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“Move.”

I move. Sweat drips down my spine. Sweat runs between my pecs. My lungs are knives.

The room is too big and not big enough.

Every time I think I have a corner, he is there.

Every time I slow, the leather finds me.

I dig deep. I do what I have always done when the heat gets too close. I go feral. I cut, fake, slip on the mat and scramble up with my palms burning.

My ass is a single throbbing map of heat. I can feel each welt stacking on the last.

“Faster.”

“I can’t⁠—”

The crop answers that lie. I run until there is nothing left in my legs but shake. The floor comes up. I hit it hard, cheek to mat, naked and wrecked and sucking air like I have been held underwater.

I wait for the next blow.

It does not come.

Silence, except for my breathing and his.

Then Dmitri’s voice, low and calm. “This trial is over.”

Mercy.

Dmitri’s hand is in my hair, not dragging, just lifting my face so I have to look at him. I must look ruined. I certainly feel ruined.

“Up.” He leads me to the corner. “Now we control our breathing. We work to calm ourselves.”

A cupboard. The same clean medicinal smell from the kitchen. Cooling gel. I hiss when his fingers touch the welts. Dmitri is thorough. Not kind exactly. But essential maintenance, like he called it before.

I do not damage what I intend to use.

The gel sinks in and makes the fire sharper before it begins to dull.

“On all fours,” Dmitri commands.

I blink at him.

“Crawl.”

My face burns hotter than my ass. I get down. The mat is rough under my palms and knees. I am naked in a secret room under a fortress, ass shining with gel, and I crawl because he is walking and he expects me to follow at his heel.

The stairs are worse. Each step is a reminder. The corridor feels endless. I keep my head down so I do not have to see the paintings watching.

We eventually reach the guest room…

“Bed, boy,” Dmitri says, a slight hint of warmth in his voice.

I climb up. I cannot face the sheets. I lie on my stomach on top of them, naked, ass throbbing in the dark, the city a smear of light beyond the glass. The mattress dips.

Dmitri leans over me. I flinch, but his mouth is on my left cheek.

A kiss. Soft. The contrast is obscene. He kisses the right cheek the same way. Then he parts me just enough to press one slow kiss between, right where I am still wet from fear and running and the filthy wiring in my head that will not shut off.