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Tseng’s desk sat at the head of Turk HQ, exactly as he had left it, and yet not.
The nameplate was straight at the center where it should be, the blotter smudged with last night’s signatures, and his paper caddy full of those same signed papers, now folded into "Top Secret" envelopes. The clock blinked 12:00 AM, a casualty of last night’s routine server reset that also routinely knocked out the power in the Turk’s office next door. But his pens…
The silver Shinra 25th Anniversary cup normally held a mishmash of pens, pencils, and highlighters. Cheap ballpoints from inns and rest stops mingled seamlessly with convenience store felt-tips and 100 gil business gift stylographs. He would prefer a cluster of simple, matching pens, but any office shared with Reno was doomed to chaos and disorder no matter what anyone else wished. He had resigned himself to the mess, and had even grown fond of how the collection told a fragmented, non-linear history of the teams' exploits.
However, that day he arrived at his office to find those trinkets missing. In their place, a fresh bundle of bright red calligraphy pens.
His secret admirer had struck again.
It started several weeks before, when the first breadcrumb in this winding trail fell on the center of that very same desk. A bento box.
Not the cheap, stale kind in the employee commissary, but a fresh and lavish spread delivered hot from a five star izakaya down the street. It sat there, offering him sustenance at the low point of a long, trying day, and he was distressed to feel his mouth water at the sight.
He hadn’t ordered it, and no others had been left for his team. Just this one. No one had been in the office but him and Rude for at least two hours.
“Thank you, Rude. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.”
The bald bruiser gave him a look that would have been expressionless to most people, but which any ranking Turk would recognize as bewilderment.
“I didn’t order it, boss.”
Tseng blinked at him, thinking he must have missed someone darting in while he was concentrating on his work.
“Give my regards to Elena, then.”
The look persisted. Tseng’s brow lifted in alarm.
“Reno??”
“Some delivery boy came in with it. I thought you used an app,” Rude said, and then put on his glasses in an indication that the matter was unsettling him, and he’d rather not discuss it any further. Tseng quite agreed.
Only a few dozen operatives had clearance to access the 63rd Floor, and none of them had reason to be gifting Tseng a high-class dinner without being directed to.
It occurred to him that this might be a threat— look how good your security is, Mr. Top Secret Director —but at that exact moment a piercing alarm shook the office and doused him in red light.
The manhunt which had put him to the point of needing a bento box delivered to his desk got a new, hot lead, and within ten minutes he was piloting a chopper to Junon with the lacquer box balanced precariously on one leg, the stick of the chopper in one hand, and a pair of disposable chopsticks in the other.
They caught the suspect, tied up the loose ends, and he attributed the odd threat to that case, if only because it allowed him to sleep better that night. And he very much needed a good sleep before the Board of Directors meeting scheduled the next day.
It was a week or so later that the next gift arrived, and he hadn’t followed that lead to its conclusion either. It was a cushion for his desk chair, one of those small sloping ones that force the user to sit up straighter and put less strain on their neck.
He meant to ask about it, he really did, but the paperwork from the manhunt had all arrived after a two week delay of bureaucratic dysfunction and he had less than twelve hours to transform the chaos into a debrief worthy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He’d noted the extra support for about five minutes, and then became lost in the data. If he had stood a little straighter and moved with less stiffness in his joints the next day, then it went equally unnoticed beside the stress of presenting a complicated operation summary to a room of over one hundred VPs and military police seated in an auditorium with a spotlight glaring down on his head.
The third gift was nowhere near as ignorable, and in retrospect that might have been the point. He had gotten wrapped up with work for the better part of the month, and before he knew it he was coming up on the next without completing his mandatory firearms training hours.
It was a bad time to be delinquent, as every overburdened operative tended to come to the same realization at the same time. He expected to have to pull rank to get a lane, or perhaps to come back after hours, but when he arrived people were streaming out of the doors in disgruntled clusters.
“F1 clearance only?!” A public safety grunt complained as he passed, “What about the rest of us? I can’t take another lunch to train, I barely got approval for this one.”
“It wasn’t even on the schedule,” his partner agreed, with the commensurate angry hand gestures one would expect. “I bet the President’s brat just wants to play with his toys without the riff raff around.”
