Hell's Mercy Read online

  No, he was all for diversity and freedom of expression, but there was such a thing as discretion. These young hotheads with their flashy wings and their tentacles were going to bring the Conservative Central Government down on Cydonia like a billion tons of bricks. After all the work he and his associates had done to gain Cydonia’s freedom, it was grating to think that this very freedom might bring about its own doom for sheer lack of plain old common sense.

  He had held his world together by sheer force of will for so long … he was tired. He was so, so tired. And there were days when he felt, if not depressed, then something embarrassingly close to it. There was no excuse for it. He had nothing to be depressed about. He was rich. He was healthy. He was powerful.

  His city was crazy and maddening. But it was the most beautiful city in the world. He had made it so. He had no reason to cry, and no wish to do such a thing.

  And yet… and yet he needed to. From time to time. From time to time something clenched hard inside him had to give way, and break loose.

  Hell had stolen his old, cold heart, and had given him what he needed most.

  Release from power.

  ****

  Hell’s apartment was pure old Venetian splendor, a luxurious extravaganza of stuccoed ceilings, mosaicked floors, Byzantine arches, and silver mirrors, overlaid by a nonchalant scatter of lavish damask throws and cushions, white peacock feathers, pelts, and ancient masks. But what made it different and memorable was the deep, deep blue on the walls. It was the same blue of the sea in a clear, cold evening just before dusk. It was the same blue as her eyes.

  Well, that and the impressive collection of whips, discreetly displayed here and there, over doorways and mantelpieces.

  Some of them were very old; others were excellent and perfectly functional modern replicas. Most had been designed or adopted for recreational purposes. But some were pure leather evil, made for scarring, maiming, and even killing. A Nagaika, the Cossacks’ wolf-slayer, the heavy knout with its deadly metal beak, the knot-ended scourge, and, looking quite harmless in this sinister company but not to be underestimated, a sjambok, and a loaded riding crop.

  If ever there was a woman who could heft any one of these and look at ease with it, that was Helenay. She had the presence for it, and the brawn, too.

  She buzzed him in, and Lukan entered the apartment with a flutter of spirits. Even after a couple hundred of such encounters, he still felt like a novice at this.

  She, on the other hand, seemed completely unmoved by his presence, as calm and timeless as something sculpted in marble.

  Looking at those blue eyes—the only living thing in the stillness of her mask, and the statuesque tranquility of her stance as she stood waiting for him in the hallway—was like staring into transparent windows, through which the surrounding ultramarine showed through. It was both beautiful and unsettling, like the rest of her.

  Her mask was nothing one would find in the tourists’ shops of course, even the best ones. It was modeled after her own features by one of the best mascherai in Neu Venedig. It was split in two halves, one matte black, one polished silver. The two faces of the moon. The two sides of power and surrender. The two aspects of her being, of course.

  He bowed his head, courteously, as people did in Neu Venedig, and then bowed it lower, as was but right in the presence of something too great for words.

  Because Hell was no mere human.

  She was divine. A goddess of pain, bondage, and release.

  “You are late,” she said, levelly.

  He didn’t deny it. He just bowed lower. Even after all these years, he could still underestimate how crowded and impassable the city became at the height of the Carnival. He took off his coat and hung it neatly over the back of a chair. Hell had maids and attendants, but these meetings were so intensely private that she dispensed with them all when he visited. It was a mark of the private intimacy they shared. This was not a professional encounter for Hell. And the small indignity of hanging his coat, and hanging it neatly, just so, so as not to spoil the perfection of the room, was the first step of the ritual on such nights.

  She nodded curtly and turned without further comment, stalking through door after door, crossing the apartment front to back. He followed her in silence, into her bedroom. This was not the place where she entertained customers. It was her private bedroom, and it was a very rare privilege to enter it.

  “Undress,” she said, and pointed to a low bench in a corner where some of her clothes where neatly folded.

