Zzzz.

(There is a very tired gothy boy conked out leaning against a pillar in front of the public library, with his phone almost falling out of his hand.)

Oooooh he's cute. Lookit him. And he looks like the sort of person who might say yes to a Magical Quest.

Kasha calls his girlfriend.

"It's ten-thirty," she observes when she picks up.

"I know, I'm sorry, I love you. I found a cute boy and I wanna do the thing. The—that crazy idea you had—the magical quest thing."

"Do you want to do the thing now or can it wait until morning?"

"He's really cute."

There is a long inhale followed by a very audible sigh.

"Fiiiine. Has he seen you, where even are you—?"

"I found him sleeping on the front steps of a library, it's adorable."

"Okay. In that case, pick a nice secluded spot nearby to start setting up, make sure he doesn't wake up or get mugged or anything, I will be there in—an amount of time that depends on which library you meant—you've got location sharing turned on, right—yes you do, okay, fifteen minutes. And I love you too."

He makes kissy noises into the phone, hangs up, and starts circling the vicinity of the library looking for a convenient alley.

Time passes.

When the cute boy wakes up, he will find himself in an unfamiliar location, being smiled at by a slightly nervous-looking girl.

He blinks groggily awake about an hour later.

–oh, shit, his train–

He looks around.

"Whhhhhat."

Is this...a kidnapping? A prank? Some kind of new, exciting dissociative shit?

It's sort of dim and foggy - hard to tell where he is exactly. He's still sitting up and leaning back against something, but the surface underneath him is asphalt, and the stone at his back is lumpier than the smooth pillar in front of the library.

"Hi!" says the girl. She looks... not like she practiced this in a mirror, but maybe like she probably should have.

"I promise if you'd rather just leave then you can leave. But I don't think you're going to want to leave."

A light flares behind her, and then a parade of tall white candles comes floating out from behind her back, arcing around until they form a perfect circle around the girl, the boy, and the lumpy rock he's sitting against. The mist still obscures everything beyond this little circle of light.

"The first dangerous secret about magic," says the girl, "is that it exists. Would you like to hear the second?"

"–uh, yes?"

"Oh, good, I was hoping you'd say that."

The candles spin gently in their circle.

"The second dangerous secret about magic is that some people can learn it, and you're one of them. Well, 'learn' isn't quite the right word—you have potential, and if you want to unlock that potential, you need to go on a Dangerous Quest." She somehow manages to make the capital letters audible. "People hardly ever die on Dangerous Quests, but they come out traumatized pretty often. As long as you start it and don't quit in the middle, though, you'll come out the other side with your magic potential unlocked and then you can start learning how to use it."

"Do I need a sword?"

He scrambles up onto his knees.

"I can totally find a sword. I don't know where the fuck you get those but the internet is just full of weird shit you can buy – you probably don't need a sword. Or you'll give me a sword. I have magic potential?"

—she giggles.

"You do have magic potential. You don't need a sword. All you have to do is accept the quest. It might take a few days, or longer if you're unlucky. If you can't spare the time you can turn me down for now and come back later, but I wouldn't wait too long if I were you. There's a reason I called them dangerous secrets."

"Well–I accept the quest, then. Bring on the dangerous shit."

If he gets fired for missing work, he's pretty sure he can deal with it, on account of all the MAGIC.

"–wait, what's the magic like? Like, I'm gonna do it either way, but..."

"Oh, there's no telling what you're going to get until you get it. It's usually pretty neat, though. Good luck!"

And the line of candles unwinds from its circle and stretches out into a long trail. Mist pulls back from the trail just far enough to let him see his footing, and the way the asphalt transitions into rough grey stone.

This is really fucking weird.

There is a possibility somebody just drugged him and he’s gonna wake up in a basement somewhere.

...he might as well go on the magical quest in the meantime, though, right?

He gets to his feet.

“Is this just, like...your job? To go around telling people they’re magic?”

"Something like that," she says mysteriously, and then she steps back into the mist and disappears.

Aww. He was gonna say thanks.

He looks out onto the misty pathway, takes a deep breath, and starts walking.

As he walks, the candles behind him wink out, leaving only the ones ahead to light his way. It's atmospheric as heck.

Before he's gone much farther, the candles have spread out far enough that from each one he can only see the next, and maybe if he's lucky the one after it.

...okay. That's easy enough.