They shared a barking laugh. Tseng opted not to comment, although he couldn’t think of many better reasons for the range to close on short notice, and to such an exclusive clearance level. F1 officers were among the most elite in the organization. Admirals, Generals, Brigadier Generals, Heads of Department, Ranking Turks, and, yes, the President’s son were the only ones granted it.
Mildly curious of who he’d meet on the other side, Tseng drew his ID card from the retractable lanyard on his hip and let himself in. Their loss was his gain.
Inside was deserted, the familiar chrome and glass arena rendered new and strange by emptiness and silence. The click of his dress shoes was loud and resonant. He became strangely aware of himself, his skin prickling with the sensation of standing out, of being watched.
Pushing into the locker room, he saw no sign of Rufus—or anyone else. With quick efficiency, he hung his jacket in a random locker and rolled up his sleeves.
Typically he wore a double shoulder holster crafted of thick leather and cut to fit his frame, but this month’s practice test was for quick draw and unholstered aim, so he left his harness in the locker as well.
This would prove to be the last he saw of his humble standard issue rig, because when he returned to collect it after his session he found something quite… different in its place.
At first he thought it was a prank. It had to be. The leather was new and spotless, but not stiff. It had been worked and treated expertly, such that it laid just as close and comfortably around his torso as the old. However, rather than hanging simply around his shoulders with a cross at the back, this one went all the way around, hugging tight around his ribs and emphasizing the muscles of his chest.
The shoulder straps were a standard shape, but the back was made of an intricate crisscross weave of thin straps that felt oddly decorative for a piece of hard-wearing public safety gear. In recognition of practicality, the chest strap closed with a clip rather than a belt buckle, which was made of polished metal instead of plastic.
All together, when he inspected himself in the locker room mirror, he looked less like a real Turk and more like the strippers in the slums who impersonate them for tips. Heat rose on the back of his neck and a strange tightness gripped his core. His toes pressed hard into the soles of his shoes as he appraised his reflection, afraid of the feeling it was giving him, and yet completely arrested by the sight.
As if the back piece and the strap under his pecs wasn’t scandalous enough, there were two more thin lines which ended in doubled-over snaps, clearly intended to circle his belt and blend the harness into the rest of his uniform, with an additional ammunition pouch on one side. Dutifully, he did up the snaps and slid his twin pistols into the holsters under his arms. Popping open the pouch, he moved to store his extra clips and found an inscription embossed on the inside of the flap.
“Offense is the best defense. The second best is style.”
Tseng stared, dumbfounded. This wasn’t some odd new design from R&D, or the work of a deranged Quartermaster playing a prank.
It was a gift. His third in total. From what could only be—and he flushed just thinking it—a secret admirer . One with access to the 63rd Floor, an intimate knowledge of Tseng’s schedule and who was not, if Rude’s testimony was to be believed, one of his inner circle.
Steeling himself, he slid the clips into the pouch and studied his own bewildered face in the mirror. His shirt was a bit wrinkled under the tight harness, but it looked quite sharp once he gave it a stiff downward tug. It had no hardware to adjust the size, and yet it fit him perfectly.
In his head, over the days and weeks of this odd series of events, his training had compelled him to draft a criminal profile of his stalker.
The suspect must be an adult, he figured, for a youth would not think to ease the aches and pains of an aging body. They had to be a Shinra employee, with a clearance level high enough to access the 63rd Floor. They had disposable income and lots of it; enough to afford luxury goods and discrete delivery.
And, Tseng added with a fluttery, uneasy feeling in his stomach, an intimate knowledge of his physical measurements.
A thrum of uncharacteristic anxiety sent shivers down his arms and curled his fingers up into his palms. It seemed unfathomable, but he could only think of one person who matched that profile exactly.
Rufus’ dreary office in Junon was more palace than prison, but one with think the opposite if they heard Rufus describe it. It had tall, sweeping rafters, grand pillars with tapestries of the company logo, and a rounded back wall that looked out onto the turquoise sea. The barrel of the Sister Ray speared a line down the center, a line which continued inside, where a regal red carpet marked the long path from the door to the desk.
