Spare the Rod

by WriteStuff

Title: Spare the Rod
Author: WriteStuff (writestufflee@mindspring.com)
Archive: Certainly on M&A and my site. Others please request.
Pairing/Category: Q/O, AU, BDSM, PWP
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Explicit sex between two hot guys. If it's not your cup of tea, leave the pot for the rest of us. No spoilers.

Disclaimer: The characters are George Lucas's, bless him for having such a fevered imagination, even if it's not as fevered as mine. I should be so lucky as to make any money from writing stuff that's this much fun to write. Unfortunately, I'm not.

Notes: First appeared in a slightly different form in Bound and Determined: A Multimedia Kink Zine, published by Light and Shadow Press, 2002; now an installment in The Long Shadow series, in The Warrior's Heart universe (which can be found in the archives). The new series is being posted out of order and only sporadically to whet your appetite until the zines appear, Force willing, some time this fall.

In this particular story, Obi-Wan is about 26, and has been a knight for about a year.

A couple of characters from the YA Jedi Apprentice series appear or are mentioned here: Bruck Chun, Obi-Wan's tormentor; and Qui-Gon's failed apprentice, Xanatos. I don't own them, either. However, if anybody'd like to sell me Qui-Gon, slightly used or otherwise, I have a platinum card waiting to be broken in. A trussed-up Obi-Wan wouldn't be amiss either. Home delivery requested.

Summary: After Obi-Wan's knighting, master and former apprentice use the past to explore a new direction in their relationship.

Feedback: Any sort is a pleasure to receive if you care to give it, off-list only, please.

I. Theory

It started out as punishment.

I was seventeen the first time and we would not be lovers for another three years. I have forgotten what I'd done gone roaming Coruscant's lower levels with my then-best friend, Garen, after being caught at it once before, I think: a pursuit both dangerous and foolish even, perhaps especially, for two young Jedi padawans. It must have been something like that, something extraordinarily dangerous or stupid for my gentle master to resort to such extreme measures.

It might, indeed, have been more my attitude than my actions. I was goading him, had been goading him for some time, wanting some reaction out of him that was beyond the usual patient masterly mannerisms, though I couldn't have said why, then, or what I wanted of him. In part, I was simply at the age when boys test the limits of their freedom and buck against the reins of authority in obvious and defiant ways; in part, it was quite something else I was wanting, though I didn't know it then.

Yes, it must have been our escapades in the Downbelow that triggered Qui's reaction. The lower levels of Corusant are strictly off-limits to unaccompanied padawans under the age of 18, filled as they are with more than the ordinary criminal elements and some of the best illegal clubs on-planet. Garen and I had been let off with a warning before, and I'd given Qui my word that was the last of it. They're not places for Jedi to be seen on their off-hours, and our braids made us rather obvious. But I think it was less the slumming that set him off than that I'd broken my word, something Xanatos did with frequent and blithe nonchalance as Qui's padawan, and a pattern he had continued after leaving the Order.

After losing a previous apprentice, and indeed nearly losing me as well, he decided this time that enough was enough. Whatever I'd done, it had frightened the wits out of Jedi Master Third Degree Qui-Gon Jinn. Only fear could account for what he did in return. In the end, what I'd done didn't really matter, and indeed, paled to insignificance in light of the consequences.

The memory begins with my master towing me through the corridors of the Temple by the cauda on the back of my head, the longest bit of hair I then possessed beside my padawan braid. Neither of us said a word, but we both radiated enough rage to clear the halls. My part of the journey actually required a bit of Force-sense. It was hard enough keeping up with Qui-Gon's long legs when he was in a hurry, without trying to do so half-bent-over and with my head twisted so far to one side that I couldn't see where I was going. With him in this mood, I knew if I stumbled, he'd only drag me up by my hair and keep going, so I closed my eyes and felt my way through the halls with the Force. I was rather grimly proud of myself when I sensed our quarters a moment before the door swished open and Qui-Gon hauled me into the room beneath the low lintel that made him bow deeply each time he passed through it.

"On your knees, Padawan," he growled at me when we were finally inside and behind closed doors, no doubt intending to lecture me. It wasn't something he often did, preferring to dole out a pithy, wry remark after I'd discovered the folly of my own ways, so the lesson would be more memorable. But I could tell he was wound up for a long one this time, and I was in no mood to take it.

Just as furious as he, I snarled back, "Make me," or something similar in the rude, defiant tone well known to every teenager and the parents or guardians thereof.

Next I knew, I was splayed face down across our dining table, secured to the surface of it with the Force. In one movement, my trousers were in shreds around my knees, my tunics up around my waist, leaving my ass bare and exposed and me gasping at the swiftness and violence of it all. I heard something thwap into his hand and clenched both my own around the edges of the table, determined not to give him the satisfaction of any kind of reaction, no matter what he did.

What I remember most vividly was the sound it made cutting through the air as he swung it. It wasn't until it cracked across my ass that I realized what it was: a thin length of tough, flexible wood from the stand by the door, something I'd seen a million times and never noticed. It had been sitting there for years, from the first day I walked into Qui-Gon's quarters as his new padawan. I'd never wondered what it was, what Qui-Gon might use it for, why he kept it there. I might never have found out but for that transgression.

Likewise, the pain it inflicted was nothing like being struck with a hand, as I had often been by others in practice combat and in the field. This was both deeper and sharper and I immediately felt the welt it raised. I'm sure the shock of being hit made it worse as well. Qui-Gon had never before laid a hand or inanimate object on me in punishment. Despite myself, I cried out, then bit the inside of my lip to keep from doing it again as the switch whistled through the air to fall across the path of the first blow. This was far worse than the initial one, landing across already injured and sensitized flesh, but I didn't have much time to think about it because there was another right behind it, and another on its heels, all falling in exactly the same spot until I was screaming and bucking against the table.