He follows the candles, trying to be aware of his surroundings, looking where he steps as best he can in the dim light through the mist.

About ten candles later, the path ends in a tall gate, lacy wrought iron set in a wall of heavy stone. There are torches burning in sconces to either side of the gate, and where the two iron doors meet, they come together to form a circular stylized labyrinth the size of a large pizza. The doors don't look possible to open, with that intricate arrangement where a latch should be—

—but then the labyrinth spins, clockwise-counterclockwise-clockwise again like a giant combination lock, and different pieces of it seem to be moving at different rates, and when it rattles to a stop the shape of the path spells out the phrase FIND THE CENTRE and the gate, now unlocked, swings slightly ajar.

Okay. Whatever weird shit's in here, he can deal with it.

He cracks his knuckles, pulls the gate open and steps inside.

There's a rumble from behind him, somewhat more emphatic than the grating-metal sound of the gate's elaborate lock, and then the mist ahead finally clears.

He's standing just inside the gate of a labyrinth, with the same twelve-foot walls of rough stone blocks that stood on either side of the gate. Ahead, a straight corridor continues for about twenty feet before splitting into a T-junction. So far, so straightforward—but beyond that, if he looks above the walls...

This labyrinth seems to be constructed on the inside of a sphere. It's a very big sphere, but definitely not planet-sized or anything. Maybe golf-course scale, approximately?

Hard to tell from here if gravity wraps with the floor. If it doesn't, exploring the maze is going to get interesting. And either way, he's going to have a hell of a time finding the centre of this place.

Also, the gate behind him has been replaced with a section of wall identical to the other surrounding walls.

...well, shit.

He hopes he's good at mazes. Or that there's food in here.

(What the fuck, physics. You stay the same for 24 years and then you just flake the fuck out on him? Rude.)

He walks forward to the junction and peers down both paths.

To the left: a shortish corridor and then a leftward turn.

To the right: a long corridor, long enough that he can see the floor curving upward.

Behind him from around that leftward corner: the sound of something big and complicated and metallic rattling along at speed, coming closer by the second.

That sounds like his cue to start booking it to the right.

Doesn't it just!

The noise pursues him. Up to him whether he wants to spare the time to look back.

He tries to glance back over his shoulder without slowing down.

It's got four legs and a lot of teeth and is almost five feet tall at the shoulder and made of wrought iron bars like the ones from the gate, bent and welded together into what would be an actually very pretty sculpture of a stylized wolf if he'd met it under other circumstances.

It's also gaining on him.

Shiiiiiiit.

He would think about how it would really suck to die before he even turns two corners in the bullshit magic maze, but he is doing less thinking and more running faster than he ever has in his life.

His current path splits in a Y-junction up ahead. Quick: right or left?

Might as well go left!

One of the large square paving-stones goes click underfoot, but he's bolting past so quickly that he manages to clear the edge of the spiked pit before it properly begins to open. The iron wolf is not so lucky.

Nothing is chasing him anymore, isn't that nice?

...yep. Not being chased is pretty good.

He did just almost get impaled on spikes, though.

He picks his way down the hall a little more cautiously, now.

Then he will safely avoid a couple more suspiciously raised paving stones, and probably also steer clear of the distant heavy clanking echoing down that cross corridor, and after a few more turns he will come to a T-junction where the left path leads to more stone walls and the right path leads into a wide open field of grass. Might offer him a good view of the rest of the sphere, if that's something he's interested in.

...yeah, he might as well take a look. And maybe take some pictures. It might help.

He walks out into the field.

It is lovely and peaceful. Although this grass has seen better days.

He can indeed get a much better view of the sphere from here. That there sure is a big round maze.

Was he looking for food earlier? There's a picnic blanket over there, and a plate of scones sitting in the middle, artistically arranged around a cute little jar of strawberry jam.

He snaps a few photos of the sphere, just in case it helps later.

Then he looks over to the blanket.

...are these scones traps?

They seem like they might be trap scones.

He approaches the blanket warily.

They look so innocent, sitting there on their plate with their jam jar. Nothing jumps out at him or makes menacing noises as he examines them.

He sits down on the blanket and takes an experimental nibble of a scone corner.

It's a reasonably tasty scone. Nothing to write home about.

He remains uninterrupted by hazards.

...okay, then he'll open this adorable jar of jam and eat all the scones oops.

"Thank you!"

It's such an adorable jar! So little and round!

