Torturous Love : Version 3 - 3. Torturous Love V3: Chapter 3

Before he’d finished speaking, the demon’s yellow eyes had already turned to his wrist, widening in a very human expression of horror and shock. He didn’t say anything, but vanished from Tobias’s fuzzy sight, and a moment later the young man felt the rough warmth of the demon’s tongue lapping at his wrist followed shortly by the intense prickly pain of his skin growing at a speed which was not natural. The creature continued to lick his wound long past the point where no blood remained on his skin, and eventually Tobias tried to sit up only to find the demon’s hands on his sides, helping him as though he was still weak.

“Thank you.”

“Please, don’t scare me like that again.”

He’s no idea how long it’s been since I met another empath who wasn’t Nassau.

Tobias was surprised to hear the demon’s voice in his head again, since it was clear his companion was speaking to himself.

“Who’s Nassau?”

“The Prince of Hell.” The demon shrugged, like it was an unimportant fact. “And please stop calling me ‘the demon’, or are you only going to use my name in times of severe crisis?”

“Sor-.” Tobias stopped himself part way through speaking and scowled.

I’m not apologizing to a creature who tried to kill me.

He saved you too, Tobias reminded himself.

Tobias glanced up to find the demon watching him closely, the expression on his face shockingly soft and gentle, as if he understood the way Tobias argued with himself in his head. Carefully, cautiously, Tobias walked his hand across the bed and touched the demon’s forearm. The creature’s emotions crashed through him like the waves on some foreign shore: pride, power, uncertainty, lust, wonderment, doubt, curiosity. Tobias realised he wasn’t the only one with a head full of questions, and he wasn’t the only one who could understand more than what was said.

“Go on, ask.” The demon’s tone was light, almost innocent. “I could try and answer your questions as they are, but you do flit between them bloody quickly. And, dammit all, could you use my name?”

“Say please.” Tobias clapped a hand over his mouth in horror. It was such an ingrained reaction, reminding his brother’s of their manners the way their father had taught them all when they were little children, and Tobias felt his heart hammer faster than galloping hoof beats in his chest. To his surprise, the demon laughed.

“Hahahaha! Well then, of course.” The demon took Tobias’s hand between both his own and smiled warmly. “Please Tobias, would you call me by my name?”

“Um… yes. OK.”

“So go, ask your questions.”

Tobias considered everything he’d learned for a long moment, then went with the one thing which had been bugging him the most.

“What’s an empath?”

Zai arched an eyebrow in obvious surprise.

Not what I was expecting you to go with, the demon’s voice murmured in his skull even as Zai began speaking aloud.

“You’re an empath, and I am. And you can hear me in your head-”

“Only some of the time.”

“Don’t interrupt,” Zai said without feeling. “So I suspect, like our Prince, you are probably also a little bit clairaudient. It means you can hear things with senses far finer than just your ears. I can’t. I can feel what you’re thinking, but not the specifics, not unless it’s a really strong feeling. But all empaths can feel emotions which aren’t their own.” Zai frowned at him. “You get visions?”

“Er… yeah.”

“An empathic-voyant. Very rare indeed. No wonder I ended up here.”

Tobias let the words he’d been about to say die on his tongue as he saw the thoughts which sped across Zai’s inner vision. He saw the demon in another house, the interior very clearly covered in brand new blood and entrails, and saw him raise his head, twisting round to find something which had caught at his awareness. In the images which followed, there was the sense of travelling, always at night, and hiding during the day in impossibly small spaces. When he watched Zai kill a rabbit almost as big as he was, he frowned.

“Zai, what-?”

“We’re not talking about that.”

“But-”

“Leave it!” the demon snapped, and for the first time in several long minutes, Tobias remembered that the creature he was speaking to was, indeed, a beast of evil. Zai’s rage boiled right under the surface of his mind, a dark, roiling thing, far larger and older than the simple tiny question Tobias had tried to ask. Tobias got the distinct feeling that there was more to Zai than what he’d seen already. The demon smoothed his steel coloured hair back with one hand and continued in a more normal tone of voice.

“I knew there was something out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, I just followed the Northern wind and found myself in the woods, waiting for you as it turns out.”