There were fifteen or twenty blows, each one aimed so precisely that it was impossible to count them from the evidence. By the time he stopped, I wasn't crying; I was sobbing, begging, pleading with him, but whether to stop or go on was unclear even to me. I was harder than I'd ever been in my life, right on the verge of orgasm. Even after the blows stopped falling, I couldn't stop squirming with the residual pain and excitement. It doesn't take much to get a hormone-ridden 17-year-old boy wound up.

Behind me, Qui-Gon was breathing harshly, whether from anger, exertion, or his own arousal, I still don't know. For a moment, we were a tableau: one pinned to the table half-naked, ass red and welted; the other standing, gasping for breath, holding the bloodied cane. I heard a sharp snap then, and he released me and stepped back, taking his cloak and walking out of our quarters as I slid onto the floor, sobbing, needing his touch in an indefinable way somewhere between comfort and desire.

That was the first time.

It sounds cruel as I recount it now, but I can't bring myself to say it was. It felt, instead, like a revelation.

Not very long afterwards, when he'd gotten hold of himself again, he returned to our quarters and made it right. I was still on the floor, but folded into the penitent bow where I'd been since he'd released me (where I should have been in the first place), the halves of the snapped cane in my hands, leggings still in shreds around my knees, having neither dressed nor tended to the wound.

"Oh, Obi-Wan," he said in a quiet voice filled with remorse, and knelt beside me, lifting me up and holding my arms, rubbing them gently. "I am so sorry, Padawan. I should never "

But I cut him off, told him my behavior had been inexcusable, that I had only got what I deserved, that I was the one who was sorry, for my behavior, for shaming him, for pushing him so far that

" that I hit you," he finished, disgust plain in his voice. "No matter what you did, Obi-Wan, surely someone who has been negotiating treaties and contracts and cease-fires with obdurate and aggressive parties as long as I have could find another way to reach you."

I had no answer to that. Surely it was true, as Qui-Gon said. But all I could think, all I had been thinking was, He loves me enough to beat me.

I wish I knew where that idea came from. It seemed absurd then, and not much less so, now. I'd never been struck as a child; children in the creche just aren't. So there was no reason for me to equate love with violence and I never had before. But it had felt so good. Not just good but right.

Had I said that to him at that moment, Force knows what he'd have done. Recoiled in horror. Spoken very gently to me about the dangers of self-loathing. Scheduled an appointment with a healer for a psychological work-up. But I kept silent and he did none of those things. Instead, he took my face in his big hands and kissed my forehead very tenderly and pulled me into his arms, right where I wanted to be.

I'd been shocked by the pain, outraged that it was my own beloved master inflicting it, furious at being made to endure it, at being pinned to the table helplessly and paddled like a child. I'd bucked and yelled and fought and squirmed and yet, when he'd let me go and stormed out the door, I'd only had to close my hand around my throbbing cock to come harder than I ever had when masturbating or with any of my partners. A good deal of the time I had spent on my knees waiting for him to return, I'd been trying to decide just what had turned me on: the humiliation or the pain.

Or the fact that my master had pinned me down and stripped me half-naked and done something extremely stimulating to me.

By the time he'd picked me up from the floor and apologized to me, I'd discovered the explanation for all my irritating behavior of the last several tens, indeed for the last half-year. I'd fallen in love with the ultimate unattainable person my master. Believing I'd never get the kind of attention I wanted from him, I'd pushed him into noticing me in the only way I could, by misbehaving.

I wonder if he saw it then and simply refused to say anything because of my age. Surely he must have smelled the scent of my release on me. But he said nothing of it, as though it had never happened, and I have never asked him.

It's not as far-fetched as it might seem that I would love him even though he beat me hard enough to not only break the skin but cut me deeply enough to scar. Qui-Gon is not, contrary to his image, a cold, unfeeling man, and he's never been cruel. All Jedi are somewhat aloof in public because it makes our jobs easier. Forty years of acting reserved and dignified in public makes for a persona that's impenetrable to all but good friends. In private, with people he knows and trusts, he smiles easily, touches frequently and affectionately, and laughs often. That had made his response to my behavior even more shocking.

And his behavior afterwards so characteristic. After soothing and petting me for a while as I nestled against him, he picked me up and took me into his bedroom and laid me down on his bed, helping me shift over on my stomach. Then he took my boots off and stripped away the remainder of my leggings and underclothes, pushing the bottom of my tunics up and away from the stripe on my ass. I wasn't pinned this time, but I felt just as vulnerable, just as exposed, if not more so, and almost as aroused.

I couldn't see the results of his work, but it hadn't stopped throbbing in the hours since he'd inflicted it on me, and I knew it had bled. I hadn't realized how much until he started to clean me up, wiping blood away not just from my ass, but from where it had trickled down and between my legs, some of it spattering onto my boots and soaking my already shredded leggings. His touch was carefully impersonal as he washed the blood from between my cheeks and off my perineum and scrotum, and terribly gentle when he cleaned the wound itself. In those circumstances, it was nearly impossible not to squirm, but I somehow managed not to.

At one point, he leaned back and turned my face toward him with two fingers under my chin. His own expression was full of reflected pain at the injury he'd done me. "Obi-Wan, this is bad enough that I should really take you to the healers. It should be packed with bacta "

"No!" I said, not wanting anyone else to know about this. This was his way of making atonement, admitting his mistake in public and facing whatever castigation the healers might heap on him. It obviously embarrassed my master that he had lost control so thoroughly, even though I had goaded him into it, and that was the last thing I wanted, to shame him publicly. I hadn't yet figured out what had happened to both of us, and there was too much going on in my head for me to want to talk about it with anyone else until I knew exactly how I felt. However Qui-Gon might view this incident, I knew I wasn't angry with him, and I knew it was no one's business but ours. "No, it's all right, Master. It's no worse than some of the injuries I've had in the field."

