by Lyssa Dering
“This new for you?” Seraphim’s voice is strained.
I look away. “I’ve only been with one other man.” And Wish didn’t have anyone do this to themselves in any of those tapes. I’m almost regretful Seraphim didn’t want me to put my fingers in him, but of course, when the game starts, I’ll be able to if I want.
Seraphim gives me a sultry look. “Let’s make you forget that man.” After another minute or so, he lies flat. “Okay. I’m ready.”
I’m suddenly more nervous than I’ve ever been, aside from the moment I learned Wish had arrived in my paradise. Seeking comfort, I turn the light to its dimmest setting. Seraphim is breathing audibly already like he’s excited—or afraid.
Suddenly Seraphim screams at the top of his lungs.
I lunge for him, covering his body with mine and clamping a hand over his mouth. He writhes beneath me like real prey. Like I’ve drugged him and brought him to my little hideout, and he’s just woken up.
How fun!
I hiss in his ear, “If you scream again, I’ll break your pretty neck.” I swipe my tongue up the column of his throat, and he whines against my palm and wriggles.
It occurs to me he probably can’t say “elephant” with his mouth covered, so I move my hand away.
He doesn’t scream. But he pants, and when I go to kiss him, he tries to push me away.
The fight in him gives me a rush like seeing a bare brain. I pin his wrists as I am so fond of doing, ignoring the writhing of his legs as I sink between them. It’s unfortunate Wish didn’t make me bigger, because I am only a little more muscular than Seraphim himself. But I’m also stronger, heavier.
“Please.” The whispered word is like fingers inside me; a throbbing starts in my groin.
“Please what, darling?” I look into his fear-twisted eyes.
“Please don’t do this.” He sounds so sincere. But I can feel his hardness against me, our erections touching with only the paper-thin layer of my sleep pants between them.
“So hard for me, though. To be taken by force must be a fantasy for you.”
Seraphim shakes his head vehemently. Wanting a little more real discomfort, I lick up the side of his face. He makes an aborted sound in his throat and goes tense all over.
My erection pulses. “I can do whatever I want to you.”
“No—”
“Shh. Don’t make me cover your mouth again. I want to hear all your little whimpers and moans.”
“I won’t moan for you.”
Hissing at his defiance, I clamp my hand around his throat. I squeeze tightly enough to keep him from breathing, and it is as if we are suspended inside a black hole, our existences minimized and fused together into this one perfect moment.
Seraphim’s body jerks as he fails to get air. And the struggle has my cock jumping. I have never been so tight with desire and satisfaction.
“You don’t need to moan,” I say, my voice rough with arousal as he claws at my arm. “You just need to suffer.”
I let Seraphim’s throat go, and he gasps and coughs. He looks at me with a hard, angry gaze that only makes the pressure in my belly intensify.
“Would you have said ‘elephant’ during that?” I ask. I don’t want to make a mess of our game, but I don’t want the anger in his eyes to be real. His willingness is headier than I thought it would be, and I want him to want it when I penetrate him, even if he thrashes.
I wait for several eternal seconds, my hand on his soft, hair-dusted thigh.
“No,” he says at last. “I liked it. Keep going.”
Pleasure hits me like a wave. Suddenly, all my focus shifts to getting inside him. I need to be closer to him, glued together, unified.
I reach down between our warm bodies, fingers fumbling with the fabric of my pajama pants as I pull out my cock. It’s rock-hard and uncomfortably sensitive even to my own touch. I bite my tongue.
Seraphim’s not fighting so hard now, bracing a hand on my shoulder but not pushing.
I try to come up with an appropriate taunt, but I can hardly think. I can barely remember the rules of the game. I lean over Seraphim’s prone body and press the tip of my cock to his hole, groaning when it yields. It’s torture not to shove all the way inside, but this anticipation is the sweetest pain I’ve ever known. The pressure in my groin increases with every throb of my heart. “Seraphim.”
“No.” Seraphim’s voice is so small, so cute. He digs his nails into my shoulder. “Please.” The word breaks across sobs, and dry or not, they make my whole body tingle. “Please, I don’t want it. Pl—”
I press my pelvis down into him, sheathing my cock in the vice grip of his body. My shoulder burns where Seraphim scratches.
