The belt came down hard across the outer side of my thigh. Even through the layer of cotton, that searing agony pierced straight through my skin in an instant and drove all the way to my nerve endings.

"Ah!" The scream tore out of me, and my whole body jerked violently at the pain. Tears welled up almost immediately, blurring my vision.

"It hurts… Schroeder, you maniac! Stop it!" I wailed, trying to twist away. But with both hands bound fast behind my back, there was nowhere left to retreat.

He paid no heed to my pleading. The belt rose again and fell without the faintest mercy.

Crack!

This time, it landed across my backside.

"Nn—" The pain doubled me over, curling me inward like a startled shrimp. The silk tie bit into my wrists, and with every violent struggle of mine it only drew tighter, grinding the skin raw.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The blows came down in a torrent, heavy as a rainstorm. Every meeting of leather and cloth brought a tearing burst of pain. Schroeder held nothing back; each strike carried absolute mastery, a force that would brook no resistance.

From cursing and struggling at first, I gradually sank into powerless whimpers. He had me pinned utterly against the sofa, forced to endure this punishment I could not begin to understand. Agony raced wildly along my nerves, my mind blanked to white, and nothing was left but the most primal sensory rawness of the body.

And yet…

Here, in the very depths of this pain and humiliation, an unspeakable, foreign sensation was quietly spreading from somewhere deep inside me.

At first, I thought it was only a spasm born of the pain. But as the belt fell again and again, the feeling grew stronger and stronger. A strange heat began to climb from my lower belly, keeping time with the rhythm of each lash, striking at my reason blow by blow.

My breath turned rapid and hot. Tears still clung to my cheeks — and yet, to my horror, I felt my body begin to change.

At this moment — my hands bound behind me by my own roommate, his belt coming down on me again and again — I had actually… reacted.

The realization dropped me into a pit of ice. A shame far sharper than any stroke of the belt swept over me and drowned me whole. How could this be happening? I was a bottom! I was supposed to like being treated gently, to like being held by a strong man — not to be humiliated into an erection by another bottom, violently, like this!

This was absurd. This was perverted!

I bit down hard on my lower lip, fighting with everything I had to suppress that shameful response. I clamped my thighs together, trying to conceal what was happening below my waist, my body trembling uncontrollably from the sheer weight of humiliation and a pleasure I dared not name.

"Stop… please… please don't hit me anymore…" I begged through my tears, my voice taking on a honeyed, nasal whine that even I found unfamiliar.

Schroeder stopped.

A deathly silence filled the room, broken only by my ragged breathing and the faint sway of the belt still hanging in the air.

I kept my head down, too frightened to look at him, my tears falling in fat drops onto the sofa. I felt like a clown stripped bare of every last disguise — all my wretchedness, all my secret desires, laid completely open before this brute in a suit.

A cold hand caught my chin and forced my head up.

Schroeder's face was inches from mine. His eyes were frighteningly deep; his gaze travelled slowly down from my tear-streaked face and finally settled on the cotton trousers tented by my erection.

There was no surprise in those eyes, and no disgust — only a dark, settled depth, as though he had known all along.

"It seems your body is far more honest than your mouth," he said quietly. His tone held a thread of mockery, and something dangerous enough to raise the hair on my neck.

"No… it's not…" I shook my head frantically, trying to deny it, trying to salvage the last shred of my dignity. "I'm a bottom… we're both bottoms… this isn't normal…"

"Normal isn't yours to define."

Schroeder let go of my chin. With one hand he undid the top two buttons of his shirt, baring his collarbones and a slice of solid chest. Then he did something that destroyed me completely.

He slipped a hand into the pocket of his suit trousers and drew out another tie. It was black, shot through with a subtle dark pattern, its fabric a touch stiffer than the one binding my wrists.

He folded it in half, pinched both ends between his fingers, and advanced slowly toward me.

"Open," he commanded.

I clamped my mouth shut in panic and tried to recoil.

But he gave me no chance to refuse. He gripped my cheeks hard, forcing my jaws apart. Then he shoved that black tie — faint with the scent of cologne — crudely into my mouth, ran it around the back of my head, and knotted it fast.

The tie filled my mouth in an instant, the fabric's bitter taste weaving together with his own scent, flooding my taste buds. All I could produce were muffled, helpless sounds — mm… mm… — as saliva slipped weakly from the corner of my lips.

I had been stripped of the power of speech entirely.

Schroeder watched my wretched state with satisfaction. He picked up the leather strap once more; it flicked through the air with a sharp *snap*—a sound that felt like a final verdict.

He leaned down, bringing his face close to my ear. The composed, elite-class air he exuded stood in such stark, soul-shattering contrast to the strap he held in his hand.

In a voice that was low and elegant, yet chillingly cold to the very core, he spelled out the rules of this absurd game, one word at a time:

"Peter—since we’re both bottom, and since we both agree that developing feelings for one another is impossible..."

His fingers traced lightly across my cheek—burning hot from shame—before coming to rest on the necktie gagging me, which he then gave a sharp, firm tug.

"Then, starting today, we shall use this method... to help one another out."