"It will probably scar, Padawan," he warned me.

The idea excited me, almost unbearably, and that excitement terrified me. I had to take a deep breath to center and still myself before I answered him. "I don't think it matters, Master," I said as casually as I could. "It's not going to show often, is it? And a Jedi should not be vain about his appearance."

"Very well, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon agreed. "But neither should his master mar it intentionally." I thought I heard a tinge of relief in his voice, but I could have been projecting it.

He cleaned and disinfected and bandaged the wound, then lay his hand over it, not on but above it, healing it enough to deaden the pain. Then bliss! he let me stay in his bed that night, something I hadn't done except on missions out of necessity, since I was a much younger padawan.

I woke in the middle of the night snugged carefully against him, his arm around my waist, hand flat on the mattress beside me, the long curve of his body curled loosely around mine, nothing but a bit of thin cloth between us. I lay awake for a while, savoring the heat and touch and smell of him before drifting off once more.

Although I'd discovered I was hopelessly in love with him, it never occurred to me to wonder what he was feeling, why it was suddenly so easy to push him to the edge and over. I assumed that any kind of reciprocal relationship beyond the one we had was impossible, that he would view it as nothing more than a silly crush. Teenagers are amazingly self-absorbed and self-dramatizing, even Jedi padawans, but even I wasn't that stupid. It had been only a year since the woman he'd been in love with, Knight Tahl, had died, and I knew he was still grieving her. It would have been completely inappropriate to approach him then, and doomed from the beginning, or so I assumed.

It would take me another three years and a fortuitous meeting with Bruck Chun to push us into each other's arms. Bruck Chun, nemesis of my childhood, pawn of Qui's last padawan, Xanatos, had grown into a beautiful young man several centimeters taller than I and ten kilos heavier, with caramel-colored skin, stark white hair and eyebrows, and eyes the color of the hottest part of the flame. We were a perfect match from the moment we slammed into each other, but we wouldn't discover that for another year, though he knew, somehow, that the only person I wanted was my master. I'm forever grateful to Bruck for making me face my feelings and for forcing me to admit them both to myself and to Qui, because the three years following that caning were torture of a different kind.

Imagine spending nearly every hour of every day with the person you've come to love quite deeply, when you believe they know nothing of your feelings and you feel constrained from ever revealing them. Imagine being a hormone-ridden young adult and living this way. Torture indeed.

It must have been nearly as bad for Qui-Gon though, because I'm sure now that he was well aware of my feelings, had feelings of his own, and was, of course constrained from pursuing the matter. As my master, it was not his prerogative to initiate a relationship between us. The imbalance of power was too great and the gap in age between us too wide to give him that luxury. And frankly, at seventeen, I didn't know myself well enough to say what I wanted, or know how to go about conducting myself once I had it.

At twenty I did.

During those three years, I either sublimated all that desire and sexual energy into my training and studies, or I burned it off alone or with partners who were equally eager for experience. None of us were in love with each other, but we were all friends and the experiences were usually mutually enjoyable and instructive. The memory of that caning stayed in my mind, as did the memory of that explosive orgasm, something I never repeated throughout my years of "practice fucking." Friends that we were, we experimented very little outside the range of the usual toys and positions. The closest I came to reliving that night was with a pair of nipple clamps Garen and I tried out. He hated them, but I loved the sensation that was somewhere between pain and pleasure. Still, it was nothing like that caning had been, and I was too embarrassed to ask anyone to duplicate it.

A quarter year after my twentieth birthday, my first encounter with Bruck in seven years finally blew the top off my secret, and I discovered, to my shock and relief, that Qui-Gon had only been waiting for me to make the first move. We didn't leave our quarters for three days.

Qui-Gon is a wonderful lover: inventive, thoughtful, attentive, passionate, tender. Once he decided to give of himself, he gave fully or as fully as our positions allowed. Early in our time as lovers, he made it quite clear that there were limits to what he could give me, and what I could ask of him until I was knighted. It wasn't until much later that I realized what he meant. It seemed to make little difference at first.

But every honeymoon comes to an end, and every relationship has its rough spots. Ours had a fair share of them, early on. The peril of having a lover so much older than one is that they've collected so much more baggage, all of which needs to be sorted through at some point, if you're to continue to grow together. Qui-Gon and I had rather a difficult sorting period, dealing with past lovers, previous apprentices, other friendships, and our own proclivities and quirks, not to mention the nature of our own prior and continuing status as master and apprentice, and the dangers of our occupation.

At one point, we spent a half-year apart while Qui-Gon taught us both a lesson in the dangers of unfinished business, possessiveness, and over-dependence as he chased down his rogue former apprentice, Xanatos. Being apart was difficult enough, but in the process, our bond was broken when Qui-Gon was injured. I spent a good deal of his recovery period alternately worried about and furious with him, sometimes both.

Rebuilding our bond was an illuminating experience for both of us, and involved a bit of well, not quite bloodshed, but what others might and did consider maiming. If the caning had been a highlight in my sexual experience, having Qui carve the Danjii characters for passion and serenity into me surpassed it by an order of magnitude. The scar on my ass from that caning had, despite Qui-Gon's prediction, long faded, a fact which disappointed me. It took some convincing, but I finally persuaded him to mark me more permanently, using the pain to rebuild the connection between us. The result was some of the most amazing sex I've ever had. The caning paled by comparison. Feeling his cock inside me, first as I sucked him and then moving in my ass as he flayed away my skin and the pain spread through me, flowing from the center of my back through my spine, around my body like a blanket, filling my cock, electrifying my skin I get hard just remembering it. The orgasm would have been shocking if he hadn't drawn it out and out and out into a long meditation. Still that night of sex repeated and amazing sex was another highlight.