He is now full of tasty scones, and nothing at all terrible has happened as a result!

Okay. Somebody's definitely looking out for him. That's nice to know.

He gets himself up and walks back into the maze. This time he takes the other path.

If he takes care to avoid ominous clanking, he'll be walking for a while longer before the next time something unusual happens:

He turns a corner and finds himself looking into a broad square, three corridor-widths on a side, with a pedestal in the middle on which rests what appears to be an intimidatingly large diamond. Like, 'would have to use both hands to pick it up' big. Not quite as big as his head but plausibly wider than his doubled fists. It scintillates at him.

...okay, the scones weren't a trap, but this is definitely a trap. He's seen movies.

He's gonna walk around this room and inspect it before he gets anywhere near that pedestal.

The trap, whatever it is, is not obvious on initial inspection. He could just turn around and leave, if he likes.

As tempting as the giant diamond is...he knows better than that. And it might not even be a real diamond, anyway.

He turns around to look for another path that doesn't sound all ominous and clockworky.

Ominous clockwork is reasonable easy to avoid as long as he's paying attention.

Until he turns a corner and finds himself staring into an alcove containing another iron wolf, close enough that he could almost reach out and touch it. It's dormant at first, sitting upright and motionless, but rouses quickly and lunges forward with a snap of its jaws.

Motherfuck.

He stumbles backward, tries to turn and run fast enough to escape it even though he's nearly tripping over his own feet.

Yeah, no.

The wolf leaps forward and bites his leg, just above the ankle. Its teeth are too dull to slice through his jeans, but he's going to have some nasty bruises. It pulls back, shakes its head slightly, and lunges again.

He makes a short, sharp noise, bites his tongue. Stay focused, Z.

The bite to his leg sends him tumbling to the ground, and he rolls over as he slams into the stone, puts his arms up in front of his chest and face.

The wolf pounces...

...and pins him down and howls, an unearthly wail whose force rattles its metal body.

Okay, what.

He starts to try to squirm out from under its paws.

It's pretty good at keeping him pinned. He might sustain some minor damage in the scuffle.

Under the sound of the howl, Z might hear that heavy ominous clanking he's been avoiding all this time. It's getting steadily closer.

He's pretty sure he just almost pulled his shoulder out of its socket, he's definitely going to have bruises on his chest, and he is no closer to being up than he was before.

He really doesn't like the sound of that clanking, though.

What if he just...pretends to stay still...and then tries to pull himself up.

The wolf is apparently not smart enough to see through this trick; it loses its hold on him, and has to stop howling abruptly so it can lunge and try to bite him again.

Nope!

Time to run! Run run run and hope that he can speed up enough that it doesn't catch him again.

(Yeah, right.)

In his hasty flight, he does actually manage to outpace the wolf...

...but he also gets to find out what sort of thing makes that heavy clanking noise.

It's like a huge suit of armor, or steampunk robot: a clanking creation of iron animated by some inexplicable force, massive and slow, with a crude blocky approximation of a humanoid shape. It strides slowly but inexorably toward him, as the wolf advances from behind. There's only one way out from between them, a branch in the path up ahead. If he runs fast enough toward the preindustrial android, he can probably make the turn before it gets close enough to grab him.

...all right. Let's make this happen.

He sprints towards the armor as fast as his body can carry him, ready to leap to the side into the hall the moment he's close enough.

Annnnd... he makes it! Congratulations, Z!

The slow clanking thing follows him around the corner, but this is actually a poor strategic move, since that means that when the wolf catches up a few seconds later it can't get past. They tangle together and have to take the time to straighten themselves out, during which interval Z can continue fleeing.

Yeah, he's just gonna keep running until he can't hear weird clanking anymore.

A highly reasonable course of ac—

—whoops he stepped on the wrong tile and now he is falling down a hole. At least there don't seem to be spikes at the bottom. He tumbles down a chute in pitch darkness, and lands in a heap on a cold stone floor at the bottom.

...ow. Fuck. Ow. That's definitely gonna be...a lot of bruises.

He groans and tries to pull himself to his feet.

A hand closes on his wrist. A very large hand, maybe even inhumanly large, and with an odd texture to it.

It drags him up off the floor, holding tight enough that the bones start to creak.

Oh.

Well, fuck.

He moans in pain (fuck he feels like his arm's going to snap in half) and struggles in the hand's grip, but...somehow he doesn't think he's going to get anywhere.

