The Traitor’s Mercy by Iris Foxglove

Chapter 10

“If this beast you employ as a whore knew better than to antagonize a woman with a lash in her hand—”

Sabre lay on the floor of his room, staring up at the ceiling. His face felt like an enormous, throbbing bruise, and when he touched his cheek, his fingers came away red, blood rolling between them and onto his palm. Somewhere above him, just out of sight, Lady Auclair was working herself to a froth against Charon’s implacable calm.

“My lady,” Charon said. “A scarred courtesan loses the House income.”

“Then he can go to the quarries, if he’s a burden.”

“My lady, come with me to the foyer, and I will put your name on the gray list, with your signature.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Well, hello there, my love.” Simone’s dress appeared before she did, a voluminous gown in olive green, and Sabre idly reached out to run his fingers over the satin. “Don’t you look dramatic.”

“I’m in a swoon,” Sabre said, and winced as the left side of his face burned with pain.

Simone clicked her tongue. “Yes, I’m dying with envy. Don’t move. I think we can keep you from scarring. What did she do, roll you on your back and whip you?”

“Yes,” Sabre said, and Simone went still above him, a damp cloth held over his face.

“Ah,” she said, in a short, quiet voice.

At first, Sabre had thought she’d only grazed him. Sometimes, when he was whipped, the rare few with enough control to do it properly would barely miss him, letting him tense and gasp at the feel of the whip lashing the air, unsure when it was going to connect. But Lady Auclair either didn’t have that control or didn’t want to, and Sabre didn’t realize he’d been struck until Charon pushed open the door, and the shock of it gave way to the stinging pain over his face and chest.

“Even if it does scar,” Simone said, rinsing off her cloth in the basin next to Sabre’s window, “it’s close enough to your jaw that you can hide it.”

“Any chance…” Sabre gasped slightly as Simone started cleaning the weal over his chest. “You can tell Lord de Rue after, then?”

“Oh, darling, he already knows,” Simone said, and Sabre cursed under his breath as a thundering of footsteps rolled down the hall outside. The door slammed open again, and Sabre lifted his head just enough to see Laurent’s wild expression before Simone pushed him down again.

“Where is the one who did this,” Laurent said.

“I’ll be fine,” Sabre said.

“Downstairs, being signed onto the gray list,” Simone said, covering Sabre’s mouth with a hand. Laurent’s boots thumped down the stairs, and Sabre winced as his voice rose from the common room, muted but so heavy with dominance that Sabre could feel it from where he lay.

“What’s the gray list?” Sabre asked, as Simone shook her head and dipped her fingers in a jar at her side.

“It passes between all the Houses,” Simone said. She dabbed some of the cream on her fingers over the cut on Sabre’s jaw, and Sabre gripped the rug, nails digging into the fibers. It stung like alcohol. “If you’re on the list, you are forbidden from hiring any courtesan until the House lords unanimously agree to remove you.”

“And she’d—ah—go on the list for whipping me?”

“Faces are off limits,” Simone said. “Everyone knows that. Why do you think that Devon Chastain of yours hasn’t broken your nose, yet, for all he threatens to?”

“He has no strength behind the blow,” Sabre said. “So he couldn’t.”

A door slammed downstairs, hard enough Sabre could almost feel the walls tremble.

“You’ll need to do something about that, soon,” Simone said, placing a bandage over Sabre’s cheek.

“I don’t think I can control someone’s temper,” Sabre said, a little bewildered.

“Not that, love.” Simone pulled his hair out of the way so she could wrap gauze around the bandage, so efficiently that Sabre wondered how many times she’d done it before, over the years. “The fact that he’s losing it at all. We’ve all had our share of close calls—Clients who offer us proposals, then turn on us when we reject them. Young hotheads with something to prove. But this is personal, I’d think.”

“Oh,” Sabre said. “No, he’s just kind.”

“Is he?” Simone helped him sit up, wrapping more gauze around his chest. “Perhaps, to an extent. It’s a dangerous thing, to be kind.”

“And what are you?” Sabre asked.

Simone smiled. “Don’t get cheeky, now, you only have one left to lose.” Sabre groaned, and she pet his hair. “Can you walk?”

“She didn’t whip my legs off, you know,” Sabre said, but he did let Simone help him to his feet. He leaned against her, breathing in the citrus scent she worked into her hair, and she patted his shoulder. “I assume there won’t be any more clients, tonight.”