Again, we’re suspended in the black hole, frozen in bliss.
Seraphim is pliant beneath me as I take his hand from my shoulder and push it into the blankets, linking our fingers. When I rock my hips back and shove in deep again, he moans, squeezing my hand. I can hardly get enough air into my lungs.
On one of the tapes, Wish laughed and called his partner a slut. I press tightly to Seraphim, sandwiching his stiff length between our stomachs, and I flick my tongue into his ear. I steal Wish’s word, and Seraphim’s, but I don’t laugh. “Can one really rape a slut?”
Seraphim whines pitifully. “Fuck.”
My skin burns. I thrust and thrust. “Admit you’re a slut.”
“No.”
“Admit it!” I bite Seraphim’s ear.
He pants and whimpers at the same time, his voice gaining pitch with each breath. I fuck him with all the strength in my body. In this, I am human, primal. I’m just like all the other animals—not a monster, not a Fiend. But I still want to eat Seraphim, dig my teeth into his brain and feel his juices spill onto my tongue. The thought gets me impossibly harder.
“Admit it.” I open my mouth over his head, grazing his scalp with my teeth. Yearning squeezes my heart and puts my stomach in a vice grip. I imagine pushing the tip of my tongue into the ridges of Seraphim’s cerebral cortex and whimper into his hair. “Say you’re a slut, or I’ll lick you all over.”
Seraphim’s fingers flex in my hold, and something changes in the energy between us. “I’m—I’m a slut.” His voice is soft. His body goes easy and willing beneath me, and he wraps his legs around my waist.
Submission. It’s a word Wish knows.
My brain turns to jelly; seeing Seraphim like this is giving me heat stroke. I plow him through the burn, hard enough that our skin slaps when we slam together. The mattress creaks. Sweat trickles down my back, tickling at the base of my spine.
I put my hand on Seraphim’s soft throat again.
“Yes,” he says, almost too quiet to hear.
I close off his airway. Little, high-pitched whistles escape his gaping mouth, and I think about choking him with my dick instead (next time). A few seconds pass, with him staring hard at me with dilated eyes. Then he thrashes anew. His bucking only serves to bring us closer, allowing me to fuck him deeper. He taps my ass with his heels. I know he needs to breathe, but he’s not changing color yet, and he won’t die. Not yet.
My cock throbs inside Seraphim’s warmth, and I try to ignore it. I don’t want to be tired and sloppy on top of him yet. I want him to see stars first. I want him in outer space with me. “Come, Seraphim. Come for me, precious.”
Seraphim’s cock twitches between us. A second later, it spurts hot, sticky cum, and the sensation of his seed on me has me freezing in mild shock. The other man I had did not come for me; I wasn’t sure Seraphim would.
My shoulder’s burning—Seraphim’s clawing me. I let his throat go, and he wheezes and sputters. I nuzzle him with my nose, breathing in the scent of his clean sweat, the crisp night air from the shower gel, and his peppery musk. Hunger digs at my stomach. I thrust languidly into his core.
“Fiend.” Seraphim’s voice is rough from being choked. “That was…too—too dangerous.”
I hold his skull with both hands. “
No, my sweet. Remember, Wish City has different rules. I won’t ever hurt you.” A half-truth, of course. But I won’t ever hurt him here, when he’s giving himself up so sweetly, scared or not.
I lick his temple; I chew on his hair. Oh God, I want his brain. His beautiful, powerful, prize of a brain. “I’m so hungry. Desperate to taste you.” The words just come, like marbles flying across the floor before I can catch them. I wrap my arms around Seraphim and squeeze, my heart thudding impossibly harder. Is this the thing I say to scare him too much?
But Seraphim snakes his hot fingers up my jaw in what feels like a loving caress. “Lick me,” he says. “It’s okay.”
My stomach tumbles. I kiss his head with an open mouth. “You don’t like it.” That hasn’t stopped me before, but it still makes me raw inside to have him disgusted by my deepest desires. I rut into him, so close to the edge, still painfully aroused despite the pinch in my chest. I groan. I want to come, too, almost as much as I want his brain inside me, slippery and—
“Taste me.” Seraphim nuzzles my cheek and pets my shoulders, his hot fingers tickling my scratched-raw skin. “Please taste me. Wanna feel your tongue on me, inside me, licking into all my holes.”
