'Member this?
Once he cut across her chest deeply enough that it did not stop bleeding right away, and he offered to stitch it up.
"It'll scar," he warned, as if she couldn't have deduced that from his own appearance. Nevertheless she lay down across one of her operating tables, breathing calmly as his needle went in and out of her skin. There was a kind of intimacy to it. When it scarred, it would be a permanent reminder that he could be gentle with her. (From chapter 5)
Good, 'cause that's what this is about. This one's particularly explicit with a focus on masochism.
He pulls his pants on and she wraps herself in his coat—gingerly, so that she doesn't get too much blood on it from the gash on her chest—and together they move from her bedroom to her operating room. She points out her sutures to him and sits down on the operating table, shedding his coat to the floor. When she lies backwards, she shivers, the metal uncomfortably cool against her skin.
The first thing he does is disinfect. She almost protests—not to the stinging, she couldn't care less about that, but to his careful treatment. She wants to mock him, tease him, honestly do you care about my health that much?, but one glance at his face tells her that it isn't necessarily about her right now. This is just the first step of a process he has carried out many times. A frown twitches at her lips.
"Stein," she says quietly.
His eyes run briefly over her face, reading her silent complaint. He smiles unkindly and presses his thumb to the edge of the cut. It aches and new blood oozes out; Medusa's fingers tense and curl, not entirely in displeasure.
"Sometimes, things just aren't about you," he tells her, and he gets to work.
He isn't rough, but he isn't exactly gentle, either. There's no compassionate concern over whether or not he's hurting her; his normal sadism is dormant as well. She almost wonders if she's just a hunk of flesh to him now—something he has to look at with a doctor's impersonal eye—except that she can feel arousal and tension in the air. His composure is no more real than it ever is.
Every time he pushes the needle in, Medusa feels the sting echo in her spine, and she has to focus to keep her back from arching. It's making her dizzy, the piercing and the slight friction of the sutures pulling through and Stein's hand manipulating her breasts but only to adjust his working surface, and keeping her breath level takes effort.
When he pulls one of the stitches tight, a tiny sound emerges from her throat, and she can feel the change in the air as Stein hears it. His idle hand wanders for a moment, down over her ribs, her stomach, further—she pushes it hand away.
"Finish with the stitches first," she says. The breathiness of her own voice surprises her. "How very unprofessio—nn—…"
His hand takes the same path back upwards, and this time she can't keep from moving in response. She struggles to keep her head clear. Oh, she'll pull him down soon enough but this really needs to be finished first, just for rationality's sake—
Their breaths are similarly ragged as he gets back to work, and Medusa finds it harder and harder to remain still. She does not squirm—she would never squirm, she has more control than that—but she can feel the contractions of her muscles that could lead to less dignified movements. If Stein is even half the doctor he claims to be then he must notice them too.
Finally he puts the needle aside and strokes the stitches with his finger. She tries to reach for him then—but he pushes her arm away and drops his lips to the closed wound. His boldness surprises a gasp out of her as he begins to suck, hard, his tongue tracing the stitches. Pain shoots through Medusa like electricity from a snapped wire, edges tinged with pleasure. She breathes heavily for a moment, and then gives a laugh that is not as cold as she intends it to be. "Who's the narcissist now?" she asks, turning his one-time insult against him. "At least I don't make out with my own handiwo—"
She is cut short when he bites down suddenly on the wound, the pain like liquid fire this time, and her eyes squeeze shut of their own accord. When she opens them again, he's staring at her with an almost-hidden smirk on his face.
"If it bothers you, I could stop."
"If you stop, you'll be the next one needing stitches," is Medusa's answer. She makes an attempt to sit up, but he pushes her down by the shoulder and before she can move again his mouth is upon hers. The tang of her blood is on his tongue. She cannot stop herself from moaning softly. She is no naïve maiden melting in a lover's embrace, but she can't fight this—
—And yet, she is not distracted enough to ignore the way Stein guides her arms up over her head and pins them there in one hand. She makes an indignant noise and breaks the kiss, bending her leg in case she needs to kick him away. "Stein," she says, threat absent from her voice because she hasn't the breath to growl, "if you think that—"
"Relax," he interrupts firmly, and he trails his free hand over the cut again, then over her stomach, her mound, and up her inner thigh. Distracting shivers of pleasure move up and down her spine, and when Stein presses down on her knee, she lowers her leg without resisting. For a moment, she cannot think; he is nibbling at the wound again, and she knows that this is not a liberty she would normally allow him but she can't for anything remember why. There is something breathtaking about how he's teasing when not an hour ago he was trying to kill her.
After a minute, he leaves off with the wound and moves to whisper in her ear.
"You want to fight back, don't you? You want to resist, get into control of the situation, but at the same time…" He touches his tongue to the edge of her ear before continuing. "You don't, because you're enjoying this more than you ever would have expected to. There's nothing quite like this, is there? The rush of putting yourself, your pleasure, in the hands of someone who'd just as soon tear you limb from limb as fuck you. And you know that you're the one at a disadvantage, so you force yourself to stay alert, which only makes every sensation that much more intense…"
She can think of no words of denial as he climbs onto the table and straddles her, the cloth of his pants rough against her bare skin. Her only option, then, is to attack: "I'm sure you'd know, wouldn't you?"
He laughs softly, not in amusement, and bites her ear. And then he does it again, harder, and then harder still, and with a jolt it occurs to her—
"It occurs to you that there's nothing stopping me from biting clean through," he says, still close enough for teeth to brush skin, "and then what would you do?"
"I'd stitch it back on," Medusa replies without hesitation.
"If I swallowed it?"
"Then I'd take a piece of your ear as replacement."
He laughs again, and this time there is amusement in it, and an edge of madness. Medusa frowns.
"That wasn't a joke."
But he keeps laughing, and he sits up, releasing her arms to clutch his sides. "It is a joke, though. That was a joke, we're a joke, far too sick for anyone to take seriously—ahaha—"
She sits up, too, and presses her lips to his firmly, smothering his laughter until he moans into her mouth instead. Then she pulls back to look him in the eye.
"Focus, love," she tells him.
There is uncertainty in his face. "This shouldn't work," he protests. "We shouldn't work."
"Who cares about 'should'? I'm only interested in what is."
His head twitches slightly in a nod. Then there is a quiet moment as they contemplate their situation: each has a hand on the other's chest, and there is enough room to fall back in either direction. It would require little effort for Medusa to take over here, to use him roughly and show him what a fool he was to have tried to lord over her. But while she is wondering why this does not immediately appeal to her, he gives her a light, experimental push. Her eyes lock on to his. "Relax," he says again, softly, and only when Medusa realizes that there is no resentment in her gaze does she allows herself to be maneuvered backwards so that Stein is on top of her once more. He kisses her, then, with something that she would have mistaken for sincerity if she were stupid, and she makes herself a thousand promises about how it's only this once, never again, and she'll show him later that he has no right to her.
But by the time his lips leave hers to trail down her neck, she has forgotten them all.