Disclaimer: Alliance/Atlantis are profiteers who own Fraser and RayK; I just do it for the twisted joy of it.

Author's Notes: It was 4am on a Tuesday morning of the week before finals in an 8 week summer session where I'm taking 18 credit hours/5 classes. I NEEDED to write dark and damaged.

Story Notes: No beta-ing except spellcheck in Word. I apologize in advance for all errors, which are mine.

It made it easier, somehow. Cuffed to the bed by both wrists, the stretch in the back of his shoulders and neck starting to hurt, you wouldn't think that would be true. But somehow it was. It was just easier this way.

Oh, he'd tried, he really had. For years. But there was something in Stella that just wouldn't tell him what he needed to know, what he shouldn't do, what he should be doing that he wasn't. And there was too much proud teenage boy left in him to really ask. Proud and terrified - not really wanting to know the answer, not really wanting to know how bad he was doing.

It was good, though, despite that. It was fucking great. He might have fumbled around enough - certainly in the beginning - but they did develop a rhythm and a... taste for each other. Got to know each other's likes and dislikes, loves... buttons to push, both good and bad. Apparently he pushed a lot of the bad ones. But he had also learned, or so he thought, how to push (and stroke and squeeze and lick) all the good ones, too.

But that hadn't been enough. Not for Stella, anyway. Ray, well... he'd known something was missing. But, like any red-blooded pussy-whipped manboy, knowing something was missing wasn't enough to make him bail. In fact, knowing it was missing and slipping away had kind of made him hold on tighter... keep coming back... keep getting pushed away... only to get the occasional welcome... which, like any intermittent and unpredictable reward system, kept him coming back...

Until Stella had had enough. Only when Stella had had enough was it really over.

And still not over for Ray. And probably never would be.

And maybe that was why he was here. And why he was waiting for her, but thinking about Stella.

The warmth of the room and Ray's near-nakedness washed over him again. His bony feet were sticking out from under the light sheet that covered him ankles to nipples. These damn hotel room forced air heaters... heat like a furnace, if you wanted. And just as dry. No sooner did sweat break out on his brow - or back - or the backs of his knees - than it would dry.

He closed his eyes again. They couldn't be more different. Stella was hard on the surface, but oh-so-soft when you got her guard down and her clothes off. Fiery and passionate... unwilling to admit it, half the time, but definitely soft and warm.

This one seemed so soft, so pretty, so fiery on the surface. But you had to get to know her to find out just how hard and cold she was when you got her guard down. There was no "guard down" with her. There was "shields up" - and WALLS up.

But that had some advantages. Shuddering, convulsive, oh-my-God-I-didn't-know-my-body-could-do-that advantages.

Disadvantages too. Shuddering, jerking away, shit-I-didn't-know-my-body-could-take-that disadvantages.

He didn't love her. He didn't. He still loved Stella. He probably always would, somewhere in his heart. Never be able to eradicate that little spark that fired up when Stella was around.

He figured Fraser figured he was just a glutton for punishment... the way he'd always pursued Stella, and gotten shot down, in front of everyone in the squad room.

Fraser had no idea just how much a glutton for punishment Ray really was. And if Fraser ever found out, well, it wouldn't be because Ray revealed it.

He jerked his right wrist, cuffed to the brass headboard, and listened to it jingle. Felt his spiked straw-colored hair flattening as he lay there.

Hum of the heater/A/C unit. Breath of hot air across what little of him was exposed. He took a deep breath and held it. And listened...

The GTO. He sure had had no intentions of letting her drive it. Ever. That was reserved only for certain people. Like Fraser. Despite the Mountie's tendency to drive so ineptly as to fail utterly to take advantage of all that the GTO could do...

Not this one. But she'd driven it once, and driven it so well, he'd just handed her the keys the next time. It was weird being in the passenger seat in his own car. But now that's how it always was when they met up. He drove to wherever she was, but then she drove the GTO the rest of the night. Until she was done with Ray. Then he had to pull his shit together enough to drive her home.

So, yeah, weird to be a passenger in his own car. But, again, easier...

So, over and above the continuous light rasp of the heater, he heard the GTO's low rumble in the parking lot outside and downstairs from the crummy hotel room he was in, cuffed to the bed. Bed was okay for bondage. Not so good for sleep. But since when did she really let him sleep, nights when they met like this?

