This one – a young, strong, dark-haired man, with a smith's arms and burn scars flecking his skin – doesn't look up at all.

He's knelt by a small boulder surrounded by cairns, deep in the woods, head bowed in thought or prayer.

As the shadow passes over him, he lays a bundle of small white wildflowers on the central stone.

He doesn't normally go for boys, doesn't normally go for people whose bodies show strength instead of softness...

But he likes this one. The burns are a nice touch. Ziraga imagines pinning him down, feeling him struggle futilely... yes, that would be lovely. Exactly what he's in the mood for.

His dive is nearly silent. A whispering ripple as his feathers cut the air. Then his talons close on the young man's shoulders, piercing flesh to scrape against bone, and he's flaring his wings and climbing the sky again.

He screams — halfway moans — struggles against the eagle’s iron grip.

Struggling does interestingly painful things to his talon-skewered shoulders, but does not get him any closer to freedom. And after a few seconds they're high enough off the ground that he'd be best advised to stop trying.

Okay.

His turn to die, then.

He goes limp in the talons — the same ones he saw before, he knows it — and stares numbly down at the receding ground.

The flight back to the tower takes only a few minutes. It looms over the forest, an impossibly tall black spire glittering with ornamentation in rubies, obsidian, and gold.

The eagle deposits Seva on a balcony near the top of the tower, then lands next to him, blurring into the form of a tall man with messy black hair and strikingly bright golden eyes. If he had any remaining doubts about the identity of his kidnapper, he can let go of them now; there's only one person in the world with eyes that colour.

Lord Ziraga does not bother to conjure himself clothes after his shape-change. He's watching Seva, instead, admiring the bloody holes in his shoulders, pausing a moment to see if he does anything interesting.

His face twists.

He’s shaking with terror, but he still looks up at him, meets his eyes completely, and then spits at his feet.

...his eyebrows lift slightly in surprise, and—well, the boy's already helpfully making eye contact—

A shimmering golden haze engulfs Seva's mind, like he's falling endlessly into the wizard's eyes. And Ziraga looks to find out what in the world he can have been thinking.

An image of a smiling boy in a long dress, one Zirava might remember, although it’s colored by nostalgic love and grief.

That same boy, being carried away by an eagle, screaming and sobbing — this man chasing them down until he collapses.

Hatred-despair-fear-anger-pain. He has nothing to lose but his life and he’s losing that already, so he might as well make his feelings absolutely clear.

...you know, he can respect that.

Not enough to let him go, but an amount, certainly.

The golden waves recede. Seva is able to think and move again.

Ziraga picks him up casually with one hand around his neck and carries him through the balcony door and into the bedroom.

It's... exactly the sort of bedroom you'd expect Lord Ziraga to have. Everything is beautiful and comfortable and slightly intimidating, and there's an excessive amount of gold.

He twitches, clearly trying his best not to struggle or choke.

He doesn’t quite manage it.

He rips Seva's clothes off and tosses him onto the bed, then pounces. His fingers dig into the holes in Seva's shoulders.

The blankets are very soft and very, very red; they hardly show the blood at all.

He takes quick, shallow breaths and grits his teeth and shudders under Ziraga’s hands, clearly trying with all his might not to make a sound.

Oh, that's fun.

He licks blood from his fingers, pauses thoughtfully, and then pins Seva to the bed and ducks down to lick and bite at the wounds. His tongue explores each puncture mark with force and enthusiasm.

He’s practically hyperventilating, now, alternately squirming violently in Ziraga’s grip and going completely rigid. He lets out the occasional near-silent whimper, and every time he clenches his teeth and tries and tries not to make another sound.

It's lovely. His obvious effort to keep silent makes every little whimper into an accomplishment worth celebrating.

After a few minutes of leisurely exploration, Ziraga gives Seva's shoulder one last playful bite and sits up, humming to himself. He puts a hand to Seva's throat and casually leans on it to keep him still, then glances around the room. Something bright yellow-orange and glowing flies into his hand—

—and he drops the glowing ember into one of the deepest puncture marks, and leans his weight there too, pressing down on the wound so nothing can escape it.

He screams.

All the pent-up sound seems to escape him at once, an ear-splitting tortured sound barely quelled by the hand on his throat. He thrashes under him, tears welling up in his eyes.

(He can’t actually control whether he starts to get hard, and he can’t hide it, either.)

...oh, now that is new. New and exciting.

He lets go and moves back a little to sit on Seva's legs so he can reach down and explore these new possibilities. He's not particularly gentle about it, but not outright violent either, not yet.

One hand tries to scratch the ember out. The other flies up to cover his face.

His breath hitches as Ziraga touches him, and he digs his fingernails into his forehead, making a clipped, broken whine through his teeth that sounds awfully like he’s about to cry.

What a delicious treat he is. Ziraga is so glad he picked this one.

And speaking of delicious treats...

He shifts his fingernails to claws, the better to get a really, really solid grip on Seva's hips, and then he lowers his head and takes Seva's cock in his mouth. He's surprisingly good at this, for someone so famously, violently selfish.

He manages to dig the ember out just as Ziraga’s claws dig in and his mouth touches him.

He lets out a sharp, winded whimper like he’s been punched in the gut, and his other hand joins the first on his face, now-scorched fingertips digging into his hairline.

“Nononono—”

He’s squirming almost as hard as he did when Ziraga was holding an ember in his wound.

Ziraga makes a pleased sound and does something interesting with his tongue.

Squirm though Seva might, the wizard's hands hold him down just the same, pinning his hips conveniently in place. Iron would have more give than this.

Eventually he seems to realize that no matter how violently he squirms, it’s not going to get him anywhere.

He’s definitely close to tears, now, from the tenor of the little gasps, and clearly trying valiantly not to respond to Ziraga’s mouth. When Ziraga does that particular thing with his tongue again, he has to choke back a moan, and makes a noise of deep frustration and anguish once he has.

Those are some pretty excellent noises. Ziraga suspects he can get even better ones if he uses his teeth.

Is he right?

He can. He can get gasping and more choked moans and pleading, nonononono, and barely disguised whimpers of pleasure—

And when he comes, he sobs outright.