Torturous Love : Version 3 - 7. Chapter 7

Empathy was a double edged sword.

A sword would fucking hurt less! And it would be over sooner.

Tobias knew, because he could feel everything Zai felt, just what the demon was going to do moments before he did it. It wasn’t enough time for him to move away before his shoulder was torn into meaty shreds, but it was enough for the memory of being in pain to usher in real pain so that Tobias was sure his injuries hurt more because he knew they were coming. He screamed, his whole body tense as he hugged the thick pillow to his upper chest, the fabric already spotted with his blood, and Tobias buried his face and fought so hard to keep from crying out again that he nearly dislocated his jaw.

Zai’s snarling was accompanied by a silently litany of sweetness and adoration which bounced around Tobias’s head, and made him feel infinitely worse, because for split seconds he found himself believing the demon’s endearments. But the demon’s words were hollow, there was no meaning there, no emotion, and Tobias almost missed the way everything the demon used to say to him was banked in equal parts lust and hunger.

Tobias whimpered as Zai reached underneath him, and wrapped soft fingers around the hardness between his legs. Pleasure he didn’t want, his own pleasure, snapped up his body like lightning, and Tobias screwed his eyes shut and tried to imagine that he wasn’t allowing this to happen to him yet again.

Every night, just the same.

Not the same, Tobias growled at himself, sometimes he uses his teeth.

“AHHH!”

You spoke too soon again.

Tobias tried not to visualise the flesh that would now be hanging from his back, or the long gashes in his shoulder, or the twist and coil of Zai’s long tail wrapped around his thigh, but he couldn’t not, because Zai was looking at him, and Tobias saw everything through the mirror of the demon’s desire to see him in pain. Every bloody score fed Zai’s pleasure, especially the sight of Tobias’s pale body being speared and opened by the dark length of Zai’s cock, and that coil of pleasure grew and glowed with every thrust and juddering breath Tobias could draw with a lung he thought might be punctured, until it poured into Tobias as well, twisting all his fear into warm gratification, his pain into bliss, his hurt into ecstasy. Tobias came into Zai’s hand with a moan, then practically purred as Zai flooded his insides with heat. They collapsed into the mess they’d made, once again, of their bed and Zai instantly fell to licking and healing the worst of Tobias’s wounds so that the young man wouldn’t risk death in the afterglow of their orgasms. Tobias let himself be worked over, and simply wrapped his arms around a pillow he hadn’t bled all over and cried without tears.

“Tobias?” Zai paused, his rough tongue ceasing to lap at the long scores in Tobias’s shoulder. My Sweetling, what’s wrong?

You just let a demon fuck you and tear your flesh with his teeth. How’s that for starters?

“Nothing.”

Zai knew he was lying, and the fact that he cared what the demon thought made him more unhappy than any of the shame and repulsion he felt at what he’d allowed to be done to his body. The demon finished healing him, and sat back on his heels with a frown.

“Talk to me Tobias.”

“I’m tired.”

Tobias reached with his free hand and dragged the furs up over himself. As if knowing his desire to be left alone, the glowing alcoves in the room dimmed to almost nothing, and left Zai sitting in the darkness feeling miserable. Nothing came from the young man but a flinty hardness Zai couldn’t penetrate, so the ash-furred demon rose, and slunk silently from the room.

Shindae was sat, cross legged, in front of the enormous fireplace in the den, his lava eyes mesmerized by the dancing flames, the magma of his body stimulated and simulating the motion as the demon smiled to himself.

“Trouble in paradise?”

Zai grunted as he threw himself into a slightly dilapidated couch.

“You’re no empath, Shindae.”

“And I don’t need to be one. It’s the middle of the night an you’re coming downstairs having just had sex and covered in Tobias’s blood.” Shindae turned to him and rubbed the side of his nose conspiratorially. “You forget others of us have skills too. So either you killed Tobias without meaning to, or His Frigid Majesty finally threw you out of bed.”

“Do not call him that.” Zai snarled, eyes blazing momentarily before the truth of what Shindae was saying hit him like a hammer to the ribcage. “Why the fuck are you still up, anyways?”