He let the breath he'd been holding go. Not explosively. In a long, almost whistling sigh.

What was really ridiculous was the bargain he'd made. Sucker. That's what he'd told himself... only later. The whole experience with Beth Botrelle had shaken him so bad that he couldn't look at a hard woman and not wonder what had happened, what she got pinned on her that she didn't really do.

Should've known with the masses of long, black curls, and the occasional sneer to her lip, that this one had actually done something. Done a lot of somethings.

But no, he'd had to listen to her sob story. He'd realized after she'd sucked him in that it was not exactly a sob story, no.

And Ray must have been looking for it. Wanting to hear some really good justification for what she'd put Fraser through. Because as much as Ray had originally wanted to put her in her place, he'd also already known how easily Fraser could rip someone's heart out without even realizing it, with his damned morals and ethics and goody-two-shoes behavior. And how dangerous that could be for a Chicago cop: hesitation, second-guessing - those got you dead. But that was what Fraser did. Made him unconfident. In so many ways. And for various reasons...

So, even though Ray had had every intention of hunting her down, "neutralizing the threat" she posed, and putting her back away... It wasn't just that she was pretty. No, it was more that she made sense. She was like every snitch Ray had ever had and watched slowly and inextricably get sucked into the downward spiral... except without her getting inextricably sucked. She'd resisted the downward spiral, to a certain extent. But that didn't mean she wasn't "in touch" with her anger, her rage. Her fury.

And Ray could understand why it was directed at Fraser. He'd never liked, okay, loved, a man who got under his skin and made him feel like shit as much as he loved Fraser even as Fraser did all that to him.

So at least Ray had talked her out of the revenge. At least he'd convinced her not to do what she wanted to do to Fraser.

But only by offering himself instead. Another one of those monumentally stupid Kowalski moves. He wondered how criminals could set off the alarm bells, so easily; and criminal women, too (Ladyshoes)... and yet somehow, with this one, all her charms hit him immediately with the dumb stick, so he either didn't see the red flags or hear the alarm bells, or he saw them and heard them and pretended they weren't there. Face first into a bad fate, was where Ray was headed, he figured.

Face up, so far tonight. So far.

"It's not the same," she'd said flatly after the first time they'd acted one scenario out. "You're not innocent enough, you're not sweet enough. You're not naive enough. If you were, you wouldn't be with me, you wouldn't know all you know and still be here. You've got 'cop' written all over you in ways he never did." And she had slapped him. Hard.

And the only thing that had kept him from half-spinning around was the fact that he was tied to the chair. Very securely. Girl knew how to tie a guy up. No big surprise there, Ray supposed.

So much water under the bridge. Culvert. Whatever.

He heard the rumble of the GTO under the rasp of the room heater. Heard it cease.

Any moment now.

Probably the worst part was she'd ferreted out everything Ray had tried to hide - not just from everyone else, but even from himself. Oh, he'd tried to tell himself he was just being protective. And jealous. Cuz Fraser was a chick magnet, and so when chicks yanked his chain, Ray both wanted to hurt them and wanted to be the chain-yanked Fraser at the same time. Cuz chicks never paid him, Ray, that much attention. They practically fell in Fraser's lap... and he was oblivious.

But this dark beauty, oh, she knew. She'd figured it out real quick. Ray had denied it, of course. And how the hell had she known? The sexual hijinks of prison, as he used to think of it? But how bad could it be in a women's prison? What could she have learned about man-on-man lust in there?

Didn't matter. Maybe it was just a matter of survival for her to know these things. To have the edge in every situation. To be able to size someone up in order to dress them down if necessary. And so she figured it out, real quick. How Ray had wanted Fraser, with an even worse longing than Stella, because Stella he had HAD, even if he'd lost her. But there was simply no having Fraser. Fraser was a man's man. Or a monk. Ray wasn't sure which, or maybe it was both; whichever it was, it was impossible. And Ray would never, ever have the nerve to ruin everything by letting Fraser know how he felt.

And she'd only had to spend one night with Ray to figure out that it was Fraser he dreamed of most nights. Fraser dreams that got him hard. Fraser dreams of things Ray had never done. 'Til her. Which wasn't exactly the same. But when she was doing it, he could close his eyes and pretend. Visualize it. Imagine it was Fraser.

