Dedicated to those who like to lose. Sometimes. Whip Hand D'Schane and Terry were necking on the couch. D'Schane, the smaller of the two, sat in Terry's lap enthusiastically sucking on an earlobe. There was nothing particularly special about this, except that they were in the middle of an elegant shopping mall, seated right between the Godiva Chocolates and Victoria's Secret. Shoppers would walk by, then miss a step as they realized that the couple by the fountain was two long-haired young men. The looks on their faces were making them laugh, and Terry choked on a kiss at one point and had to pause to wipe the drool off his chin. This was their first day together after d'Schane's two-week conference in Chicago, and neither of them was feeling particularly discreet. Mall security put up with this until D'Schane started unbuttoning Terry's shirt, giving the general public full view of Terry's collar. While the mall seemed prepared to put up with same-sex affection, the touch of leather at Terry's throat clashed with the sedate decor. A pair of uniformed guards very politely but firmly asked them to leave. They were still laughing on the way out. The rain was drying off of the zigzag brick pattern on the sidewalk. The new-washed sun reflected blindingly off of the gold dome on an old bank. D'Schane seated his Stetson firmly back on his head and pulled the brim down to shade his eyes. "Don't feed or tease the straight and vanilla people," Terry said when he could. D'Schane snorted. "What makes you think I'm not straight myself?" "Well, for one, you sleep with me." "That doesn't make me queer. It makes me a lot of other things. An opportunist, for instance. Are you?" "Straight? You aren't the only man I've ever slept with." D'Schane actually looked startled. "I didn't know that." Terry smirked. "Like you know everything just because you can read my mind. You never even thought to ask. It still amazes me how everyone seems to think I was born knowing how to deep-throat." Terry stopped them to stare in the window of one of the little stores. He used to come there back when he was in school. It sold rude greeting cards, a little over-priced leather and a lot of T-shirts, mostly to high-school students who wished they could afford the leather. "Here. Open your mouth," D'Schane ordered. Terry obeyed almost by reflex. D'Schane reached up and popped something into his mouth. Startled, Terry bit down on the chocolate. D'Schane crumpled up a distinctive piece of gold foil and pitched it in the gutter. "Hey," he said, swallowing. "I didn't see you pay for this." D'Schane gave one of his most irritating grins, like a small child who has just killed someone. "That's because I didn't." "You self-righteous case of arrested moral development . . . ..." "Funny. That's what the shrink called me, too." "What shrink?" "My parents made me agree to see one a few years back. They were having a hard time dealing with my criminal lack of gratitude. Said I owed them for my education, my nauseatingly neo-romantic first name, my fucking DNA, and everything else. Wouldn't let me forget that the senior Professor Grey invented the nerve splices that let us all plug in, that I'd be nothing without Mom's software company, and how dare I not come home for Thanksgiving? They're just pissed that I had lecturer status at MIT when I was younger than Dad had been. The shrink saw me once and asked them not to send me back. I think I scared him." D'Schane never kept quiet, unless his mouth was busy with something else. Terry could think almost as fast as d'Schane could talk, and so often found himself absorbing a flood of words, all the things that d'Schane had wanted to say for twenty-one years but the rest of the world hadn't been smart enough to understand. "And don't worry," he continued. "The place I stole the chocolate from is about to get an utterly inexplicable credit from American Express, as soon as I can find a console." Terry sighed. "You're weird." "Am I now? Weirder than my darling, who gets off on being held down and hurt? Honestly, some times I wonder how you got to be so delightfully twisted." "I've had practice." "Well, I found out what I liked early, and set out to find the best people to teach it to me, just like I'd learned everything else. Only problem was I kept getting thrown out of leather bars until I turned eighteen. No one wanted to do time for blatant baby-fucking. I bottomed for a good year up in Boston, and I saw much more than I could ever do. I still think you're something special. You seem to have the most fun long after most