The Bloom of Tartarus Pt. 01

When he finished attaching the gag, he pushed a pedal at the base of the cross which tilted the implement until it was horizontal and about a meter off the ground.

"Get on, facing down." He commanded her.

She mounted the cross apprehensively, her bare ass suddenly feeling like a grave vulnerability. He fastened the restraints around her wrists and ankles just as tight as he had fastened the gag, rendering her completely unable to move her arms or legs. When she was fully attached, he tilted the table upright. The leather restraints on her wrists digging harshly into her skin as they supported all her weight. She whimpered into the gag, disgusting herself with how pathetic it made her sound.

Xus picked up the whip and began to pace around behind her. It was a cat-of-nine-tails-style whip with a multitude of leather straps hanging down from the handle. It could easily be a deadly and excruciating weapon in the hands of a man as strong as Xus.

"My brother thinks he can get the better of me." Xus said, fuming as he paced around her. He brushed the leather straps across her back so that she could feel what he was about to hit her with. She flinched against the touch and whimpered again, drool beginning to fall down her chin and onto her chest.

"Can you believe that?!" He shouted, raising the whip over his head, and bringing it down very hard against the skin of her back.

She screamed into the gag and struggled hard against the restraints as a crisscross of red welts began to raise on her back.

Xus lowered the whip and traced the welts gently, almost affectionately with his finger. "Your skin is so beautiful, and the whip makes red art against the pale ocean of your back." He said wistfully.

He reached down with his other hand and cupped her pussy, feeling the heat radiating from her skin. "Ah, I see you have been trained well, slut, lubricating yourself even when you are afraid." He said, running one of his fingers across her slit slowly. She couldn't help but moan into the gag when his finger brushed against her clit. "Perhaps I should train you to become aroused under so much pain." She could hear his wicked smile as he slowly pressed a finger inside her pussy. She had been trained to focus on the pleasure, and she did just that, meditating on the sensation of his finger exploring around inside her most sensitive skin. He used another finger to stimulate her clit, and before she knew it, she was moaning needily into the gag, hoping despite herself to be penetrated by something more than his finger.

He brought her right up to the edge of an orgasm before withdrawing his hand. This time she groaned in disappointment, and her hackles began to rise in fear of what probably came next.

He brought up the whip and leveled a harsh blow against her ass cheeks. Again, she screamed into the gag and began to whimper as tears fell down her cheeks from the pain.

He immediately replaced his hand and stroked her clit gently, filling Nadia with a confusing mix of agony and arousal. She alternated moaning and whimpering until the whimpers became fewer and she was poised on the edge of orgasm once again. Her legs began to shake under the confusion of the ordeal, and her mind attempted to intervene, knowing that Xus would not allow her relief so easily. But it was no use. She longed for it. She would have begged for it were her power of speech not suspended by the gag.

When he withdrew his hand this time, her breath was heaving, and her hips were pressing into him as far as she could reach. She growled against the gag, long past the point of caring about her dignity.

He removed his hand, and she was filled with a white hot searing panic for a half second as he set his feet and raised the whip again. He brought it down very hard on the backs of her thighs, just under her ass. Nadia cried out in a pathetic howl into the ball of the gag, and a new set of tears began to fall down her face.

Xus paced slowly around to the front of her, his presence how a menacing shadow on the grey concrete.

"You have such lovely breasts, Nadia," he remarked, his voice strangle gentle. He cupped her left breast gently, and Nadia's heart pounded in apprehension. Her nipple found it's way between his thumb and forefinger and she felt the pressure begin. Slowly at first, but he did not stop squeezing. Soon, he was pinching her hard enough to hurt, and in a few seconds she was uselessly blubbering for mercy into the gag as she struggled with all her strength against the restraints to get away from his hand.

He released her for a moment and moved his hand to her other breast. She was shaking her head involuntarily and begging him not to do the same to her other nipple, but he just looked at her coldly as he repeated the same methodical, excruciating torture to her other breast.

By the time he finished with her right nipple, her mind had begun to retreat from reality. She could feel her body, but it didn't quite feel like her in the same way it normally did.

