TRIGGER WARNING

Contains description of intense needle, scalpel, and knife play (see section 7 for the more detailed warning)

After what feels like an eternity of lines being engraved into me, none of which bleed, and most of which put me just this side of another orgasm, for all that they hurt, he puts the scalpel down at last. "If I use this much longer, I'll make it dull, and that won't do," he says. "Not for this." And then he pulls another blade off the tray and shows it to me. This one is not disposable. It looks like it has a sharper edge, too. "This is a Liston knife. In medicine, it's usually used for sawing through bone. I don't use it for that. I use it for bloodletting. I find it a little more sensitive and precise than my fleam, although it's not appropriate for finer work, such as cutting sigils, brands, and designs into flesh. That requires a very sharp surgical scalpel." He puts it against the left side of my neck, directly on the pulsing vein. Or is that my carotid artery?

I draw in my breath sharply.

"This would be a remarkably inappropriate place to cut. Which is why I won't cut you here." The blade slides down, slowly and gently, to the center of my chest, just between my breasts.

And he presses down, parting my skin as he cuts. A sudden pain burns coldly where he has slashed my chest.

"There. That's what I was looking for," he murmurs; then he lays down the blade, puts his mouth to the surface wound he made over my heart, and drinks me in.

As he drinks, my chest grows cold, in contrast to the soft warmth of his mouth and tongue. Then the rest of me grows cold. The room spins around me. It feels almost pleasant. Don't faint. Don't faint. If you faint, you might slip, and then you'll tear yourself off the chair. Don't faint...

My outer labia are on fire. I wish the sensation would stop.

He has set aside the scalpels and knife and gone back to the needles.

"Ordinarily I'd insert many more needles into the safer areas to target, but for your sake, I'm keeping my needlework to a minimum. One can confront phobias without going overboard. I think next, I'll target the side of your nose, the corner of one of your armpits, and the cartilage of one of your ears. That last one will be extremely unpleasant. Ear cartilage is considerably harder to pierce than a flap of skin. It's one of the more common areas to pierce, but it presents certain problems, especially if the person being pierced is going to be wearing permanent jewelry there. Earrings in that area pose something of an infection risk."

I blink. "My armpit?"

He pinches a flap of skin between his fingers. "You have very loose skin there."

"Oh."

"But with an abundance of nerve endings, and in an awkward and frequently stretched location, which is why this is seldom done except as a temporary piercing, with a subject who can reasonably be expected to not move out of a restrained or held position, and who for whatever reason does not mind getting hurt. Just so you know, it's also quite common to pierce lips and tongues and navels for reasons of adornment as well as for play piercings, not just in the BDSM scene but also in the vanilla mainstream, especially among members of certain fashion and music subcultures, but I'll avoid doing that to you. Hmm." He brushes the top of my inflamed, cut chest with a tentative finger. I wince. "The chest is a fairly common site, for temporary piercings anyway, as is the back, but you don't have much skin there. Or much of anything else, other than bone." He reaches to the side for another alcohol pad. "We need to fatten you up some more, eromene."

He puts the spoon back between my teeth.

I start crying again when he resumes his work. If it wasn't for his arm around me, and the warmth of him at my back, I don't think I could bear it. I'm not sure I can bear it now, but I bite down on the spoon harder and keep telling myself that this can't go on for too much longer. Surely.

When the needle selected for my armpit goes through, I scream into the spoon. Agony remains after Magister is done pushing and I am done screaming.

Blood trickles down my side.

Magister kneels down and licks it from my skin.

When he's done, he releases me and tilts my chin so that I am looking him in the eye. He is at once grim and distant.

We stare at each other wordlessly for a long moment. He doesn't blink; nor do I. We hold each other's eyes without speaking, even as he moves a hand toward the tray of needles and blades. A part of me is astonished that he can reach for things like alcohol pads and sharps without even looking at them, and not get cut or stabbed in the process. The other part of me is noticing that he is using his other hand to tease one of my nipples. Around and around, then gently back and forth. I shudder and keen with pleasure. Then it dawns on me what he's doing.

I let out a strangled scream as I push my feet against the floor with all my might, as if I could fly if only I pushed hard enough. My back arches in an attempt to get me away. Anywhere away, so long as it's away.

He picks up the spoon I just spat out off the floor and places it in my mouth again. The cold evaporation stiffens me more, whether I am ready for it or not; of course, I am not. His hands are busy. My body is shaking in quiet convulsions. I have become a sine wave.

When the needle enters me, it is agony. I scream again. The spoon drops to the floor, clattering.

He stops and looks at me speculatively. "You do have a safeword, you know," he says.

I can't stop sobbing and shaking.

"Have you - have you forgotten it?"

I think I nod. I'm not sure. I've finally gone over the edge.

"I'll assume that's a yes. I'm stopping now. I was beginning to wonder what would make you safeword. Or try to, anyway."

"Stop, please," I hear myself croaking. "Please make it stop..."

He stops.

After he gets all the needles out of me - which is a whole new exercise in misery - he holds me close until my sobs subside.

"Oh, eromene. You do know that safewords aren't a form of 'giving in,' right? You need to feel secure about it being acceptable to say no to something, even when you're in the middle of it, or to ask for a break. Even I might need a break, although admittedly, almost nothing we have done together has been too intense for me, which I'm not sure I should find worrisome or not. You haven't been enduring things you didn't like all for the sake of avoiding using your safeword, have you?"

"No."

"Do you remember what it is now?"

"Mate."

"Good. Wait. You've never even simply said 'no' in the heat of passion to anything I've done to you, have you? You've never said 'no,' you've never asked me to stop, no matter how intense things got between us; you certainly don't seem to be one of those people who needs to go through the motions of resistance or denial to find release, and thus needs to use a safeword to stop play rather than use literal words like 'no' and 'stop' - which is just as well, because I prefer to not tap into that, consensual nonconsent makes me nervous. For that matter, the closest you've come to so much as asking me to pause has been when you touched or squeezed my hand to ask me if you could scream into my mouth when your climax was near. I think we should avoid playing chicken like this again, in the future; the result would be traumatic."

I nod and collapse against him, smearing him with my blood and sweat and tears.