'Course, Fraser would (or would he?) never be as cruel as she was. But then again, maybe Fraser had a hidden side Ray didn't know about. Ray had to admit, Fraser must have been either pretty brainwashed by concepts of "duty," or pretty fucking cold, to do what he'd done to her.

Cuz Ray sure as hell had a hidden side Fraser didn't know about. And Ray would probably just die of embarrassment and humiliation if Fraser ever found out. But then sometimes a little flash, like a minnow deep in the backwater of his own thoughts, made Ray think how much easier it might be if Fraser did know. It could all be settled once and for all.

So despite the deep shame that still made his cheeks flush to think of it, he loved it. This. With her. Abuse. He might as well call it what it was. Submission, abuse, being dominated.

He didn't love her. He loved IT. That's what he told himself. Somehow what he felt for her was both less and more than love. It was less because there was Stella to compare it to - and things with Stella had never been, would never be, this weird and twisted. And because the only other thing to compare it to, besides Stella, the Fraser-thing, had been locked up tight inside Ray, so tight and hidden, he had only been ducking his dreams of Fraser and pretending it was post-traumatic stress ever since, what, since he met Fraser?

So, no, he didn't love her. What he felt for her was less than love. Because she wasn't Fraser.

But it was also more than love because, because... Because Ray had to love her, didn't he? To let her do the things she did to him? Because she held up a mirror to him and let him know just how much he was asking for it? Just how much of a good boy victim he was, deep down inside? Just how much he needed to be violated in all the ways she violated him? Because it... it... it was so damned intimate. It was beyond love because of that intimacy.

He hated that word. It was a chick word. But... that's really what it was. Even when they didn't have sex, which was half the time, unless you counted Ray involuntarily ejaculating on HER schedule, not his own, which he supposed was a KIND of sex, but not what he would really call sex. It was so damned intimate. She'd gotten inside his head, she got inside his body, she made him serve her, lick her, caress her, perform for her, show her how he did himself at home in his easy chair with a hand towel to wipe up the jizz... and then she fed him his own cum, which somehow seemed so right and yet deeply humiliating at the same time.

And then she'd driven deeper still. So cruel, so sweet, so gentle, so mean, that it all got mixed up into something that was more than pleasure and somehow less than pain, even though it hurt, it always hurt, it hurt like a sonofabitch every time she started with Ray, no matter how she started. But it only started that way. It didn't end that way. It never seemed to end with hurt until he'd stopped jerking and coming HARD and then when he was back in his body, which might be stretched tight and aching, or crunched up and cramping, or spread wide and trembling, or raw in spots, or red. And sometimes there were welts. And sometimes he had to wear long sleeves for several days.

He heard her footsteps on the dingy carpet in the hall. She'd brought the riding crop tonight. And a bigger toy than last time. Last time, he had knelt until the carpet had made his knees look like sponge, and his jaw and tongue ached, but he'd licked, and kept licking, and got slapped or his hair pulled or his neck pinched or got grabbed by his wheatstraw hair and had his head jerked back when he deviated even slightly from exactly what she wanted. And then, when he thought his tongue and jaw couldn't take any more, she turned around and made him lick the other side.

And he'd done it. Why? Because that was what she wanted. Because she knew exactly what she wanted. And he didn't have to ask, have to fumble, have to hint, have to look nervously at reactions. No, if it wasn't exactly what she wanted, she just pushed and pulled and smacked (among other things) Ray into exactly what she wanted him to be doing at exactly the time she wanted it and exactly the place on her body she wanted it.

It was such a relief not to have to be in charge and not to have to "know" what to do in every minute detail. It was so much easier to be told, ordered, shown, positioned, coached, coerced, and generally forced to get it right.

He heard the keys jingling at the lock. None of that plastic magnetic key crap for shitty, dive motels like this one.

The door opened and she strode in, purse and keys jingling, slamming the door behind her and then locking it.

She dropped purse and keys and jacket on the dresser by the door, next to the TV stand. Turned quick, long black curls swinging over her shoulder, and, just like that, she was sitting on the bed near Ray's armpit, checking his wrists for red marks.

"Not yet," she half-purred. "Good. There's still time for more punishment."

"Well, my arms..."

