Are We Human? Ch. 02

"You might act like a brat, but you beg like a submissive. You whimper like a submissive. You serve like a submissive."

At the edge of the bed, she leaned forward to bring her face as close to Drew's as possible. An adrenaline-spiked cocktail of resentment and terror surged in his bloodstream, and somehow, it made him strong enough to maintain eye contact. He scanned her face for signs of falter, any indication that his rebellion was chipping away at her power. Lady Sparrow gave him no such gift.

"I highly doubt that you're a good enough actor to fake the things you said and did last night," she continued. "That came from the heart, I can tell."

"I don't know what you think I am, but you're wrong," he fired back. "I don't care about what happened last night. What matters is what's gonna happen now, and what's gonna happen is that you and I are going to go our separate ways. I want nothing to do with your weirdo kink shit."

It wasn't the speech he had planned out earlier in the day, but it checked off enough boxes to satisfy him. Even more satisfying was the look on Lady Sparrow's face: hard, vindictive wrath giving way to a softer blend of surprise and confusion. To his astonishment, the woman took a step back from him. Her eyes never left him, but this time they weren't staring through him; they were taking him in.

"What do you know about kink?" she asked in a tone of genuine interest, perhaps even of concern.

He rebuffed coldly, "I know enough. It's all rape and crying and beating with people like you."

"People like us," she corrected.

"Not us. Not me. I don't do that shit, I told you."

"Yeah, you told me. You also licked the cum off my fingers and said you belonged on your knees, so..."

"I was drunk! I say and do a lot of things when I'm drunk."

That made her eyebrows raise, made her mouth open up to let out a stunned silence. The excuse was much less effective against Lady Sparrow than it had been against Drew, but now that it had been said out loud, even he realized how absurd it sounded. She must have seen the doubt flush into his cheeks, for she quickly picked her jaw up and set her face into cruelty and amusement.

"It repulses you, doesn't it?" she asked him in a smooth voice. "As much as you try to distance yourself from us 'freaks,' you already know that if I even told you the things I would do to you, you would be on the ground kissing my feet begging to be my slave. Last night, you learned who you were meant to be, and that sickens you to your rotten core."

Climbing onto the bed, Lady Sparrow crawled over to Drew so that he could inhale the words she said to him. He didn't resist her approach; he didn't even move spare for a light quiver that he got from watching her ravenous eyes grow larger as she closed the gap between their faces.

"And you know something, sweetheart? It should sicken you. You should be ashamed of the kind of disgusting, immoral little slut that you are deep down."

Quicker than a snakebite, Drew's wrists were pinned against the wall; the loud smack startled him even more than the feeling of his arms being held above his head.

"You're sick, darling. Sick in the fucking head."

Faintly, he whimpered, "but..."

"You don't get to speak," she interrupted. "I don't give a shit what worthless whores have to say."

That shut him up in a second, drove his teeth into his lip to seal his mouth closed. He hadn't had a thought for a while now; the words in his head didn't belong to him. They were her words, and they were spreading an infection inside of him that made his muscles weak and his hunger impossible to ignore.

"You disgust me too, you know that? Normal people don't get hard when they're choked and slapped around. Normal people don't beg their partners to degrade them. You're abnormal. You're a freak."

Freak. After a flurry of verbal shots to his face, that was the comment that hit him in the gut. It hit him hard enough to shake a free thought loose, woke his nerves up long enough for him to shake his head in the negative. He scraped up whatever fight there was left in him and told her, without speaking, that she was still wrong about him. He was not a freak, and he would defend that claim against all storms until the last heartbeat, the last blink, the last breath.

No century had ever seen a storm like Lady Sparrow, and this storm loved a challenge.

"You know, this scene really could've been fun for the both of us. But what I'm going to do to you now, I sincerely doubt you'll find it as fun as I do."

She let go of his wrists and brought the back of her hand to his cheek, unleashing the kind of sound that sends shivers down the spine, like that of a breaking bone. It knocked him down to the bedspread, and he made no attempt to get back up.

"Okay, stubborn bitch, time to find out what the price of pride is."

