Half the Distance

Title: Half the Distance
Series: Innocence Stripped Away
Chapter: Twelve : Bleed For Me
Author: Orchyd Constyne
Contact: soultornasunder@gmail.com
Website: http://www.hithanaur.net/
Update List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nairn_orchyd/
Beta: Alex Cat

Extra warning here: This chapter is the darkest of the bunch. Erestor loses it, and BDSM leaves the realm of consensual play and into the much darker, crueller realm of torture. It's intense, but it's supposed to be. You've been warned. :)

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Imladris, Spring, Third Age 2086

Erestor and Glorfindel saw little of each other over the next few weeks. When not attending to his duty, Glorfindel bided his time in the barracks or in submission to the Mirkwood King. Erestor, meanwhile, took out his frustration on the more than eager Teledan. Every lash he gave, every cruel word he spoke, he justified to himself with some twisted sense of logic. That ever-present voice purred at him that what he did was *right*.

*****

He hadn't wanted to kiss him.

Glorfindel whimpered in his bonds as Thranduil plundered his mouth. Things had been so simple in the beginning, but now, everything was complicated.

His muscles screamed from overextension; his back and buttocks were a mass of stinging, burning welts. With every breath, the weights attached to his nipples swung, sending a fresh spike of pain through his body. His engorged sex pulsed with every beat of his heart.

It was so different, being with Thranduil. With Erestor, there was a set pattern. A routine to how everything was done. The session, and then sex. Sometimes those lines had blurred, especially during their darkest moments, but it was their way. Thranduil, though, erased the line in the sand.

Thranduil had taken to stroking him between whippings. He used a phallus while depriving him of all other sensation. As he would tug on a weight, his mouth would cover Glorfindel's and coax soft cries from him. Slowly, ever so slowly, Thranduil had seduced him. Glorfindel *wanted* Thranduil to take him. To bend him over the table mid-session and take him roughly.

Just as Erestor would have done.

Yet each session left Glorfindel hungry and hard, wanting so much but unable to ask. He was unaccustomed to this dance of Ingor and Tumbo, one of trust and desire and pure lust. Thranduil's eyes would sparkle as he tended to Glorfindel's bruises. His voice would be gentle as he massaged ointment into welts.

The moments following the session had become something he craved as much as the sessions themselves.

Thranduil's tongue stroked his as Thranduil's hand moved over his erection. Glorfindel trembled, knees weak, and he moaned softly into the kiss. Thranduil's lips curved into a smile as he pulled back, watching Glorfindel. That was something else Thranduil liked: watching him. Nails raked over sore skin, and Glorfindel cried out.

*****

Teledan's back and buttocks were already a bright pink, and they'd barely started. Erestor had gone for one of his heavier braided whips right from the start, and ramped up the intensity rapidly. The muvael's wrists were red from rubbing against the shackles holding him as he squirmed and bucked under the lashes.

Erestor put the whip away and considered another. He was in a dark, brooding mood that day, and he'd hoped that this play session would help abate it, but the frustration and anger remained in the pit of his stomach like rocks. He passed over several choices in the cabinet before selecting a three-tailed whip made with strips of rough leather. Each strip had been knotted several times along its length. He rarely used it because it was very intense, but he was in an intense mood at that moment.

The first strike left dark red lines across Teledan's shoulders. The second created twins along his lower back. Teledan gripped the chains attached to the shackles, knuckles turning white from the strain. Erestor brought the whip down again and again, bringing first bruises and then welts to the slave's skin. They were artfully placed, to be sure, all arranged in neat lines crisscrossing Teledan's back, but Erestor did not stop there. He continued, placing new whip strikes over the old, until one of the knots struck just right, and left a trickle of blood in its wake. Teledan cried out sharply as the skin broke, a mixture of pain and desire in the sound.

Erestor's dark demeanour faltered to hear it, and it felt as though one of the rocks in his stomach began to dissolve. He took a firmer grip on the whip and continued the session with a renewed vigour.

*****

The cane struck his flesh for a fifth time, the sting instant and breath-stealing. Glorfindel arched, his arms pulling at his restraints. He panted, waiting for the initial shock to pass. He waited for the next blow, but it didn't come. Instead, he felt Thranduil's tongue trace the new welt. Glorfindel shivered, moaned, twisted in the shackles. Thranduil blew a line of cold air where he had just licked, and Glorfindel was lost. He was utterly delirious with all of the sensations Thranduil produced.