Tobias gulped noisily as the demon watched him, his smile turning broad as lust surged to dominate all the colours in his mind. Zai was remembering the past night, and Tobias wished he could screw his eyes shut and block out the repeating image of Zai ripping open his thigh as he sheathed himself within his body. Tobias shook so violently that he nearly vibrated out of Zai’s grasp.

“You’re going to hurt me again, aren’t you?”

You know the answer to that already. And you know why.

Tobias was suddenly reminded that, apart from the demon’s cloak, he was naked. He scrabbled to hide himself, but it was too late, and Zai pinned him flat back against the mattress in a single athletic pounce.

“Please don’t.”

The begging is awesome…

“Zai!”

Oohhhh…

Zai groaned against him, his sun-yellow eyes half shuttered as Tobias gasped his name in panic, an expression of undeniable bliss on his face. Tobias was surprised to find himself smiling. The demon in pleasure was a sight to behold.

“You like that, don’t you?” Zai purred smugly. He licked Tobias’s neck and then moaned in his ear. Tobias hated that his body responded in such an obvious manner. “I wonder what else you like?”

Tobias knew what the demon was going to do just before it happened, because Zai’s thoughts were clear and banked with the fires of lust which made the pictures bright in his mind. Tobias watched twice and screamed once as Zai slashed open the skin of his bicep, collected his blood, and used it to gain entry to his body. Tobias whimpered and squirmed, kicking Zai in the shin in his attempt to escape. The demon curled his fingers within his inner passage, bringing the sharp points of his claws into contact with sensitive flesh Tobias hadn’t even known he possessed, and he stilled instantly.

“See, you’re learning.”

The young man clenched his teeth and fisted his fingers into the thick blankets, every muscle tense and shivering with the concentration of not moving when all he wanted to do was spring from the bed and sprint away. The demon flexed his digits, and pressed against something bright and warm inside Tobias which flooded him with pleasure so sudden it was almost painful in it’s own right, as though the bottom had been torn from his stomach. Zai was smiling in a languid, satisfied manner, and Tobias glanced at himself in horror to find his own erection waving excitedly at him. He looked away quickly.

I hate it when that happens. It’s so inconvenient. Tobias willed the hardness to subside, but it wouldn’t, and then he became aware that the demon was watching him with more than just his eyes. When he looked up, Zai was frowning, though he hadn’t removed his hand.

“Never?” He asked in a disbelieving tone. “Not even for yourself?”

Tobias heard the openness in the demon’s tone, and stamped on it.

“And why would you give a damn, anyway?”

Zai snarled, pressed on the tight, hot place inside him again, and simultaneously dug the claws of his other hand into the taut skin of Tobias’s lower abdomen. The young man wailed, panting, hating to see the dark red spikes of his pain twisted around and spun into a golden skein of pleasure for Zai. When the demon drew back, he sighed with relief, then kicked out again as the demon held him around the back of one knee, and brought Tobias into his lap.

“Don’t, please.”

“Oh Sweetling. The Northern wind brought me to you, and I intend to make use of this present.”

He pressed the blunt tip of his cock against Tobias’s entrance, and the young man did his best to close his mind and body against the invasion. Zai scored his chest, and the pain was enough distraction to allow other muscles to give up their protest. Tobias gritted his teeth as the demon docked the length of his hardness inside his flesh, and turned his face away from the closeness of the demon above him.

You just left your neck exposed.

The thought flashed across his mind moments too late, and Tobias screamed as Zai bit him. The sensation of his muscles tearing, blood pouring over his skin, combined with the instantaneous prickling of the demon’s peculiar healing talent, and Tobias blinked for what felt like a long time.

He opened his eyes to find the demon fucking him slowly, holding his hips, driving himself deep inside his body in an unhurried manner, and stroking the place inside which had made him quiver so violently with every stroke. Zai’s pleasure was so bold, totally untainted by Tobias’s pain after the demon’s mind had spun it into gold, and Tobias couldn’t help but hold onto that rope with both hands and let the pleasure wash over him even as Zai’s every action filled his head with shame.