“Just came back from Upstairs, and don’t change the subject.” Shindae casual mirth was covered by a layer of concern. “He still doesn’t like it here, does he?”

“Oh, he likes it here just fine.” He just hates me. “He loves the kitchen, and you and Sitka have been keeping it extra well stocked. Trust me, he’s noticed.”

“Zai… I don’t care what Kiorl says: secrets are bad for you. C’mon, spill.”

Zai growled indistinctly and sighed heavily.

“We’re just too different.”

Shindae turned to him and rolled his eyes.

“You melodramatic bastard. You’re an empath, so’s he. If the two of you can’t make a relationship work, then fuck knows how any other creature in the ‘verse ever manages.” The lava-demon rose and shook oxidisation from his skin in a shower of black flakes. “I got him something while I was upstairs. Seemed like something he might enjoy.” He offered Zai a thick book of fine paper, full of images of what Zai knew was food, along with the instructions to produce the recipes.

“You give it to him.” Zai handed it back. “He’ll like you better.” He likes Shindae and Sitka more than he likes me already. Fuck, but I’m glad I haven’t caught him fantasizing about them instead. I’m not sure I could bear it.

“You’d give him up, just like that?” Shindae’s tone was full of surprise and disbelief.

“No! Yes… fuck! I don’t know! I just want him to be happy.”

You should have thought of that before you dragged him into another dimension.

Zai hung his head and wrapped his tail around himself tightly.

“Maybe Kiorl is right. Maybe we’re not supposed to try and mate with humans.”

“You don’t believe that.” Shindae laid the book on his lap. “Something else I don’t need to be an empath to figure out. Just… maybe try and do things his way for a bit. See where that gets you?”

Zai stared at the embers of the fire for a long time after his friend had gone. Wherever he might end up by trying to play along to Tobias’s emotions, it had to be better than spending the night on a sofa that made his spine ache.

*

The tenday he’d been gifted away from his duties in order to settle his mate into the house was long over, and Zai felt guilty at the sensation of relief he’d experienced when he’d gone to the Enforcement Office and collected a portal token to take him Upstairs. There’d been a tablet with it, and Zai read as he walked towards the West Portal. Someone had captured more salamanders – which was good, because the scaly bastards bred like rabbits – but then they’d let them go on a stopover world, and now the fiery lizards had become something of a nuisance. Zai scowled, and wished he had time to go back to the house and drag Shindae out with him, even though he was only a scavenger. It was always useful to have someone flame-bound on any mission involving dragons.

Not that I’m eager to get back to the house. It’s easier to forget that I’ve ruined my life when I’m not there.

He’d left the book Shindae had given him outside their bedroom door where Tobias would see it, and one touch to the smooth wooden surface had transmitted to him a ball of rolling pain, fury, and disgust that had made him want to be sick. Tobias was spiky and full of emotions Zai didn’t understand the source of, so he’d left without saying anything.

Zai didn’t know anyone who’d mated. Demons from other houses who he recognised perhaps enough to nod to, but they’d all been partnered for a long time, he doubted any of them, or their mates, could give him any advice.

And I’d rather be run through with one of Shindae’s swords than ask the Prince for help. The last thing I want to do is remind him of what he lost. No one needs another collection of weather events like the last lot. Zai flicked his tail. I wonder if that world has recovered from it’s sudden ice age yet?

“Good morning, Zai.”

“Is it?” Zai replied without looking up from his tablet.

“Sir?”

“Sorry. Good morning Graccas.” Zai smiled at the minotaur who was standing on guard duty again. He could feel the shape of the question the huge bovine wanted to ask him, so he countered with one of his own first. “Do you like being a guard? Doesn’t it get boring?”

“No sir. It’s not as glamorous as what you do, or some of the scavengers. Getting to travel all over the ‘verse, but it has its points.”

“Does it?”

“Oh yes. Lots of time to think, getting to meet all sorts of demons from the Circle as they go here and there. We always get the gossip first.” As Graccas spoke, Zai could feel his fear of the doorway he stood next to, and he knew that the minotaur was terrified of getting lost in The Way. “And it’s much better than patrol. Patrol is so boring – as though anything could get through the fire mountains.”

Zai took a long glance at the huge wall of flames which rose in the distance and encircled the place he called home.