Drew felt her thighs close around his waist, the front of her hips pressing against his rear once again. She tore off his shirt and unrolled herself section by section along his back; when her breasts were squishing against his shoulder blades, she reached out her arms and interlocked her fingers with his, palm to back. The hand-holding felt almost sweet for a moment, until it became clear that his hands were not being held so much as they were being held down. Lady Sparrow sighed contentedly behind his ear, and then her lips were on his neck. The faintest of kisses was still enough to send a chill through his body; once the thin lips opened themselves up to take in his skin and caress it with a wet, curious tongue, an electrical current of chills coursed ceaselessly and aggressively all throughout him. Drew kept his face in the covers so the subtle, shameful noises of his enjoyment would go unnoticed. If this was the price of pride, he would be happy to pay it with interest.

But his enjoyment didn't go unnoticed. How could it have? Lady Sparrow could feel the vibration of his cooing against her chest. She could feel the shifting between her thighs as her pet's growing lust for her forced him to adjust himself. She could even detect the slight turning of his head that revealed more vulnerable flesh to her pursing lips. If this was all she had planned for him, there wouldn't have been a need to hold him down. Unfortunately for Drew, Lady Sparrow asked him a question.

"Tell me, baby: have you ever read 'The Scarlet Letter?'"

Before he could recall the online summary he had read in high school, Drew felt her teeth laying into him. She pulled back to yank on his skin, shook her head side to side to maximize the damage. The context of her reference became clear, and he started to struggle from underneath his attacker. She squeezed his fingers between her own and refused to let him interrupt. The weight of her head kept his neck from squirming out of her reach, and all the while her teeth kept gnashing at him. They tore and traveled across him, soldiers carving a trail of wholistic destruction whose horrors were meant to be displayed to the world.

Soon, she was sucking on his skin, hard enough to shatter his capillaries and let the blood pool into an expansive bruise of dynamic coloration. He could already feel it forming: the mark of a slut that would follow him through the next days of his life. Lady Sparrow wanted to make it a week. Releasing his hands, she moved to cover his mouth and pulled his head back to allow herself more neck to illustrate. Passionate cries trembled and died against her palm. Even with his arms free, Drew couldn't shake her off. The heat of her mouth and the sensation of lips brushing skin threatened to sap the fight out of him. While he dreaded the lingering wounds, the importance of the aftermath diminished continuously with every passing second of her onslaught. Even the bites had begun to feel welcome in his skin.

Silence fell over the opposition in his head, the cacophonic voices tapering off as a haze clouded his vision. It was warm beneath Lady Sparrow, the kind of warmth that burrows under the skin and wraps itself around each individual organ. Her warmth burned pleasantly in his chest and tingled at the tips of the fingers that dug at the bedspread. Her hypnotic breathing was a lullabye; her chewing teeth were gentle caresses. He couldn't stop her, but he didn't have to. It was okay to be helpless. She would take care of him. It was warm underneath her and it always would be. This was his place now and it always would be. He was safe and he was comfortable and he always would be. Drew was hers. Always would be.

The struggle dimmed and fizzled out as the bruises emerged into view like the figures in a developing photograph. The damage had been done, and there was no more reason to fight it. The cries of protest no longer vibrated against Lady Sparrow's hand, and so she relinquished her hold on his mouth to let the quiet moans fill the cool, still air of the bedroom. A few minutes of decompression saw her put the finishing touches on her massacre masterpiece, then she sat up to examine her creation. Drew lay motionless spare for the panting that caused his back to raise and lower in a quick rhythm. Once she tired of watching him pant, she stepped back onto the floor of her bedroom and, taking a fistful of her plaything's hair, pulled him to the floor alongside her. He shivered meekly in the new, unapologetic cold.

"Crawl to the mirror, boy," she ordered, pointing to the long mirror hanging from her closet door.

The high of the moment had worn off; the warm burning in his chest degenerated into a painful burning of shame. His hands and knees fell timidly as he dragged himself to the door. He kept his head down the whole time, unwilling and unable to come face to face with the ghastly carnage that had spilled out across his neck. Even when he reached the base of the mirror, Drew kept his eyes fixed on the ground.

"You know, it really defeats the purpose of having a mirror if you don't look into it," she informed him dryly.