He does not, in fact, get anywhere!

"Fun," says a cheerful voice from somewhere well above Z's head. "I thought the big boys were gonna have to drag you down here, but nope, you came running all by yourself."

"...ha ha," he says, weakly. "You got me."

"Ooh, and he's got a sense of humour! I'm gonna have so much fun with you," he says, shifting his grip smoothly so he can pick Z up with both hands around his waist—a ridiculous display of casual strength and also of how his hands are big enough to span Z's waist with ease—and then toss him a few feet into the air and somehow catch him in a perfect bridal carry. There is motion as though he's walking, carrying Z away from the chute with long strides.

—holy shit. He can’t actually stop himself from squeaking a little in midair. How big is this guy?

...He guesses this is gonna be one of those traumatic parts quest girl was warning him about.

“Uh—not like I don’t want you to have fun but I’ve kinda got somewhere I’m supposed to be...”

The big guy snickers.

"Oh, I know," he says. "And you'll get back to it eventually. But in the meantime..."

He takes a casual forward leap. And... doesn't land, and doesn't land, and continues not to land, for a really unsettlingly long time - maybe as much as a full minute.

Then he touches down lightly, and there's the soft whumpf of a flame abruptly igniting, and the lights come up—a many-armed spiral of flame that races outward from their position, lighting little fire-bowls set into the floor in successive outward rings.

"Welcome to my world," says the nine-foot-tall naked giant, grinning toothily down at the boy in his arms. His purple-red scales and dark curling demonic horns glitter in the flickering firelight. The floor directly under his feet is in fact on fire, and he doesn't seem to mind a bit. As the fire spiral begins to burn out patchily, the bowls of fire set into the floor stay lit. The overall effect is somewhat... hellish.

His stomach drops as they sail through the air for what seems like an impossible amount of time. They should be falling, right? Or at least...landing?

Then they do land, and his guts settle, and...

Well, fuck.

“Is this actually, uh...” Wow his mouth is dry. “A hell kind of situation?”

It’s...

kind of hot.

—god dammit he’s trying to focus on magic powers and being alive here.

He laughs.

"What do you think?" he says cheerfully, and without waiting for an answer he lets go of Z—who remains inexplicably floating in midair—and starts ripping his clothes off.

Oh, and now that Z has line of sight to the demon's crotch: yeeeep that's a tentacle dick. A kind of intimidatingly large tentacle dick.

“—uh.”

He flails a little ungracefully in midair, and then there are giant demon hands literally tearing his shirt off and okay okay this is happening he guesses.

He looks down.

“Uh. You said I was going to get back to that but I’m pretty sure that thing would kill me, can we maybe—”

There go his pants (fuck, observes a weird detached part of his brain, his phone was in there). And his underwear. And, yeah, he’s definitely getting hard. Sue him.

"Don't worry!" the demon assures him. "I'm not gonna let you die. People stop being fun when they die."

He playfully rakes his claws down Z's chest.

He

okay, no, this is not a pretending not to react situation, he has enough things to worry about. He feels the demon’s claws split his skin and he moans.

The demon hums happily and does it again.

Louder, this time, and he should probably be trying to minimize blood loss here but he’s just going to arch up into the claws instead.

If he wasn’t hard before, he definitely is now.

"Ooh," says the demon, very appreciatively. "You are fun."

He applies his claws to more of Z's surfaces, stomach and back and arms and shoulders and hips and thighs. There's kind of a lot of blood now, dripping into the soot-streaked stone at the demon's feet. He does not seem concerned that all this casual bloodletting is going to deprive him of his new toy.

The more blood is dripping the more worked up Z gets. By the end he’s moaning and squirming even when he doesn’t feel claws, nearly screaming when they dig in and slice him open. He doesn’t think he’s ever hurt this bad, felt this good.

“Fuck—fuck fuck fuck I’m gonna—”

The demon chuckles, and pulls Z up higher in the air so as to more conveniently get his mouth on Z's dick.

His teeth are sharp. He doesn't use them too much.

He barely lasts a few seconds. The moment he feels teeth he comes explosively, crying out and jerking where he’s suspended in midair (which doesn’t really help with the lacerations).

The demon swallows, and pulls his mouth away, and sighs contentedly.

"People who get off on this shit are the best," he says with deep, sincere affection.

