Yet, personally, I’m not entirely certain I’ve conquered you at all yet, brother… or done much of anything but prove to both of us that you like sex.”

  I felt the tension in my limbs worsen.

  Pain lived there, more than I had felt in a very long time.

  It took me another few seconds to recognize the possessiveness that lived there, too, the complete irrationality and anger I felt at Terian’s words. I felt Terian’s light flicker through mine even as the realization hit, a faint whiff of curiosity seemingly centered on that intensity.

  I fought to hide it from the other male, but knew I only half-succeeded.

  Likely, given who he was, I hadn’t succeeded at all.

  Again, I felt Terian smile.

  It only pissed me off more.

  Terian held his light more guardedly now. As a result, I couldn’t gauge anything specific in the other male’s response. Lying there, I tried to decide if I should say anything, then I realized there was nothing more to say.

  I glanced at the seer’s old-fashioned alarm clock, forcing my mind back into military mode, ignoring the pain that still tugged at my light, especially in the area of my groin and belly. I equally tried to ignore the more physical pains that vied for my attention as soon as I put my focus back on my actual body.

  I remembered Terian using a belt on me at one point.

  I’d scarcely felt it at the time, but I felt the cuts now.

  The pain, physical and otherwise, had been so wrapped into and confused by the other male’s light, I could only see them as part of the same end. Terian had me begging before long, but not to end that pain… instead I’d been asking him for more, anything to open more of the other male’s light, anything to allow me to feel more of it, whatever it took.

  If I could have cracked open the other male’s chest and forced him to open to me, I would have done it.

  Even as he climaxed, much of the other seer felt distant, out of reach.

  Out of my reach, anyway.

  I remember Terian asking me things, too, wanting to know more about me, even as he beat me to open my light, even as he fucked me, during and after.

  You were in the camps, weren’t you brother? We recruited you from the camps?

  I told him about it in detail, when he pressed me.

  I’d never told that story before, but for some reason, I told Terian.

  I told him about the guard I’d lived with for over five years, a Russian named Krikev, who’d grown infatuated with me while I was still a child. He’d eventually moved me into the guard post quarters, raped me every night he wasn’t too drunk to get it up.

  Krikev turned me into a pet, keeping me in his kitchen like a dog.

  He used to make me kneel by his table, naked, while he ate his dinner with the other guards, a collar around my neck. He’d offer me to the others, too, and occasionally they’d take him up on the offer, depending on t
heir own preferences.

  I told Terian that the human had enjoyed beating me.

  Terian only laughed, telling me he didn’t blame Krikev for that.

  I told him more. I don’t know why I told him, why I felt compelled to tell him, but I did it anyway.

  Krikev regularly beat me nearly to unconsciousness when he drank.

  Then he’d rape me, if he could, but just as often he would just fall asleep, frustrated and angry.

  There’d been nothing erotic about those beatings, no light to share with the worm who could not see me as a living being at all, except to feel deprived of the desire and love he felt he deserved. Krikev beat me out of stupidity, out of unhappiness and loneliness and a need to forget. He’d piss on me sometimes, too, leaving me cold and wet, on nothing but a few rags by the dying embers of his coal stove.

  Like an animal. Like I was barely alive.

  Like I was… nothing.

  Still, over time I developed a strange sort of empathy for the man, who would cry over his vodka some nights like a child, asking my forgiveness. That empathy didn’t stop me from snapping the human’s bearded neck, however, the very hour the Org came to the camp, and offered me an alternative.

  Hell, I considered it a mercy killing.

  I’d never told anyone about Krikev before.

  I never talked about it with the Org agents who found me.

  I never told any of my other lovers.

  I never even told Janen, who had been my lover for over a decade. Janen had his own secrets, of course, things he never spoke of with me, things I sometimes glimpsed through the vibrant, painful pictures that remained imprinted in Janen’s light.

  All seers had memories they didn’t speak of, in these days at least.

  Us younger seers especially had memories of this kind, since we suffered most when humans began rounding us up like cattle. We had less emotional padding, as well, in that many of us were ripped from our parents before experiencing that foundation of love so needed in a seer’s extreme youth.

  I forced such thoughts from my mind now, clenching my jaw.

  I had less than six hours to get ready.

  I’d need at least half of that time simply to shower, eat, dress and imprint the intel into my light so I would have it at my beck and call out in the field. That didn’t even include the intel Terian wanted us to know before we left the encampment.

  I’d slept some, but I doubted it had even been as much as an hour.

  It would have to be enough.

  First, food. I would find some coffee.

  I started to push myself up, sliding my long legs over the side of the mattress, when Terian caught hold of my arm, stopping me.

  I let myself be stopped, but I didn’t turn my head to look at him.

  Terian released me after only a few seconds, without speaking. I felt my pain worsen a second time, but I quashed it that time, too.

  Screw this. I didn’t need this crap.

  I didn’t need excuses, stories, or vague placations.

  I didn’t need to be kicked out at all.

  I could find my own way to the fucking door.

  Completing the motion I’d started, I pulled myself off of his bed and began looking on the floor for my clothes. The light was almost nonexistent, so I used my aleimi to compensate for my physical eyes, and soon found my pants… then my shirt. I had a vague memory of the room’s layout, from when the lights were on, when Terian first brought me here.

  The room, like most areas of the headquarters building, didn’t contain much in the way of non-essentials. Bed. Night table. A small wardrobe, half-filled with clothes.

  An attached bathroom was the only luxury, in that it contained a real, hot-water shower.