practicing masochists would have called quits. It's not the pain levels you get off on, though I suspect a major pharmaceutical company could make a fortune off of your neuroreceptors. It's how you like to be _forced_." "Are you complaining?" "Hell no. But I worry about you some times. I'm not sure you have the pride to keep the rest of the world from stepping on you. Letting your lover hit you is one thing. Letting yourself be used, really used, is another." "You're just jealous of the rest of the world." "And you're a slut." They had stopped in front of a Sense Arcade. Inside the laser-painted darkness, school kids were competing against the latest generation of video entertainment. Some of them, lucky enough to have sockets, were tied into a dozen different worlds of magic, fear, and stars. "Let's go in," Terry suggested. "Why?" d'Schane asked, twitching his upper lip in a carefully-cultivated gesture of distaste. "They might have metachess." "Hm. Is that a dare?" "You bet it is." They stopped to gawk at an ancient mechanical pinball machine before locating a metachess console in the back. The game was idling, blinking directions and disclaimers at the walls. An Arcade attendant took their money and set up the game. D'Schane pointedly touched the back of his head to make sure his link was hard-switched off. Reading his partner's mind would be a very rude way to cheat. They struggled awkwardly into the rented headsets and switched into a world the size of a chessboard. Terry drew black and picked a bishop for a heart-piece. He flipped back to visual to eye the spectators. They had begun accumulating as soon as he and d'Schane had connected. A couple of people were pumping tokens into view consoles so they could follow the action. Terry and d'Schane spent about five minutes taking swipes at each others' pawns. Terry was playing conservatively, keeping his bishop covered, but not too much to give it away. He let d'Schane take down a knight. If he did it right, he could get d'Schane to lose caution and give away his mate piece. One piece on each end of the cybernetic board would, in dying, lose the fight for either of them. There was a game beyond the game. If Terry lost, he could count on being brought home and treated like captured property for the rest of the night, taken hard and often until they both were tired. If he won, d'Schane might get mean. Terry bided his time and watched one his pawns kill a castle on a lucky stroke. D'Schane slipped up. It was a hairbreadth miscalculation of combat that drew Terry's attention to the white queen. It didn't fight with quite the mechanical, if random, clumsiness of a computer. Terry sent his other bishop against the queen. The bishop lost, but by a bit too much. It was tempting to flip to visual, to look at d'Schane. Terry didn't do it just yet. He didn't want to lose his concentration. D'Schane couldn't be sure that Terry had him figured out. Terry began creating a ring of black pieces around the queen. Keeping his bishop tucked safe in a corner, he started picking away at d'Schane's mate piece. D'Schane, who had read Sun Tzu, liked to force an opponent to yield. Terry, who hadn't, liked to kill. He let the queen wipe out a knight and a pawn. D'Schane must be getting tired. The queen, his heart, was powered only by his own skill and reflexes, and those were being drained by the relentless real-time combat. When at last the queen looked sufficiently wounded, Terry brought the bishop out of its corner. It was safer to let one of the dumb pieces kill the queen, but he wanted to feel this. His bishop jumped to the queen's square. Instantly the game view clicked into encounter mode. The two combatants brought up lightning lances and struck at each other, one desperate, the other gleeful. Terry mistimed just enough that the queen actually hit him once. He hit back, nearly wiping out her offensive capabilities at one stroke. At this point, it was usually polite to demand a yield from the fatally crippled party. Terry wasn't in the mood. He took just a little too long to kill the queen. If d'Schane hadn't flipped out before the death-blow, he'd have a headache from the visual effects. Terry gave the console his ID to post with the winner list. He then started disengaging himself from the headset. D'Schane was glaring at him. Terry smiled back. "Nice game." "Get up." The arcade rats milled about, uncertain what to make of the tension. Terry obeyed, feeling his throat move against the collar. He wondered if d'Schane would hit him. Instead, Terry was impelled out the door by an