Two years later, I took my pain trials, though I didn't at the time know that was what they were. Every padawan spends a period in the clutches of the Republic's invisible and virtually unknown Agency, whose operators construct a plausible scenario that involves the capture of a master-padawan team, their separation, and the torture of the younger of the pair. The purpose is to teach one one's limits and breaking point, and to train one to use that knowledge to outwit one's captors.

I have the dubious distinction of being one of the few padawans in the Order's history who not only held out longer than any human male in recent history, but killed the agent and nearly escaped. As a consequence, the person who had to show me my limits was Bruck Chun, who'd been my lover simultaneously with Qui-Gon for a little over a year. But that was merely the secondary lesson. What Qui had really wanted me to see about myself was the thing he'd begun to suspect with that first caning: that I not only had a high tolerance for pain, but that it turned me on.

This seems obvious, in retrospect. How could I not know this? Well, the capacity for self-delusion is vast, at least in humans. It wasn't that I liked pain, I told myself. I just liked it a little rough. I liked passion, rambunctiousness. Not pain. How could I possibly be capable of finding pleasure in something that caused Qui distress, when he had taught me everything I knew, when he was so good, and so kind? How could I ever think of asking him to hurt me? Cane me, cut me, fist me dry but not hurt me. No, not that.

Well, yes, that. And Qui-Gon was amazingly nonchalant about it. "Just another stimulus," he said. One he claimed he couldn't give me, one that Bruck could, and did, though never to the degree I wanted, except the night he took me to the club where his friend Suri works, tied me to the bed and flogged me. Oh gods . . . that was exquisite. But it cost Bruck too much emotionally for me to ask him again, and I could hardly go prowling the clubs for an agreeable partner. So I made do with what he could give me: with bites and bruises, rugburn and roughhousing, a lot of wrestling for dominance and up against-the-wall ferocity, all of which Bruck does very well.

Then I was knighted and everything changed.

In one very long night, my relationship with Qui-Gon became something neither of us had expected. Our bond had grown strangely stronger and deeper when I had saved his life on Naboo a half-year before, but that night it blossomed between us, opening both of us up until we could feel the other's presence as clearly as we knew ourselves. Qui-Gon bound me and cut his monogram into my skin that night, marked me once and for all as his own, giving me an orgasm that robbed me of speech, thought, and finally, consciousness. What he wanted in return I was only too glad to give, though he barely knew how to ask for it, or to let himself take it when it was offered. It left both of us stunned and awed and . . . changed.

It's a change we had to deal with on the run, as usual. The Council only gave us a few days together after my knighting before I was sent off to my first solo mission. What should have been an easy, break-in-the-new-knight mission, turned into a string of crises that flowed into one another like water in a flood stream going from rock to rock.

When I finally declined a mission and came home a halfyear later, I was too exhausted to do much but recover, and spend time with Qui learning how to keep our bond open while we were separated without distracting each other. Then I was sent off on another round of missions.

At last, after another quarter away from Temple, away from Qui, I've been given leave to come home again. I've sent a message to tell him when I'll be in, so he'll be expecting me. I was tempted to surprise him, but I'm sure he's been checking the roster each day and nagging the Assignment Master to know what my schedule is, so I suppose there wasn't much chance of that. I've been promised a few tens to rest and recuperate, which I shall, indeed, put to good use, like the switch I've brought home with me to replace the one he broke that night eight years ago.

II. Practice

I hardly know him when he comes in the door. It is only his second time out, and he has been gone for another long stint on his own, though not for the halfyear of the first time out. No, he learned that lesson the hard way. But if it weren't for the sense of him full of light, burning bright with desire flooding through our wide-open bond, I might not recognize him. I forget again that he's grown his hair and his beard, and I expect to see the clean-shaven, cropped young padawan come through our door, not this stunning red-haired and bearded knight who seems taller, thinner, more muscular, and quite sure of himself. Not this fierce, hungry, predatory man.

He comes into the room like a contained whirlwind, dropping his pack and other objects in his wake, cloak flying out behind him as he sweeps it off his shoulders and lets it fall to the floor, energy crackling off him like lightning. A moment later, he glides toward me, inexorable, heedless of obstacles.

I am not about to be the helpless victim of this force of nature.

We meet somewhere in the middle with the dull thud of two solid bodies. In the collective almost-year he's been gone, I've changed too, no longer the crippled old man he left the first time, but back to fighting strength with wind enough to chase after and catch a ten-year-old who's currently with his friends in the initiates' creche. We grapple and grope, mouths meeting hard enough for our teeth to clash, pushing into each other, fumbling for the touch of skin beneath clothes. I hear something rip, wonder if it's mine or his. He smells, impossibly, of clean sweat and outdoor air, as though he had not just spent five days cooped up in a transport. He tastes, as always, of sweet tea and Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan.

No longer my padawan. Still my lover. Safe home in my arms again. Bliss.

I back him up against the wall, still bigger and once again stronger than he is, though he hardly protests. I know he likes this, the illusion of being overwhelmed and taken as he struggles and I'm happy enough to oblige. It's a game we seem well matched to play with each other, given the difference in our sizes. Truth be told, it excites me, too, perhaps because it excites him so much.

He opens the fastenings of my trousers, pushes them and my linens down off my ass, around my thighs, hard hands gripping my buttocks. My cock bobs free between us, leaving wet stains across the front of our tunics. More ripping ensues. This time I know it's his trousers, because I'm doing it. The seams of the fly part and they slide down his legs to his boot-tops. He's not wearing underclothes. The man is maddening.