He heard Thranduil stand, walk backwards, and then the singing of the cane through the air before it cracked sharply against his sore backside. This time, there was no pause between strikes. Thranduil began a firm rhythm, the cane landing along a very narrow path of skin in order to produce the most pain. Each time the cane struck, it sent another tremor through Glorfindel. It wasn't long before Glorfindel began to writhe, his heart pounding, his eyes full of tears, and his cock heavy between his thighs.

It was exquisite.

*****

Erestor stood back, admiring the bloody portrait before him. Teledan hung limply from the shackles, his knees barely able to support him. His back was a striped mass of purple and red. He'd cried out every time a new cut opened, but never called out the word to bring Erestor to stop. He'd taken everything that Erestor had to give and borne it with a grace and a dignity that few could have matched.

And, for some reason, Erestor hated him for that. His own chest glistened with sweat from his exertions, and the hand that had held the lash ached from the force he had clenched it with. And still that core of unnameable anger festered inside him. And all the while, Teledan accepted the brunt of his frustration and need without backing down. It was as if the damned slave were mocking him, trying to say that he could bear Erestor's burdens better than Erestor himself! Or that he could endure the roughness of their play better than Glorfindel could. Better than Glorfindel! As though any such thing existed.

Erestor drew close behind Teledan and grabbed him roughly around the sides. His thumbs pressed deliberately into the cuts, bringing moans to the slave's lips. Erestor gritted his teeth in rage and lust and hauled Teledan back to his feet, twisting his thumbs into the wounds to speed him along. He pulled back a hand and smeared the blood along his cock, using it, however inadequately, to ease his passage as he guided himself into the other Elf's tight body, driving in fully with one smooth thrust.

*****

Thranduil's hands stroked along Glorfindel's sides, so gentle and warm. Glorfindel's head lolled back, his eyes half open. Lips moved down his throat, and teeth tenderly nipped at his collarbone. When Thranduil's hand skated down his belly to take him in hand, Glorfindel bucked.

"So needy," Thranduil said with a rich, deep chuckle. "Tell me, Glorfindel, what do you want?"

Glorfindel swallowed, his mind in a fog. What did he want? He wanted Thranduil to not stop.

But he couldn't say it.

To say it would be to betray something he had been holding onto for years now. Hoping against hope that the Valar would put right what was wrong.

"Tell me," Thranduil insisted, his hand stilling.

Glorfindel whimpered, the words precariously balanced on his lips.

Thranduil's lips were near his ear, teasing him with hot breath. "I know what it is you want, Glorfindel, but I will not give it until you ask."

His back and buttocks stung beautifully, and he knew no blood had been shed. Thranduil had worked him perfectly without inflicting anything more than a welted bruise. He had not drawn blood since that first session, yet Glorfindel had been driven to heights of delicious pain and wanton need he'd never known before. Thranduil taught him how to flow with the lash, how to lose himself in the burn.

"I want you," Glorfindel said, his voice rough. He turned his head in time to see the triumphant gleam in Thranduil's eyes, and the satisfied smirk on his lips.

"And so you shall have me," Thranduil breathed before capturing Glorfindel's lips in a searing kiss.

*****

The rattle of the chains echoed through the room as Erestor pushed himself onto Teledan again and again. One hand was buried in the slave's hair, wrenching his head back, and the other was delighting in pressing open the cuts across his back, sending fresh rivulets of blood trickling down to the floor. The edges of the shackles were cutting into his wrists, already purple and swollen. Erestor grunted like an animal as he drove roughly into the battered body.

Finally, it seemed that Teledan could take no more. "Salab," he rasped, his throat dry and lips cracked from his earlier cries. Erestor was too lost in his haze to separate that one sound from the rest, and continued on unheedingly. "Salab!" came the call again, stronger this time. "Master Erestor, salab!"

Erestor growled in frustration as the buzzing sound in his mind resolved itself into words. "Shut up!" he yelled to whatever was making the noise, and thrust home once, twice, and a third time, emptying himself into the muvael with a final snarling cry. He withdrew and padded across the room, trailing pink droplets of blood and semen across the floor. Erestor grabbed a cloth and wiped himself clean. Only then did he seem to remember Teledan, sagging against the shackles again. Sighing in annoyance, he walked back and pulled the release catches on the cuffs. Teledan slumped for a moment, and then his legs refused to bear his weight, sending the Elf to the floor in a heap.