Give him a second to catch his breath.

Or...maybe give him a minute.

He keeps moving his lips like he’s trying to say something, but he can’t really make sound come out as anything but a helpless moan-adjacent sort of noise, not with his whole body still cut to ribbons coming down from the most intense orgasm of his life thus far.

The demon giggles, and presses an affectionate kiss to Z's inner thigh, and then pulls him down again to nibble playfully on his shoulder. (There are fangs. He's gonna bleed a little more.)

He lets out another choked moan.

“You’ve gotta—you’ve gotta—keep me alive—”

He sort of has forgotten about everything else, but he knows that being alive is very important. And he can’t have any more if he dies, either.

"Don't worry, babe, I will," he murmurs reassuringly, and then he rakes his claws across Z's stomach.

He moans, shakily, again. This really should have stopped being good after he came, but it’s just a different ache, now, slow and deep, almost comforting.

(And he doesn’t think he’s even going to stop being hard before he starts getting hard again. It’s already sort of happening.)

He wraps his arms around Z, squeezes affectionately (which does interesting things to many of those cuts), then lets go and bites his shoulder again, pretty hard this time. There follows an exploration of all the places where one might bite Z and what he thinks about each of them.

He floats on it, hazy, lost in the pain, the teeth slicing into him and the bruising force of his jaws, only distantly aware of the noises he’s making. He thinks this is subspace or something? He’s never quite been able to get there — nothing’s ever really been strong enough to do it for him — but now...

Somewhere in the fog he realizes vaguely that he should definitely have bled out at least enough to have passed out by now. He doesn’t think there’s an inch of his body that’s not covered in blood.

The demon occasionally murmurs a heartfelt compliment—tasty, pretty, sexy, biteable.

He gets distracted, at one point, biting Z's thigh pretty deep and then spending a while licking out the wound.

He's surprisingly cuddly for a seemingly literal demon in plausibly literal Hell inflicting definitely literal torture on a helpless victim. When his hands aren't busy holding some part of Z in place for his teeth, they're generally petting him or trailing claws lightly across his open wounds.

The tongue gets him a little more awake – he pants and squirms while it's in the wound, pushing his thigh up into his mouth.

This is...

...this is really nice.

It's not like it wouldn't be horrible for a normal person – but just having somebody paying this much attention to him is nice. Touching him, saying nice things about him, doing things he likes...

(His eyes are a little wet, and not for the right reason at all.)

And then, with Z's blood-drenched body cuddled against him, he nuzzles the back of Z's neck and kisses it and bites it and wraps his hand around Z's cock.

He makes a little noise, halfway between a moan and a sob, choked off halfway through.

And it sort of...keeps happening.

He bites and licks and strokes, surprisingly gently for how much pain is involved.

He can feel the teeth in his neck, holding it in place.

How deep is he in, that it feels somehow comforting?

He just sighs it out when he comes, this time, makes little unsteady crooning noises into the dark, head swimming from the inescapable burn of the open cuts, shaking in the grip of some possibly-literally-demon from possibly-literally-hell and somehow feeling more cared for than he has in...how long? A long time.

The demon kisses the bite in the back of his neck and hugs him.

"You're gorgeous," he murmurs. "You're fucking amazing."

What a stupid time to cry.

Well, the demon thinks it's an excellent time to cuddle him while he cries, so there.

Can he turn himself and face the torture demon who cut him up while he cries? Is that a thing he can do? Because fuck it, why not, he wants to put his face on a shoulder and there's a fucking shoulder.

He can totally do that. And get snuggled and petted and nuzzled and hugged. Why do all the coziest verbs have double letters?

They're good verbs. Good activities. Helpful.

After a while, he calms down enough to stop making noise. He's just breathing a little oddly into his shoulder.

Pet pet.

"You're real cute, y'know. I'm a fan."

He peers up at him cautiously.

“...you’re a really weird labyrinth monster,” he says, voice a little wobbly.

"Sure am!" he says brightly, and kisses Z's forehead. "So, what are your opinions on fire?"

“...haven’t tried a ton of it—I feel like you’re not totally on board with the whole...not killing me thing...”

He looks down at himself.

There's a whole lot of blood.

But—

When the demon runs his hand down Z's chest, over several places that have been clawed and bitten and generally mauled in the last couple of hours...

...none of it hurts?

There's just unbroken skin, with blood on it.

...hey, what?

