In Kuroinu

Her head was on my chest and her breathing was still coming down when she asked.

"Is it always like that?"

I had my arm around her and my hand on her bare back and her hair was spread across my shoulder and chest in a tangled red mess that smelled like sweat and something clean underneath it, whatever she'd used to wash it before coming here. My other hand was resting on the cot frame because there wasn't room for both of us to lie side by side without one of us falling off, and she'd solved that problem by putting herself half on top of me.

"The power part or the sex part?" I asked.

"Both."

"The sex gets better. The power, I don't know. First time for me too."

She lifted her head. "You said you'd done this before."

"Sex, yeah. The power loop, no. That was new."

She put her chin on my chest and looked at me. Her face was still flushed and her eyes were bright and the candlelight was catching in her hair. She looked good. She looked like she was trying to run a combat debrief inside her own head and kept getting distracted by the fact that she was naked.

"I can still feel it," she said. "The strength. In my arms, my legs." She flexed her right hand against my ribs and the grip was harder than yesterday. Measurably harder. "It's real."

"Yeah."

She was quiet for a few seconds. Her fingers traced a circle on my chest. The sweat was cooling on both of us and the draft from under the door was cold on my legs where the sheet had slipped off. Her body was still warm where it pressed against mine.

Then she sat up.

She was still naked. The candlelight hit her from the side and caught the scars on her ribs and the lean muscle of her stomach and the flush that hadn't fully faded from her chest. Her hair fell around her face. She looked down at me and her jaw was set and her eyes had that focus I'd seen in the training yard.

She put her hand on my chest and pushed me flat.

"Again," she said.

"Already?"

"The power is still active. I can feel it. If we go again, the boost might compound."

"Strategic reasoning."

"Yes."

"You want to have sex with me again because of strategic reasoning."

Her ears went red. "I want to- it's not just- we should maximize the-"

I pulled her down and kissed her. She made a surprised sound into my mouth and then kissed me back, hard, and her hand was already reaching between us.

She found my cock. I was still hard from the power humming through me, or from her sitting naked on my stomach, or both, and when her callused fingers wrapped around me the sensitivity from round one was immediate. She stroked once and my hips jerked up into her hand and I grabbed her wrist.

"If you keep doing that this is going to be over before it starts."

She let go. Her lips were parted and her eyes dropped to her own hand and she was breathing faster. She'd felt how hard I was. How my hips moved on their own.

She shifted backward. Rose up on her knees, straddling me, and reached under herself and wrapped her fingers around my cock again. Lighter this time. She positioned me and the head pressed against her and she was soaked. Wetter than round one had started, slick and hot and swollen from what we'd already done, and the heat of her was there before she even took me in.

She sank down.

Slow. Her jaw clenched and her breath caught in her throat and she took me inch by inch, her hands flat on my chest for balance. She was tight, tighter than I'd expected from this angle. Swollen from the first round. The sensation was different from below, the head dragging along the front wall as she descended, hitting her differently than missionary had. Her eyes squeezed shut at the halfway point and her fingers curled against my chest.

"Oh-"

Deeper. She eased down another inch and her thighs shook against my hips and the wet sound of me sliding into her was loud in the quiet room. She heard it. Her face went red and she stopped for a second, adjusting, and then pushed down the rest of the way until her ass was flat against my hips and I was all the way inside her.

She let out a breath that shuddered through her whole body. Her hands pressed into my chest and her eyes opened and they were glassy and dark.

"This angle is-"

"Different?"

"I can feel more." She shifted her hips. A small forward grind. My cock dragged inside her and she made a sound low in her throat. "A lot more."

She started moving. Slow at first, grinding forward and back, figuring out what worked. Her hips were strong. Sword-fighting built everything from the core down and she had the same controlled power in her thighs and stomach that she had in her sword arm. She rolled her hips and the friction changed inside her and I clenched my jaw.

"Filia."

"Mm." She wasn't listening. Her eyes were closed and her hands were pressed flat on my chest and her hips were rolling at a pace that worked for her. She was using me. Finding what she liked. Each forward grind pressed her clit against the base of my cock and every time it did her breath stuttered and she did it again, harder.

She was louder than the first time. The sounds were coming out unclenched. "Ah-" on the downstroke, quiet at first, then louder, each one punching out of her before she could catch it. The cot was creaking under us and the wet sounds were obscene, slicker and louder than round one because she was soaked from what we'd already done. My cum from the first round and her own arousal and every time she lifted her hips the slickness on my shaft caught the air and cooled for a second before she dropped again.

I put my hands on her hips. Her skin was hot under my palms, the muscles working under my fingers as she rode, and I gripped and pulled her down harder on the next stroke.

She gasped. "Ah- that- do that-"

I did it again. Pulled her hips down and thrust up to meet her and the depth made her cry out and her hands slammed flat on my chest. She was riding faster now. The controlled grinding had broken into harder drops, her hips coming down heavier on each stroke, taking me deep every time.

Her breasts were bouncing with the motion. Small tight bounces from the impact of her hips hitting mine and sweat was running down her chest and catching in the dip between them. I moved my hands from her hips up her stomach to her breasts and she arched into my palms. Her nipples were hard against my hands. I pinched one, gently, and her hips jerked and she clenched around me hard enough that I grunted.

