Chapter 137: The Glass
The light outside was too clear.
Laira did not pull a curtain. She walked to the glass, both large hands braced on the cold surface, her brow tipping down as she watched cloud pass under her feet, as if confirming that this sky would truly let her stand on it.
A body two meters twenty threw a long shadow across the floor. The combat skirt was blown against her thighs by the cabin air. The line of her back ran straight from nape to waist. Her shoulders were wider than any ordinary window frame Ethan had seen.
He had just been about to tell her to step back from the glass when Laira turned her head. "What are you standing there for?"
"Watching you watch the sky."
"Then come closer."
She did not wait for an answer. One step and she had his shirt, pulling him in, pushing him against the very glass she had just been hungry for. Cold from the pane ran into his back for one beat, then Laira’s heat took it back when she bent and kissed him.
The kiss went deep. Her large tongue slid in. Heavy breasts pressed his ribs until he had to put his arms around her waist to stay on his feet. Beyond the glass the clouds still drifted. Inside the room, their breathing had already fallen out of time.
Rou Yan shut the door and leaned against the lock she had just set, watching that scene for a moment. Her face was red, but she did not look away. Three days had broken more than a few layers of that cold mask. Now she only caught her lip, stepped forward, and when Laira lifted her mouth from Ethan, Rou Yan tipped her face in and kissed the place just left empty.
Ethan was caught between cold glass and two sources of heat.
Laira would not stand and watch for long. She turned, both palms on the glass, that tall body bending a little, her hips set back toward Ethan. The motion was direct enough that it needed no explanation. The skirt was drawn up. Hot skin met his palms. Through the glass, the space ahead was cloud and light. Behind him, Rou Yan’s breath still lingered on his mouth.
Ethan put his hands on Laira’s waist. That waist was larger than an ordinary reach. He had to open his palms, pull her back, and push into her from behind. Laira made a low sound. Her brow touched the glass. Her breath clung there as a ring of fog. Her body flattened against the window. Her large breasts were pressed out of shape along the pane. Wide shoulders covered nearly the whole view. Her thighs trembled as Ethan went deeper. Each thrust from behind sent that two-meter-twenty body shivering, red hair sliding down to stick to the very fog her breathing had left.
"Too tight," Laira said, her voice breaking, but she did not pull away. "Don’t pull out."
Ethan bent, his mouth against the line of her back, one hand at her hip, the other reaching around to take the breast the glass was crushing. Soft flesh spilled past his fingers. The difference in size made the position even clearer. Laira had to bend quite far before he lined up, and each time he drove in, that whole large body bore down on the glass as if she meant to print herself on the sky.
Rou Yan stood to the side, kissing Ethan’s temple, then the corner of his mouth, her fingers sliding into his hair. She did not push between them at once. She waited, breathing heat into his ear, and only when Laira shook through a long beat did she pull Ethan’s shoulder far enough aside to step into the space.
The change needed little talk.
Laira leaned slantwise on the glass, breathing, cheeks flushed, still unwilling to take her hand off Ethan’s shoulder. Rou Yan was pressed to the pane beside her. Her body was far smaller, so when her breasts met the cold she flinched, the sound swallowed in her throat. Ethan lifted one of her thighs and entered from behind, the first rhythm slow so she could catch her breath. Rou Yan bit her lip, brow to the glass. The fog she left was a smaller ring than Laira’s, but her hand locked hard on the frame.
Laira bent and kissed Ethan while he was still inside Rou Yan. Red hair fell in a curtain over his temples. Her large tongue licked away the thread of saliva just broken. Ethan was pulled between two rhythms: ahead, Rou Yan shaking from cold glass and the heat behind her; above, Laira taking back the mouth she had only lent a moment ago.
The room filled with skin on skin, with breath breaking on glass, and now and then a swallowed cry when the airship tipped with a high current. The light outside did not change. The clouds stayed white. Only two bodies were flattened to that clear surface, one large and one small, both held to Ethan’s pace from behind.
Laira whispered short things against his ear, greedy and hot, a large hand covering the very fog she had breathed as if to hide it, and only making the glass cloudier. Rou Yan bit her lip pale and let out only the breaths she could not keep. When Ethan changed rhythm she nodded very slightly, cheek to the glass, eyes shut, letting him go on.
A while later Laira could no longer stand just kissing. She pulled him back to herself and took her turn again. The two-meter-twenty body flattened to the window once more, breasts crushed out of shape. Ethan held that large waist from behind and drove deep. Laira laughed in broken pieces, her voice both winning and wanting more, while Rou Yan kissed the corner of his mouth each time he bent to breathe.
No one counted how many times they switched. Ethan only still knew that the glass was growing warm from skin, that the clouds outside were growing dim behind breath, and that these two days of travel would certainly not be spent looking at the view.
In the corridor outside, Thanh Lien stopped at the door.
She had come for a small matter. The two-day route, the time they would reach the gathering grounds, a few rules that needed saying before Ethan could crawl into a bed and sleep. Her hand was already raised, the middle knuckle not a finger’s width from the door.
Then she heard.
The cabin walls had soundproofing enough that ordinary people, even most Gold-rank Awakened, would have heard only the ventilation. For someone standing at the threshold of Emperor rank as Thanh Lien was, that wall was thin as paper. Broken breathing. Skin. Laira’s low cries. Rou Yan trying to hold back and breaking anyway. And a steady rhythm from inside that matched the blurred presence she could feel beyond the door.
Thanh Lien let out a breath and drew her hand back, but she did not walk away at once. Color rose in a line from her cheek to her throat, a color that rarely showed on a face that was always clean and distant. Her breathing was less even than it had been on the landing field.
She pressed her lips together and listened a few more beats, long enough to know the people inside did not mean to stop for a schedule, long enough that her own chest rose and fell out of time. In that instant Thanh Lien did not think of the Trial Gate, and she did not think of the races they would meet in a month. She only listened, and when she had heard, she had to remind herself that this door was not a place for her to stand any longer.
A moment later she shook her head.
Her fingers touched the door once, not to knock, only as if to tell herself that what needed saying could wait until morning. She turned. White and red cloth slipped down the empty corridor. Her steps were a beat faster than usual. At the corner Thanh Lien stopped, set the back of her hand to her cheek, felt the heat still there, then let out a breath and vanished toward the ship’s bow.
Inside the room, Ethan did not know someone had just stood outside. He only knew Laira was pulling him back to the glass, Rou Yan was kissing his shoulder, the clouds beyond were still white, and the two days of road ahead were still very long.