It was Zai’s pleasure which made him moan, made him clutch at the demon’s strong limbs as his body tensed. He dug his fingernails into the short grey fur, and Zai responded in kind and punctured both his thighs with all ten claws. Tobias screamed again, his voice pitched perfectly against Zai’s snarl of pleasure, and shook as the demon bent low over him, the pace of his hips increasing.

“Oh, my Sweetling….” the demon took his jaw with bloody fingers, Tobias opened his mouth automatically, not wanting his face torn apart again, and jolted in shock as Zai kissed him.

Every sensation made Tobias reel with emotion, original and borrowed: the demon’s tongue in his mouth, Zai’s low-timbered moan, the nearness of teeth, the taste of blood, the richness of the demon, a flavour as complex as his voice, and the thrum of Zai’s thoughts, the words blurred by passion. The thick, glowing rope of pleasure lay across it all, and somehow, Zai tied Tobias up with it, and the young man cried out as the demon flooded him with sticky warmth even as he lost control of himself too. Tobias wanted to feel ashamed, but there was no space to feel anything other than the pleasure Zai had taken and fed back to him.

For a very, very long moment they lay there together, and then Zai slipped from him and bent to nuzzle his spent crotch and lick his wounds closed. Tobias hid his face in his hands, but when Zai moved to lap at the seed Tobias had so wantonly spilt across himself, he grabbed the demon by the horns and pushed him away.

“NO! I don’t need your pity!”

Zai lent up on one elbow, frowning, his acid yellow eyes bright and confused.

“Pity? Use your head Tobias. There is no pity here.” The demon clasped his thigh with one long fingered hand, and Tobias wished he could draw away from the surge of emotion which played along his bones. Zai was tired in a self-satisfied sort of way, pleased, proud, still a little curious, and… hurt?

What has he got to be upset about? Tobias asked himself with an inner sneer. He’s got all the power here.

Has he? The other side of him asked silently. That was some kiss.

Screw the kiss. Tobias drew his limbs up to his body, along with one of the blankets, and his the evidence of his arousal within it’s folds. Why do people spend their whole lives thinking about sex when it’s so dreadful?

You think sex is dreadful? The thought was so clear, that Tobias had the check that the demon hadn’t actually spoken.

“Seriously? What, is everyone in your town a repressive nut-job or something?”

Tobias grunted wordlessly, and remembered all the times he’d looked at Richard Fletcher only to find the barman visualizing another of his conquests. Every one looked painful and violent.

And now that you’ve had sex, Tobias sighed unhappily, you know that it’s even worse than people make out.

Zai was sitting up now, and Tobias frowned at the expression of genuine shock and concern on the demonic face.

“Tobias, tell me something? You have parents – sorry – had parents, right? They thought about sex?”

Tobias shivered.

“My father did.”

“Show me.”

“No!” Tobias hauled the blanket up over his head, making himself a little cocoon, but he knew that was a useless defence.

“Show me what you saw.”

Tobias had hated seeing inside his father’s head when he was a child, and he’d relived the experience enough in nightmares, when the only person to comfort him was his father, not to want to visit it again.

“But, I was only a kid. I didn’t know what I was seeing.”

And because he didn’t want to see it again, that was exactly what happened, and Tobias watched the memory-picture unfolding in his head. His father’s animal grunts, his mother’s painful whimpers, the sweat, his father’s desire for completion no matter the cost, his mother’s hunger. Tobias shrank back from the memory, and was surprised to feel the presence of Zai in his mind, watching the awful memory with him.

“Oh Tobias...” Zai’s voice came out warm and soft, touched with a note of something like sorrow. The young man felt the sadness shedding from his fur like thick morning mist, and he did not want to touch him. “There’s another thing about empaths I didn’t tell you. Mostly because I was hoping Nassau’s theory was shite.”

“What is it?”

“We’re all broken in some way or other, us empaths,” Zai sighed. “I can’t feel pleasure, not in the normal way. I have to channel it through something else.”

“By hurting me.” Tobias stated. The fact that the demon got such extreme pleasure from hurting him weighed heavily on his mind, but it was a fact, not a question.

“Yes, by hurting you. You on the other hand… you don’t experience love.”

“Yes I do!” Tobias snapped. “I love my little sister, and I love cooking and-”

Even you know that’s not actual love, his inner voice mocked.