"You sound incredible right now," I said.

Her rhythm faltered. Her face went red, deeper than the flush from exertion, and she looked down at me with her lips parted and her eyes wide.

She grabbed my wrists. Both of them. Pulled my hands off her breasts and pushed them above my head, pinning them against the cot. Swordswoman grip and the Blessing on top of it. My wrists were pressed into the thin mattress and I wasn't going anywhere.

She leaned down. Her hair fell around my face and her breath was hot against my mouth and she kissed me while her hips kept moving. The angle changed with her leaned forward. Shallower. My cock dragging along the front wall inside her on every stroke and her clit grinding against my pelvis. She moaned into the kiss and the vibration went through my lips.

"Don't move your hands," she said against my mouth. She sat back up. Released my wrists. Put her hands on my chest and rode.

Harder. Faster. The cot was slamming against the wall and I kept my hands where she'd put them because she'd told me to. She was above me, her stomach flexing on every downstroke, her breasts bouncing, sweat on her skin catching the last of the candlelight. Her mouth was open and she was making sound on every stroke now, loud broken moans that filled the room. "Ah- ah- ah-" Timed to her hips. Getting louder.

Her rhythm was getting ragged. The smooth strokes broke apart and she was snapping her hips forward, grinding down at the bottom of each stroke, chasing it. Her jaw was working. The tendons in her neck pulling tight. There it was. The set. Same as the first time.

"Haruto-"

She was close. Her pussy was clenching around me, rhythmic, squeezing tighter on every downstroke. Her thighs were shaking against my hips. Her hands were pressing into my chest so hard her knuckles were white.

"Haruto- I'm- nn- ah-"

Her voice broke on my name. Her thighs clamped and her back arched and her head went back and she came. Loud. My name on her lips, the whole word, and then just sound. Her pussy clenched around me in deep rolling waves and her nails dug into my chest and her hips ground down in tight circles, pressing me as deep as she could get me, riding through it.

I grabbed her hips. My hands came off the cot and gripped her waist and I pulled her down and thrust up into her. Hard. Her body was still shaking from the orgasm and she cried out and I thrust again and her pussy squeezed around me and I came. Deep inside her, my hips pressed up against hers, and the second pulse hit.

Smaller than the first. A low hum of warmth instead of a wave, spreading from where we were connected up through my chest. She shuddered on top of me and her hands pressed flat on my stomach and she felt it too.

"There," she breathed. "Again. Smaller."

"Diminishing returns."

"Still returns." She collapsed forward onto my chest. Her hair fell across my neck and her breathing was ragged and her body was limp and heavy on mine. I put my arms around her. Her back was slick with sweat under my palms and her heartbeat was hammering against my chest.

We lay there. The cot was too small and one of my legs was hanging off the edge and the candle stub was guttering and the room smelled like sex and sweat. Her heartbeat was slowing down against my chest.

I was still inside her. Getting soft. The cum was warm where it was leaking out of her around me and the wet spot under us was bigger than it had been after round one. She shifted her hips and winced and didn't move again.

"You've done this before," she said into my collarbone.

"A few times."

"On your world?"

"Yeah."

She was quiet for a while. Her finger was tracing circles on my chest. A mouse was scuttling in the wall.

"Were they prettier than me?"

I laughed. She thumped my ribs with her fist, still lying on me.

"Were they?"

"Nobody's prettier than you, Filia."

"That's a line."

"It's true."

"You say that to all the girls you sleep with for strategic purposes?"

"You're the first girl I've slept with for strategic purposes. The rest were for fun."

She was quiet again. Her hand had gone still. Then she pushed herself up on her elbow and looked at me and the flush was still on her cheeks and her hair was a disaster and she had sweat drying on her throat and she looked annoyed and pleased at the same time.

"This was also fun," she said. "For the record."

"Noted. I'll include it in the field report."

She punched my arm. Hard enough that I'd feel it tomorrow. Then she put her head back down on my chest and her body relaxed against mine in stages and her breathing evened out and her hand went still on my ribs.

She fell asleep on me. The swordswoman who'd walked in here calling this a "procedure." Asleep on my chest with her hair in my face and her hand curled against my side. Her sword was still leaned against the wall by the door where she'd put it when she arrived. She'd come into this room armed and left her weapon by the door and climbed on top of me and now she was asleep.

I stared at the ceiling. The stone was rough and there was a crack running through one of the blocks and a spider had built a web in the corner where the wall met the beam. I watched the spider work for a while.

I was inside a hentai. The party leader had just ridden me and fallen asleep on my chest. My power ran on sex. Tomorrow the whole party was going to see the results and the elf was going to lose her mind and the priestess was going to get very quiet and the beastkin's tail was going to go at a frequency that could power a small generator.

And somewhere north of here, behind a wall of seven fortress-cities, a continent's worth of women were walking toward bad endings I'd watched play out in a dozen series. Vault was planning his betrayal. Dirk was cutting deals with demons. Guignol was preparing to invade Dragundaala. Olga was fighting a war she was slowly losing. None of them knew about each other.

I had sex powers and three allies.

I closed my eyes. Filia's breathing was warm and steady against my neck. The spider was still working. I fell asleep before it finished.