“Oh, it’s possible.” Zai remembered the last time something had broken through the barrier which secluded the Inner Circle from the rest of Hell. “I hope you never see it come to pass again.”

“How is your new mate? No one’s seen him around yet.”

“Fine, thank you Graccas.” The advantage of being one of the only three empaths in Hell, was that Zai could lie to anyone else as easily as breathing. He handed his token over to the minotaur, who swapped it automatically for a little bone chit. “Would you dial me up, please?”

With surprisingly nimble, hoof tipped fingers, the minotaur span the concentric rings of the dial, aligning symbols and touching others so that they glowed to match the token he’d been handed. The huge arched doorway, a cut out in the fabric of the universe, rippled suddenly, and then glittered with a billion stars.

“Have a good day sir.” Graccas said crisply, and Zai stepped into The Way.

There were hundreds of legends about the salamanders, about where they’d come from, how they’d got out and spread across so many worlds like a parasitic plague, how their evolution had suddenly exploded until many worlds suddenly found themselves at the mercy of giant lizards the size of cathedrals who could fly and breathe fire. Being a resident of Zinkara Rumah, and being an empath, Zai knew more truth about them than most, and as he stepped out into the wasteland rubble of what had until recently been a functional city, he could hardly believe that Kiorl had been at least partially responsible for the epidemic of fucking huge fiery lizards.

And oh look, there’s one now.

Zai cracked his tail like a whip, and went to work.

An hour or so later he stood on the head of a dead dragon and pinned the idiot responsible to it’s scaly muzzle with one hand round the guy’s thorax.

“You idiot!”

“It was an accident!” The minor demon beneath him squirmed and refused to meet his eyes. Zai could feel the chill fear that practically drowned the waxy skinned demon, but the thin, sharp spike of intention alerted him, and Zai reached out with his tail, wrapped it around one of the demon’s three lower arms, and snapped it with a snarl.

“How many did you bring with you?” The whimpers of the demon angered him, and Zai clenched his claws into the flesh of his thorax. “How many?”

“Only two, they were both female!”

Zai roared in frustration and annoyance. One of the reasons that the salamanders had gotten out of control so quickly, and that their movement now was strictly prohibited, was that all salamanders were born female. Older females past egg laying age hibernated for a season, and emerged as males, ready to impregnate a whole host of their former peers.

“You’re too stupid to live. Did you see a clutch laid?”

“No.”

People who lie to empaths should all just be taken off at the head.

“WHERE?”

“A-a-a beach south of here. Two tendays ago.”

Fantastic.

“Stay here.” Zai commanded, then ensured that his instruction was followed by tearing one of the dead dragon's teeth out of it’s mouth, and driving it through the idiot demon’s lower abdomen. He probably wouldn’t bleed to death before Zai returned.

It took the rest of the day to find the nest, kill the vicious female guarding it, then destroy every single egg until nothing remained but shell shards and bloody viscera. He pushed the lot down past the high tide mark, hoped the ocean would do a good job of clean up, and returned to where he’d left the moron who’d thought smuggling salamanders across the ‘verse was a smart idea. He dragged his prisoner away, burnt the body of the dragon – dragons were only fireproof on the inside – and used the portal stone to visit one of his least favourite places.

The demon standing watch at the edge of the reaping fields looked sullen and annoyed, but snapped quickly to attention when Zai appeared. The empath felt his swift, hot desire for the portal stone, and stepped back, pushing his prisoner in between himself and the guard.

“Set him to work, for eternity or until he breaks completely. And never let him near a portal stone ever again.” Zai gave the waxen demon a kick and watched him tumble from the platform into the fields below where souls were being planted and crops harvested in rotation. He gripped his portal stone hard as it began to glow with the familiar fires of home.

“Sir?”

“What?”

The guard shook his feathers nervously.

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to return to the Inner Circle?”

Zai felt his abject desolation, broken only by the bright spark of hope, and paused.

“What was your crime?” he asked loftily.

The guard knew better than to lie to demons older, wiser, stronger, and more powerful than himself.

“I supported Nathaneal during the War.”

Zai shook his head as the portal stone glowed brightly in his hand.