Tseng walked that carpet like a man on the warpath, fearful and furious in equal measure. In their long acquaintance, he had come to expect the unexpected from Rufus Shinra, but this was a new low even for him.
What if Tseng had followed protocol and reported the security breach two weeks ago? There had been an active manhunt, and plenty of reasons to panic at an uninvited guest entering the beating heart of Shinra’s Intelligence arm. There could have been arrests, show trials, a media frenzy.
A man who was already facing dire consequences could have been punished in excess of his actual crime. And for what? So a spoiled heir could garner even more of Tseng’s attention?
He already served as Rufus’ eyes and ears, as his bodyguard, chauffer, and confidante. He had even, at times, been cajoled into menial tasks like picking up his dry cleaning and polishing his shoes, simply because it would be more trouble than it was worth to say no. All in addition to his actual duties, which were significant.
Was this not enough for Rufus?
Hearing Tseng’s footsteps, Rufus swung around in his chair. He looked smug because he always looked smug, but under that, Tseng detected surprise.
“Tseng,” he said, the silent ‘What brings you here?’ expressed by the lifting of a blond brow.
“You know perfectly well why I’m here."
“Do I? I suppose you don’t need an appointment to admire me…” Rufus tried for nonchalance, even as his left hand whipped out a PHS and un-subtly checked his calendar.
“That's not funny," Tseng snapped.
Blue eyes slid back to Tseng, quietly concerned. He glared back, frustrated by the Boss playing dumb. Rufus sat up, his lips tipping downward at the corners. “And have I done something… wrong… by your reckoning?”
Tseng didn’t doubt the young master had done a great number of wrong things while his chaperone's back had been turned, but the genuine worry in his question took the wind out of Tseng’s sails.
They’d known each other a long time now, ever since President Shinra had tasked Tseng with guarding his young son during the war, and perhaps that’s why he hadn’t considered Rufus a serious option until the evidence demanded it. He had been a little shocked, because in his mind Rufus would always be that frustrating, mischievous fourteen-year-old who tried to sneak out of his parent’s penthouse in a B1-Alpha Black Ops chopper. As if every air traffic control tower in Midgar wouldn’t notice the rogue flight path.
But the person before him wasn’t a boy, not anymore, and after recent revelations, he felt compelled to take notice of him. His white suit and golden hair glowed orange in the Junon sunset, and gave him an otherworldly quality, like a lightning wisp or a seraphim. His blue eyes were much sharper than they used to be, wise beyond their years and brimming with schemes.
Tseng had never had much appreciation for his own sex, but he was man enough to admit that Rufus cut a fine figure with his neat, platinum hair and sumptuous suit. Were he a woman, Tseng might even be tempted by his advances.
To have orchestrated this month-long campaign of gifts and flirtation (and to do so without setting foot in Midgar for fear of breaking his exile) seemed like an awful lot of effort for empty sex. He must be hoping for something real, a true romance .
Clearing his throat and tugging nervously at his starched shirt cuffs, Tseng resolved to reject him kindly.
With a steadying breath, he stepped around the desk and knelt beside the chair so they were on a similar level. Rufus’ eyes widened.
“It’s not uncommon for people, men and women, to become attached to their subordinates,” Tseng began. “You spend a lot of time together. You weather… challenging circumstances, which can make one feel… particularly invested in the other’s well being. More than is proper, or professional.”
“Tseng, what are you—”
“And though I had not looked at you in that way, recent events have changed my perspective, and anyone with eyes can see that you are a very attractive man—”
An uncomfortable snort shot out of Rufus’s mouth, and his closed fist came up to cover his mouth, his eyes darting away.
“There’s someone waiting in the hall, isn’t there? Are we on that prank show where they hide the cameras?”
Tseng had carefully constructed this speech. He had rehearsed it in his head the entire flight to Junon. Anyone with eyes can see you are an attractive man, just not the kind of attractive that appeals to me. He had prepared various phrases for the different reactions Rufus could give. He had not prepared for this.
“I’m not—what do you mean?” Tseng said. Rufus leaned sideways in his chair to peer at the large steel door. No camera crew appeared, of course.
“Well, someone’s put you up to it.” The VP’s gaze flicked back onto Tseng, studying his face with a perplexed amusement that crumbled in the face of Tseng’s sincerity.