angry hand at his back. He tripped on the threshold and fell, catching himself with his hands. Terry got up with slow, nearly insulting deliberation. By now, he had probably racked up a couple of dozen lashes to be delivered when they got home. Once they had reached the parking garage, Terry let himself be thrown against the side of the Pontiac. He could have knocked d'Schane over had he wanted. Terry was a little bigger, a lot stronger, and much more fit. But the part of him that was gleeful at d'Schane's rage would only let him struggle when he was sure he would eventually lose. "Spread your legs," d'Schane ordered. Doing so brought Terry down to eye level. The door trim was chewing on his spine. D'Schane leaned an angular hip sharply against Terry's crotch and scratched at his nipples through the shirt. Terry's breath caught. D'Schane usually made sure Terry's nipples were good and sore so that a single touch made him whimper. Terry had almost forgotten the feel of d'Schane's sharp-edged nails. D'Schane said, "You're being rather provocative today. Have I neglected you so badly?" Terry opened his eyes. He hadn't realized until then that they were closed. D'Schane's expression was incongruously serious. "Are you reading me?" he asked. "No." "If you were, you'd know the answer." D'Schane twisted Terry's nipples between his fingers, dragging a ragged gasp from him. "I want to hear you say it." Terry shook his head silently. This was something he couldn't ask for, not even to release his lover from the uncertainty of walking a fine line between love and abuse. A car door slammed. The echoes broke the mood. A woman was walking past them, staring. Terry flashed the bystander a strained smile over d'Schane's shoulder in a vain attempt to make her look less like she thought she should call the police. D'Schane reached behind Terry and keyed the car door open. Terry climbed into the back and d'Schane into the front. Once he had shut the door, d'Schane fastened his seat belt and then slumped, pressing his head against the steering wheel. Seconds passed. Terry realized he was counting to ten slowly before he started the car. The car engine turned over silently. The lights on the dashboard rippled. D'Schane pulled out of the parking space with a silent concentration that made Terry wonder if he was about to hit something on purpose. Terry struggled into his own seat belt. D'Schane always put him in the back when he was feeling particularly domineering. The garage exit gate took d'Schane's credit card and spat it out a few seconds later after charging them for parking. D'Schane took a left turn over Key Bridge and got onto the highway. Terry sank back into the leather seats and wondered if they would be doing anything interesting on the road. It didn't look like it, though. Instead of ducking onto the express lanes, that would autopilot the car at a smooth 110 miles per hour, d'Schane kept them in the driving lanes with the rest of the slow older cars. D'Schane passed from lane to lane, cutting someone off abruptly and earning a sharp honk. He seemed calmer, but only just, by the time they reached the house and left the car. Turning on all the lights, d'Schane disappeared into the kitchen. "What are we doing now?" Terry asked. He was answered by the sound of kitchen things being opened and closed. "I don't know about you, but I'm eating dinner. What do you want?" Terry walked into the kitchen. "I want to be your dinner." "Sure you do." D'Schane threw two boxes into the oven. "I'm eating steak and fries. I know what it wants. It's dead." Terry sat down at the table. "Is something wrong?" Food smells worked their way into his nose and made his stomach growl. "No, nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. I'd just like to know what you want." Terry thought about that. "All of my friends live in Maryland." D'Schane had started sorting dishes and putting them away. He stood on a chair to put the glasses in an upper cabinet. "I'm your friend." The oven sounded off. D'Schane jumped off the chair, opened it, and pulled out the two steaming dinners, juggling them on the tips of his fingers. He dropped one in front of Terry. "All of my other friends. We're fifty miles away in Virginia. And this place is nowhere near public transit. I haven't visited any of them in months." D'Schane pried dinner open. "I can buy you a car." "I can't drive." "I can fix that, too." "That isn't what I meant," Terry said, picking at the potatoes. "Then what did you mean?" d'Schane asked over a mouthful of food. "I wouldn't mind a little autonomy. I