Ch.10
Gray light was coming through the basement window when I woke up.
The candle had gone out. The basement was cool and still and the only warmth was her, pressed against my side, her head on my chest, her breath slow and even against my skin. Her leg was hooked over mine. One arm was across my waist. Even asleep, she held on.
The Falna had stopped glowing. My back felt normal, the usual residual warmth from the last update. The hieroglyphs had settled. Whatever excelia surge had lit them up had been absorbed, written into the stats. I'd find out the numbers later.
Her finger was tracing.
She was awake. I'd thought she was asleep but her finger was moving on my chest, following a line of script that wasn't visible anymore, tracing from memory. Her breathing was still slow, still even, but her finger was drawing hieroglyphs on my skin in the half-light.
"Morning," I said.
Her finger stopped. Then started again. "Morning." Her voice was hoarse. Raw. Used.
"How long have you been awake?"
"A while." She pressed her face closer into my chest. "I was watching the glow fade. It took a long time."
Her leg shifted against mine. Her thigh pressed higher, against me, and the contact was warm and deliberate. I was half-hard from sleep and the press of her thigh finished the job. Her breathing changed, the slow rhythm picking up.
"Bell."
"Yeah?"
"Can we..." She traced a circle on my chest. "Again?"
I looked down at her. Her blue eyes were looking up at me through her tangled hair, and her cheeks were flushed even in the gray light, and she was biting the inside of her lip.
"You're sore."
"I don't care."
"Hestia."
"I don't care." She pushed herself up on her elbow. The blanket we'd found sometime in the night slid off her shoulder. Bare skin, the collar flush from last night still visible, her hair wild. "I want to. I want-" She stopped. Started over, quieter. "I want to try being on top."
Her ears were red. She'd been a virgin goddess twelve hours ago and now she was asking to ride me.
I put my hand on her hip. Her skin was warm from sleep and she shivered when I touched her.
"Okay."
She climbed onto me. Her knees settled on either side of my hips, the same position as the falna update, the same position as last night. Her hands were flat on my chest and she was chewing her lower lip, the mark from last night still there, and she was looking at my cock, hard and pressing against her inner thigh, and she was calculating.
"I don't know the-"
"You'll figure it out." I held her hips. "Go slow."
She reached down and took me in her hand. Her grip was firmer than last night, less tentative. She lined me up and lowered herself onto the tip and her breath caught and she bit her lip and kept going. The heat of her. Wet, still swollen from the night, and the angle in this position was different, tighter, her body gripping me from a new direction. She sank down an inch and her head fell forward and her hair curtained both our laps.
"'Nn-'"
She went lower. Another inch. Her thighs were trembling and her hands were pressing into my chest and she was doing this herself, setting the pace, the effort visible in her face, the concentration, the jaw tight, the slow controlled descent. My hands were on her hips but I wasn't guiding. She was.
She bottomed out. Sat there. Full. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open and she was breathing fast through it and every pulse of her heartbeat came through where we were connected. I was deep inside her and she was tight and wet and warm and my fingers were digging into her hips because the urge to thrust up was physical.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Now I-"
She moved. Up, then down. Clumsy. The angle was wrong and she listed to the side and caught herself with a hand on the couch arm. Tried again. Better. Her hips found a version of the rhythm, rocking forward and back, and the motion was grinding more than bouncing, her weight pressing down on each forward pass, her clit rubbing against me, and the friction was different from missionary. She felt different on top. Tighter at the base, wetter at the tip, and every grind changed the pressure.
"'Ah- that's- Bell, that's-'"
She'd found it. Her eyes opened and her mouth did too, surprised by what the grind felt like from this angle. She did it again. Harder. Her hips rolled forward and the wet sound of it filled the quiet basement and her face went red but she didn't stop.
"That's it," I said.
Her face went darker. Her nails dug into my chest. But her hips rolled again, harder, the grind deeper, her weight pressing down on each pass, and she was getting wetter and the sounds were getting louder and she was small enough that everything was visible from this angle, her stomach flexing with each roll, her breasts moving with the rhythm, the place where she stretched around me glistening in the gray light.
She got greedy. The grinds got shorter, faster, her hips rolling in tight circles, chasing the friction on her clit, and her breath was coming in gasps now, through her mouth, a sound on every exhale. She was making the couch creak. She didn't care. The goddess who'd been too embarrassed to say "on top" was grinding on my cock in a church basement and the morning light was on her skin and she was lost in it.
I gripped her hips. Pulled her forward on the grind. She gasped and her eyes flew open and she looked down at me and I did it again. And again. Each pull dragging her across the full length, the wetness of it audible, and her sounds climbed.
"'Ah- ah- ah- right there- don't- don't stop moving me-'"
Her hands went to my shoulders. She leaned forward. The grind was desperate now, tight fast circles, her breathing ragged, sweat beading between her breasts and on her stomach. Her chest swung with each roll, close enough to my face that her nipple brushed my chin. I took it in my mouth and she made a sound that cracked in the middle, half moan half sob, and her hips ground down hard enough to make the couch shift on the stone floor.
Her hand found my hair. Gripped. The tell. The same grip from last night, her fingers winding in and pulling, and I knew.
I sat up. Pulled her against me, chest to chest. The angle changed and she slid down onto me deeper and her mouth fell open against mine. Her legs wrapped around my waist. She was pressed against me everywhere, slick with sweat, her heartbeat hammering into my chest, and I was so deep inside her that every breath she took shifted the pressure.