“No,” said Laurent, striding into the room with his eyes blazing and his voice shaking with dominance. “There won’t be.”

Sabre made a soft sound and sank to his knees, and Simone raised her hands in the air.

“I just had him standing, my lord.”

“Yes. Thank you, Simone,” Laurent said. Simone raised her brows.

“I’ll go, then,” she said, and sidled past, holding up the skirts of her gown. Laurent sighed loudly and ran a hand through his hair.

“Sabre,” he said, and turned aside, pacing down the narrow space of Sabre’s room. “Would it be…better, if I…you would be safer in another House, I think.”

“What?” Terror rolled through him, sharp and cold, dragging Sabre out of the drifting haze he’d settled into under the whip. “Why? What did I—Did I do something? Should I have done something differently?”

“No.” Laurent turned to Sabre, held his chin in one hand. “You were on your back, covered in blood.”

“Yes.”

“In the House of Gold, they don’t carry any tool harsher than a flogger.”

“That sounds miserable, my lord,” Sabre said. “And they rejected me. Here, I know you won’t…I thought you wouldn’t send me away.”

Laurent stared down at him for a minute in silence, Sabre’s breath unnaturally harsh.

“Please,” Sabre said. “Lau—my lord.”

Laurent let out a ragged breath and got down on his knees in front of Sabre, pulling him into his arms.

“I won’t send you away,” Laurent said at last, speaking into Sabre’s long, red-gold hair. “I don’t think I can.”

* * *

The salve Simonegave Sabre must have been magically infused, because it only took a few days for his face to heal. Sabre did get a scar, all the same. It was a pale one, like a crescent moon cradling his jaw, and while Laurent kept fussing over it, brushing Sabre’s hair back in the bath and tracing it with his fingers, it wasn’t noticeable with his hair down. Rose even spent an entire afternoon mixing paints to make him look like there were stars falling over his face, squinting at him thoughtfully while they sat in the kitchen.

“Laurent used to ask me to tell him stories about the moon all the time,” Rose said, painting a star over Sabre’s brow. “I still come up with them, sometimes. Silly things, really. I used to say I was a moon princess.”

“You could be,” Sabre said. “It’s a shame there aren’t any plays about moon princesses, or you’d be perfect for the role.”

Rose stopped, brush poised over his nose. “Maybe I wrote one,” she said, in a hushed voice.

“I can read it, if you like,” Sabre said.

Rose disappeared into her room, which was next to the kitchen and draped with silks and handmade tapestries, and returned with a worn, leatherbound journal. She held it out reverently to Sabre, who flipped it open.

“It’s probably terrible,” she said.

Sabre raised his brows. Rose looked nothing like her usual, overconfident self, pacing around the kitchen while Sabre read, rocking on her heels as though she meant to ask a question, fiddling with the puff of hair on the top of her head. Finally, when Sabre got to the part where the moon princess was being chased by the bird-children of the lost Oria, Rose scraped her chair over the tile and sat so close her knees knocked into his.

“So?” she said. “Is it awful?”

“I like the line about her lost mother,” Sabre said. “On page…fifteen. The way she says how it feels like a door you can’t find in your house?”

“Oh,” Rose said.

“I think,” Sabre said, carefully, as Rose rocked in her chair, “that you might have picked the wrong profession. You’re sure you don’t want to do this full-time?”

“But, I mean. They’re just stories,” Rose said, in a way that meant, clear as day, that they weren’t.

“Laurent loves them,” Sabre said.

“I love nothing,” Laurent said, from behind them, and both Sabre and Rose jumped. “I’m cold and unfeeling, just like you said when I wouldn’t buy you those shoes. What are you putting him up to, Rose?”

“Nothing,” Rose said, as Laurent set down the drink he’d been holding and headed over. She grabbed the book and held it to her chest. “And those shoes weren’t even that expensive.”

Laurent gave her a look. “Is that your play? The one with the moon princess?”

“Maybe.”

“And she let you read it?” Laurent asked Sabre.

“Because there’s romance in his soul, obviously,” Rose said, defensively. “His whole life is basically a play, anyways.”

“A tragedy, I assume,” Sabre said.

“Or a romance. It depends.” Rose squinted at him, then at Laurent. “I haven’t decided.”