  Terian had taken me in there, too, painstaking washing the wounds he had inflicted, caring for me with a gentleness that had thrown me at the time. When he’d finished, he’d knelt in front of me, giving me a slow-building and sensuality-induced orgasm that literally made my knees buckle, to the point where I might have fallen and hurt myself for real if Terian hadn’t been there to catch me.

  I cried out like an adolescent that time, clutching the other seer, and for a long moment, I’d opened my light completely, unable or perhaps unwilling to shield any part of myself from his light.

  I felt like a fucking asshole for that now.

  Needless to say, he hadn’t done the same for me.

  Even then, he still hadn’t let me in.

  I could feel my lingering frustration around that, even now. I could feel the part of me, of my light, that was angry about it, that felt rebellious about it, that felt deprived and borderline entitled about it. I knew I was letting myself get into dangerous ground there, but luckily, I also knew the most efficient way to cut that lingering want off.

  I had to remove myself.

  Entirely.

  I’d ask Pavel for a blow job. That would help.

  The other seer would probably be open to it.

  Especially if I offered to return the favor.

  I didn’t look back at the seer on the bed as I hunted for my clothing and dressed, but I could feel those amber eyes on me anyway, and had to fight to keep from snapping at the other male for staring, sure somehow he could see me clearly, despite the lack of light.

  I had to bite my lip to remain silent, even though I had no idea what I wanted to say.

  My separation pain worsened in those few minutes it took for me to get dressed, until I was hard again, painfully hard, but I fought not to react to that, either, as I pulled my armored pants on over the erection, then fastened them carefully to the top.

  I’d known what this was.

  I’d known, walking in.

  I damned well should have known, anyway.

  I was heading for the door when a blur of motion came from the bed, covers and springs making sounds, the whole thing happening so fast that I felt it more in my light than I saw it via the limitations of my physical eyes and other senses. By the time I had paused my steps, Terian stood between me and my exit.

  Even in the lack of physical light, I swore I could see the seer smiling at me.

  Perhaps I could just feel it.

  Either way, that predatory sharpness had returned to the other male’s aleimi.

  I was still staring in that direction, when he flicked on the overhead light, causing me to blink and shield my eyes from the brightness.

  For the first time, I noticed he was almost as tall as I was.

  “Leaving so soon, brother?” Planting his feet slightly apart, Terian fell back casually against the closed door. “Just who is kicking who out of their bed, I wonder?”

  I didn’t answer.

  I didn’t even bother to avert my eyes.

  “Are you really so anxious to get a blow job from this… Pavel?”

  I felt my jaw harden.

  “He is good with his mouth then? This… Pavel?” Terian’s voice sharpened. “Should I invite him over here then, brother? Save you the trip?”

  I still didn’t speak.

  My pain worsened sharply when Terian put his hands on me, feeling over my chest, and then the bulge on the front of my pants. Those amber eyes still boring into my face, Terian began to massage my groin deliberately, using that incredible light of his in his fingers and sending more heat into my chest with his other hand.

  After a few seconds, I let out a strained breath, leaning a hand against the door behind him.

  “Fuck you, sir,” I managed.

  Terian laughed.

  My light remained charged, strangely intense, borderline, or maybe full-blown aggressive even as the other male trained his gaze, laser-like, on my face.

  “What if I ordered you back to my bed?” Terian said. “Would you disobey me, brother?”

  I felt my anger worsen.

  “You know I would not.”

  “Do I? I am not sure that I do, brother. Not at this moment.”

  I saw a frown touch Terian’s mouth as h
e assessed my face.

  “Clearly I’ve fallen out of favor,” the other male added. “To have you leaving here so quickly, brother. Without so much as a thank you… or, better yet, an offer to suck me off a last time before you scurry back to suck this ‘Pavel’ instead. Hell, I would have settled for a kiss, brother… on any part of my body.”

  He massaged me harder, and I let out a low sound, leaning my face into my arm.

  “…Maybe you intend to get me back for this imagined slight against your pride?” Terian said. “Maybe fuck another in your pod, in your delusional quest for revenge? Or one of my people, here? One of the camp rats, perhaps?”

  I looked over at his words, feeling my jaw harden.

  “What difference would it make, sir?” I said.

  Terian’s smile faded, leaving a look that caused me to immediately regret my words.

  “I apologize––” I began, but Terian cut me off.

  “––Perhaps it wouldn’t make any difference to me, after all,” Terian said, his voice suddenly ten degrees colder. “I wonder, though, how much do you value your own cock, brother? Perhaps I could rid you of the inconvenience, if it pains you so to simply fucking ask me what I desire, instead of storming out of here like a wronged adolescent?”

  I felt my pain worsen when the other didn’t stop the motion of his strong fingers, and now I felt confused, too. Terian used his light and touch with a deftness that made me lose my train of thought. The more he focused his light, the worse my confusion grew.

  Closing my eyes, I leaned into the other male’s hand.

  After a few more seconds, I gave up, letting my light grow submissive once more, how it had been before, when we were first alone.

  “I apologize, sir,” I said, quieter.

  “You’d fucking well better,” Terian said pleasantly. “…Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “I like that you’re possessive. You got me hard as hell, getting all territorial like that, especially with only a single, marginally unconventional fuck under our belts. I have to say, it’s been quite a while since one of my playmates got to me like that… quite a while, indeed.”

  I winced at the playmates reference, but bit my tongue, not voicing it.

  Terian felt it, anyway, and grinned.

  “Gods. I may have to keep you on a short leash, brother. This jealousy… is it normal for you? If it is, you’d better lie to me.”