“You put me up to it,” Tseng sputtered. “With your gifts.”
“My… gifts?”
Tseng’s stomach dropped through the floor, and he stumbled to his feet in a blur. Rufus would never let him live this down.
“Please excuse me,” he choked out in a rush. With the most haphazard bow he’d ever given, he all-but ran down the long, carpeted runway to the door.
“What gifts?” Rufus called after him, amusement audible in his voice. “Is someone wooing you, Director?!”
“We will not speak of this,” Tseng tried to say in a stern voice, but it came out pitchy and strained. He couldn't shake the feeling that somewhere, just out of sight, his admirer was having a laugh at his expense.
Shame curtailed any desire to reexamine the clues.
Every time he thought about his blunder, it became a bigger, tighter tangle in his chest, and he committed himself even more steadfastly to ignoring the unknown admirer who continued to influence his days with tiny, leading gestures.
Food appeared when he’d neglected to eat. Minor meetings disappeared from his calendar when he was weary. Once, after a particularly rough-and-tumble pursuit through a machine shop left a deep, ugly gash across the toe of his shoe, he’d even received a pair of very expensive replacements in the post the next day.
All of these he accepted with the bland stoicism of a seasoned Turk, all the while wondering if Rufus might have been right. Perhaps this was some kind of highly involved prank, or a debt that his benefactor might later come and demand compensation for? The idea that these might later be construed as bribes in some scandal aiming to get him removed from his post chilled him, and he wound up shoving the shoebox into the back of his closet, unworn.
This seemed to spurn his admirer, because after that, their gestures became more noticeable. Gossip sprung up in the office, and the junior agents often had to smother whispered conversations when he turned a corner. He met it all with a steady gaze and a sigh.
It wasn’t until two months after the first gift that it all started to come unwound. Tense from the constant scrutiny, he lost his temper at a Board of Directors meeting, at Scarlet of all people.
They often had to authorize forms with their signatures, and it had long been a point of irritation for him that Scarlet insisted on signing in red ink. It did not really matter in the grand scheme of things, but Tseng was a fastidious rule follower, and it had always irritated him. The way she flaunted simple norms just for the attention, how she seemed to think she was above everything.
Her signature was just the same, large and looping, standing out in garish crimson amongst the dull blue and black scribbles of the others. It wasn’t fair how she just kept getting away with it, and on one particularly hot day in the height of summer, he said so.
The other directors had jumped to her defense, and nothing came of it. At least, that’s what Tseng thought until he came into the office the next morning, and found his usual cup of mismatched pens gone. Gone and replaced by a bundle of garish, bright red pens with glossy plastic caps that shined under the fluorescent lights like icicles.
Red, red, every one of them red.
Tseng rode the lift down to Research and Development on numb, tingling legs. The harness squeezed his chest with every bump, like a cruel joke. He had grown comfortable with the sensation over the past weeks, the weight and pressure of it under his jacket reassuring, like a hug from his invisible benefactor.
It was beneath a man of his station to need such reassurance, and yet he’d come to rely on it. Most touches in his life lead to chaos, pain, and death. He had no friends, no family, and his crew were not bold enough to reach out to him like they did each other.
The gentle, steady constriction of the strap was as close as he’d come in years to a loving embrace. It promised him, however quietly and indirectly, that someone out there cared for him. If he were to be injured or killed, at least one person would mourn.
To think that he’d been given these secret, indirect hugs by Scarlet, of all people… it was difficult to wrap his mind around.
Everyone knew about Scarlet’s perversions. She made no effort to hide it. As such, most employees considered her a bit foul and repugnant, and her pathetic, salivating playthings as even lesser. Tseng had assumed from her crass and unapologetic manner that her methods of seducing those men must also be brazen.
She couldn’t be his admirer. He or she was everything Scarlet was not; patient, subtle, supportive, generous. But she matched the profile. She had F1 clearance, access to the building’s CCTV, and a corps of underlings to deliver her gifts while dressed in the appropriate uniforms. She had the funds from her generous compensation package to buy all the finery her heart desired, and the free time in her schedule to do so. The only question was why. Why Tseng?