As he's done so often before, usually in our shower, my limber young lover hooks a leg around my hip and hoists himself up until he can wrap the other around my waist. I press him harder against the wall, slide my fingers down between his cheeks to

I have a moment of consternation before I realize what he's done. He leans forward and growls against my lips, "Pull it out. I'm ready for you," then shoves his tongue into my mouth, showing me what he wants me to do. The first words he's said to me in a quarter year. Not "I've missed you," or "how are you?" or even "I love you," but "I'm ready for you." Oh, gods. I'm so lucky.

The plug is long and thick. He shudders and moans as I pull it out. He's stretched and slick inside as I push into him. I hook my arms beneath his knees and spread him wide, my palms resting on the wall beside him. He clamps down around me as I sink into him and my cock sends a flare of hot pleasure through me and into my brain, and I'm moaning with him. I can feel what he wants before he says it, and it's hard to know whether it's his desire or mine that shapes what we do.

"Hard, Qui," he gasps. "Hard and fast. Fuck me."

I love it when my dignified and genteel lover says things like this. On top of that, he's read my mind. I pull back a little and slam into him. His body is hot and tight around me, slick and clutching. I feel as though I'm the one who's come home, filling him. I want all of him, right now. I want him to come, right now. I want to fuck him until he screams and I want him to scream right now. He cries out and grips me hard, head thrown back against the wall, eyes closed. I can tell through our bond that the angle is right, that I've hit his prostate, because pleasure floods through him and spills over me, making me shudder and drive into him again, again, again, our bodies thumping against the wall. Anyone in the hallway outside would think we're hanging pictures, except for the sounds we're both making.

Obi-Wan is gasping and moaning wordlessly, one hand working his cock in the rhythm we've set, the other clenched in the front of my tunic to give himself leverage, eyes closed, long, pale lashes fluttering against his sharpened cheekbones, so beautiful. Each thrust pushes a harsh grunt from me as I sink into him and my balls draw up tightly against the base of my shaft. Then he's keening in my ear as I lean into him, hips rocking wildly, then shouting, "Oh gods Qui! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!" as he squirms against me, impaling himself, muscles spasming around me. Then we're both silent and shuddering to stillness simultaneously and there's the musky scent of his cum soaking into our clothing as I come inside him, groaning then whispering his name as my breath and seed leave me. I barely hear him shout my name over the roaring in my ears.

Spent, I let go his legs and he closes them around my waist again, pulling me to him and wrapping his arms around my neck for a moment, unwilling to let me slide out of him, gasping in my ear as I am in his. We're both trembling with the aftershock, his body pushing me out whether he wants it or not. Sighing, he drops his feet to the floor as we disengage, slithering down my legs, and pulls me against him. We hold each other up against the wall, gasping and weak-kneed.

"Oh, Qui-Gon, iji aijinn," my lover, he murmurs in our shared tongue, rubbing his face against my shoulder. "I've missed you so much."

"Kosai Obi-Wan," beloved, I lean down and kiss him, working my way across his beautiful face as he raises it to me, ending finally at his lips. This kiss is slower, more thoughtful, sweeter, a remembering rather than a reclaiming. We explore each others' mouths at leisure, breaking finally in soft little kisses and nips. When I lean back, I see a portrait of utter debauchery: tousled hair, swollen lips, flushed face, eyes bright and heavy-lidded. I suppose I appear the same to him.

"You look like you've just been very well fucked, my love."

"Possibly because I have," he grins. "And I'm going to get reprimanded by the quartermaster if you ruin a set of my trousers every time I come home."

"You'll just have to change into an old set on the transport, won't you? And please don't tell me you were meeting with the Council before you came here."

"Yes, I was, as a matter of fact."

Maddening. "With that plug inside you?" I demand.

He laughs. "I made a discreet stop afterwards, Qui. Little gods! I may be your padawan, but I don't have the balls to do that."

"Yet."

"Ever," he corrects. "And I doubt you do, either, so don't pretend you do, you old rogue." He leans up and kisses me again, forestalling the one-upmanship. "I should very much like a bath, Ser. Is it possible to get one of those around here?"

"I believe that can be arranged. For a price."

"And just what is that?" he murmurs against my lips and kisses me again. "Will that do?"

"No, not quite. But you're getting the idea."

Kissing me again, he begins to strip the remaining clothing from me, pushing my leggings down around my ankles and running his hands between my legs on the way back up as I step out of them. One hand closes on my balls and squeezes lightly, making me hiss. So soon after coming I can barely stand his touch there, and it keeps me right where he wants me until I'm naked. He's unsurprisingly adept at stripping me with the Force. Then it's my turn.

I undress him without haste, kissing newly revealed patches of skin as his clothing falls to the floor: the hollow of his throat, his shoulders, across his collarbones. I lick and bite at his rosy nipples, slip my tongue into his navel as he strokes his hands through my hair, pulling out the tie in it. His boots and the remains of his trousers are the last to come off.

"Join me?" he says mischievously, rolling my balls in his hand and making me squirm.

"Ah that was exactly the price, my love."

A little while later, we're settled in the bath together, Obi-Wan leaning against me between my legs, soiled clothing in the laundry, the hopelessly torn trousers disposed of. My tunic has suffered some damage but can be easily mended, once it's washed. The bond is wide open between us and I feel more content than I ever do when he is away, basking in his presence in my heart and arms.

