Content warnings can be found here

Teddy gave another nod, but it was no larger than the last one, and his eyes were screwed up tight. He hung between the bedposts, his flesh waxen pale. All of him looked damp. 

Peaches put the whip down on the bed and touched his chest, the long, hollow curve of his ribs. He twitched back from her touch with a little catch of whimpering sound. His skin was cold. She put her hand under his chin, as gently as if she were handling something made of glass, and pushed his head up a touch. His stubble rasped on her skin, and she felt all the tension in the muscles, the sinews corded and taut. 

“Teddy,” she said, soft. “Let go of the bed.”

He made a sound that was not speech, but was not him crying out, either. 

And although she would wrap him in her arms, although she would have him stop this, now, she made her voice brisk and sharp, “Do it, Valance.”

His hands spasmed open and were drawn shaking to his sides. He trembled where he stood, tears still running over his cheeks, falling on to her hands. He seemed about to fall himself. 

“Down here,” Peaches said, “Onto the bed.” She could not let even the smallest note of fear into her voice, could not let that tone of command leave her. 

Teddy stumbled forwards and fell beside her, putting up his hands to shield his head, but nothing more. His back was a wreck of bruises, welts and broken skin and Peaches felt a sudden, curling guilt at her heart. 

He still had not opened his eyes.

“Look at me,” she said, but she said it too gently. “Now. Look at me, Valance.”

But Teddy only curled in on himself more, his hands over his face, his head tucked down to his chin.

“That weren’t a request.” She grabbed what she could of his hair, twisting his head to face her, “Open your bloody eyes.” 

Small and fearful, he did. His irises were clear, brilliant blue, and he was such a long way behind them, so very, very far away. 

“You’re mine,” she made herself say it. Forced herself to speak the words aloud. “And you don’t get to go away from me like that. Not without my leave. Is that clear, Valance?”

And somewhere, some life in him flickered, and he gave another tiny, frightened nod.

Then, only then, Peaches let herself touch his face again with the tenderness that she felt, long smooth strokes of affection on his rough, glistening cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” said Teddy, and his voice was a shattered whimper, “I’m sorry, I…”

She put one of her hands over his and he seized it, pulling it to his lips and just holding it there, letting his tears soak it, his breath coming hot against her fingers. There was something worshipful in the action, something desperate, as though he were pleading for something from her - forgiveness, love, or perhaps just more pain.

Staring at him in awestruck horror, Peaches felt something in her stir. Love, obviously, but arousal, too. 

He lay before her like a crushed moth, and she held him, as it were, cupped in the hollow of her hand. She could break him, clench her fist and press him to fragments. It would be easy - much easier than letting him lie here, under her care, until he was strong again. The sense of power was as heady as gin. 

She tensed her fingers over his own, permitted him to go on kissing at them as she worked her other hand up over his cheekbone, down across his jaw and round the back of his neck, into his hair. She tugged at his curls in the sort of smooth, possessive motion that someone would use to pet a favourite dog. Sitting, poised, she knew that she could annihilate him with some cruelty, or bring him crashing down at her feet with an endearment, and her lips trembled with the potency of the moment.

“Sorry,” he whispered, a low, abject chant. “Please, I’m sorry, I…”

“Shhh,” she said, deciding at last. “It’s alright, Teddy.”

At her voice, he tensed again, a shudder going through him, pulling her hand to his lips.

She stroked his hair, feeling nothing but love, love and ownership. 

You’ll lose him, whispered the voice in the heart of her. You’ve always known you will lose him.

But not now. Not yet.

“I’ve got you. You’re safe,” she said. 

He opened his eyes and clung to her hand, “I don’t… You shouldn’t… You should kick me out, you should…”

“Why should I do that, Teddy?” and she ran her hand over his forehead, along the bridge of his nose, across his soft, pretty lips.

“Because I’m worthless. Because I’m nothing, I’m just… I’m just a stupid molly, a worthless… dog, a…”

“You’re mine.”

“Yes,” and he sobbed it. “Yes, I’m yours, I’m…”

“And you’re mine. So, I’m the one who gets to decide if you’re worth anything. Are we clear on that?”

He pulled her hand closer, clutching it, crushing her fingers with his strength, with his weakness.

“Are we clear on that?”

“Yes. Yes.”

She let out a long, cool breath, and brought her hand down the back of his neck, down to between his shoulder-blades. He tensed as they moved towards the swollen, reddened skin. “You’re my toy,” she said. “My man. My pretty whipping post.” With a feather-touch, she slid her fingertips over the welts, the scabs, the still bleeding cuts. “And that’s worth something, alright?”

He said nothing, only trembled.

“You didn’t sing,” she said after a moment, keeping her voice neutral.

“No,” he said, less as though he were proud of it, and more as though it were obvious.

She moved her hands away from the cuts and went back to caressing his neck, his hair, his lips. Teddy shifted, and curled himself around where she sitting, a child-like grasping after comfort. 

“You could have asked me to stop,” she said, but he stared at her with such incomprehension that she did not say any more on the matter. 

The enamelled clock on the mantle ticked the time by as Teddy lay, wrapped around her, and slowly, slowly, the shaking and the tears fell away, and his hands began to climb her back, to stroke her thighs, and then where his hands had been, he laid tender, eager kisses, and then he was on his knees beside her, head still bowed, and saying, “Dear God, but I worship you.”

Peaches touched his face again, his chin, his lips, the curled, thick flesh of his ears where there was still the little, white nick of scar Dandy Pete had left there. “I know.”

He bowed, kissing the feet she had brought up next to her on the bed, laying his mouth again and again upon the sole of her boot until he had quieted the desperate breathing, the wild ardour that still blazed, trembling, beneath his every action, his every word. “Anything,” he said. “I’d do anything. You’ve ruined me. I…” His eyes blazed longing and submission.

“Have I, now?”

The words sent him over whatever edge he walked, and he bowed his head once more as if there was no way he could abase himself to his own satisfaction, as if the rapture rushing though him were beyond all possible means of expression. Part of her thrilled to this worship, the abandon of him, the way that he began to fret at his britches and moan and kiss her neck, lick the lobe of her ear, or lay his head against her boot and breathe as though awaiting her slightest command. 

She wanted to put her hands on him, to caress this loveliness, this true face of him, where all his defences and humour had been swept away by the crack of her belt against his skin. She wanted to turn him over and take her pleasure of him, careless of the bruises on his back, wanted it so very much. 

“Ask me anything,” he said. “Have anything of me.”

Her hand hesitated on his cheek.

Drop this grudge with Dickie Thornton. 

Stop this game you’re playing.

And he would. If she asked him now, if she told him to do it now, he would stop. But that would make her as bad as the bastard who had got him in to this state – who had left him  chasing down a chance of vengeance as if it was the only thing that could clear away the wounds left by years of torture, violence, and neglect.

Because, oh yes, she loved to hear those stories, loved to see his cock get hard when he talked about whippings and beatings, when he talked about being made to strip off, being made to kneel and beg, but she knew the difference between a lover who would do those things to you if you wanted it, and the kind of man who took them even as he shrugged off your affections as worthless. 

She sat, holding him, knowing she could use her hold on him to command him, could use his perversions to twist his behaviour, and he would let her, and he would not hate her for it. 

No. It would just bind them closer. She could tell him to leave it and take her back to Forthenby tomorrow, and there they would be, safe: Peaches and Teddy until the very end of their days, pulling a great jape on the whole rest of the world.

But this was Teddy Valance, her Teddy Valance. 

She had always known she would not get to keep him. 

She said, “On your back, Valance. I want to fuck you.” 

And she took what she was given now, and did not ask for anything more.