don't even have a job." "Yes you do." "I work for you, Grey." D'Schane looked up across the table. "Don't call me that." "D'Schane. I work for you, I sleep with you, and I don't even leave the house unless you're around to drive me into town. You asked me what I wanted." "I asked you to tell me what you wanted me to do to you this evening. I didn't ask for a lecture, especially on things I already know." "But . . . ." Terry bit his lip and let the conversation die of frustration. He ate about half the food and went to dump the rest down the trash. There was a spider on the floor by the disposal. Terry shuddered and stepped on it. "You don't like spiders." Terry looked up irritably. D'Schane was switching on the cyberlink that read the thought impulses off of Terry's collar. "You know I don't like spiders." "You _really_ don't like spiders. You're afraid of them." "Is that a big deal?" D'Schane smiled and got up. "Maybe." He pointed to the floor and snapped his fingers. Terry edged away from the spot on the floor that had been a spider. "Not here." "Are you disobeying me?" "Yes." "It'll cost you." D'Schane was using that tone of voice that he reserved for his affronted feudal lord persona. Terry tried to figure out what he was up to. D'Schane smiled harder as he read Terry's confusion. "I don't care." "That's nice. I'll be in the bedroom in a few minutes. I want to see you on your knees on the floor facing away from the door when I get there." Terry turned on the bedroom light. There wasn't much stuff in the room. D'Schane had moved all of the consoles, the vintage Macintosh (which didn't work), and the stacks of paper books into the downstairs den. That left the bed, a dresser, and a pile of dirty laundry. Terry thought about taking his clothes off, but then didn't. D'Schane liked to strip him himself. He knelt by the bed and waited, enjoying the clawing edges of that velvet-pawed, half-safe sort of terror he loved so well. D'Schane took his time. Terry shifted from side to side, letting the blood back into his knees. He froze when he heard d'Schane come in. Two hands, dripping wet, rested gently on his shoulders. Terry sighed and relaxed under the touch, until d'Schane abruptly threw him down onto his back and sat on him. "You are afraid of spiders," d'Schane said, pinning Terry's hands up over his head. "What else are you afraid of?" His blue eyes were narrowed and his smile grew wider as Terry started to struggle. Terry tried very hard not to think of the summer he spent living with Daphne, of the hot and airless closet where he had slept after she stopped taking him into her bed. D'Schane said, "What if I tied you down and held a hand over your nose and mouth until you fainted? Try not to think about that, too. What else are you afraid of?" Terry screamed. D'Schane called from Austin. "It's funny how the smoother virtual communication gets, and the cheaper it is to hold a computerized conference, the more some sites want to pay me to actually show up." "Are you having fun?" Terry asked. The scene behind d'Schane's face was a hotel room with an unmade bed and a console half-disassembled on the bed. D'Schane's face was pale and sharper than usual. That could be the video quality, though. "Sometimes. The job is sort of a pain. I'll tell you more about it when I get back." Terry nodded. The com lines weren't secure, and if d'Schane was doing anything sensitive, talking about it would tip valuable information to any electronic thief who cared to listen in. "Do you dream of me?" Terry asked. "I haven't slept much." "Got company?" D'Schane smiled. "Sometimes. A woman I haven't seen since school stopped by. You'd like her. She's tall, blonde, and overbearing. What about you?" "I got a couple I know to drive down, pick me up, and go out to dinner and a movie last night." "That's good. I have to go now. I'll see you Friday." "Maybe you will. I've been invited up to U. Maryland for the weekend. I think I'll be going to see a friend's band play." "I want you there when I get home. In fact, consider that an order." Terry sat back when d'Schane broke the connection. He didn't need to obey. He could go anyway. Or maybe it was time for a little escalation. Terry switched his console over to the documentation he was supposed to finish, worked on it, and thought. D'Schane's plane was supposed to land at 6:35 p.m. His car arrived home at just before 8:00, right on time. The garage door slammed. Luggage hit the floor with a thud. "Terry?" Silence followed. All of the lights were out. The house had old hand-switches in the