A fresh sweat breaks out across my shoulders, and I shove my hips down into Seraphim’s pliant heat. I lick his jaw, his stubble scratching me.
“Eat me,” Seraphim whines, and maybe I’m imagining it, but the words are so sweet. “Eat me, please.”
My orgasm steals my breath. All my muscles lock, jerking me like Seraphim jerked while I choked him, as my cock quivers inside him, spilling deep. I moan with each spurt of cum, my pelvis twitching like there’s an anvil in my gut and somebody’s yanking it: tug, tug, tug.
Seraphim’s mine. He’s mine! As my pleasure ebbs, an intense, possessive urge replaces it. I lick lazily at Seraphim’s face.
But oh, I shouldn’t. He was lying when he said those things about feeling my tongue. How sweet of him to spin me that tale in order to bring me pleasure, though!
I roll us onto our sides. I run my hands down the back of Seraphim’s head over and over, caressing his silky, sweet-smelling hair. My cock falls out of him, but I keep him close. Mine, mine, mine. Perfect specimen.
Seraphim laughs, his breath puffing past my ear. “I didn’t take you for a cuddler.”
I pull back to meet his eyes. “Why not?” I even cuddled with the man I tied for a little while before releasing him. I pet Seraphim’s smooth cheek.
“Um. I don’t know.” A vein bulges slightly in his forehead, and there’s something like fear in the depths of his absinthe eyes.
I kiss him on the side of his head. “You are safe, you are safe. Let us sleep.”
Sera
“No, I don’t want any more of that shit. I want food. Real, hot food.” Because if Wish City doesn’t at least have that, it’s going to be real hard to convince myself not to jump off the nearest roof and die for real. If I can even die, that is. “No permanent injuries,” Fiend said, except for the one in my broken brain, obviously.
Fiend’s creepy eyes go big and sad, and he looks at the white juice box in his hand uncertainly. We’re standing in the kitchen, which has no windows just like everywhere else in this house. The numbers on the stove read 2:03; I’m assuming it’s afternoon. The kitchen’s neon tubes are off currently, but the room also has fluorescent strips on the ceiling, which give the space a radioactive, supermarket-type feel.
I know the juice Fiend is trying to give me is tasty, but I want to make a point.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Look, I just… I’m hungry. Isn’t there any other kind of food here? I could really go for a steak.” A thick, salty, marbled steak. My mouth waters. After sex as intense as what we had this morning, I need some protein. I’ve been feeling light-headed since I woke up about fifteen minutes ago, and then blinked and was suddenly back in Fiend’s real bedroom. Or maybe it was the fake one. Who knows?
Fiend puts the juice box back into the refrigerator, which is filled with rows upon rows of the same little boxes. “There was food when I first arrived, but it all went bad a long time ago. I’ll…have my soldiers bring you some.”
The words go around and around in my head, not quite making sense. Does Fiend not eat? “Do you live off that stuff?”
Fiend looks at me over his bare shoulder, which bears the evidence of my scratches. There’s something in his aura I can’t quite read. Feigned innocence, maybe? In any case, it puts a sour taste on my tongue.
“Mostly, yes,” he says.
I decide I don’t want to know any more about Fiend’s eating habits. It’s just additional weird shit to cloud my brain when what I really should be focusing on is survival. Food, water, escape. It’s not that Fiend has been treating me badly so far, but I’m tired of being trapped. Ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced into spaces or down paths I didn’t choose. I don’t want to do that in the fucking afterlife, too. Not even for a few days like Fiend said, but he may or may not have been lying about that. He made me come harder than I have in a long time, with some real heavy kink that nobody should do unless they really know their partner. But I’ve always been sexually irresponsible, Fiend is a stranger, and I can’t trust him.
I go over to the sink and turn on the faucet. The water is clear and cool and at least appears to be drinkable. “Is this water okay for me to drink?”
“Yes, but I…don’t have any cups for you.” Fiend lingers with his long fingers on the refrigerator door handle.
I scoop some of the water into my mouth. It tastes perfect like I’d imagine the rarest artesian stuff would taste. I drink several handfuls.
