Dev gave a whimper as Allistair pulled back from the kiss, the loss of contact pulling the sound from him without thought. He was lost to sensation already, proving that he needed this, needed Allistair’s command of him, his master’s complete domination of him.
Some of the rules of BDSM were universal and unbreakable. Others were bendable. Some kept a dungeon separate from the bedroom deliberately. Others kept whole houses separate for it. But some were so immersed into the lifestyle that their home WAS their dungeon.
Then there were those like Dev… Dev had little choice in the matter. In order to keep his cats under control, he literally lived the lifestyle. It really helped that he loved it, though…
He was so lost to it all that he missed a bit of time. So he didn’t notice it when Allistair moved and inspected the toys Dev had laid out along the foot of the bed. The next thing he knew, Allistair simply put a hand to his shoulder and pushed him to his knees.
He gave a shudder as he settled on his knees as Allistair secured his wrists behind him into the cuffs; the added forearm cuffs increased his breathing even more, but he still didn’t move from where he’d been put. Then came the blindfold…
Thankfully Allistair wasn’t into choking or restricting his breathing or speaking.
He heard Allistair walk up behind him then lean down to his ear and whisper to him.
Yes, he’d given everything to Allistair. But he wasn’t actually expecting this. Everything else but this…
He heard Allistair move away from him and lowered his head as pure emotion moved through him, knowing that he was going to do it, the air rushing out of him hard and fast, “Gods! You don’t ask for much, do you…” he said softly even though they both knew he was going to do it. It didn’t mean he liked it, though. Thankfully, all the cuffs Allistair had were crafted with silver in them so that he couldn’t break them even though the silver never actually touched his skin. This one thing, this one time, he just might have run from… But it slowly started to come from him, Dev laying his soul bare for Allistair without any bond between them but Dev’s willing submission and Allistair’s claiming of him…
“It started with my first shift… He’s a gold tiger… I shifted to a blue that first time… I was instantly locked into the cell until my next shift. It was lined with silver to keep an out of control shifter from doing damage. They’re meant to hold one of us for the duration of a normal shift: one night. So they’re small. Big enough to lay down in half form, big enough to stand up in half form, but not big enough to get any momentum to try to break out.
“I was in there for a month as a cub. I think I was about eight, I’m not sure, it was a long time ago. The next full moon, he pulled me out. That night I found out he’d beaten my mother. When I shifted to my black tiger that night, apparently I did something that made him treat my mother like fine crystal because he never touched her again. But I went back into the room…
“Once a month he pulled me out until he could count how many forms I had, then I went back into the room. Over time I acquired a few things: a pillow, a blanket, a book… but nothing that could be sharpened or used to damage Nashirr when he opened the door.
“It didn’t stop me from attacking him, of course. That always lead to what he called ‘manners lessons’… They were really beatings or punishments along those lines. At some point in there he put the silver collar on me so that he could chain me to the back of the wall. I don’t remember that point too well or much after it,” he faded off a bit on that one, finding himself getting lost in the memory of the pain of the silver collar that had so viciously scarred his neck…
As a shifter, he was particularly sensitive to silver. It was actually deadly to him, to tell the truth.
But his ‘father’ had left an unlined silver collar around his neck until he was sold to Gin. That was no less than twenty years but was actually closer to about six times that. Unfortunately, being locked in that cell, Dev had lost track of the days and years all too easily, so he had no idea how old he really was.
“If your collar ever has to come off, Master… To treat an injury or anything like that… Please just… Please don’t look at it… I won’t ask you for much Master but… Please…” he stopped there for a moment to regain his composure so that he could continue with what Allistair wanted of him.
“Over the years, my mother was allowed to visit a few times. She was allowed to bring me a few things, even some extra food sometimes… She told me that one of the reasons that Nashirr didn’t dare kill me was that she was hinting that he might be my father.
“See, there was this Beltaine celebration thing. Everyone lets loose, people wind up behind the bushes with who-knows-who and no one complains about it. It’s supposed to be freeing and fun and all kinds of stuff… Sometimes you remember who you wind up with and sometimes you don’t. Well, it seems that Nashirr couldn’t remember who all he wound up with that Beltaine beyond who he woke up with. So my mother told me that she lied through her beautiful lips and Nashirr was buying it. Especially since he woke up in a rather embarrassing orgy pile three days later…
“But the rest of the time…
“The rest of the time I ‘took care’ of whoever Nashirr sent into my cell, no matter what they wanted. Even his ‘real’ sons. Thank the gods I was never really related to those morons! You know how the first one died? My mother was the one that told me. You’ll love it:
“He walked into a wall.