“Sweetling, that isn’t love. Caring, and friendship, and satisfaction maybe, but not love. That image of your parents, I can see how it looks to you. Dark, hard, almost violent-”

Just like what you did to me.

“-you think she’s in pain, and he’s forcing himself on her, and she’s letting him because that’s what a wife does, right? You can’t feel the love, the adoration they had for each other, the fact that he would do anything for her, anything at all.”

Tobias blinked. His parents had always seemed happy, in the time when they’d both been alive, and though it was long ago, Tobias watched the images stream past, unspooling from his mind like so much yarn on the spindle, and Zai watched with him. After his mother’s death and his sisters birth, things had been hard, and though Tobias had only been five summers old, he’d taken the baby whenever he could, just to save her from his father’s bitterness.

“You think your father is hard on your sister because he hates her? She reminds him of your mother. He’s protecting her, that’s why he makes you and your brothers work so hard – to keep her safe.” Zai sighed heavily.

The world has been a horrible place for you, hasn’t it?

There were a million things Tobias could have said, but he saw the softness of Zai, and saw an opportunity to injure the demon who had damaged him so much. He sneered.

“It only got worse after I met you.”

Tobias could feel how much his words had hurt Zai, the demon speared him with a glare, snarled, and removed himself from the bed. Tobias watched him pace tightly around the little house, but the satisfaction he’d felt at causing Zai even a modicum of pain had already faded. Instead he observed the demon’s movements as Zai stopped, standing over the fire place. He’d almost forgotten that the demon had a tail, but now it was the only part of him which moved, twitching back and forth as Zai stood staring at the cold and empty hearth.

The demon was dressed like the paladins Tobias had seen on painted banners attached the wagons and circus tents which rolled through the town most summers. With his tall leather boots fastened with many buckles, and the heavy belted tabard which left his arms bare, he looked exotic enough without also being covered in grey fur and having horns. Had Zai not attacked him and had he looked human, Tobias wondered if he would have thought of his tall, strong, muscular companion in the same way he had once thought about Richard Fletcher and the farrier’s lad.

“Things you hoped for in fleeting moments without imagining the possibilities of what might happen if you reached outside your shell?” the demon snapped bitterly.

Tobias flinched, as though Zai’s words had slapped him. He didn’t want to be reminded by the demon of any of his failings. He gathered the demon’s cloak tighter around himself, and his fingers brushed against the chain around his throat. He tugged on it gently, and felt the demon’s attention turn towards him, even though he was still looking into the dead fireplace. He was tempted to try and pull it off once again, just to make Zai shout at him.

You’re a twisted one Tobias, his inner voice derided him quietly. Why do you want him to shout at you?

It would be better than being ignored. Tobias’s stomach rumbled vehemently. And I'm hungry. I hate that someone else got to eat my Forgotten Cookies.

Just as Tobias was trying to count backwards to work out when he’d last eaten, the demon pulled his tabard off over his head, snarled as the fabric caught on one of his horns, and threw the garment onto the bed as he strode from the room.

“Where-?”

You could run?

Tobias wiggled his bare toes, and thought of the way the demon had pulled at his throat the last time he’d tried to leave.

And it’s dark, and I can’t see.

But he can.

Exactly.

Never mind.

Tobias was interrupted from the conversation with himself by the sounds of squealing, grunting, the scrape of stone, the splash of… blood? Tobias was half risen from the bed when the door slammed open again, and Zai, naked with most of his fur black with blood, strode through with what was quite clearly half a pig over his shoulder.

“What’s that?” Tobias asked pointlessly.

“You said you were hungry.” Zai rubbed the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand, leaving a bloody smear across his face. “What are Forgotten Cookies?”

“They’re sweets-” Tobias stopped himself. “Why do you care?”

“You care,” Zai muttered. “You know how to cook?”

“Better than that, I know how to butcher too. What did you use to slaughter it? Your hands?” Tobias caught Zai looking guilty for a moment, then retched dryly as he saw flash-fast images of what Zai had done outside. “Forget I asked.” Tobias crossed to the single wooden table, and picked the larger of the two knives left there. When he tested the edge with his thumb, he was pleased to find that Old Man Riley had kept his blades very keen. Then he glanced down at himself, and scowled. “I am not cooking with no clothes on.”