He sincerely hoped it wasn’t entrapment, or worse, blackmail. Scarlet knew Tseng had Rufus’ ear. That must be it.
The elevator stopped in the lower basement of the weapons division, and he went through the usual circus of scanning his ID on six different security doors. When he strolled through the auto door of the R&D Director’s office, Scarlet was seated at her desk, her eyes already trained on the entrance, waiting.
“You—” he stalked forward, still breathing hard from the shock.
“Took you long enough,” Scarlet sniffed.
“You witch, she-devil, what kind of game are you playing?” He was livid. He’d never been so out of sorts. It wasn’t like him to lose control, not at all, but it felt good in the moment. It felt justified. “If you’re hoping to turn me against Rufus, then you’re in for a surprise.”
“Rufus?” Scarlet tipped her head, her clever eyes grinning with superiority and intrigue. Blue eyes, he noticed, not that it was relevant to anything. “Rufus Shinra? My, aren’t you precocious, currying favor with the successor already. The brat’s barely old enough to drink, I couldn’t care less what petty chores he inflicts on you.”
Tseng’s jaw tensed at the admission, and a part of him regretted coming down. “So then, it’s entrapment.”
“Entrapment,” Scarlet echoed, savoring the syllables. “Not how I would describe it, but what wonderful, naughty word. And it sounds positively delicious in that smooth voice of yours.”
“I’ve no desire to be one of your toys,” he said, shuddering at the thought. Bending, grovelling, crawling around like a beast while others looked on with disgust. Some people would do anything for a promotion.
“Truly?” The lady set her elbows on her shapely thighs and leaned forward, her smile turning wry and knowing. “But you accepted all of my favors. Some of them even seemed to bring a smile to that glum face.”
“And I feared there would be a price. If I could, I would undo every bit.”
“Because you’re so honorable.”
“I have my pride, yes.”
“Hmm… and is that perhaps why a young, healthy, handsome, successful man like yourself, despite every appearance of loneliness, chooses to spend all of his time alone?”
A lump formed in this throat when he tried to answer, and he couldn’t seem to keep his eyes on her. They wandered up the textured metal surface of the basement wall, over a triptych of tastefully suggestive paintings of women’s legs, and onto a vast fish tank that filled most of the back wall, in lieu of the windows that an office higher up might have.
It bathed the room in an unsettling, wavering light that tinted her hair and skin blue like frost magic. That tension he’d felt at the firing range crept up the backs of his legs and made his whole body feel electrified.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Don’t play dumb, pet. It doesn’t suit you.”
His throat felt dry all of the sudden. “I’m not.”
“Come here,” she ordered.
“Uh…”
Her voice took on an edge that made his stomach flutter. “Now.”
He couldn’t say why he obeyed. Force of habit, maybe. He’d spent the better part of a decade doing what he was told as a Turk, and a four-year tour in the Infantry before that. A buzzing, nervous energy filled his head and made it difficult to think.
Once he stood behind the desk, close enough to hear the motor of the fish tank humming, his heart was hammering double speed beneath his shirt. He stood in the same spot with Rufus last week, but it hadn’t felt like that. He’d been calm, measured. She placed her open palm against his stomach, light, barely touching, and it sent a rippling, scorching wave right through him. His breath hitched.
“W-why me?” He hadn’t chosen to say it. Truly, he hadn’t. The words just spilled out like a cracked egg.
Her fingers pressed upward, and wrapped tight around the chest strap of his holster. She pulled. Crisscross straps wrapped tight across his back. His breath caught again.
“You like this one,” she said. “I saw the way you gaped in that mirror. The way you preened and squirmed and flushed up to your ears. You wanted it so badly.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Exactly,” Scarlet sighed, her eyes burning. “That’s exactly what’s so irresistible. You’re so eager to have someone take you in their hand, but you don’t even realize that you need it.” She pulled, suddenly, strongly, and Tseng’s knees fell right out from under him.
A surge of… of something rolled through his body and heat pooled heavily between his legs. He was mortified, and yet the shame only seemed to encourage the arousal, which intensified the shame, which intensified the arousal, on and on in a fiendish loop.
“And you’re doing so much better under my watch,” she said.