walls. Terry could hear d'Schane trip in the sunless hallway as he turned on lights. Then d'Schane was standing in the bedroom doorway, back-lit, his lean profile and cowboy hat achingly familiar. A switch clicked. Nothing happened. Swearing at all things mechanical, d'Schane hit the switch again. "I need to talk to you." D'Schane jumped. He reached up behind his ear for the link switch to Terry's mind. "You know what I'm thinking now," Terry said from where he stood in the dark. "But I'm willing to bet that you can't avert it." If d'Schane were smart, he would have backed up into the lighted hallway. But if he had retreated, he wouldn't have been d'Schane. He stepped into the room under the heavy tactical disadvantage of eyes unadjusted to the dark. Terry, unseen, slammed into him from the side. D'Schane staggered and slapped Terry across the face. If Terry had been feeling a bit more submissive, the blow would have knocked him down trembling at d'Schane's feet. Instead he caught the wrist, twisted the arm behind d'Schane's back, and lifted up. D'Schane yelped. Terry said, "You should think with your own head. Mine just confuses you." D'Schane said nothing, but gritted his teeth audibly. He was no match for Terry in a fair fight, and knew it, so went limp and tried to disappear. Terry pulled a pair of cuffs from his pocket and snapped one of them around the captured wrist. When he reached for the other hand, d'Schane's composure broke. He gave a soft whimper as Terry took away his freedom. Terry kicked him lightly behind the knee and lowered him to the floor, then went and did something obscure to the light switch. They both blinked in the sudden light. D'Schane was kneeling, head bowed, hair messed. His hat had fallen to the floor. Terry eyed the arch of d'Schane's back, the bound wrists, and the blush on his cheek. He realized his mouth was watering at this taste of power. "I want to tell you two things," he said, sitting down on the floor before d'Schane. Terry felt the collar at his throat when he swallowed. It could not be removed, and housed the sensors that fed d'Schane's cyberlink. Ordinarily it gave him a sweet sort of 'owned' feeling. Now it provided an artistic touch of irony. "The first is that if you beg, I'll stop and let you go." D'Schane stared fixedly at the floor. He would, Terry knew, rather die horribly than beg. Yet the offer was tendered, and d'Schane couldn't blame Terry for forcing him if the game were played to conclusions. "The second is how good you look like this. I should top you more often." He stroked d'Schane's face with a finger, touching his lips, the cords of his throat, the soft part behind his ear. D'Schane hadn't moved. His breath was shallow and eyes half-shut. "Still playing nobody home?" he asked. Even though d'Schane knew it was coming, he still cried out when Terry slapped him. "You've forgotten what this is like, haven't you?" Terry hit him again. "You've watched my mind dissolving as you shredded my skin, but you couldn't feel the pain." Again. "Until now." Again. "You should do this more often. You'd be less of a coward about it." Again. D'Schane tried to bury his face in his own shoulder. Terry paused. His palm burned. He reached out and stroked D'Schane's reddened cheek. The sudden arbitrary gesture of tenderness made him dizzy. He could make d'Schane feel anything he wanted. "Turn it off." Terry blinked. "What?" D'Schane's eyes were still fixed downward, hidden behind hair. "The cyberlink. I can hear you thinking. Please turn it off. Please." Terry smiled. He thought about how much he was enjoying the position of dominance. The pleasure of it warmed him like sunlight. He would sit in judgement of d'Schane, and he planned to show him just enough of hell that anything else would look good. D'Schane would weep with gratitude at the slightest kindness. After all, d'Schane was the one who showed Terry how to do it, and should be proud of how well his student had learned. D'Schane looked at him for the first time that night. His eyes were wet. He said, "Then tell me you aren't doing this because you hate me." Terry leaned forward and touched d'Schane's lips with a finger. "I don't hate you. Not ever. I promise." "Thank you. I won't cry." "You're crying now." Terry watched with fascination as d'Schane trembled. Tears leaked from his eyes and down his cheeks. "Kiss me," d'Schane said. Terry slapped him, jerking his head back. "In case this is news to you, you don't get everything you want." D'Schane glared at him, and his eyes were bright as sparks. He would need that fire