“Well, I think your writing has promise, no matter what genre it is,” Sabre said. “Maybe the House could try it out. Charon would make a good Storm King, don’t you think?”

Rose closed her eyes for a moment. “I think…Yes. Maybe he would. I…I think I’m going to ask him.”

“What have you done,” Laurent whispered, as Rose marched off, book held tight in both hands.

“I’m encouraging the arts,” Sabre whispered back. Laurent turned his face towards him, and smiled.

“Yes, I see that. Your face could feature in a gallery.”

“Do you think my clients will mind tonight, if I showed up with stars on my face?” Sabre asked. Laurent grimaced. “I…am taking clients again? The king will notice, I think, if I don’t.”

Laurent’s gaze went distant. “He already has. We’ll be resuming your usual schedule tonight, I suppose.”

He ran his hand down Sabre’s cheek, tracing the pale scar that curved there, and drew away.

“Best clean up, then,” he said, and turned for the hall, leaving Sabre alone in the kitchen with a hand on his cheek, chasing the warmth Laurent’s fingers left behind.

* * *

The first clientsof the night were Roland Garnier and Olivier Blanchet, which meant Charon was probably watching through the wall, just in case. Roland wasn’t a sadist, but he despised Sabre enough to do the work of one, and that, Sabre knew now, was a dangerous combination. Roland was in rare form that night, regardless. Sabre was tripped twice as he led them up the stairs to his room, and Roland pushed him through the door, sending him crashing to the floor with a low thud that made the window panes rattle.

“You’re right, Roland,” Olivier said, as Sabre rolled to his side. “I think the slut actually likes it.”

Roland kicked him in the side. “On your knees, whore.”

“Yes, my lord,” Sabre said, and Olivier smiled, foxlike and wicked. He grabbed Sabre by the chin and held his mouth open, and Roland spat in it.

“Swallow,” Olivier said, almost sweetly. When Sabre managed to work his throat, he slapped him. “You know, I always liked your sister. Thought she’d spread her legs for me when you wouldn’t, but watching her hang was good enough.”

“You can have him now, Ollie,” Roland said, holding Sabre back by the hair. “Whenever you want. Just tell me, and I’ll foot the bill.”

Sabre’s eyes must have widened at that—he hadn’t known the Blanchet estate was doing so poorly—because Olivier slapped him again, pushed him down on his back and struck him with his palm until Sabre, breathless with pain, raised a hand to stop him. Olivier sat there, breathing hard, Roland palming himself over them both, and spat in Sabre’s face.

They took him together, Olivier tugging at his hair like reins while hissing about how much of a slut he was, how depraved, how desperate for cock that he’d choose the whorehouses over a hanging.

“He can always have both,” Roland said, and pushed Sabre away from him, tied a rope around his neck while Sabre bounced on Olivier’s cock, wild-eyed with fear. They both came too soon, after that, and left him sore and gasping, covered in sweat and come.

“Fuck,” he whispered, pushing the rope off of his neck. He kicked it into the corner, taking huge, gasping breaths, and hastily cleaned himself from the basin. He didn’t have much time, just enough to dress and run a comb through his hair, but his clients tended to like him disheveled.

“Do you think they’re fucking?” Sabre asked the wall where the alcove was. His hands were still shaking. “I always suspected they were. I feel for the poor submissive who gets between them.”

He didn’t consider until he was walking gingerly down the stairs that he was the submissive in question. It was almost sad, in a way. Olivier had been sweet enough, when Sabre turned him down, but there must have been something festering under the surface.

Lord Chastain—the proper one, not his son, Devon—met Sabre in the common room. He gave Sabre a curious look, lingering on his wrinkled clothes and loose hair, but rose from the couch when Sabre bowed.

“Your manners are still atrocious,” Lord Chastain said, as Sabre led him up the stairs. “I never did understand why your father chose to let you run wild for so long.”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” Sabre said, opening the door. “I was never formally trained.”

“Clearly. Let me see your form. Kneel for me.”

Sabre went to his knees. Lord Chastain hadn’t bothered with form, the first time—He’d simply circled Sabre, asking him questions about his mother, his sister, until Sabre was shaking and close to tears. Now, Lord Chastain took a cane from the wall and circled Sabre again, boots thumping on the rug.