Erestor dropped the cloth in Teledan's lap. "Clean up and go," he said sharply, turning his back on the muvael and stalking from the room.

*****

It was strange.

Thranduil hadn't taken him then and there.

The bonds had been released, Glorfindel's welts tended to, and only then did Thranduil spread him out upon the bed. The coverlet made his skin itch and tingle pleasantly. He waited for Thranduil to pounce; the Mirkwood King had waited quite some time to claim his prize.

And after his humiliation in his own playroom, Glorfindel expected Thranduil to subject him to some manner of degradation worthy of his offence.

He watched Thranduil strip himself completely, casting aside the loose trousers he had been wearing. Glorfindel licked his lips as Thranduil crept onto the bed like a great cat, golden mane wild and green eyes like jewels. The mask of cold calculation that Glorfindel had grown accustomed to seeing upon Thranduil's face finally fell. Glorfindel was struck by the warmth he could see in Thranduil's gaze, and the tenderness of his hands.

Thranduil hovered over Glorfindel. "It is not all about control," Thranduil murmured. "It never should be."

"Tell me what it is about," Glorfindel said as he hesitantly brushed his fingers across Thranduil's cheek.

"It is an exchange of power. Both taking and giving. The Ingor takes responsibility for the Tumbo's pleasure, and gives away the power of stopping the session. Tumbo releases his control over the means and methods utilized, but must take on the duty of monitoring himself -- his discomfort or distress -- and the accountability of using the exit word when those levels reach too high." Thranduil lowered his head, kissing Glorfindel sweetly. "It is about trust, Glorfindel."

How long he laid there, looking up into Thranduil's eyes while digesting what the King had just said, Glorfindel didn't know. It seemed Thranduil had captured all that Glorfindel hadn't understood about this life and offered it to him freely. "Trust," Glorfindel repeated. "I trust you."

Thranduil smiled down at him. "That is good to know." He kissed Glorfindel again, but this time, it was deep and consuming.

Glorfindel arched up against Thranduil's body, his arms wrapped around Thranduil's neck. He *craved* this. Glorfindel wanted to be touched and loved and wanted in a way Erestor hadn't touched, loved, or wanted him in so long. Thranduil's kisses, his gentle caress, were like water on a parched tongue. Glorfindel greedily drank from Thranduil's lips, tears on his lashes.

"Why do you cry?" Thranduil asked quietly.

Glorfindel simply shook his head. "Please?" He arched against Thranduil again. "Do not ask me questions I have no answers for. Dominate me, take me, but, please, do not ask such questions."

Their eyes held steady, and Glorfindel wondered if Thranduil would continue.

"No questions," Thranduil promised softly. His hands stroked along Glorfindel's sides while he repeatedly kissed him. There was no need for much foreplay, as the session had left them both wanting.

Glorfindel shuddered, clung to Thranduil as they joined for that first time. He gasped, eyes wide as he stared up at Thranduil. The rhythm Thranduil created for them was slow, steady, ever so careful of Glorfindel's smarting backside. Each thrust into his body, Glorfindel's abused skin rubbed against the rough coverlet, and he would moan. The pain, the intense pleasure of Thranduil within him, Glorfindel didn't know what to do with it all.

Overwhelmed, he buried his face in the crook of Thranduil's neck, his legs wrapped tight around the King's waist. Their bodies were as close as they could be.

Once, in a far distant memory, Glorfindel knew Erestor touched him like this. That Erestor had worshipped him. Loved him. Cherished every sound, every breath, every whispered word, and the knowledge ripped open a gaping wound within him. Everything had gone so terribly wrong, and from beneath the pushing weight of Thranduil's body, Glorfindel had the mind-numbing fear that what was now broken could *never* be repaired.

All thought fled from Glorfindel's mind when Thranduil finally took him in hand. The kisses became more heated. Forceful and possessive, and Glorfindel gave himself over to the feeling of such intensity. Glorfindel met Thranduil's thrusts, all sensation breath-taking. Within moments, Glorfindel's muscles tensed, he trembled, and Thranduil's name was a broken cry on his lips as his climax washed over him.

In the aftermath, with Thranduil drowsily wrapped around him, Glorfindel pondered what had just happened.

And what it meant for Erestor and him.

TBC...