"I know what these need," he said in his disconcertingly gentle voice. He walked away to some cabinet a few yards away and left her to try and gather her wits for a moment.

The strange thing was, she was beginning to wonder if she actually liked this. The pain was horrible in its way, but it made her feel something she didn't expect and could not really explain. And that way her skin was humming with latent energy where the whip had lashed her was... exhilarating.

He returned with something she did not really want to see. Her eyes weren't working that well anyway. It was easier to let the world become a blur and let his abuse wash over her.

She felt his fingers brush over her pussy. She hadn't noticed until he drew attention to it, but she felt extremely wet, maybe wetter than she could ever remember being in her life.

"I think I might have found a true masochist," he remarked with some astonishment, "let's see how far you can go..."

He walked back around her and squeezed something shiny and metallic between his fingers. He brought his hand to her left nipple and released whatever it was onto her skin.

Pain overwhelmed her entire being, and before she could even begin to recover, he attached the same thing to her right nipple, sending a fresh shock through her as she bucked against the restraints and screamed helplessly into the gag.

She realized eventually when she recovered some of herself that they were metal alligator clamps attached together with a small silver chain. The searing initial pain had dulled into a throbbing numbness, accentuated by the tacit threat of pulling on the chain that now connected her nipples.

He was fiddling with something in her hair, more gently than she might have expected. She realized with some surprise that he was removing the gag. She moaned sensually at the freedom to close her mouth and move her jaw, not even considering that she could now speak again until he addressed her.

"You have done well, little Nadia," he said in his gentle voice. He was undoing her wrist restraints as he spoke.

Nadia felt a stupid, reflexive smile spread across her face at his praise. "Thank you, Lord," some autonomic part of her training almost compelled her to say, though her voice was barely audible.

His touch remained gentle, unclasping her ankle restraints one at a time. Nadia was in a state she did not recognize or understand, both distant from the world and herself, yet her senses were hyper aware of every movement and slight touch of his hands against her skin.

It was somewhat shocking, then, when he scooped her up in his arms in a clean, decisive movement and began to carry her somewhere. The sudden contact with so much of his skin was as overwhelming as it was comforting. She felt like a toy for all the trouble he had in picking her up and carrying her. His arms felt like warm, soft tree branches whisking her away to something else. What that was she didn't much care.

He set her down on something very soft and raised off the ground. Her skin rebelled against the cold, soft surface and she groaned for want of the warmth of his skin against hers. She felt it very soon, behind her this time. They must have been laying down. He was spooning her, pulling her body into his with a palm on her breastbone.

She moaned gratefully as his warmth returned. She moaned again when he lifted her leg into the air and slid his erect cock across her labia. The sudden sexual contact snapped something back into place inside her. She could not remember ever feeling so aroused in her entire life as she was in the moment Xus began to press his cock inside her pussy. She felt overwhelming need and release in the same moment. None of it made any sense, but it didn't matter. She was in heaven.

Whereas before, on the cross, his strength was terrifying, now she found it comforting. It was still there, pushing her where he wanted her to go, moving her how he wanted her to move, fucking her how he wanted her to be fucked, making her feel as helpless as she could ever remember feeling. But he was warm, and his touch was sensual, and his cock felt incredible inside her.

It wasn't like any sex she could remember having either. It felt very good, very warm, like a balm on her confused body. But before, it always felt like sex was a drive toward something. A pursuit that never quite ended, it just sort of stopped mattering after a while. This felt as if it just was. The closeness and warmth and safety were the end itself, and she felt a delightful rightness in her being as he fucked her.

When his orgasm began, she realized in a detached sort of way how distant she felt from her own body. She could hear him moaning and grunting. She could hear his skin slapping against hers. If she thought hard enough about it, she could feel these things too. But none of it felt exactly as if it were happening to her.

Until he pulled out and pulled away. It was as if the spell was broken, and she was herself again. A little dazed by the intensity. A little confused by the journey she had just taken. But herself.

"You have done a great service to your King, Nadia," Xus said from somewhere behind her. She could not tell if he was near or far, "I will see you soon enough."

It was both promise and threat.