We talk about his missions, my teaching, Anakin's progress, news of his friends and mine, general temple gossip. It's a hard blow to be reminded again how little of his life I'm directly involved in now, and how little of mine he shares. Our conversation would feel like two old friends catching up were it not for the fact that I can't stop touching him in places no mere friend would, and for the way our concern for each other feeds back and forth across the bond. The latter is like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

He tests the truth of my words when I tell him I'm no longer in any pain, and have regained my full mobility and strength. I soothe over his doubts about his decisions during the last near year, tell him truthfully that I think he's done very well, and suggest where he might have done something differently, which he takes with very good humor.

Finally, because he seems reluctant to say what I've sensed on his mind since he dropped his pack at the door, I turn the conversation to it myself.

"In your last message, you said you had something to discuss with me, Obi-Wan."

Tension tightens his muscles just the slightest bit and his shields close up somewhat. I rub his arms with the warm oily water we've renewed twice already. Both of us will be wrinkled old men if we don't get out soon. Or one of us will be and the other will be doing a decent imitation thereof.

"What is it, iji aijinn?" I murmur against the long bright waves of his hair. I can't stop stroking it and his beard. He rubs against my hand like an animal marking me with its scent.

The color of his hair alone should be indication enough of his nature, without the changeability of his eyes. I find I want to look at him now, to see what shade they've turned with the conversation. Cloudy blue-grey, I would guess, from the hot blue they were earlier. After thirteen years of living with him, raising him, loving him, I should know him better by now. Still, he surprises me sometimes, as he does now.

"Do you remember, Qui, when I was seventeen, the night you caned me?"

Little Gods, how could I forget? If any single event was a foreshadowing of the relationship we have now, at least the early part of it, that night was. I haven't been so angry or so out of control since Xanatos. It was the memory of his behavior, behavior that Obi-Wan was mimicking unwittingly that every teenage boy engages in at some point that set me off. It was a long time before I trusted what my heart had known from the beginning, that Obi-Wan was not Xanatos, and never could be.

But that's not what my lover remembers of that night, nor why he remembers it. Once again, it's made plain to me how our focus does indeed determine our reality. I sense his arousal as he describes the sensation of being held face down on our table and beaten bloody. I listen to him tell me how hard he came afterward, how he knew from that night that he'd loved me.

"Because I beat you?" It's hard not to sound incredulous, but I have years of practice and my voice remains neutral.

With our bond, however, there is no deceiving Obi-Wan. I sense his amusement with me as he's sensed my incredulity. Our emotions almost have a flavor now. His tastes spicy and sweet at the same time, like the tea he prefers. He turns until he can see my face, touches it gently, kisses me the same way, and the spiciness fades to sweetness. "No, Qui. I would have said 'yes' years ago, because that's what it felt like. I was too young to understand that I'd loved you before that, and the beating had nothing to do with it. All it did was catalyze my feelings with arousal. But you must have known it turned me on."

"That was fairly obvious," I agree. "And still does."

"Yes. Especially when it comes from you."

He lets me think about it for as long as I need to, without saying anything or intruding beyond my very flimsy shields, but I know he's monitoring my feelings as I've monitored his in the past. I wonder what heat my emotions have for him, how bright the light he perceives my presence as might be. He's given me a great deal to think about.

There is a reason that one of the four major Jedi koans says "there is no passion, there is serenity." The true meaning of this phrase is not in the negation of passion, but in its control. A Jedi lives by his feelings and thus cannot afford to deaden them; but they must not rule. Passion is often the cousin of anger, and anger of violence, as is fear. I've rarely been as ashamed of my failure to abide by my own beliefs as I was the night I took the cane to Obi-Wan.

But that was not the last time I hurt him, or saw him hurt intentionally. The marks on his back attest to my willingness to give him pain, as does the fact that I watched every moment of his pain trials, though not with any pleasure. As he came nearer his knighthood trials and we grew closer to becoming colleagues and peers, our sexual relationship became more impassioned, sometimes rougher, but not . . . violent. At least I don't believe so. We may, however, be treading a very fine line in that area.

"Qui," Obi-Wan says quietly, touching my face again with waterlogged fingertips. It really is time to get out of this bath. "If it makes you uncomfortable, then you needn't agree. I don't want you to do anything that feels wrong to you, simply to please me."

"Was it simply the pain that aroused you, Obi-Wan? Or was it also my domination of you?"

"The pain, certainly, as you well know," he replies, splashing me. "But you know I love it when you're forceful, so to speak."

"You realize, under those terms, what you're proposing is something I believe is referred to as a 'scene.' If that's the case, it requires some negotiation."

"Of course. Strict limits and agreed-upon safewords before we do anything."

"Ah. I see you've done your research already."

"Don't I always?" he acknowledges smugly.

"Very well. I find that I'm . . . intrigued by the idea."

He's surprised. It's a sharp taste, almost a scent. I sense it quite clearly and he doesn't try to hide it. He tests the bond between us for ambivalence, uneasiness, or for the sense that I'm doing this only to please him. I lean down and kiss him. "In some ways, we're starting all over again, love," I tell him. "The restrictions we started with when you were my padawan no longer apply. There are avenues of our relationship that we're free to explore now, and this is one of them."

"I thought it might . . ." he begins, and stops.

"Repulse me? To hurt you?" He nods.

"If I thought I were hurting you against your will, it would repulse me. That's why I walked away so suddenly the night I caned you the first time. I couldn't stand to see what I'd done to you. I had to walk away because I was afraid of hurting you more. I didn't realize until afterwards how you felt about it. Now, I'm trusting you to tell me what you want and need, and to show me how I can give it to you. This, as far as I'm concerned, is just another way to give you pleasure. Another stimulus, as I've said before. Is this what you want?"

"Yes. You know it is. I've said so."

"Then I don't see any reason why I shouldn't do something that gives you pleasure."