He reaches down and tries to part a spot where, just a minute ago, he’s very sure there was a cut.

There's still a cut there, but noticeably less of one.

"Told you I'm not gonna kill you," the demon says fondly.

He starts to giggle like a kid who’s just been left totally unsupervised with a box of Sharpies.

The demon laughs.

"You're the cutest."

“Fire! Fuck yes! I wanna try fire next!”

The demon begins to glow, a deep fiery light that seems to come from his bones and radiate out through his flesh, centered in his hands but extending up through his arms.

He grabs Z and kisses him aggressively. Everywhere his hands touch, flesh sizzles.

—well, fuck.

He screams into the demon’s mouth, and his body jerks and twists in his grip. It’s amazing — but the overload of sensation is intense, it hurts so fucking much, he isn’t capable of doing anything else.

When he's pretty well covered in handprints, the demon releases the source of the heat but keeps groping him and trailing bites and kisses over his body.

He sobs and moans as the demon grabs and bites at the seared flesh, presses at the raw nerves in the worst of the burns. The way he squirms and bucks, it’d look to anyone who wasn’t close enough to hear him like he was trying to escape.

As it is—

“—fuck please please more more more more more—“

"Fuck you're gorgeous," the demon breathes into his neck. "Fuck, yeah, tell me what you want."

And he bites him again, and slashes his claws across a particularly nasty burn on his hip.

He screams again. It takes him a minute of thrashing and moaning before he has enough language to answer.

“I want—I want, fuck, fucking tear me up—show me, show me, I—more—”

Maybe he’s not so hot with language after all, yet.

Oh, on the contrary, he is very hot with language.

The demon methodically applies his claws to every inch of blistered skin. By the time he's done, the earliest burns are starting to heal, which in his opinion makes it a great time to suck Z's dick.

With his entire body shredded and blistered and raw and screaming in pain, he comes just as embarrassingly quickly as the first time, grabbing onto the demon’s horns and practically weeping.

The demon keeps his mouth where it is, afterward, stroking gently with his tongue.

He pants and sighs and occasionally makes another little sob-like sound as the demon licks him.

(If he were in the state to think about anything at all, he might have something to think about the fact that the best sex he’s ever had is happening in a labyrinth hellpit and started without his actual consent. Mercifully, he is currently unequipped for thoughts.)

Those are some pretty excellent noises, and the demon is going to do his best to extract more of them.

His best is more than good enough.

Again, he doesn't even have a chance to stop being hard. How many times has he come, now? He feels like he should be...out of sex, or something.

There is so much more sex to be had.

Starting with this endless hellpit blowjob, apparently. The demon runs his fingertips lightly across some half-healed burns on Z's back, then follows the same trail with his claws, much harder.

–oh, that makes him pay attention.

He makes a choked sound and jerks in place, not sure whether to lean back into the claws or forward away from them.

The demon makes a sound not unlike a purr, and finds another set of burns to maul while he very enthusiastically sucks Z's dick.

Well, then, he’s back to whimpering and gasping and grabbing his horns again.

(He keeps feeling his own blood dripping off his skin and that’s even fucking hotter when he’s apparently getting healed fast enough that there can be this much of it without him passing out.)

“Fuck—fuck, it’s so much—”

Yes. Z is forbidden from running out of either blood or sexual stamina for the forseeable future.

The demon purrs and deep-throats him and claws him hard enough to leave scratches in the actual bone of his ribs.

—yeah, that’s another screaming orgasm. His voice is actually starting to go a little. (He’s never had something scratch his bones before—he can feel the vibrations—holy fuck.)

Once Z has stopped screaming and shaking, the demon takes his mouth away long enough to remark, "You're seriously fucking gorgeous, you know that? I could do this all week. Maybe I will."

He nuzzles a burn on Z's thigh.

"Wouldn't...wouldn't mind that a ton."

He feels like someone melted him and then halfway reconstituted him into person.

"Mmmm." Nuzzle. "Yeah, I noticed. It's really hot."

He kisses his way up along Z's side, over his ribs, up across his chest to his collarbone, then his neck—at which point he bites. At the same time his hands, wrapped around Z's hips, flare with searing heat.

He chokes off the scream halfway through, but it comes out.

He should be too exhausted to feel anything like this. Instead, the pain comes through hot in his veins like it’s the first of the night.

“Ah—ah—aaaaahh—”