"'Bell- I'm- I'm going to-'"
"Look at me."
She looked. Her forehead pressed against mine. Both our eyes open, so close her features blurred but her irises were right there, blue going dark, and we were breathing into each other's mouths and I thrust up into her and she clenched and her mouth fell open against mine.
"'Ah- AH-'"
She came. Forehead against mine, eyes open, seeing me and nothing else. Her whole body locked tight around me and she shook and the focus left her eyes, the pupils blowing wide, and then she bit my collarbone because that was what she did, teeth sinking into the ridge of bone, and I came inside her with her teeth on my skin and her body pulsing around me and the gray morning light on both of us.
We sat there. Breathing. Her forehead against my shoulder now, her arms around my neck, her body still twitching. My arms around her waist. Both of us slick and the basement cold everywhere except the place where we were still connected.
"I like being on top," she said into my shoulder. Her voice was wrecked.
"Yeah. I noticed."
She punched my arm. Weakly. Her fist was the size of a plum and she didn't have the strength for it anyway.
"Shirt off."
"Already?"
"Falna update. Now."
She was sitting on the couch with her legs folded under her, still naked, a cup of water in her hand. The gray morning light was brighter now, coming through the narrow window, and it caught the water in the cup and the black of her hair and the marks on her collarbone and the inside of her thigh.
I pulled off my shirt and lay face-down. She climbed on. Same position, knees either side of my hips. She settled in comfortably, practiced even after just two times.
She pricked her finger. Touched my back. The warmth of the Falna spread and she started tracing.
She was quiet for a long time. The tracing was slower than usual. She went over the same sections twice, three times, her finger pressing harder each pass. Her breathing had changed. Shallow. Controlled. Concentrating too hard.
"Hestia?"
"Your Agility is at D." Her voice was flat. Careful. "D-503."
D.
"From E-403. Overnight."
"Yeah."
"Your Strength is at E-421. From F-321." She re-traced the number. Her finger was shaking. "Endurance F-307. From G-207. Dexterity E-402. From F-302. Magic I-082. From I-12."
I lay there and let the numbers settle. D-rank Agility. Strength and Dexterity into E. Endurance into F. All overnight.
"Bell." She put both palms flat on my back. "That's not normal."
"I know."
"That's not even abnormal. Abnormal is what you were doing before." She leaned closer. Her chest pressed against my back, her heartbeat there through her skin. "The overnight surge alone is more excelia than most adventurers generate in a month. The growth rate has gone past anything Liaris Freese should be able to produce even at maximum emotional input."
She went quiet. Her hands stayed flat on my back. Her chest rose and fell against my shoulders. We both knew where the surge had come from. Neither of us said it.
"I need to re-conceal Liaris Freese," she said. "And I need to lower the visible numbers. If any god sees these growth rates, it'll draw attention we can't afford."
"Can you do that? Alter the visible stats?"
"I can blur them. Make them look high but plausible instead of impossible." She pressed her forehead between my shoulder blades. "I hate hiding you. You should be able to walk into the Guild and put these numbers on the board and every adventurer in Orario should know your name."
"Later."
"Later," she agreed. Kissed the spot between my shoulder blades. Climbed off.
She hummed while she made breakfast.
I'd never heard her hum. In all the mornings since I'd arrived in this world, Hestia had been cheerful, sleepy, complaining about the Guild, complaining about money, burning rice. She'd never hummed.
She was humming now. A melody I didn't recognize, light and absent, while she cracked eggs and heated a pan and sliced bread. She'd gotten dressed, the white dress back on, the blue ribbon in place, but her hair was still down, still tangled, and she moved through the kitchen with a loose ease that was new.
She touched me every time she passed. A hand on my shoulder when she reached past me for the salt. Fingertips trailing across my back when she walked behind the couch. She straightened my collar before I'd even put my shirt on all the way, her fingers adjusting the fabric with a proprietary precision that hadn't been there yesterday.
"I packed you lunch," she said. "And dinner. In case you're late."
"You packed me two meals?"
"You need to eat. You burned a lot of energy last night." She said it without looking at me and her ears turned pink.
I watched her wrap rice in cloth. Her hands were quick and practiced and she was still humming. A spider had built a web in the corner of the kitchen ceiling, between the shelf and the wall, and it was catching the morning light. Hestia hadn't noticed it. She'd have screamed if she had.
She reached past me for the tea. Her arm crossed in front of my chest.
I caught her wrist.
She stopped. Looked at me. I lifted her hand, turned it over, and kissed her palm. My lips against the center of her hand, where the skin was soft and warm.
She made a sound. Small, high, the same sound she'd made the first time I kissed her neck. Her blue eyes went wide. Her other hand, the one holding the plate, opened.
The plate hit the floor. It didn't break, bounced on the stone and clattered to a stop under the table. Neither of us looked at it.
"Bell." Her voice was a whisper. Her hand was still in mine.
I let go. "You should get that."
She stood there for a second. Then she bent down and picked up the plate and her face was red and she was smiling and when she turned back to the counter her humming was louder.
I put on my boots. Grabbed the Knife, buckled it on. Picked up the lunches she'd packed, both of them, and headed for the stairs.
"Be careful," she said. Same as always. Different.
"I'll be back."
"I know." She turned from the counter and looked at me and her face was open and warm and her eyes were blue and clear and the morning light was in her hair. "I know you will."
I went up the stairs. The morning was bright and cool and Orario was waking up and I had two packed meals and a Knife that was warm against my hip and a goddess humming in a church basement behind me.
Good morning.