No response. No lifted eyes either. Just a solemn head shake from a boy who didn't know when to quit.

"God, how ungrateful can you be?" Lady Sparrow scoffed. "I spent all that time making your neck look so pretty, and you won't even acknowledge what I've done for you?"

He should've ran when he heard the footsteps approach, he knew that. Somewhere along the line though, the will to run from her had withered away. There was no escape from her, he knew that too. The world belonged to Lady Sparrow, and wherever she wanted him to be would be his home until she decided otherwise. When the fingers tangled in his hair again and pulled his head upward, he closed his eyes to the loathsome sight in front of him.

"No!" he gasped.

"I can bruise a whole lot more than just your neck," she warned. "I advise you, strongly, not to make any more mistakes tonight. You have till the count of one."

It didn't take him one. The markings would exist whether he acknowledged them or not; although pretending otherwise was the more comforting alternative, the consequences of denial were far too severe for such a futile endeavor. This was obvious even to him, so finally, Drew opened his eyes. When the horror she had unleashed upon him filled his vision, he almost wished he had taken the punishment instead.

"Damn, you are one sorry looking slut," the woman in the mirror laughed.

These weren't hickeys. He had received hickeys before in high school and, occasionally, in college when the girls were particularly sloppy. This girl wasn't sloppy, and she didn't deal in red dot sprays and small brown dimes either. She was an astronomy painter who had birthed her galaxy onto his skin. Black holes stretched out next to brown and purple planets caught in their orbit around enormous red suns, and the colors swirled together as if the enormous red suns truly were hot enough to melt the galaxy away. Drew ran his fingers across her universe, wincing as he prodded the artwork in places that varied from mildly sensitive to thundering with pain.

"The fellas are going to be real impressed with you, huh?" the artist asked him. "The hero returns from conquest, proudly displaying the badges of his victory."

She patted the side of his head so that he was forced to lean it against her thigh. The way she rubbed his hair now seemed affectionate on the surface, but Lady Sparrow always delighted in manipulating the image she presented to others. Drew knew her well enough to hear the malice and the joy in her sarcasm. Despite this, it was still soothing for him to be caressed instead of beaten for once. Maybe it was the shame that was overwhelming him, but something compelled him to nuzzle her thigh. A soft smile cracked in the mirror; Abby didn't mind it if Drew saw her smile.

"But you and I know the truth," Lady Sparrow resumed. "You're returning from conquest alright, but you're not the hero. You and I know what those badges really signify. Now, tell me what it means to wear those beautiful bruises."

Drew wondered how severe the consequences of this particular denial would be, but it wasn't long before he decided that whatever the consequences were, they wouldn't be worth it either. Resistance had gotten him beaten. Rebellion had gotten him tortured. Denial had gotten him branded. Everything he did against Lady Sparrow, he had done to preserve his dignity. The person staring back at him now was kneeling, bruised and pathetic and hopeless, at the feet of his mistress. He didn't have any dignity left. Not a person anymore. Something else now.

"Whore."

Butterfly wings beat the wind louder than the voice that carried the word, but the word itself blew out the candles and smashed the windows and shattered the faces in the mirror.

"Louder, my love. I want to hear you say it."

He obeyed, "they mean I'm a whore."

"Not just any whore."

His lips were dry.

"Your whore."

Lady Sparrow's only response was a smirk and a squeeze of his shoulder. She backed away to allow her whore a moment to stew over his admission. Maybe he had said it to make the torment stop. Maybe he had said it because it was true, damn true, the ultimate undisputed inescapable truth. The purgatory of uncertainty left him empty, a plume of stale air filling up the pit of his stomach. Drew was so focused on his own hollowed eyes that he didn't even notice her undressing behind him, folding her clothes and placing them neatly on the chair. She returned, pure in her nudity, and observed the pitiful state of her favorite toy.

"Looking at you right now, I can't tell whether I should be turned on or fucking depressed," she remarked.

"I want to be normal again," he whispered. "What's wrong with me?"

Lady Sparrow reached the end of her patience the same way a speeding bus reaches a brick wall. Taking another fistful of Drew's hair, she yanked him from the mirror's binding spell and tossed him on his back. The aggressive footsteps reverberated through the floor and into his bones; suddenly, Lady Sparrow's mask of rage appeared above him.