“Then I’m guessing no. You’re lucky to be alive at all.” Supporters of Nassau’s brothers had not often been afforded the privilege of breathing. Zai shrugged, it didn’t matter to him that the demon felt bad. His side had lost, and rightly so. “You’d best learn to live without plumbing for awhile longer.” Then the bright, hot flame of the portal stone consumed him, and he vanished.

Zai hated the greasy feeling that always accompanied him after he’d been the reaping fields. There was misery and distress, but mostly resentment, annoyance, and petty squabbles. The perpetual wailing of the trapped souls, inaudible to most ears, but not Zai’s mind, gave him the chills every time, and Zai knew there was a good reason he wasn’t a Hunter. He hated to think of having to carry souls around with him every day, weighed down by their borrowed emotions.

Graccas had been replaced by a sandstone sphinx who took the chit from him with a silent nod of thanks, and watched him with intense curiosity as he walked away. But then, everything sphinxes did was intense. Zai had heard that they made alternately wonderful and terrible bedmates. From an intersection of the main path which branched down towards the Palace on his right, and back on a dogleg that would take him back to the office, Zai could see his house. His vision wasn’t any sharper than average, but already he could pick out the shape of Tobias on the rooftop.

He’s gotta be standing right on the edge, or I wouldn’t be able to see him, it’s so high up.

Zai climbed the great ridge of basalt that skirted one side of the path, and used the shortcut to get onto a narrower track which lead quickly to the base of the steep side of the hill upon which Zinkara Rumah sat. By the time he had scaled the slope the figure of his mate had vanished, but Zai could feel him in their room. Even though his fur was dusty with the grit and grime of travel, Zai didn’t stop to wash, but went straight to the source of the loneliness he’d felt from halfway across the Circle. As the opened the door to their room, Zai was knocked back by the force of the relief which struck him from Tobias’s huddled figure.

Oh heavens, please let him never leave me again.

Zai clenched his fists, digging his claws into his own palms briefly, and turned to shut the door behind him.

He thought I left him. Actually left. Fuck.

“Hello Tobias. Did you find the book?”

“Yes. Thank you.” I can’t read it. The young man’s disappointment was very sharp, and Zai heard the words as though he had spoken. “Did you have a good day?”

“It was… interesting, at least. Bloodier than I would have liked.”

Tobias regarded him with surprise.

“I missed you.”

“Oh.”

Zai took a deep breath, and brushed his hand down the front of his tunic nervously.

Nervous? You’ve not been this nervous in over a decade. Get a grip.

“Tobias?”

The young man turned to him, and Zai knew he was not misreading the hope in the young man’s dark eyes.

“May I kiss you?”

His mate said nothing, but nodded, and Zai crossed the room in a few quick strides, knelt with one knee on the stone edge of the bed, took Tobias’s chin without touching him with his claws, and kissed him. Tobias opened for him, through whether the overriding emotion was pleasure or duty, Zai couldn’t tell. Shindae had advised him to do things the way Tobias wanted, so when the young man began to lay back in the bed, Zai followed him down, and it was Tobias who took hold of his horns and kissed him again.

Zai obeyed every lead Tobias gave him, every groan and unspoken command in his head, mindful of his claws when he stripped Tobias from his clothes, soft with his hands as he stroked his chest and abdomen. When Tobias parted his legs, Zai was pleased but surprised, found the bottle of scented oil he’d stolen from Sitka, and touched the boy carefully. Tobias’s body vibrated with physical pleasure as Zai touched him, but his mind was a confused mess. No single emotion stayed long enough for Zai to read him properly, but even as Tobias’s knuckles clenched in the furs behind his head, his body tightening around Zai’s fingers with his release, Zai knew that not all was well with the human he’d brought home.

He knelt between Tobias’s thighs, removed his hand from the young man’s sinuous body, but made no move toward him. He was not expecting Tobias to scramble to his knees and slap him across the face.

“You’re bored of me, already?” He was crying, misery turning the air blue and grey between them. “I mean that little to you?”

Zai blinked in shock, too surprised to even growl.

“It was what you wanted.”

“But you didn’t feel anything!” Tobias wailed. His fists pummelled ineffectively at the hard planes of Zai’s chest. “What’s the point if you don’t feel anything!?”