"C'mon, Ray. Don't be such a wimp. We made a deal." She arched a black eyebrow at him and that slight sneer wrinkled her lip.

He had no idea, no way of knowing, if this was how the "pros" did it, the dungeon queens. He'd heard things in Vice, but he gathered that this was in a realm of its own. Too lightweight for the hardcore people... too intimate for the lightweight people. Too sexual to be hardcore. Too violent to be sexual.

As usual, Ray just didn't fit into any of the available slots.

"I know..." he whispered.

"And you know you owe me." Her voice dropped and her face darkened. "Because he owes me."

"I know."

"And you said if I didn't do anything to him, I could take it out on you. Right?"

"Yeah. I said that."

"And I can do as much as I want, for as long as I want."

"Yes," he assented quietly. This is what I am, he thought. This is what I'm reduced to. Because of... of Stella? Of Fraser? Or was I just always this way, and I didn't know it until I met the one person who could pull every dirty, nameless, shameful thing out of me and show me how much easier this is?

She slowly pulled the sheet off Ray, dragging it especially roughly over his hardening cock.

"Because you love him, don't you," she whispered, her back to the table lamp, black curls haloed around her dark face.

"Yes," he replied, helplessly, staring up at her.

She stood and began stripping out of the black sweater and black jeans. She was down to the black bustier. Ray had paid for that. She had said it would probably be more authentic that way, and he'd agreed. So he'd bought it for her. And he supposed it did make her superficially like every lame-ass dominatrix in every bad S&M porno he'd ever seen that wasn't really S&M, just slap & tickle straight porn. Although he liked the fact that when she wore the tight black Victorian bustier, she didn't wear anything else. Made it easier. Easier to serve.

"And you want him." She stood with hands on her hips at the side of the bed, taunting him.

"Yes," Ray whispered.

"And he'll never want you back that way. 'Cause Fraser's not that kind of man. Right?" she whispered, leaning over him and grabbing his chin.

"Right," he sighed, meeting her eyes.

"Just like he'll never want me that way again. Because I'm bad."

"You are bad," he agreed with a slight smile, squished between her hard fingers.

"You're bad, too," she snapped, not smiling. "Worse."

"I know."

"So we're made for each other." She released his chin and slapped him, hard.

His head snapped to the side and his cheek immediately warmed.

"Turn the other cheek, Ray," she whispered. "Like a good little Catholic boy."

He did. She slapped the other.

"What do you want, Ray?"

"I want you."

"You want me to tell you what to do." She climbed on to him, clambering over him until she sat on his chest, cowgirl style, but with her back to him.

"Yes."

"Yes, what?"

"I want you to tell me what to do."

"Of course you do. And why?" She turned to look over her shoulder at him, and he looked up at her, his arms straining at the cuffs to the head of the bed, just to test what he already knew was true: he wasn't going anywhere.

"Because it's easier this way."

"Easier for who?" She turned back around and grabbed his by now fully erect cock, and began jerking it, rough.

"Easier for me."

She slapped his cock. "No, not for you. Not easier for Ray Kowalski. Why would I want to make it easier for you?"

But you do, he wanted to say. No matter how bad this seems, even to me, I always know where I stand with you. I'm your fucktoy. Your rag doll. Your slut. Your whipping boy. You ALWAYS let me know when I'm not getting it right. And you ALWAYS let me know when I've pleased you. And I get what I want, sort of. Even if I don't want it in the beginning, you always make me want it by the end.

But he didn't say any of that.

"Who, Ray? Who is it easier for?" she repeated impatiently.

"It's easier for you, Victoria."

Her pubic hair brushed his chest and then his chin as she settled her warm, moist cleft over his mouth. A tiny spasm of panic flashed over him. She could, theoretically, suffocate him this way; his hands weren't free to push her ass off his face.

"Pretend it's Fraser's ass," she whispered. "And it's your last chance on earth to make love to him."

And then the panic was gone.

And she squeezed his cock too hard, and started using her nails, hard, harder, still harder, interspersing those raking strokes over his cock with smooth, firm strokes from root to tip, his outcry at each rake muffled between her cheeks, interrupting the work he was trying to do with his tongue.

It was just so much easier this way.

End Easier by Voltairine: voltairine_owl@hotmail.com

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