Ch.19
Her voice was quiet in the dark.
"If this works." She was on my chest, her chin on my sternum, her body still warm and damp against mine. The Falna glowed faintly on my back underneath us. "If the excelia keeps coming like this every time we..."
She didn't finish the sentence. Her cheeks had color in them even in the dark.
"Then every time we do this, I get stronger," I said.
She buried her face in my neck. Her breath was warm on my skin. "That sounds terrible when you say it like that."
"It sounds like a very efficient training method."
She bit my neck. Lightly. "Stop making it sound like homework."
"I'm making it sound like a compliment."
She lifted her head. Her blue eyes found mine in the dark, lit faintly by the Falna glow from beneath us. Her hair was still stuck to her face. The tear-tracks from her orgasm had dried on her cheeks and her lips were swollen and she was looking at me with her mouth pressed together but her pupils were dilated and she couldn't quite make herself look away.
"Bell."
"Yeah?"
"You're hard again."
I was. She'd shifted on my lap during the conversation and somewhere in the last minute my body had decided round one wasn't enough. She could feel it against her thigh, pressing up, and her pupils were dilating even as her mouth tried to form a complaint.
"Already?"
"You're sitting on me naked."
"That's not a- that doesn't mean you should-" She stopped. Her hips had shifted. Rocking against the hardness. Her breath caught at the contact. She was still sensitive from the first time, still swollen, and the pressure against her made her eyes flutter.
I sat up. Put my hands on her waist. Lifted her.
She made a surprised sound as I laid her on her back on the couch. The cushions were warm from where we'd been sitting and the cool basement air hit the sweat on her skin and she shivered, goosebumps rising across her arms and stomach. She was on her back looking up at me with wide blue eyes and her black hair spread across the cushion and the marks from my grip on her hips were faintly visible in the glow.
"Bell-"
I leaned down and kissed her. Slow, this time. Her hands came up to my face and held my jaw and she kissed me back with a softness she'd been too urgent for in round one. Her lips moved against mine and her tongue found mine and the kiss was wet and deep and unhurried.
I pulled back. Kissed down her jaw. Below her ear, where the skin was thin and warm, and her breath went shallow. She turned her head to give me access and her fingers slid into my hair. Down her throat. The pulse jumping under my lips, her heartbeat fast through her skin and getting faster.
Her collarbone. I kissed the mark she'd left on mine and she made a small sound. Down her chest. The valley between her breasts, where the skin was still damp with sweat and tasted like salt.
My mouth found her nipple.
Her back arched off the couch. The sound she made was louder than she meant it to be and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Her eyes darted toward Lili's cot across the room.
I sucked. Slow. My tongue circled the nipple and her back arched further and the sounds behind her hand got louder. She was pressing her palm against her lips hard enough to whiten her fingers and her hips were lifting off the cushion in tiny involuntary rolls.
I switched to the other one. Her free hand gripped the back of my head, pulling me closer, and her hips rolled up against my stomach and the wet heat of her pressed against my skin. She was soaked. From the first time, from the cum and the slick and the fresh arousal building on top of it, the evidence of round one smeared hot against my abdomen every time she rocked.
"'Nn- Bell- mm-'"
I kissed down her stomach. The muscles flexed under my mouth. Her hand came off her mouth and found the cushion edge and gripped. I kissed her hip bone. The crease of her thigh. Her leg twitched and her breathing went fast through her nose and she was trying to stay quiet and the trying was making her whole body tense.
My hand slid between her legs.
She was drenched. My fingers found her and the slickness was warm and thick and when I touched her clit she jerked. Swollen. Oversensitive from the first orgasm. Every pass of my thumb made her legs shake and her hips lift.
"'Ah- that's- too much- nn-'"
I slowed down. Lighter. Circling instead of pressing. Her body relaxed by degrees, the tension releasing as the touch shifted from too much to building again. Her breathing evened out for three breaths, then broke when I slid two fingers inside her.
The entry was effortless. She was so wet from the first round that my fingers sank in without resistance and the sound was obscene in the quiet basement. A slick, liquid sound that filled the room. Her face went red.
I curled my fingers. Found the spot. Pressed.
Her hand came off the cushion. She grabbed my wrist with both hands. Her hips ground against my hand. Her mouth was open and her eyes were squeezed shut and she was making sounds through clenched teeth that matched the rhythm of my fingers.
"'Right- right there- don't- don't stop- ah-'"
Her grip on my wrist was pulling me deeper. She was climbing fast. Second orgasms built faster, especially when she was still sensitive. Her thighs were shaking and her stomach was flexing and her breathing was going ragged and she was close, visibly close, her body winding tight around my hand.
I pulled my fingers out.