The demon shrugged in a liquid motion that made Tobias scowl. No creature covered in blood and picking gore out of his fur should have been so graceful. There was a solid looking chest at the end of the bed, and within it Tobias found a shirt and trousers, and a pair of socks with holes in the heels. None of it fit well, and all the garments were a little thin, but it was better than being nude. As he dressed, Tobias realised once again how dirty he was, his skin marked with mud, old blood, newer blood, bruises, and the crusted stains of his and Zai’s violent couplings.

What I wouldn’t give for a hot bath.

Actually hot?

Yeah. Fresh and not already used twice.

Tobias sighed with longing. High paying guests at the Inn got hot baths with clean water drawn up from the deep well and heated over roaring fires. They banked coals around the base of the heavy bathtub to keep the water hot, and whenever Tobias had to go back out into the rain, wind, and wet snow, he was deeply jealous. Then he blinked, and saw an image of Zai stepping into a waterfall of water, huge billows of steam rising up round him as the demon tossed his head back and closed his eyes, his hair and fur plastered to his skull. Tobias heard him purr, a deep rumbling sound that made his belly warm suddenly, and looked at the demon in the room with him. Zai had lit the fire, and was purring to himself without words.

“Where is that?”

“Zinkara Rumah, the house where I live.” The water is always hot.

“You don’t always steal other people’s houses and livestock?”

Zai didn’t answer him, but the demon moved aside without looking as Tobias shoved a skillet onto the grate over the fire to heat up. Tobias knew his companion was spying on his mind, but he had not idea how to stop him from doing so. Instead he sliced strips from the belly of the pig, carved and boned-out the shoulder, and rolled it with the torn up remains of an old loaf and some dried sage leaves which had been hanging in a bunch by the window. A quick scavenge of the shelf under the table revealed a clay pot of honey with a broken wax seal, and Tobias smeared it over the belly strips before dropping them onto the hot griddle. He found a second blackened metal pan which had clearly seen better days, placed the pork shoulder in it and set in in the coals, using the tongs to bank the heat around it. Inevitably, because he was distracted by thinking about how nice it would be to have an open hearth and spit with a handle, he caught the back of his hand on the hot edge of the griddle, and yelped in pain. Before Tobias could drop the poker and put his knuckles to his lips, Zai had taken his wrist. Tobias watched as the demon held his gaze, and lapped at his burnt flesh with his long, pointed tongue. His skin tingled, and then the hot pain melted away.

“Why did you do that?”

“You were in pain,” Zai said simply.

Tobias gaped, and slapped the demon across the face. A heartbeat later he was flat on his back on the stone floor, his skull ringing from the impact, the demon pinning him down, face mere inches away and snarling. There was a pitch to that sound that made Tobias’s skin crawl, and he wanted to shut his eyes and think of anything other than the feral creature atop him. Tobias knew, suddenly, that no one had challenged Zai in a long time.

“Let me go.”

“No!” The demon barked.

Tobias used his free hand to pull as hard as he could at the chain around his neck. Zai’s fist closed over his fingers, but the young man didn’t relent, and held the acid yellow gaze as he caused the demon pain. Zai squeezed his hand, and then they were just tossing pain at each other without speaking until Zai lost his patience and cracked one of Tobias’s knuckles. He screamed.

“Let me go!” Tobias pushed himself back into the wall, cradling his broken hand in his lap, watching the demon who crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet, uncaring for his naked, blood drenched state.

“No.”

“Please? I won’t tell anyone what’s happened. No one would believe me even if I tried. I’ll say I hid in the woods from wolves or bears or something. Let me go.”

“I can’t!”

Tobias blinked.

“What?”

“Even if I wanted to,” Zai spat, “and right now that would be an easy fucking option... even if I wanted to let you go, I can’t. That’s a Chain of Possession you’re wearing, it can’t be removed.”

“Never?” Tobias was more horrified than he was by the broken bone in his hand.

“Not from a mortal.”

And that was the thing about being an empath that Tobias had always known. No one could lie to an empath and get away with it, and Zai wasn’t lying. Tobias put his head in his good hand, and cried.