Another sharp tug pulled the harness tight around him, and he found he could not deny it. He was doing better. Tseng didn’t crash and burn with the same drama as other people, but he was still human. He had needs, fears, moments of weakness. He just fell apart in ways the people tended not to notice, except for Scarlet, apparently. He had neglected himself for so long that he couldn't even say for sure when he'd become utterly miserable. He hadn't noticed it himself until her invisible hand guided him gently towards health and contentment.
“You… intended this for me,” he said, chewing through the realization even as he gave voice to it. “You gave me those things to shape my behavior.”
It should be mortifying, professionally ruinous. He is an acting director, an agent of the Vice President. For him to be so compromised by another Director within the company is beyond the pale. And yet, she had never shown any interest in his job. In fact, she had been caught off guard by his accusation.
“For your own good, yes."
"But... why?"
"Incompetence irritates me. You are a valuable asset, well worth whatever... maintenance you require. I kept waiting for that self-righteous child to realize the extent of your neglect, but the fool never did. Would you watch a flower wilt, Director, if you knew that all it needed was a little water, sunlight, and care? If you could save it with little effort, and receive great rewards in return?”
She tugged again at the leather holster, and his body folded forward with a sudden, soul-deep exhaustion. Long nails plowed through his hair and cradled his jaw into the dip between her thighs and it felt so right, so safe, that it drew a glaze of tears to his eyes. He blinked hard and fast, and hid his face in her skirt like a child. Tingles coursed down his back as her fingers played along his scalp, eventually growing impatient with the hair tie and yanking it gently out.
“That’s it, pet. I’ll make the decisions here, you don’t have to do anything. Just be.”
Shame and relief warred inside him, suspending him in indecision, but there was something very liberating about the stasis. As long as he said neither “no” nor “yes,” he didn’t have to claim responsibility whatever they were doing. He was her victim, hunted, baited, and trapped. He couldn’t be held accountable, as long as he kept quiet and let it happen this would all be her doing. It was easier to accept, went he framed in like that.
Her painted nails carded through his hair, down the slope of his skull and then all the way down his neck. When they reached his collar they turned back, and this time their touch was not gentle. They left hot, pulsing lines of raised skin in their wake, and drowsy, dull pain prickled his skin.
Instinct arched his back and pulled his shoulders up towards his ears, but his skin wasn’t the only thing that swelled. Between his tense, shuddering thighs, his cock started to thicken as well. She seemed to know, even though his shame was hidden from her view. Her voice rang out, firm and victorious.
“Oh yes, you’ll train up nicely. Very, very nicely,” she hummed. It was only then that he noticed that she was aroused too. Her body grew warm beneath him, and her voice had taken on a low, husky quality that did funny things to his stomach and made goosebumps rise on his arms.
Threading her fingers into his now-loose hair, she held him tight and pressed up with her hips, rubbing herself through her skirt. Tseng flushed at her lewdness, and shuddered once again at the soft sound of her moan.
“You’ll let me teach you, won’t you, pet? I’ll take that tension away and make you hurt so, so good for me.” Tseng watched with wide, hazy eyes as she slid a hand under the high slit of her dress and started to pleasure herself right there in front of him.
Deliriously, he realized he wanted to do that with his mouth. He wanted her to claw his neck and grip his hair and hold him right where she wanted him. His hand shook as he unclasped his belt and ripped the zipper down.
“Yes,” he said, quiet and desperate like a sob. He had to close his eyes to do it, but he managed.
His face burned with emotion, with the image of Scarlet standing over him, of her taunting him, slapping him, leading him around by a leash of his own hair—of her treating him, in actual fact, exactly like all the men he’d looked down on for years—and him liking it , craving it as badly as he craved his coming orgasm just then.
“Oh, good boy—“ she said, gripping his chin tight between her fingers and taking his mouth in a forceful, claiming kiss. His own heart shocked him with the ferocity of its beating, with how his whole heart seemed to open up and beg for her to say it again.
He’d had to wear a turtleneck under his uniform for two weeks. The scratches pulsed hotly underneath, distracting him at the worst times and making him unbearably moody until they healed.
Reno still teased him about long after everyone else had forgotten.