“I will get you food,” says Fiend. “But a little blue juice will help with…”
I turn off the water. “What?”
“Your throat.”
I smirk. It’s tender, I’ll admit. It’s bruised, too, I think, but it was hard to see for sure in the gold glow of the bathroom after I washed the cum from my ass and torso. Running my fingers across my neck, I remember the fear that gripped me as Fiend held my throat a few seconds too long when he choked me that second time. My cock jumps inside the sweat pants he gave me. Even without the choking, the sex was a little off book, especially when he scraped his teeth over my head (nobody’s ever done that to me before, no matter how kinky they were), but it was hot. Real hot. I cross my arms over my hardening nipples. “Are you going to drink some juice? Get rid of those scratches?” I gesture with my head at his shoulder.
Fiend looks down and back up again as his cheeks flush. “No.”
Universe, he’s cute. Maybe I only think so because we’ve had sex now, and I’m notorious—at least among the people I used to hide with—for becoming infatuated with men after nothing but sex. I used to miss one-night stands for days afterward and dump onto Thisbe all the things I liked about them: his beard, his sense of style, his bright eyes, his wit. Maybe it was my way of making up for the fact that I could never tell them my real name or stay until morning.
“I think I’ll keep my sore neck,” I say.
Fiend grins; it’s infectious. And I want to jump—or fall—into bed with him again and forget about all the weird little details of this place that let me know it’s Not Right. Like the lack of cabinets in this kitchen, for instance, and the magnetic letters on the refrigerator spelling “FEARED BIN WE” with no letters left over.
Fiend leans against one of the chrome counters and takes out a cell phone. He ignores me momentarily and appears to be reading something on the screen. Then he starts typing.
How strange to see a phone after so long locked up. When I was on the run, I couldn’t have one—they were too easy to track. But the part of me that remembers running wonders if I ought to steal Fiend’s phone and try to call for help.
I immediately shove the thought aside. Fiend said he was in charge here, and I’ll assume that’s true for now. No way there’s a 9-1-1 number to call when the leader of Wish City is holding one pri
soner, and in my experience, 9-1-1 never brings anyone who wants to help anyway. Plus, I don’t know another soul here.
Fear drips into my stomach in a way I’m not sure even another round of rough sex would completely get rid of.
Fiend drops his cell phone into the pocket of his drawstring pants, the outline visible through the thin, gray material. “I’ll be going out once the sun falls, but not until then. While we’re waiting for your food, would you like a tour of my house?”
So he really must be nocturnal, if he doesn’t go out in the day. I guess I should count my blessings that he hasn’t sucked my blood yet, or transformed into a bat and flapped through the house. Though in a certain light, that bedroom under the bed could look like a coffin…
“Uh, sure. I’ll have a tour.” Knowing the ins and outs of this place can only help me in my quest for freedom. I force a smile, clasping my hands behind my back.
5
Sera
This isn’t a house—it’s a puzzle. And I’m not sure I know how to solve it even as Fiend takes me up and down stairs, through doors both plain and hidden, and into closets and rooms filled with half-familiar things (old pulp novels, comic books, a television that never turns off showing wispy clouds passing over a blue sky on loop). It’s obvious Wish made this house, probably for himself, and that puts a chill in my bones I can’t shake even in this perfectly temperature-controlled environment of every human being’s dreams.
The closet in the master bedroom that was locked this morning comes open when Fiend turns the knob. He yanks a chain, illuminating a single bulb, and as I step in, Wish’s favorite flannel button-down assaults my eyes.
It’s an ugly shirt. It’s got yellow, turquoise, and pink in the same plaid pattern, but it fit him like a glove. He wore it all the time. I look at that shirt—on, weirdly, a gray mannequin—and all I see is Wish the last time we were together, standing in the alley behind our hideout during sunrise. He tilted his face toward the light, closed his eyes, and smiled. I smiled, too, even though I was jittery from being out in public. “We really might die tomorrow,” he said. “Try to enjoy a few seconds of your life.” Later that day, they nabbed Thisbe and me. I still feel guilty about not inviting her or anyone else to see the sunrise, but I’d wanted to spend time with Wish by myself, like some pathetic lost puppy.