“Chin up,” he said, lifting Sabre’s chin with the end of the cane. “You’re a submissive, not a doormat. And what, exactly, are you doing with your shoulders?”

Sabre rolled his shoulders back, and Lord Chastain sighed.

“That’s three lashes. Four, for your hands. No, you imbecile, not on your thighs, behind your back. Legs like so.” He pushed Sabre’s knees slightly apart.

“I…apologize, my lord,” Sabre said.

“I don’t need to hear you talk,” Lord Chastain said. He sighed again, heavily. “Over the desk. Don’t drape yourself over it like a cast-off coat, boy. Count the lashes.”

The cane cracked over Sabre’s upper thighs, and he gripped the desk tight. “One.”

“It comes from your father being a progressive, I suppose,” Lord Chastain said. “This lapse in your training. Your descent into your mother and sister’s treachery.”

Pain flared, and Sabre had to hold onto the desk to stop himself from rubbing his cock along the side of it. “Two.”

“Imagine. Making a submissive son your heir when he could have sired another. It’s no wonder your mother found him so odious.” Sabre tensed, and Lord Chastain leaned over the desk, holding back his hair. “You don’t think so? The whole court knew she hated him. All you needed was a pair of eyes.”

He caned Sabre until he was squirming, just on the edge of enough, and stopped, setting the cane aside. Sabre couldn’t suppress the sound he made, then, and Lord Chastain looked at him sharply, his gray-green eyes hard.

“Did you want more?” Lord Chastain asked. “You, the son of Arthur de Valois, who suppressed the insurrection on the northern coast? Pity’s sake, I almost wonder if you would have liked being held down by the king. A Valois, yearning for a boot on their neck. What a strange creature you are.”

He stepped forward, pulling a lock of hair from Sabre’s face, and gripped the lot of it in his fist. Sabre braced for the pain, and something flashed in Lord Chastain’s eyes.

“To think your mother kept a masochist locked away in her estate,” he said, softly. “What a waste. Get on the bed, boy. Let’s see if you’ve learned something useful in your time here.”

* * *

Laurent was not supposedto be here, tonight.

It was Charon, usually, who watched over Sabre. He knew just how much a masochist like Sabre could endure, but more than that, he knew how to tell when a submissive who was as much a painslut as Sabre was enjoying himself, not just enduring.

Nanette or Simone would pop in, when Charon was booked. He’d asked Laurent if he could take less clients, so that he could see to Sabre’s safety.

“You know this will mean longer to repay your debt,” Laurent had told him, carefully, when Charon had asked.

Charon had clicked his heels together, straightened and raised his chin—then bowed, which was apparently how Arkoudai officers showed respect. “My debt will never be repaid in money, my lord. This service eases it more than you know.”

So Charon gave up a few clients a night to keep watch over Sabre, but there were some that even Laurent couldn’t reschedule. Charon was with one, now, and Simone was under the weather with a cold, so that left either Nanette or Laurent. And it was Lady Cordelia’s night, the young woman who was Nanette’s favorite client, who came up with such elaborate character roleplay that they spent the majority of their time together gossiping, sewing, and writing backstories in Lady Cordelia’s leather-bound notebook.

The last time, apparently, they’d fully dragged out Lord Danger’s issues with his overbearing father and why he was so keen to join up with the navy, despite being terrified of pirates.

So he couldn’t in good conscience ask her to miss that, given that Lady Cordelia’s doting, older husband was more than happy to supply his young wife with all the crowns she wanted to spend on her favorite whore. Laurent therefore sat in the alcove and watched Lord Oscar Chastain suddenly start to sing a different tune.

He’d known it would happen, eventually. Some noble eager to hurt Sabre for his family’s transgressions would get it out of his system, but then notice how lovely Sabre looked when he cried, how pretty he was on his knees, and instead of a thing they could hurt, they’d see something else. A wounded animal in need of tending. A misunderstood whore waiting for the right patron to find the good in him, find his bruised heart of beaten gold and polish it up to a proper shine.

He hadn’t thought it would be Lord Chastain, but Laurent should have really learned not to be surprised anymore. He’d been in this business long enough to have seen just about everything, and this was fairly classic behavior; older, wiser client, suddenly aware the whore they were paying to fuck or hurt or both was a person, perhaps in need of being saved.