soon. Terry abruptly grasped that one special pleasure of topping. He could watch. D'Schane often blindfolded him, or he was too distracted to see what what was done to him. Now he could study his victim's changes of expression, each drop of sweat, and every tiny twitch. Terry got up and dug in the dresser for the things he wanted. When he returned, d'Schane was still sniffing. Terry held a tissue to d'Schane's nose. "Blow." D'Schane obeyed awkwardly. Terry wiped the corners of his eyes and put the tissue aside. Reaching up, Terry unbuttoned d'Schane's shirt. Terry took d'Schane's nipples between his fingers and stroked them until he squirmed and sighed. Then he reached down for the heavy chromed clips. "I'll bet these hurt you more than they hurt me," Terry said, "because I'm used to them and you aren't." D'Schane gasped as the clips bit his nipples. Terry cradled d'Schane's face in his hands and held him that way while he sank into the pain. He touched his fingers to d'Schane's lips, letting him take them into his mouth and suck on them. Terry probed the back of d'Schane's throat with a finger, trying to make him choke and bite, and so provoke Terry into the mood for further violence. But d'Schane was quite still and meek. Somehow that was provocation enough. Taking out a Y-shaped chain, Terry attached one end to each clip, leaving the third to dangle free. He tugged the loose end, making D'Schane whimper. "I'm going to unfasten your hands," he said. "I want you to know how sorry you'll be if you give me trouble." D'Schane nodded. "I know. I won't." Terry unlocked the cuffs and pulled off d'Schane's shirt. "Put your hands behind your head," he said, then gave the chain another tug. "Stand up." D'Schane obeyed. Terry unbuttoned his lover's jeans and helped him step out of them. One of the things he dearly loved about d'Schane was his instant, electric response to every touch, even as distressed as he was now. He squirmed as Terry bit his neck. D'Schane's penis was soft. Terry took it in his hand and stroked it. He had sucked it often enough. This time it seemed that no velvet touches on those sensitive parts were going to make d'Schane hard just yet. Terry made him dance against the chain and gasp when it pulled. There was an eye-bolt set in the underside of the bed. Terry had set it up that morning and covered it with a draped corner of sheet so it wouldn't be noticed until he needed it. It was at exactly the right height that Terry could bend d'Schane over and clip the end of the chain to the bolt. Almost the right height. Terry nudged d'Schane's feet apart and forced him lower. D'Schane rested his head and shoulders on the bed and clasped his hands at the back of his head as Terry fastened the last link to the bolt. If he moved much, or even took too deep a breath, he would give the nipple chain a very sharp jerk. "Clever," d'Schane muttered into the blanket. Terry brushed a hand against d'Schane's bare flank and trailed his fingers over the tense muscles of his back, stroking every rib, ruffling his hair, and running a fingernail down the crack of d'Schane's ass. He took one hair between his fingers and tugged. D'Schane jumped, froze, and then moaned. Terry stripped off his shirt, bent down and picked up the riding crop. He laid it gently against d'Schane's ass and watched his body go taut and trembling. D'Schane had, as far as Terry knew, few hang-ups. He did seem to suffer from delusions born of reading, at an early age, too many indifferently-written sword and sorcery novels in which the heroes were tied up by their hands and flogged across the shoulders by thoroughly evil yet attractive villains. Romanticized tales conspicuously lacked the mess and bodily fluids (except for an artistic streak of blood) of a real-life torture scene, and the hero's breeches were always left on for some obscure plot reason. Terry suspected that this was why his back would be whipped raw and his ass scarcely touched. D'Schane showed little interest in the ramming end of anal sex. To strip away someone's dignity that completely, to have to bother with lubricant and cleaning up afterwards just held no appeal for him. Terry did not suffer from any such delusions. D'Schane knew it, and he was starting to cry again, before Terry had even struck him. The force of the first blow startled even Terry. D'Schane cringed. Terry examined with clinical interest the mark across his ass. He never knew skin had quite that many colors. The shaft of the whip was fiberglass and left a thick red welt as if it were a cane. The loop of leather on the end