Trying to pleasure herself in this state hurts badly enough that her breath falls apart into helpless sobs almost immediately, but with the Emperor looking at her like that, it feels like mere moments before she cries out in agonized pleasure. Her body doesn't care how broken it is, it wants to move; her involuntary writhing prompts a wave of pain so intense that her vision goes white and she screams like a dying thing.

He pounces, sinks his teeth into her lovely throat, breaks her wrists with careless strength as he pulls her hands aside, and fucks her with hip-shattering force.

There's something incredible about being needed this badly, about knowing that he's as desperate for her as she is for him, about feeling the physical force of his desire crush her bones to splinters. He could kill her like this, if he was just a little too careless, a little too caught up in the rush; and she loves him for it, loves the shattering pain, loves the thrill of genuine fear, loves the all-consuming intensity of his passion.

He has, just barely, enough presence of mind to hold her together with lifecraft while he fucks her. She bleeds, but the blood is replaced as fast as it flows; a snapped rib pierces her lung, and his magic shoves it out again and heals the damage before she draws another breath. Killing her is the last thing in the world he wants to do; she is precious and beautiful and glorious and she loves him, and he wants to keep her forever.

She hardly notices the healing. Most of what she feels is pain, and the rest is pleasure, and the details are hard to hold onto when instead she could let go and let herself be overwhelmed. She feels his cock moving inside her, and the heat of his body on hers, and the broad sharp blur of pain that comes from a hundred individual broken bones all moving and jarring and grinding and healing and breaking again.

"My Niamira," he breathes in her ear, "my treasure, mine, mine, mine—"

She gasps and trembles and tries to form words, tries to say yes, yours, yours, always, yes; but she lacks both the breath and the coordination. All she can do is sob.

He spills his seed deep inside her, and for a moment just lies there, sprawled over her broken body, feeling her heartbeat and listening to her struggling breath. She is his, and she is wonderful, a magnificent slut who loves to be raped, who begs to be tortured, who welcomes every single fucked-up thing he wants to do to her.

If she hurt a little less, maybe she would feel safe and warm and cherished and satisfied. Instead, she cries with pain and tries not to move.

After a minute or two, he turns his head to kiss her cheek, then heals her and gathers her into his arms.

Oh, there's the feeling she was looking for. She lets out a deeply contented sigh and cuddles into his chest.

"You're so beautiful," he says, running his fingers through her blood-matted hair. It disentangles itself at his touch. "You're amazing."

"Thank you, my lord."

"And I was planning to torture you for hours longer before I gave you what you wanted." He wraps a hand around her throat and presses her into the bed. "Temptress."

She moans.

"On the other hand, maybe it's more fun this way." He squeezes her throat and kisses her.

She kisses back, dizzily, as her vision clouds from lack of air.

He lets go.

"Spread your legs," he says, "and tell me all the things you're afraid of."

With a stifled whimper, she obeys.

"I'm—I'm afraid you'll fuck me to death without even meaning to," she says. "I'm afraid the man who hates me will find a way to kill me before you can stop him."

He starts trailing kisses over her body, following smears of blood. "Go on."

"I'm afraid being gang-raped by the gladiators won't be awful enough without him and you'll have to find something worse to do with me when you want me punished—I'm afraid you'll go through with what you said about making me beg for mercy that I know you won't give me—I'm afraid you'll decide to see how badly you can hurt me without killing me, and make a mistake, and I'll die of it..."

He lifts his mouth from her skin long enough to ask, "What do you think I'd do to you, if I wanted something worse than the fighters to punish you with?"

"I—I don't know—" That clearly isn't good enough. "I don't think you'd really chain me up in public for anyone to use," she says, thinking about it. "It would definitely punish me, but you've never done something like that before, so you'd have to explain it to people, and that would just be tedious."

By this point his mouth has reached her hip; he bites it affectionately, puts his face between her legs, and licks her warm wet cunt.

She shudders and moans, almost losing hold of her thoughts - but it's pretty clear by now that he wants her to keep talking. Either because he wants her frightened while he pleasures her, or because he wants her to design her own punishments so he doesn't have to bother, or both.

"I think.... you'd find someone else, someone who'd hurt me worse," she says, trying very hard to keep her focus despite what he's doing to her with his tongue. "Maybe you'd buy a fresh bunch of fighters from someone who trains them differently, or even look for some lesser nobles who like raping pretty slave girls almost as much as you do. And you'd tell them they'd better not kill me but you want me to suffer, and you'd tell me to be a good slut and do as I'm told. You could—mmm—you could have them do it on a stage, so everyone who isn't busy raping me can watch, and you could tell me to—to think about them watching—think about how everyone knows what a desperate slut I am, how they can all see me begging to be raped—"