Red Roses for Your Lover

“Good morning, Seras. Are you ready for today’s lesson?”

“It won’t matter to you if I’m ready or not.” Seras knew she sounded sullen, and she didn’t particularly care.

“True, but I do have to remember to pretend to civilized niceties while I am forced to live with and serve others.” Walter pulled back a little to look her over. “You really do look a fright, Seras. I think the first thing we need to do is get you cleaned up.”

That didn’t sound so bad. Other than the fact that Seras didn’t know what Walter had in mind and she was afraid of what he’d come up with. She found herself wondering how they bathed on this craft. Were there showers? Surely there wouldn’t be bathtubs. She closed her eyes and thought of sinking into a big bathtub filled with steaming hot water and scented with her favorite bath oils. She could hear Walter open and close the wall locker.

She sucked in a breath when Walter suddenly pulled the coarse blanket off of her, causing it to pull and rub across her many injuries. He tossed it to the foot of the bed and bent to pick her up.

“You know, if you’d just feed me a bit more, you wouldn’t have to carry me around.”

“You have changed, Seras. I remember how difficult it was to get you to drink your blood at all.”

“Look who’s talking about changing.” He chuckled. “If I’d known then what it was like to be this hungry, I probably wouldn’t have given you and Alucard such a hard time about the blood.” She desperately missed the old days (they were just days ago?) when her worst fear was of having to drink the blood that Hellsing supplied her, not this.

“Too late now, Seras. It’s far too late now.” He carried her out of the room and down the hall.

They did have showers. Small, but at least they were individual stalls instead of an open bay like she remembered from school. Walter settled her on the floor of a stall with a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo from what seemed to be a communal reserve. He turned on the water, adjusted the temperature, and stepped away from the spray. He leaned against the wall across from the stall and watched her as she laboriously cleaned off the grime of war, blood, soot and some other things she didn’t want to think about. The hot water was painful on the silver burns, but she did her best to ignore it and get herself clean as quickly as her shaking arms would permit.

By the time she was done, any energy she might have derived from the little wake-up that Walter had given her was long used up. She submitted to his toweling her off with barely a flinch, despite the fact that the towel was rough and he took no care to be gentle with her.

Wrapped in a towel and cradled in his arms once more, Seras had a flashback to being held similarly by Alucard as he carried her away from the charnel house that had been Cheddar. Hadn’t it all started there? She felt a brief flare of hatred for her careless Master. It’s my choice, he told me. I didn’t choose this.

Seras was mortified when Walter didn’t take her directly back to his room, or at least someplace private. Instead, they detoured to a room that seemed to be the vampire version of a cafeteria. The smell of blood was heavy in the air. She didn’t want to think about where the blood that dispensed from coffee urn-style containers came from.

What was worse was that there were people there to witness her, towel-clad and vulnerable in Walter’s hold. She buried her face in his chest when she heard catcalls and comments that, while they may have been in German, were unmistakable in their content. She cringed when she heard him laughingly answer some of the men. It was worse still when she could pick a few names out of the banter: “Seras Victoria, Hellsing, Jolene, Alucard.”

Whatever Walter had told them about Jolene hadn’t made them happy. The tone of the comments changed, but instead of demoralizing her still more, they gave her strength. She had been strong enough to kill that bitch. She was not just some child to be counted out as harmless. She would survive this.

Seras would use the only things she had – her appearance of weakness and the fact that Walter wanted her. If she ever did feel stronger, she would not let anyone know it, and she would do what it took to keep Walter interested. If that meant fighting, she’d fight; if it meant submitting…well, she’d give that her best effort.

Walter accepted a cup of the liquid meal from another uniformed man. Even though he carried it tucked behind her back, she could smell it. It wasn’t just the smell of food, it was the smell of the strength she would need to someday be free again. I’ll teach you some lessons, Walter.

That resolve carried her all the way to Walter’s room. Once there, the fear was waiting for her.

She watched him silently as he settled her on the bed once more and began removing his clothing. There was no indication of the man who had been gentle with her. This was the man who had captured her and laughed as she fought the wires and who had left his marks on her body. She enviously watched every movement of his throat as he drained the cup he had brought with him.