Zai caught his wrist tightly, and felt the sudden spark at the expectation of pain. But Zai had lived with own emotions for a millennia, and he knew the feeling hadn’t been his.

“Tobias….”

“Get off me!”

And Tobias knew it too. Zai let go of his mate as the young man fled from the room, and arrived in the hallway in time to see the bathroom door slam.

Kiorl was standing at the end of the doorway, and the panther arched a dark eyebrow at his housemate.

“I do not want to know. But I know I will want a shower when I get back from the Palace. You’d better get him out of there at some point before then.”

Zai stood with his forehead against the bathroom door, and wondered how in Hell he was supposed to find Tobias through the storm of emotions his mate was lost in.

*

As soon as he slammed the door, Tobias span on his his heel, pressed his spine to the hard wood and glanced around wildly, looking for the way out.

Except there isn’t one. You’ve got your back to the only door, and there’s a demon on the other side.

Tobias sprang away from the door, and moved swiftly to stand under the endless and warm waterfall. At the far end, where the water fell fastest and hardest, Tobias crouched with his head between his knees, letting the water pummel his body like the blows of so many small fists. He reached out to feel the gap where the water vanished, no wider than his hand, and snarled silently at himself for his stupidity. Through the curtain of water, he saw the deep square bathpool, and wondered what it would be like to drown.

Maybe it won’t hurt. It’ll be just like falling asleep….

But it turns out you like pain.

Shut up! Tobias snapped. Unbidden, his mind replayed the way Zai had touched him, and pleasure of it should have been plenty, but had felt hollow and false to Tobias’s empathic senses. Zai had been concentrating, working hard to resist him, he’d felt that clear as the water which fell around him, and Tobias knew that the demon didn’t want him any longer.

He’ll kill you. Get rid of you, take back his Chain, and go in search of another boy to waste his time with. I wonder how many there’ve been before you?

Tobias could no longer pretend to himself that he wasn’t crying, and collapsed in a mess on the stone worn smooth by the ceaseless motion of the water.

He said I was special.

Maybe he can lie. He’s had a lot more practice at it than you have.

Zai doesn’t like me any more.

Well, you are awkward to live with. You want to win a demon’s favour? You’re sick.

Tobias glanced back at the bathpool again.

Better to kill yourself than let him do it.

Tobias abandoned the waterfall and slid into the pool. It was deeper than he’d expected it to be, and he slid below the surface, panicked, yelped, swallowed half a lungful of water, and came up coughing, kicking his legs and scrambling for the smooth marble side.

I can’t even drown properly. Tobias scowled. I don’t want to die.

Well that’s pathetic.

Tobias trod water for a few moments, then pushed away from the side of the bathpool, and used his hands to drive himself beneath the surface. He’d never been submerged and warm before, the water of the river ran chill as the mountains even in high summer, and Tobias closed his eyes in the sloshing underwater silence. It would be easy to slip away, to just stay under, not come up from breath, and let go into the quiet dark oblivion. Except…

That I want to feel that bright, hot pleasure again. I’ve never felt anything so powerful and wonderful in my whole life. It makes being an empath worth it when I can feel Zai’s pleasure as he hurts me.

The young man surfaced suddenly, gasping for air.

You like when he hurts you.

No! No I don’t!

You’re a sick excuse for a person. Thank god your family aren’t hear to see you like this. They think you died as safe and boring and innocent as you were in life. No wonder the demon chose you, you’re disgusting.

Tobias sniffed, wanting to cry, but he was too angry with himself for tears to fall.

But he’s bored of me already. What’s the point?

Tobias bit his lip, clenching his fists hard, and hauled himself out of the water. As he reached for a towel, he felt the warm breath of another person on the back of his neck, but when he turned, there was no one there.

He is not bored of you. The voice was new, different, smooth like fine silks, and Tobias leant his mind towards it without considering what might happen. And there is nothing wrong with you either, Tobias. Zai adores you, you just can’t feel it.

Tobias blinked at his reflection in the mirror.

Who are you? But he already knew to whom the soft, fine voice belonged.

I thought it was about time we met. And Kiorl tells me you’re quite the cook….