Chapter 418 - 417 - Silence Before Destruction
Vivian pulled back from his shoulder. Her golden eyes — still soft, still raw from what the last hour had done to her composure — went wide.
"’W-what—’" She looked at his face to confirm he had actually said that. He had. He was looking at the garden wall with the same flat patience he brought to logistics. Her mouth closed. Opened. "’Hngg~?!’"
His hand moved.
It found her left breast under the water — full, heavy, warm — and closed around it with the easy ownership of a man who had decided something and was not going to explain the decision. His fingers pressed in. The breast gave beneath his grip, soft and full, and the sensation — the specific pressure of his incubus hand against skin that had not been touched in years and was now being touched like this — drew out of Vivian a sound that she had not planned.
"’—Haahn~—!’"
It cracked out of her, high and thin and completely involuntary, her elven composure folding in a single syllable. Her hand flew up to cover her own mouth. Her eyes went wide with mortification at the sound she’d produced. Her lashes were still wet.
Viktor looked at the breast in his hand with mild academic interest.
"Wide," he noted.
"’That— I— you—’" She was breathing in short pulls, her fingers still pressed to her lips, her golden eyes very bright. "’That is not an appropriate—’"
His thumb moved.
"’—MNNGH~—’"
She said nothing else coherent for several seconds.
They came the way they always came.
Not loudly. Not all at once. But with the collective, gravitational certainty of women who had learned that their husband had a departure window and a finite amount of morning, and had developed opinions about both.
Bella appeared from the far end of the pond, silver hair drifting behind her, golden eyes already locked on Viktor’s silhouette in the water. Her tail was at half-mast — the casual position, not fully swishing, which meant she was approaching with calculation and not enthusiasm, which was, in its own way, more dangerous.
She stopped three feet out and looked at Vivian.
Then at Viktor’s hand on Vivian’s breast.
Then back at Viktor.
"’Mm,’" Bella said, which communicated nothing specific and a great deal in general.
Mira arrived beside her a moment later, moving with the brisk self-possessed stride of a woman who had somewhere to be, green eyes already tallying the situation. She stopped at Bella’s shoulder. Her dark wet hair was pushed behind one ear. She looked at Viktor’s hand on Vivian’s breast with the expression of a woman who had planned for this and was satisfied that the plan had arrived at its correct conclusion.
"You’ve been here four hours," Mira said.
"Three and a half," Viktor said.
"You have a capital to reach."
"I’m aware."
"Then—" Her green eyes tracked to his free hand, which was doing something under the water that made Vivian press both palms to her mouth again. "Viktor."
Helena arrived from behind him, the warm presence of her simply appearing at his back the way it always did, her palms settling on his shoulder blades with the proprietary ease of complete ownership. Her pregnant belly pressed soft and round against his spine. Her enormous breasts — still heavy with milk, still warm — pressed above them.
"She’s right," Helena said, pleasantly. "We’re already going to miss the morning merchant window."
"There’s no merchant window."
"There could have been. Hypothetically."
Elara had appeared at the water’s left. Her pink hair was damp, her pink eyes soft, her tail curling and uncurling with the specific rhythm that meant she was working up to something. Olivia stood slightly behind her, blonde hair pushed over one shoulder, golden eyes watching Viktor with an expression that had not fully recovered from the last hour and was not pretending otherwise.
Kaida waded directly to Viktor’s right, arms crossed, crimson eyes level.
"We’re crowding him," Kaida observed.
"Yes," Mira said.
"Is that— is that intentional."
"Completely."
Kaida looked at her own arms for a moment. Uncrossed them. Recrossed them higher. "’Fine.’"
Viktor looked around at the full assembly of them.
Six women. Seven if he counted Vivian, who was currently trying to restore the functioning of her respiratory system while his hand remained where it was. The water around them was still and warm. The morning light had moved — later than it had been, the garden’s diffuse gold now carrying the specific slant of approaching midday. Rusty and Rustina pulsed slow and content at the edge like two small patient moons.
Viktor released Vivian’s breast.
She made a small bereft sound that she immediately pretended had not happened.
He looked at the assembled women. His dark eyes tracked from face to face with the efficiency of a man taking inventory.
"Ladies," Viktor said.
They looked at him.
"I need to leave." A pause. "Can you be fast."
The silence that followed was the silence of a negotiation.
Then: six sets of hands moved.
It was not discussed. It was not choreographed in any way Viktor had witnessed. But the wives — Mira and Helena and Bella and Kaida and Elara and Olivia — moved with the synchronized efficiency of women who shared a telepathic network and had been married to the same man long enough to develop operational shorthand about it. Vivian drifted backward, startled, as they converged.
Helena’s hands went to his shoulders and drew him deeper into the water, to the flat submerged shelf, and sat him on it with the matter-of-fact authority of a woman who had been putting him where she wanted him since he was nineteen. The water hit his chest.
Mira and Bella went to his lap simultaneously. Not sitting — positioning. Mira sank down on his cock with the practiced ease of a woman who had done this a thousand times and had stopped being shy about the sound she made doing it.
"’Hngh~—’"
Bella pressed against his side and sent her hand below the surface.
Kaida took his left hand and put it exactly where she wanted it without saying a word, her crimson eyes directed firmly at the opposite garden wall, jaw set with warrior’s dignity.
Elara pressed against his right, her pink tail coiling around his wrist, her face turned into his shoulder. Her lips found the skin of his neck and stayed there, breathing.
Olivia, flushed to the roots of her blonde hair, knelt on the shelf to his right and did something with her mouth that she had apparently been paying very close attention to learning, because the result was technically competent in a way that suggested natural aptitude rather than experience.
Viktor tilted his head back.
The garden was very still except for water.
"’Mmph—’" Mira’s thighs flexed. "’You said ’fast.’’" Her green eyes were sharp even now, even here. "’Then stop making that—’" She rolled her hips. "’—’face’—’"
"What face," Viktor said.
"’The face you make when you’re—’ Hngh~—’enjoying yourself and pretending you aren’t.’"
"I’m not pretending anything."
"’Then—’" She sank deeper. "’—cooperate.’"
Viktor cooperated.
’Pah. Pah. PAH.’
The water churned. Mira’s dark hair plastered to her cheek. Helena’s hands rubbed slow circles between his shoulder blades, her face warm against his neck, her breath even and steady and somehow the calmest thing in a radius of several feet.
Bella had stopped pretending to be casual and was making small sounds against his shoulder that were not casual at all. Elara’s tail had tightened around his wrist. Olivia’s technique had developed confidence in real time.
Viktor’s tail moved. Found Kaida’s hip. She startled and then held still, which was its own form of permission.
"’Hnn—’"