  He swallowed. He was not, never had been, comfortable outside his clothes. Least of all now that half of his skin had been grafted from cultured tissue. It didn’t show, but he still felt it, especially in the presence of Hell’s young, flawless, glowing perfection. He felt like something slightly less than really alive. Sometimes Hell allowed him to stay clothed at least in part. Tonight, it was not the case. He didn’t complain though. He obeyed quietly.

  When he turned, white and naked, she stood just beside him.

  He was not a short man. In his youth back on Earth-that-was, he had been considered very tall. These days, he was still at least average. But Hell towered over him. She was taller than him barefoot. When she wore high heels, like tonight, his eyes were barely level with her Adam’s apple.

  “Good. Kneel,” she whispered softly, and he did, very readily. He was close on four hundred years old. Hell was less than forty. A mere child. He had known her for close on twenty-five years.

  But he knelt.

  There were only a dozen or so survivors of Old Earth left in the Galaxy. He was one of them. As a group, with typical modesty, they called themselves “the Immortals”. Most Immortals were rather less than presentable these days, having succumbed to melancholy, paranoia, dementia, or the plain simple existential ennui of four centuries of life.

  Well, poor Immortals, in their ivory castles, complaining that the world was floating by, leaving them behind. If only they had bothered to look out of their bunkers and fortresses once in a while, they would have known that, from time to time, there came into the world something so pure, so perfect, so timeless, that be one fifty, or a hundred, or three-hundred-eighty-nine, all one could do was kneel in veneration.

  “Help me, please,” he whispered, and she stroked his long pale hair, slowly, fondly.

  “What have you been doing with yourself, Lukan?” she whispered. “I turn my back on you for less than ten days, and you come here looking almost like an old man.”

  He gave a sort of snuffling whine, leaning his head against her thigh like a dog.

  She rubbed his neck and his shoulders and caressed his cheek, and then, quite suddenly, she thrust two fingers into his mouth. He whimpered, but sucked on them. Unlike her, he wore a half mask. He knew Hell expected to have the unhindered use of his mouth.

  “Now, this,” she said, and pulled a heavy steel plug from her robe. He opened his mouth again. It was cold, despite being carried so close to her body. He did his best, for his own good, to make it warm, and wet, but the unforgiving hardness of the metal made him careful of his front teeth, so he had to suck delicately, his jaw tense. She let him work on it until his mouth ached, then she pulled it out, glistening with saliva.

  He didn’t wait for an order; he bent on all fours, and spread his legs.

  This was submission indeed. Hell pressed the plug on his anus, working it in slowly, twisting in one direction then another, not quite forcing it in, but not easing it too gently either.

  He gasped with a stab of pain when the massive head passed his spasming sphincter. The pain was sharp and hard-edged, yet it promised to turn to pleasure, if he allowed it, if he let it. He breathed deeply as his ass drew the length of the plug further in, until it settled with its flared base between his buttocks. Then he felt Hell’s cool fingers, and heard the gentle swish of cord running through a metal ring. Against his will, a small whimper formed in his throat, but he choked it down. There was pleasure on the other side of this.
And in any case, it was not for pleasure, not quite, that he had come here tonight. It was so intricate.

  There is a complex dance, between desire and pleasure, anticipation and fear.

  They breathe in and out of you, ever changing into one another.

  “On the bed,” Hell said tersely, and Lukan got up and walked the four steps to the bed, trailing a tail of black cord. He could feel the wide ring at the end of the plug spreading his buttocks. He didn't look at his own image in the floor-to-ceiling mirror that adorned one wall, but he let his eyes linger for a moment on Hell’s long, long legs, striding behind the liquid folds of her silk robe as she followed him. He sat on the bed, his head still bowed and Hell motioned him to lie back, and spread his legs.

  There were a thousand ways to tie a cock and balls, no doubt, but Hell had the purest aesthetic sense, and for her pleasure—and this night was for her pleasure as much as his—she favored simplicity.