His surprise gives way to relief, happiness, and a burgeoning desire. I taste a warm, sweetish spiciness in our bond. After that, the negotiations and setting of limits go quickly and smoothly. Obi-Wan knows what he wants and what he doesn't; I know what I'm willing to give and what I'm not. The one thing that worries me is his capacity for pain, which I think might make him take more than he physically should. It makes him formidable even as a prisoner, but for our purposes might keep him from using the safeword in a wise manner. The bond should make that easier to sense, though it is still so new between us that neither of us have tested its limits or efficacy. Nonetheless, as a condition of our play, I make him promise to keep it open.

Then I drag him out of the bath by his beautiful hair.

It is more than long enough to get a decent grip in, unlike his padawan buzz, and thicker than his cauda ever was, providing quite good purchase. I grab a handful at the top of his scalp, stand up and step out of the tub, dripping, pulling him after me out of the room, both of us leaving a trail of water behind us. Obi-Wan yelps, "Hey!" not expecting me to move as quickly as I have, and stumbles a little getting out of the tub, but quickly regains his feet and begins to struggle. In earnest.

"What do you think you're do " he sputters, balking, one hand closed around my wrist, the other trying to open my fingers.

"I'm treating you like the little slut you are," I hiss, pulling him upright. "Not that I owe you an explanation. Now shut up before I gag you." There's a flare of arousal through the bond at that threat, hot spice this time, and I find it hard to hide my smile. "Is that what you want, little one?" I growl in his ear, still holding him by his hair. His eyes are pools of black surrounded by a thin ring of green and he's panting softly. Beautiful. "Perhaps I'll oblige. If you're good."

"And if I'm not?" he says defiantly.

"Then you'll get what I want instead, and it won't be anywhere near as amusing for you." I haul him over to our dining table and shove him face down across it, pressing down on the center of his back, on the mark for passion that I carved into his skin five, no, six years ago. He bucks against me, trying to rise, and I lean over him, molding his body to the surface of the table and his hands around the edges of it. I push my groin against his ass and pin him down. He squirms beneath me and I start to harden against him, rubbing my cock between his cheeks. Obi-Wan goes still, moaning a little. Catching him unawares, I fix him to the tabletop with the Force and stand back.

"You bastard!" he yells, unable even to struggle now.

"Enough," I tell him. "I want silence from you."

"Well you're not bloody likely to get it!" he snaps.

I leave him pinned to the table, swearing, and go into our bedroom to dry off and collect my robe a beautiful, long, dark blue silk wrap that he insists matches my eyes, a gift for our tenth anniversary as master and padawan and one or two objects including our freestanding mirror. I stop near the low front door for another object he arrived with himself. After arranging the mirror in front of him, I lay them out on the table, one by one, and watch his eyes widen. Leaving him to contemplate them and his own reflection, I go back into the fresher to let out the water and wash up one of the items. He starts to swear again as I leave. I'm amazed at the vocabulary he's picked up in less than a year away from my influence.

"Shame, Knight Kenobi," I admonish him, provoking another outburst.

By the time I return, he's worked himself into a fine state. I've bent him over the table at the waist, leaving his groin free without anything to rub against and giving me access to his cock. Sweat glistens along his back and he's breathing heavily, flushed and glorious against the table, his cock bobbing. I wipe him off with a towel and lean over him again, picking up one of the objects on the table and holding it close to his face. "Such a tirade, Obi-Wan."

"Let. Me. Go." He says it with such conviction that I'd almost believe him if the bond weren't pulsing with enough sexual excitement and desire to make both of us hard.

"Do you know what this is?" I ask him, leaning against him, lazily grinding my groin into his smooth, muscular ass. "It's the exercise ball I used to strengthen my grip. I think it might be just the thing to shut you up for the duration. Open wide."

It's a struggle to get his mouth open. He fights me as though I really were his captor, growling, even after I pop the ball into his mouth. There's a fierce scowl on his face, his eyebrows pulled into a graceful arc, his brow furrowed. His eyes are wide and glittering, watching me. I've no doubt that if I truly were his captor, he'd bite my fingers off, given half a chance.

When I'm certain he can still breathe freely, I step back and pick up the tube of lubricant, spreading some on my fingers and stroking up from behind his balls to the tight ring of muscles, making him whimper and clench his hands. I stroke over and around the tight entrance to his body, watching him twitch and futilely try to grind himself into something. A few minutes later, without warning, I plunge my fingers into him, nudging the sweet spot, feeling the burn and the accompanying spike of pleasure and arousal through the bond. With my other hand, I find the velvet-over-steel of his cock and stroke it, my thumb spreading the beads of moisture around the head, pushing back his foreskin. He moans around the ball in his mouth, breathing harshly through his nose, eyes fluttering closed in the mirror as he tries to push into and back against my hands.

I bring him right to the edge and leave him there, pulling my fingers out, letting go of his cock, wiping my hands and picking up the plug I'd pulled out of him earlier. Washing it up a few minutes ago, I'd wondered how he'd managed to walk so gracefully with something this size nearly as big as a dildo inside him. He whines in frustration and hunger, a far more submissive sound than any he's made yet. Now, with him watching me, I lube up the plug, but lightly, and move behind him, stroking over the same path my fingers took earlier. He moans quietly and I hear his breath rushing harshly through his nose. The bond is pulsing with an almost unbearable excitement that has me fully erect and aching to come.

I make him wait for it, and shove it into him long minutes later, when most of the tension has flowed out of him. He grunts as the plug goes in, as I fuck him with it. "Don't come," I tell him. "Not until I tell you. Or I won't finish this."

He whimpers and holds himself very still, completely obedient now, no longer fighting me just for the sake of it. When I can feel he's on the verge again, I shove the plug in and leave it, then pick up the final item, the one he's brought home with him, and watch a shiver of anticipation go through him as I draw the tip of it down the center of his back. His hands clench tighter around the edges of the table. I test its pliability, flexing it between my hands, whipping it through the air next to his ear and making him flinch involuntarily. It's very much like the one I broke in half after hitting him that night eight years ago. He mewls and closes his beautiful eyes, shivering.