It was an act, of course. Some were better at it than others—Yves could teach lessons, if he wanted—and Laurent knew a few in the House of Gold who could pout just so, cry so pretty their clients gave them hot chocolate and cuddles instead of a flogger or a good fuck. It was a business, and people liked to feel special. Laurent hadn’t been terribly good at the wounded faun act, himself, but the current top-earner in the House of Gold, Gabriel la Nuit, could have raised an army of men who wanted to protect him, if he’d wanted to.

With Sabre, though. His vulnerability was as attractive as suffering, simply because it was so honest. And Oscar Chastain was many things, but if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to find vulnerable creatures who were trying to hide, flush them out and trap them.

He had Sabre trapped, now, on the bed beneath him. Laurent had been mildly surprised that Lord Chastain had returned for another session, given he hadn’t fucked Sabre the first time, and he’d been one of Sabre’s first clients. It hadn’t been because he’d come too quickly, either, or was too taken in by disgust to work himself up, as had happened with his son—and kept happening, according to a frustrated Sabre. It hadn’t seemed as if he would, tonight, but something had changed.

And Laurent knew exactly what it was. Lord Chastain looked at Sabre and saw not the son of a traitor and a whore, but a man who moaned prettily under a cane and begged to be put so firmly in his place, untried and unsure of himself, someone who needed to be saved. And there was enough truth to it, wasn’t there, for Sabre to sell it without even having to try?

Laurent watched as Lord Chastain pushed his trousers down, freed his cock and climbed on the bed to kneel over Sabre. He flipped Sabre on his back, stared down at him, and even through the partition Laurent could hear how hard he was breathing, could sense the sea change that had taken him.

“They say true masochists are the rarest jewel of all, did you know that?”

“I—have heard that, yes, my lord,” Sabre panted, guileless and eager and probably more than a little afraid, with it written so clearly on his lovely, tear-streaked face.

“And did you know that you were one?” Lord Chastian asked, his tone heated, his stare intense, no longer disinterested, no longer smirking.

“I was not trained for any of it, my lord,” Sabre said, which was of course the truth, and would only inflame Chastain further, probably.

“What a ridiculous waste. Your mother, she had no idea what you were, a diamond in a draw of paste glass.” Chastain smacked him across the face, and Sabre’s moan was pained, aching, and his hips pushed up, too eager. “I wouldn’t have believed it. The king must not know, or else why would he have sent you here? It’s more a reward than a punishment—” Chastain went quiet, staring down at Sabre. “Maybe you weren’t being punished at all.”

Laurent’s fingers dug into his palm, hard enough that there would be marks there, later. Any idiot with half a brain could tell Sabre wasn’t only just a submissive, did Chastain think himself clever, for figuring out what Laurent could tell at a glance?

Get ahold of yourself, it’s not shocking information you’re smarter than a Starian noble. Even if you are one, now.

“I—my lord, I don’t presume to know the king’s—”

Chastain slapped him, hard enough to take the rest of his words and turn them into moans. “We won’t speak of that. I said I wished to see what they’ve taught you here, and I do. To think Lord de Rue saw in you what no one else did. I suppose it takes a whore to know one.”

Laurent smiled in the dark, mentally ignoring all of Chastain’s requests for future assignations. Takes one to know one, indeed.

He took Sabre on his back, staring down at his face, enraptured as he made Sabre beg for it, to be mounted and fucked hard. Sabre’s head tossed on the bed, and Chastain was less a noble lording over a disgraced peer’s son and just a man, a dominant with a touch of sadism watching an eager masochist fall apart beneath him.

“Beg me to hurt you, Sabre,” Chastain ordered, and Laurent’s eyes narrowed. It was the first time any of his clients had called Sabre by his given name, and he didn’t like it even though he knew it shouldn’t matter. Laurent cursed himself as a fool even as he idly rubbed his cock with one hand, nails still digging into the skin of his palm on the other.

“Hurt me, please, my lord,” Sabre begged, voice slurred—he hadn’t come tonight, and it was making him frantic, desperate to go under.

To his credit, Chastain didn’t go for the rope, which was far too obvious a choice, and instead used Sabre’s long, unbound hair; he wrapped it around Sabre’s neck and wound the strands like a lead over his wrist, so that every time he pulled his hand back, Sabre choked, strangled by his own hair.