  She drew the cord forward from his anus, spreading his testicles wide, gave each a turn, and another. He lay still, staring at the ceiling. His cock was already responding to Hell’s deft touch. Her fingers stroked him once or twice encouragingly, although he hardly needed encouragement. He hated being touched by strangers—he hardly ever even removed his gloves in public—but Hell’s touch was intoxicating.

  He kept himself apart from all other humans, for this. For her. He shared his bare skin and his bare heart with nobody else.

  When she tied several turns of rope around the base of his shaft, he was wholly hard, and his cock bulged out, dark with trapped blood, skin straining, and every nerve ending wide-open to her touch. He swallowed.

  “Up,” she said, and he stood cautiously. His swollen erection bobbed and lolled in front of him, heavy and slightly ludicrous, dark as it was against his whiteness. The butt plug filled him, shifting and stroking him inside at every step. The ends of the cord brushed against his knees as he walked meekly across the room once more.

  “The window,” she said, and his heart gave a wrench. The window was the hardest. She pulled the heavy damasked curtains open and lit a small lamp in the deep windowsill. He grabbed the sides of the window frame, looking out into the night. The window looked on a canal. Not one of the most crowded, fortunately, but there were boats plying the dark waters, passers-by along the opposite side, and two small bridges within sight.

  Hell stood behind him, so tall that her breath puffed in his ear. She took hold of his engorged cock, putting an arm around him, and stroked it a couple of times, with her palm on the way out and with her long black fingernails on the way down. It was a light touch, but stretched as he was, it made him shudder with the intensity of it. His genitals were so sensitive right now that a puff of breath would make him tremble. When she palmed both testicles with her hands and squeezed them, pulling him close to the front of her body, he had to bite back a small scream. He writhed in the window, but didn’t let go of the wall on either side.

  Even if Hell had not spoken the words, he knew that he was instructed not to.

  The movement attracted attention, and two black-caped, masked figures paused on the small bridge that spanned the canal just under Hell’s house. They stood still, and looked up. Lukan swallowed, and closed his eyes, trying to push the two strangers out of his mind. He could bear any amount of abuse, but being witnessed this naked was almost more than he could endure. Almost. Because, in fact, he would take just about anything short of real physical damage for Hell.

  And that was only because, at his age, despite all the careful enhancements that his body had undergone, physical damage was a hazard. If only he had been one or two centuries younger … well.

  “What a beautiful picture you must make from down there,” whispered Hell hoarsely. “Do you know, I have half a mind to take a stroll outside to see.”

  Lukan swallowed, and didn’t answer. He didn’t think she would leave him here alone. But then she might. One never knew with Hell. Safety first didn’t count when he was not actually tied. It would be almost unbearable to be taken so close, and then being abandoned. Would she do this to him? Would she be that cruel? He swallowed again, and almost whimpered when she let go of his balls, and stepped away from him, back into the room. He didn’t turn. He could not even hear her as she moved. Even her heels were silent on the deep carpet and pelts that covered the floor.

  That was why when the first blow fell, he was jolted almost out of his skin, and he cried out.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” he yelped, not loud, just gasps of breath that escaped out of surprise as much as pain, until the first shock burnt out, and he settled quietly into the pain, leaning into the longed-for stings.

  There was, in fact, no overwhelming distress yet. Hell liked to vary her routine, and sometimes would hit him with a riding crop on cold skin, which was excruciating, but sometimes she would ease him into the pain by degrees, drawing things out, playing on the edge of agony. The hand that hit him now left and right, right and left, left and right, was neither very hard nor very fast, but it did make his bound genitals bob hard with every blow, and Lukan spread his legs wider, both to ease the pressure a little, and to steady himself. He was panting. The blows kept coming, a little faster, a little harder, but it was only when the hand was replaced by the sharp touch of a strap, no, actually a tawse, that Lukan cried out again.

  He knew all her favorite toys by their sting, and the sound they made when they met his flesh.

  Helenay slapped the split strap of thick leather hard on his buttocks and then down his thighs, in a neat crisscrossing pattern. She could leave crisscross switch welts as neat as a corset’s lacing if she wanted. At his knees, she stopped, and Lukan breathed deep. The sharp sting of the tawse was pure fire, but it faded quickly enough. Still, his skin was now definitely well primed for the real pain.