He's never asked me why I had it or if I'd used it on any of my former padawans. If he had, he would know that the only person that cane was ever used on before him was me, by my own master, on my booted or clothed shins, where it stung deeply but left no marks. I wish I had used it on Xan. I've always wondered if he might not have respected me more if I had been harsher with him, though in my experience, such treatment usually results only in distrust and fear. I'm not sure anything could have redeemed Xan.

How ironic that, having used it on Obi-Wan when he did not deserve it, I should find another one in my hands at his request to give him pleasure.

I make him wait for this, too, stroking over his hot skin with tip of it, drawing thin scratches down his back, just tapping him lightly with it. He looks so luscious and wanton like this: bent over naked, skin flushed and gleaming with anticipation and the oil and heat from our bath, pinned to the table with his hands gripping the edges, quivering and panting. I draw the tip of the cane over his tight balls, up his perineum, over the end of the plug, stroking along his crack. Then I lean down and fasten my mouth on the monogram of my initials at the end of his tailbone, in the hot V of flesh where his ass begins to split, and suck hard. He jerks and moans and in that moment of surprise, I lean back and bring the cane down smartly across his ass.

Pain blazes through our bond, and on its heels, an exquisite sensation that I cannot name, that can only be the beginnings of the rush of pleasure this gives Obi-Wan. He screams around the ball in his mouth, a muffled sound that ends in another moan. It startles me so much that I hesitate, but there is such a clear sense of wanting more, now from him that I bring the cane up and lay it hard across his backside once again. The sensation following the pain blossoms once more, stronger this time, and I begin to understand that if I do this faster, it will give him more pleasure and less actual pain.

I step back and swing again, and again, and again, and again, each time careful not to hit the same place, raising welts but not breaking the skin wherever the cane strikes him. I mark him from the top of his ass to the backs of his knees in close stripes until the flesh is hot and swollen, until he's screaming constantly around the gag, until the cascade of endorphins floods through our bond and triggers my own. I drop the cane then and pull the plug out of him, plunging my painfully hard cock into that tight, hot, swollen channel of flesh, clutching his hips and pounding into him. His round ass fits against my groin like nesting bowls and the heat of his skin is like pressing myself to the walls of a small oven. I loose the Force bonds on him, and he rips out the gag, gasping and sobbing "Master! Master! Master!" bucking against me as I plunge into him, impaling himself. He's so tight around me, so hot against me that I can hardly stand it.

"Come, love, come for me!" I gasp, fucking him hard, running my thumbs hard over the welts.

The endorphins crash over us again, like a wave through the bond, pushing us over the edge as our pleasure washes back and forth between us, both of us riding on the crest of pain and ecstasy. I come explosively, despite my earlier orgasm, and Obi-Wan goes rigid beneath me, almost convulsing as he comes, screaming wordlessly. It seems to stretch forever, his muscles spasming around me, my balls emptying into him as he spatters the underside of the table.

Then it's over, leaving us both drained and trembling and amazed, Obi-Wan's face coated in tears.

I pull him down off the table, down onto the floor with me and cradle him against me, both of us nearly paralyzed, gasping desperately for air. I realize now that I've barely had an inkling of the way Obi-Wan processes pain, how little it feels like pain after the initial physical insult. I understand now how he was able to hold out for so long during the trials and I'm amazed again by his abilities. I'm sure it's this gift of his that allowed him to save my life on Naboo, to not just endure an agony I could not, but take it from me and release it into the Force for me. That he could take this sensation and turn it into its polar opposite, into something ecstatic, makes him a remarkable man. And yet, it has its limits.

The aftermath of it, for instance, is another matter. At first, it's a little like coming down from a drugged high as our bodies break down and process the endorphins. But by the time I start to catch my breath again, I can feel the sting and burn of his welts myself. He hisses when I touch them now, and all I want to do is sooth him and make him whole again.

"Come to bed, love," I whisper in his ear and help him up. He walks carefully into our bedroom with me, grimacing, and in a few minutes, we finish reenacting the scene where it ended the last time as well, in what's now our bed, Obi-Wan on his stomach. I clean us both off and wipe him down tenderly, examining the marks I've made. None of them have broken the skin, unlike the last time, and all it takes is a little Force healing to take the swelling and sting down. He sighs and settles sleepily into the mattress when I'm done. I lie down beside him, stroking his back.

"Thank you, Qui," he murmurs, looking at me with heavy-lidded eyes, hardly able to stay awake. Still, he reaches to cup my face, running his fingers through my beard. "Was it all right for you? Did you mind?"

"At the risk of sounding facetious, I would have starting beating you years ago, Obi-Wan, if I'd known what it was like, although I don't think it would have been the same without the bond we have now. I had no idea it felt that way to you. Is it worth what comes after?"

"Mmmm, to have you pet me and coddle me after giving me an amazing orgasm? I'd say so," he answers dreamily, still a little high on his own endorphins, looking the way he does when he's been sniffing inhalants at the club with Bruck, eyes dilated and a silly smile curving his lips. Something about this expression always makes me very tender with him. Perhaps because he looks so young.

"Kosai, I will always coddle you and pet you, whenever you want it," I tell him, cuddling up to his still very warm backside.

"And the amazing orgasms?"

"Delivered on demand."

"Ah. In this case, sparing the rod doesn't spoil the child. Quite the opposite," he grins mischievously.

"But you're not a child anymore, iji aijinn, and I'm going to enjoy spoiling you as often as you like, in the future."