“What’s going to make you happiest today, Walter? Shall I fight you or just take it quietly?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, “That’s a change in tone, Seras. It’s almost what I was looking for yesterday.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes, “Why don’t you just do whatever feels right for you.”

He pushed her back on the bed and sat straddling her knees, holding them down and together with his weight. Walter watched the fear on her face with pleasure.

Seras expected him to resume playing with the marks that seemed to fascinate him so. Instead, he gently slid his fingertips around the cuts. She shivered. Her nerves didn’t know what to tell her brain. He was coming so close to parts of her that would cry out in pain at his touch, but he was bringing such a soothing sensation with his ministrations. She could almost understand what he had meant about juxtapositions – the proximity of anticipated and remembered pain with very immediate pleasure was dizzying.

Her eyes slid closed. As soon as her body relaxed on the bed, he went from gentle to cruel. His fingernails scraped across the welted edges of the roses on her thighs and she stiffened under him again. Walter continued to play his games of pleasure and pain with unexpected transitions from one to the other until Seras’ head was spinning with overload.

When he slid his body to fully cover hers, she didn’t fight him. His kisses were urgent and she responded to them. His lips kept everything spinning for her until his knee nudged her legs apart and she felt him hard against her unexpected wetness. She froze and her eyes flew open. For the second time since waking, she was staring into Walter’s amused eyes from the closest possible point. Neither of them closed their eyes, nor did he remove his mouth from hers as he slowly rubbed against her until they both could feel that he had found his mark.

Her eyes widened and his narrowed and he pushed himself harshly into her. One previous gentle sexual encounter did not make this rougher joining easier. Seras didn’t doubt that it was another of the lessons that he wanted to teach her – it hurt, but she could feel pleasure lurking just under the hurt if she could get a hold on it. She shifted her hips and had a flashing moment that jerked her under him and wrenched a groan from her throat.

Walter began to move, one hand on her hip encouraged her to match him. Seras’ eyes fluttered closed as she got caught up in the pleasure and the pain receded. She was snapped out of it as his nails clawed across a piece of unmarked flesh, it was a shock, but it was strangely…strangely...erotic? What was he doing to her?

They continued this game of pleasure and confused pain. Every time Seras would find that the pleasure outweighed her pains, Walter would add a new one to the list; a shallow bite, a claw drawn over welted skin, a particularly hard thrust. He tortured her with her pleasure until even the pains felt like a lover’s caress. When she had finally reached that point, he brought them both to the edge and then pushed them both over.

The one thing Walter didn’t anticipate in breaking down Seras’ self-control to that degree was that at the moment of orgasm, she bit down on his shoulder. She shuddered with the force of the twin pleasures and Walter was drawn down into his climax and the bliss that came with her teeth in him.

Moments later: “Let go, Seras.” His hands clamped down harshly on her wrists. “Let go, Seras, now.”

She pulled herself away and looked into Walter’s angry eyes. She smiled and licked his blood off of her lips. Even a little bit of revenge was sweeter than the blood in her mouth. She hadn’t felt this good in what felt like forever. She started to fight Walter and was actually able to put some force behind it. She had forgotten until that moment that they were still locked together and that was…(interesting) filled in her conscienceless libido Unfortunately, he’d had as much blood as he wanted recently, while she had been drained and tortured and drained and…(shagged silly) her traitor mind suggested. Walter won their wrestling match and concluded it by taking back the blood she’d borrowed for those short minutes, which started them on another cycle of pleasure and pain and bodies entwined, but this time, Walter was more wary of her teeth.

“Even I need some rest, Seras,” he murmured in her ear. They had finally separated. Walter was lying on his side next to her on the bed. She thought back, and could only guess that Walter had been going non-stop between Millennium’s work for him and “playing” with her, for the past thirty-six hours, at least. He was obviously getting the most out of his newly regained youth.

She was wondering if she’d be able to sneak out past him while he slept, when he leaned back and pulled the door to the cubby shut. Now he was between her and a closed door. He pulled her into a spooned position against his chest and mumbled with sleep clearly beating at him, “I’m a light sleeper, Seras. Don’t think you’re going anywhere.”