“But it gets better.
“He walked into a wall while he was re-wrapping the binding on the handle of one of his daggers. Meaning: he was carrying it with the point towards himself.
“So, in a nutshell… He stabbed himself. But I like my way better…
“Anyway, all of his sons got themselves killed in ways like that. It didn’t help much that Nashirr pissed off some goddess by dropping some pregnant vampire down into Hell’s Cradle and binding her there under Contract. So Nashirr got cursed to see all of his sons die before him, his bloodline to end before he winds up getting taken by that goddess to wind up as her lap cat, or something like that. My mother couldn’t get all the details since he was drunk off his a** when he said it,” he brightened up over that one without realizing exactly what he was describing…
Namely the fact that Nashirr was the one that had dropped Kedar’s beloved pregnant wife in Hell’s Cradle under contract with the demon that would later become Gypsy’s father… In short, Nashirr had pissed off Pandora, the goddess in charge of the Reapers (now known as the Shadows) who were now allied with the Re and would pay very dearly for that information… If Allistair left Nashirr alive by the time Dev was finished…
“Anyway…. It took me years to work at it. Lots and lots of years. But I finally figured something out at some point… You see, Nashirr is completely oblivious to anything that doesn’t lead to what he wants. It sounds so simple, I know. But it’s actually more complicated than you’d think.
“You see, here’s how it goes: Nashirr wanted my mother. Still does. Only way he could have her was if he could throw her into heat. Only way for that was the same way he fathered the rest of his sons. Method falls back to tradition in some shifter groups. Tigers and some lions are the worst in some opinions, though.
“When a new male Alpha takes over, he kills off the cubs under a certain age. Throws the females back into heat and allows the new Alpha to spread his own genes through the group. Just like in some of the wild animal packs and prides. There are a few wolf packs that do it too.
“But I was too old for Nashirr to kill me and the whole coalition knew it. So he couldn’t kill me. And he couldn’t claim my mother. But he could get rid of me in another way, it turned out…
“My multiple cats allowed him to lock me away, claiming that I was dangerous. Whenever my mother was allowed to visit, I was kept muzzled and chained down. They hid the fact that it was all silver so that she wouldn’t protest. Whenever she wasn’t around though…” the thought of his mother had him pausing. He hadn’t spoken to her since he was a small cub. Nashirr had taken that away from him. He didn’t even know if she was still alive.
He cleared his throat and forced himself to continue, his arms shifting in the cuffs while Allistair’s scent kept his mind here instead of flashing back to the past. So instead of having a problem, his body was showing the desire Allistair had raised even as he continued.
“The rest of the time, I serviced everyone Nashirr put me to until he decided to show me off to Ren and Gin, trying to brag about how he’d trained me do whatever he wanted. Gin laughed his a** off when I tried to attack the b*****d. Damned collar saved him again and landed me on my back. Gin offered for me on the spot. To get rid of me, Allistair took the deal.
“As he passed the chain over… He said… He said, ‘
As long as you get rid of him and send me the proof for his mother, I can honestly say that I didn’t kill the little piece of rotten toe lint. Experiment all you want on him. As long as he doesn’t survive it. He’s nothing but a feral animal. If nothing else, turn him into a weapon. Point him in the direction you want him to attack and let him go. I’d keep him around but his mother keeps whining about him. I was going to sell him outright, but giving him to you is just better business, after all…’ that’s what he told him. Then they all laughed. When they got back here, Gin did his tests, sent me to the pillow room, and promptly forgot about me. Hal took care of me… Had to teach me everything… I really was little better than a feral animal. Still am sometimes,” he finished, letting Allistair know the truth of the lie Nashirr had fed to Lily.
Now he fell silent, his head still down. He didn’t realize how the final bit had affected him, he never really had. It was one of the things that had lead to him not believing that Allistair would ever really claim him and had also lead to his cats’ jealousy issues: the fear that Allistair and Lily would give in to the Semi-deal Nashirr had made with Gin. That he’d become nothing but the feral weapon Nashirr wanted him to be, that he’d wind up dead or worse…
No, it wasn’t logical thinking on his part. But he was dealing with more cats in his head than Esabel had funky nicknames to call people and lost marbles. Besides, he’d just told Allistair something that had once gotten him nearly beaten to death for revealing….