"You're making this all about you, and it's really pissing me off," she lectured, eyes narrowed and voice fiery. "My slut should be worried about one thing only, and that's making me happy. So stop bitching, bitch, and start worrying."

The mighty figure began to lower. She placed her hands on his abdomen and her calves around his head, preventing his face from turning away from the soft skin and dripping hairs hovering over him. The warm, quick breaths of anticipation beneath her tickled so much that she had to bite her lip to keep herself from giggling.

She regained her composure, then told him, "nature made you a whore, but I'm the one who's gonna make you love it."

Even if he could have moved away from her, the thought of it never crossed his mind. His mouth opened for her, lower lip twitching as it reached up toward heaven above. The scent was familiar, as was the feeling: hunger. The sight of her glimmering vagina brought the hunger back; it stirred up those desperate addict cravings that made him mad for her, made him willing to say anything and do everything for a taste of her, for the feeling of her hands on him, for the sound of her voice and the look of smug confidence bearing down on him. The bruises on his neck were gone, were never there, were never in existence. Nothing existed except Lady Sparrow's beautiful, perfect vagina, and she was letting him have it.

She gasped at first. No matter how many times tongues prodded at her wetness, the initial sensation always surprised her. Her legs tightened around Drew's head as the shudder ran its course through her body, then she relaxed to let him continue. The tongue was exploring her now, tentative in its steps along her flesh. It pushed through the hairs on the outskirts of her cunt, and each time it dared to venture a step closer to her center, Lady Sparrow's claws would roam on her servant's stomach. The faint scratching encouraged him, and soon, the pink skin of her cunt trembled against his exploration.

He lapped at her, savoring the water of life after 20 years of drought, of despair, of forlorn forsaken desert. Although he had given oral many times before - even to the woman herself - nothing felt the same to him. No woman had ever had him on his back like this. Normally, he'd be on his stomach, licking at his leisure; he would trace letters on her while his fingers stroked her hips, slid along her stomach, reached up for her breasts. Rare occasions would see him on his knees, staring up with sly winks and fingernails digging into some girl's quavering ass. But she denied him the luxury of smug teasing. Time wasn't his to take anymore; he couldn't break away from her, couldn't take any breath that she didn't give him. The arrangement was simple: no service, no air. If he slowed, if she bored, she would push down and drown him.

"You're no good to me if you can't make me cum," she would scold over his muffled pleas. "You wanna see what I do to worthless things?"

She would let him his limbs thrash and let the begging hum against her clit for a moment, then she would raise to let her slave continue with renewed urgency. In the past, he could delight in making the girls wait for their moment and revel in the whining and squirming of an impatient partner, but Lady Sparrow's control put the desperation on him. She tarnished his face with her cum, disgraced it with her riding, but his lips were forbidden to halt their frantic squeezing on her pink flesh. Beneath her once again, the notion of his helplessness was all he could hear with the meat of her legs plugging his ears. Helpless little whore whose face was nothing but a seat for his mistress.

But she tasted so good, smelled fresher than valley air. Even if he wasn't a pinned down helpless little whore, he would be drooling at the thought of savoring the cum on her soft skin. He would ache for a chance to run his tongue up her wet cunt, even just once. He would beg. He did beg. Of course he begged. He had to beg. Helpless little whores always beg their mistresses and he was a helpless little whore. Of course he was a helpless little whore. The bruises on his neck said so. The famished way he sucked at her clit said so. Lady Sparrow said so, and a small part of himself said so too, quite loudly now actually. His owner felt the vibration of speech against her cunt and lifted high enough to let him speak.

"Let me guess, poor baby's tired, isn't he?" she asked sternly.

"Tell me I'm a whore."

In the stunned silence that followed, he added, "please."

A thick droplet of cum pooled onto her lips, and Drew reached up to swallow it. Her eyelids fluttered, and she threw her head back as she lowered herself once more.

"You shouldn't need me to tell you something so obvious, but fine."

She slid her hands to his waist and brushed a rigid finger along the outline of his cock. She liked it when he shuddered under her.