That first year taught Tseng a lot about himself.
That he enjoyed pain. That he craved orders and domination and a touch that was both gentle and cruel. Many men and women and those in-between share these same predilections, and most of them enjoy normal, productive lives. These facts he had accepted without much hardship. Others were more difficult, such as…
“Hurry up, boy. You know I hate waiting.”
Tseng leaned against the bathroom door, eyes shut tight and his breaths coming up ragged. Even after all the work they’d done to build up trust and bring his barriers down, this new game of Scarlet’s was simply too much. He couldn’t possibly walk out like this. He could barely even stand on legs that quivered like quicksand.
Worst of all, he was aroused. Not just by his nakedness or his anticipation of what Scarlet had in store, but by the situation itself. By the knowledge that he was about to humiliate himself beyond any level he had yet done, and he would do it not for Scarlet’s pleasure, but for his own .
He had realized, gradually over time, that he and Scarlet were very compatible, but they were not entirely the same. She got off on cruelty. It didn’t matter the method. Whips, words, imagined situations, or torturous, drawn-out pleasure; so long as Tseng was tormented in some way, they all pleased her equally.
But as for Tseng himself, well, he had one particular button that drove him wild like nothing else, and once Scarlet found it, she took endless joy in pounding that button repeatedly with her fist, every chance she got. And the button was…
Scarlet pounded on the door with her fist, hard enough that it shook Tseng on the other side. The little brass bell on his cock rang a humiliating trill. Shame flushed his face all the way down to his nipples, which were also adorned with little, tinkling bells held on by a pair of truly sadistic clips.
“What’s the matter, pet? Do you not like my special gift?” Scarlet taunted, knowing full well what she was doing. The now familiar push-pull of shame and arousal stole his breath for a delirious second, and the whole room wobbled and blurred. He might be harder than he’d ever been in his life, and he absolutely resented Scarlet for it.
“N-no, mistress,” he whimpered, a sound he’d had to get used to. Scarlet never failed to coax it out of him, one way or another.
“Then you like it too much, hmmm? Too busy admiring yourself to come out here and do your job.”
Eyelids still pressed tight to his cheeks, Tseng couldn’t help but laugh. She was overestimating his abilities by a mile. He couldn’t even bear to look at himself in the mirror, let alone appraise what he saw.
The ache in his cock was agonizing, but if he touched himself the bell would ring, and Scarlet would know, and he’d be mortified and delighted and in all likelihood he’d end up coming before she even got to lay eyes on him.
He could see their night so clearly. How he’d kneel in the pool of his spend, breathless from release and terrified of Scarlet’s wrath. How she’d creak the door open behind him and pretend to be outraged, when in reality she was thrilled to have an excuse to give his ass a thrashing. They’d both pretend the punishment was terrible, although they’d both enjoy it in their own macabre way, and then Scarlet would make a big show of 'soothing' his pain with her body.
They’d gone through that progression many times, and usually it would be a fine way to kill a Saturday. But that wasn’t what Scarlet planned for him, and he didn’t want to force her down that road. He wanted to let her lead, unconstrained by the obligation to punish misbehavior.
Gulping audibly, he pressed the tips of his fingers into the wood grain of the door and stood up. He did not meet his own eyes in the mirror, nor hers when he swung the door open with a bit too much force.
The sound of the bells already mortified him when he put them on, but it was orders of magnitude more embarrassing with her eyes upon him. She said something with a glimmer of mischief in her eyes, but he didn’t hear it over the roar of his own pulse. He saw her gesture, the slow crook of her finger that she always used to beckon him closer.
His body tingled from her attention, the sensation of her eyes trailing over him filled him with the courage he had lacked moments ago. One foot forward, and then the other. His cheeks burned at the jangling, rhythmic ring. Precum beaded at his tip. Scarlet flicked his length with her finger and cackled. Tseng would do any number of humiliating things if she’d just stroke it once. Anything to give him relief. He was so tense.
Instead, she turned her finger in a circle and leaned against the door jamb to watch. Fists clenched at his sides, he spun around in a circle and cringed at the noise.