had wrapped around D'Schane's skinny hip. Terry laid a second mark diagonally across the first. D'Schane kicked, earning himself a welt across the calf. He had so little body fat, Terry realized, that it was hard to find a spot to whip that wouldn't instantly bruise. Terry would have liked to leave a symmetrical lattice of welts like d'Schane sometimes did, but it proved to be too much trouble. Terry concentrated on the tender flesh just beneath d'Schane's buttocks, which were rapidly becoming so sore that a light touch made him moan. He bit at his own arm to stop the noise. Terry clipped him across the shoulder. "You're not allowed to hurt yourself." Dropping the crop, Terry pressed up against d'Schane's ass. The skin was so hot that he could feel it through his jeans. Terry decided that he was wearing too much clothing. His jeans joined d'Schane's on the floor. Terry picked a tube of lubricant out of the drawer. His skin was tingling with arousal, and his penis was almost half-hard already. When he looked back, d'Schane had turned his head to watch him. Terry reached down and tugged the nipple chain, making him cry out. "Ever been fucked in the ass?" Terry asked. "Yes." "Then I don't have to tell you how much more it hurts if you resist." Terry started working a lube-covered finger into the tightness of d'Schane's anus. He probed past the muscle, pressing downwards. D'Schane sighed suddenly as Terry found his prostate. His slack genitals showed some sign of life. Terry pulled his fingers out and reached for more lube, smearing it over the head of his own penis. He fumbled just a bit finding the exact right angle. Apparently d'Schane had decided not to resist. The head of Terry's penis went in slowly but smoothly. He gave d'Schane a moment to lean into it, to thrust back and open himself up to be taken. Terry had spent too much time thinking about what he was doing to d'Schane. The full sensory force of what he was doing to himself, when it finally caught up to him, nearly made him pass out. The heat and the tightness were squeezing his heart. Dizzy, Terry leaned down and licked the sweat from d'Schane's back. He pulled out and thrust back in again just a little too fast. D'Schane made a pained noise and tossed his head. Terry wrapped his arms around him tightly. Reaching down, he sprang the clips and was rewarded with a ragged scream. D'Schane shook and melted into Terry's arms, his moans rising in pitch as the thrusts grew harder and harder against his sore flesh. Then something at the base of Terry's spine ignited. He clawed d'Schane's back, leaving red marks all the way down. Terry's knees buckled, bringing them both tumbling to the floor. Little by little their pulses sank back to normal. Terry disentangled himself from d'Schane, reached up and pulled the blankets down off the bed to wrap them both. Then, as the sweat cooled on their bodies, he kissed d'Schane on the mouth and licked his tears. D'Schane's body was stiff with unaccustomed stresses and the pain of being taken. Terry felt him soften under the gentleness. Terry said, "Remember how you said I shouldn't let people step on me?" D'Schane very pointedly reached up to the back of his head and touched the switch of the wire to Terry's mind, turning it off at last. Holding Terry tightly, he whispered, "I'm sorry. It's so hard being God for you sometimes. I had to run away. I'm sorry I didn't try to talk about it. But I can have you a job somewhere in town by next week. It's another favor, I know, but you'll have something you can keep on your own merits. I can even find you an apartment . . . ..." Terry was shaking his head. "That's not what I want. Ask me what I want." "OK. Terry, what do you want?" Terry reached up and touched his collar. "I belong to you and I want to stay that way. That isn't what's wrong. But I wouldn't mind if you sold this house and we moved to Georgetown." "Is that all?" Terry ran his tongue along d'Schane's throat. "No. I want you to tell me that you love me." "I love you." When Terry whispered the words back, they both lay still for a moment, not looking at each other, just a little frightened by it. Terry kissed d'Schane again, tickling the roof of his mouth and biting his lips. He licked his way down to the sore nipples, making d'Schane wince. He tasted the taut skin of d'Schane's belly, then took into his mouth that which grew hard and twitched all of its own. D'Schane lay back, breathing hard, one hand twined in Terry's hair. "You're going to get it tomorrow night." Terry freed his mouth. "I know. I'm looking forward to it."