  He breathed hard.

  Hell placed a hand between his buttocks and stroked the edge of his butt plug again and again, sending it to stroke his prostate, over and over, while at the same time, gently pulling on the cord that tied his cock and balls. He groaned, feeling waves of pleasure and the afterglow of pain mingling in his flesh and in his brain, addling him. Soon he would hardly know the difference between the two. He groaned again, not knowing anymore if he had come for the pain she could give, or the pleasure she so often withheld. Sometimes she would give both. Perhaps he would beg for it today.

  Yes, he would certainly beg if he had to.

  “Turn,” she said, and he let go of the wall, gingerly, because his knees were soft. Her tawse was still in her hand, and from one end of it, on a thin silk cord, hung a long suede tassel. Not quite a flogger, but a vicious enough little thing, when one was standing naked with a swollen glans reaching out, begging to meet that deceptive velvet kiss. He took a deep breath and then gave a sharp gasp when the first soft swish of the tassel hit his engorged cock. The suede was neither rough nor stiff, but his stretched, blood-filled skin exploded in pain at its kiss. The pain was so close on top of the pleasure he had been savoring a moment earlier that he could not quite tell them apart. The almost-gentle, almost-intolerable flogging went on and on, perhaps for only a few seconds, but he was jolting back at each blow, crying out, whimpering. When she stopped and palmed his balls again, he actually screamed, although she did nothing, just held them.

  “You are so full of it today,” whispered Hell, seriously.

  “It” was the unbearable tension that mounted inside him between their encounters, as he knew well.

  “Why?” she asked.

  He shook his head wretchedly. “I don’t know. Help me. Help me, please.”

  She sighed, and kissed his forehead for a long moment.

  Moments like this, long or short, made his heart stop. Neither he nor she were made for tenderness, really. And yet it materialized, from time to time, out of the blue, unexpected, unexplained, often unacknowledged. Half the time, they almost pretended that it hadn’t happened. A secret they kept, even from themselves.


  “Turn,” she said once more, and he resumed his position in front of the window, spread-eagled, his hands on the corners of the wall. The couple on the bridge was still standing there, hugging under their cloaks and looking up. Lukan gave a small, unhinged laugh. I should be selling tickets, he thought, as a vision filled his mind of the spectacle he must be giving, striped ass and bound cock, writhing in that bright window like a cheap whore in a peep show. Only, it was not a peep show. The whole bloody canal could see him, large as life in this lit window. He laughed again, and then whimpered.

  The next blow came high under his shoulder blades, and he jolted with the sting of it. After a tawse, a many-tailed loopy johnny was Hell’s favorite, and it stung like bloody murder.

  In her professional capacity, Hell was an absolute artist in every last implement ever designed to tie, gag, spank, or whip a man or a woman. In her private chamber, she favored effective simplicity.

  She was certainly favoring him tonight.

  The sting of the loopy johnny was pure torture, sharper than the tawse, almost as bad as a switch, although wholly silent.

  It was no matter. He provided the music to the dance.

  He braced himself for a long ride because Hell was marking his back methodically, like a painter creating an exact pattern. Before she had gotten to the small of his back he was crying in his mask, and uttering low, sobbing ah, ah, ah! at every blow, with such exact timing that it was a testament to her unerring precision. He swayed at every blow, and his erection, unable to deflate, bobbed obscenely in front of him.

  He began to wish, as he had known he would, that he had been tied. It would be easier to take the blows, lost to the world in his bonds, free to thrash and rage. But now it was his responsibility to keep upright, to stay still. He clenched his hands on the corners of the wall, focusing on its coldness and its hardness, fighting for control. He had not been permitted to collapse yet, so he must stand. The blows descended with frightening, infallible precision, to his butt, his hot, hot, already-sore butt, tender, oh so tender, from the former blows, ready to flare with red agony, and then past.