“So pretty, baby,” Scarlet cooed, running her hands over his belly and up his arms, so close to his clamped, aching nipples that it stole his breath and made him whine. Another sound that used to mortify him, but that had become a daily fixture of their play. “Do you like dressing up for me, hmm? You like prancing around like a slut?”
He cringed, knowing the correct—and truthful—answer. “Y-yes, mistress.”
“Which one do you like more?”
“Please, please touch me. I need it so—” Scarlet flicked the bell on his left nipple. Tseng feared he might come. He didn’t, he wasn’t all that close, but the thrill and the rush of a sudden hit had pushed him there unexpectedly in the past.
His muscles clenched, his heart rate surged, and in the rush he felt momentarily weightless. His throat closed around the words he meant to speak, and they came out as an indecipherable, wanton moan. Sly fingers flicked the other bell, and then the first, back and forth, until it took every bit of his concentration just to stay standing and breathe.
“I said, which one?”
Tseng knew from her tone that she was pleased, even if her face remained stern. Her nails grazed down his quivering stomach and left tingling sparks behind. She came closer and closer to where he desperately wanted her only to swerve at the last second and scratch his thigh. His body writhed and whined without his permission, his hips angling towards her in a silent plea, and she laughed her cruel, beautiful laugh.
“Not until you say it, darling. Go on.”
“I—” his voice broke. His face burned with shame. “I like p-prancing…like, like a…” He couldn’t look at her, not with his cock dripping more filth onto the floor with every syllable. He tried to say that last, most forbidden word, but he couldn’t do it. He could only mouth it soundlessly.
“Louder,” she said sharply, and it was the breathless hunger in it that broke him. She'd be wet under her skirt by now, would be happily humping his face and carving love-marks into his neck if not for his pride. Damn it, damn it all, damn his fearful, timid heart. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt a fresh wave of shame at the way his lip quivered around the words.
“I love debasing myself for you, Mistress. I love being your dirty little secret. I’ll do whatever depraved things you want, just please, please, touch me, please …”
Scarlet hissed a quiet curse, and he heard the heavy material of her dress flutter and flap. Wet, slurping noises sent a tremble up his back. She leaned close, her breasts soft and warm against his chest and her signature perfume graced his nose. Goosebumps rose in his neck when she whispered into his ear.
“Ring that bell, slut. Show me where you want it.”
His body answered for him, its need too powerful to be denied. The bell jangled as he wiggled his hips and bounced his cock for her amusement. She flicked it once with her finger, just to see it flop and flail.
“Hmmm, such a naughty, needy boy. Look how wet you are just from standing in my presence.” Scarlet laughed again, and then a tight, slick grip circled his length. His eyes shot open, and he saw no bottle or jar in her hand. She stroked him fast, only to stop moments later. “Oh, all that stroking is such a bore. Fuck my fist, slut, why should I do all the work?"
Pleasure consumed him as his body lurched into motion, such a relief after an hour of build-up. She egged him on with sweet mockery, and he quickly lost all sense of control. Even if it was his back that arched, his hips that pistoned, his skin that smacked wetly against her palm, it was Scarlet’s will that drove him, and her voice that pulled his strings. His balance became unsteady, and so she moved behind and wrapped her arms around his waist. Things turned languid and lingering, all of the sudden.
“Slower, harder,” she growled into his back, her free hand fondling his abs and flicking meanly at his clamped nipples when he started to quiver and beg for release.
“You want to fuck me,” she said after an interminable cycle of edging, neither question nor request. It was a statement of fact, a desire she was depositing directly into his brain. He did want to, with every fiber of his being, but he wasn't always granted the privilege. His hand reached blindly behind him and found the loose fabric of her skirt. He was beyond words, but he tugged at the fabric, and she bit him sharply at the nape of his neck.
“Earn it first, pet. Hands and knees. Show Mistress every little bit of you.”
It never stopped surprising him, how easily his knees gave way. He lost track of time watching her heels walk in circles. Taunting him, fondling him, admiring his naked body. It was a lovely haze, until the first smack of the flogger jolted him back into full awareness.
“Don’t make any noise, pet. I want to hear those pretty bells jingle.”
The first hit gave way to a second, and then a third, and then a steady, mesmerizing chorus of ringing. Mistress always had the best ideas.