“Look at you, little masochist, you could come from this, couldn’t you?” Chastain’s voice was wrecked, guttural, and when he smacked Sabre right on his hard cock, Sabre bucked beneath him, babbling yes, please, please, let me.

“You like this,” Chastain whispered, speeding up, fucking Sabre so hard the bed frame rattled and the headboard knocked against the wall.

Laurent caught himself rubbing the hard press of his cock through his pants with his palm, scowled and went back to digging his nails in instead. He wanted Chastain to tell Sabre no, to leave him there on the bed, wrecked and unsatisfied so that Laurent could do it, finish him off, put him under.

But Chastain was not the idiot his son was, apparently, and he let Sabre come, kissing him while Sabre wailed his pleasure and came between them. Chastain came inside him after a few harsh, fierce thrusts, and all but collapsed on Sabre when it was over.

Sabre was still trying to catch his breath, likely finally under after all he’d endured that night, and Chastain didn’t tell him to open his eyes. So he didn’t see the pleased, smirky little smile Chastain smiled at him, but Laurent saw it, and knew it probably didn’t mean anything good.

That was further proven when, instead of leaving out of the rear of the establishment as all nobles did, Chastain made a point to ask after Laurent and meet him in his office.

Laurent almost refused, but Sabre was done for the evening and fast asleep in his little bed, and Laurent was the lord of the House of Onyx and had his own responsibilities to see to. So he made himself presentable and greeted Lord Chastain with the easy, blank smile he’d spent years on his back cultivating, and said, “Is anything amiss, Lord Chastain?”

“No, no. I’m simply here to congratulate you, Lord de Rue. True masochists are quite a find. I imagine Lord Julien of the House of Gold will be beside himself, when he hears you tricked him out of one.”

“Ah, but you see, the House of Gold isn’t quite equipped to handle a creature such as our Sabre. But I am, of course, pleased to know that you enjoyed your time with him.”

Lord Chastain had the look of all dominants who were well satisfied, but there was something else there, something Laurent didn’t quite trust. The cruel, sly look of a fox watching a den of baby rabbits, figuring out best how to make off with them under their mother’s horrified eyes. He slid a ring off his finger and pushed it over Laurent’s desk. “Give him that for me. A token. I’ve heard it is useful to pay one’s debt. Impossible in his case, given the amount, but he should know when he’s pleased his client.”

“Of course, my lord,” Laurent said, smoothly, taking up the ring and placing it in the small box marked with Sabre’s name, where clients could leave such baubles or tips, if they wished. His accumulated only scraps or pennies or, once, a piece of colored fabric that Sabre had finally stammered out was ripped from his sister’s gown on her way to the gallows.

Other than de Mortain’s gift, this would be the first he’d received.

“Sabre will be grateful, of course,” Laurent added. And I am quite curious as to how you know the amount of his debt at all, given no one does, outside the House lord and Isiodore de Mortain.

“You’ll reschedule my appointments so they are with him for the foreseeable future, and see that mine are first in the evening. I’m an important man and do not care to go second.”

Especially not when you’re penciled in after your son, you pompous peacock. “Certainly, I shall amend the schedule and send it along.”

“No, no. That won’t be necessary, I’ll send a messenger. Do put together the requirements for travel, if you would, I’d like him to accompany me later this month to a fête I’m attending for His Majesty.”

The bloody hunting party, the one the king himself had requested Sabre attend? That would cause some chaos, certainly, but Laurent just nodded and said, “I shall consult the schedule, you understand he’s quite…popular.”

“With the fools who don’t know what he is,” Chastain sniffed, as if he’d known any different an hour ago, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Laurent’s easy smile lasted until Chastain took his leave, and then he took the ring from the box and went back upstairs. He could hear the sounds of the house in business all around him—Nanette and her client laughing, the rhythmic thwack followed by a sob as Charon worked someone over, Yves begging daddy, please, don’t hurt me! In such a ridiculous tone that Laurent would smile, were he in a better mood. Yves might be what Chastain called a paste jewel, but Laurent was fond of him, far more than most.

But he pushed into Sabre’s room without knocking, staring at the mess there, the furniture knocked over, the torn clothing, the hangman’s rope used as a plaything—and the submissive on the bed, bruised and messy-haired and fast asleep with a smile on his face.