"'No-'" The word was instant. Her hips chased my retreating hand and her eyes flew open and the look on her face was desperate and wrecked. "'Bell- why did you- put them back- please-'"
I positioned myself between her legs. Her eyes dropped to my cock. Hard. She swallowed.
I hooked her right leg over my shoulder.
She went still. Her eyes widened. This was new. The stretch of her leg over my shoulder opened her and the angle was different from anything we'd done and she was looking up at me with her chest heaving and her face flushed and her eyes caught between anticipation and nervousness.
"I couldn't hold this position a month ago," I said. My left hand braced on the couch beside her head. My right held her leg against my shoulder, the weight of it easy. My Strength was different now. Weeks of training and combat and the power-sex loop feeding back into itself. I could hold her like this without my arm shaking.
She bit her lower lip. Her eyes went from my face to where my cock pressed against her. The head slick from both of us. The angle would take me deeper than anything before. She knew it.
"'Do it.'"
I pushed in.
The angle was devastating. Her body opening around me in a long slow slide that went deeper than round one, deeper than our first time. She was swollen from the first orgasm and the tightness was different, a velvet clench that gripped the entire length, and the wet heat was overwhelming. The slick from round one made the slide frictionless and the sound of the entry was loud and wet in the quiet room.
Her mouth fell open. Her eyes squeezed shut. The sound that came out of her was low and broken and nothing like the sharp gasps from cowgirl. Guttural. From somewhere in her chest.
"'Oh- oh god- Bell- it's so deep-'"
I held there. Fully inside, bottomed out, deeper than she'd ever taken me. Her stomach flexed. Her leg was shaking against my shoulder. Her hands had found my arms and her nails were digging in. Her chest was heaving, breath coming in short pulls through her mouth.
I pulled back. Slow. The withdrawal dragged along her front wall with a pressure that made her eyes roll up. She whimpered. The ridge of the head caught as I pulled almost out, the stretch visible in how her brow creased, and then the cool basement air hit the exposed shaft, slick and glistening in the Falna glow.
I pushed back in. Slow. Deep.
"'Ah-'"
The rhythm was patient. Controlled. The opposite of how she'd ridden me. Long deep strokes that bottomed out on every thrust. Each one drew a sound from her that matched the depth. The wet sounds were immediate and constant. She was drenched, round one's cum and fresh arousal mixed together, and every stroke produced a slick noise that filled the basement.
Her hands were on my arms, gripping. Her teeth were clenched between the sounds and she was breathing hard through her nose. But every thrust broke through her control.
"'Nn- nn- ah-'"
I increased the pace. Her grip on my arms tightened. The thrusts were hitting deeper at this angle and her body was responding with full contractions on every stroke. Her stomach flexed visibly. Her breasts moved with the force of each thrust. The sweat was reforming on her skin, a fresh sheen across her chest and stomach, mixing with what remained from round one.
Her free leg wrapped around my waist. Pulled me harder into her. The depth increased and she gasped and her back arched and her sounds went louder.
"'Bell- Bell it's too- I can't- nn-'"
"You can."
"'It's too deep- ah- ah- please-'"
Her please had no end to it. Her leg was pulling me closer, her hips lifting to meet each thrust, her body contradicting her mouth on every stroke. The slapping of skin was louder now, wet from the slickness, rhythmic. The couch cushion compressed under each thrust and the frame creaked and the basement was full of sound. Her sounds and the wet sounds and the creaking and my own breathing, harsh and fast because my body was climbing too, my cock aching inside her with every stroke, the tight wet clench of her pulling me toward an edge I wasn't ready for.
I leaned down. The position folded her, her leg between us, and my face was close to hers. Her eyes opened. Unfocused. The blue barely visible behind dilated pupils. Her mouth open. Her breath hot on my face, fast and ragged. Sweat on her forehead, strands of black hair stuck across her cheeks.
I slowed down. Ground at the bottom of the stroke, pressing against the spot my fingers had found. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened wider. No sound came out. Her body locked, rigid, her back arched off the couch.
Then the sound came. Low. Continuous. A drawn-out "'Ahhh-'" that she couldn't stop and couldn't shape into a word.
"'Bell- I'm going to- again- I can't- ah- ah-'"
Her left hand moved. From my arm to the back of my neck. Fingers in my hair at the nape. Gripping. The same tell from round one. She was close.
I thrust deeper. Harder. The patient rhythm broke and I was driving into her with the full force of stats that shouldn't exist at Level 1. Her body jolted with each thrust and her sounds came on every stroke, overlapping, continuous.
"'Ah- ah- ah- Bell- Bell- please- nn-'"
I ground deep and held. Her eyes went blank. Her mouth opened in a silent O. Her whole body went rigid. Her pussy clenched around me in waves tighter than the first orgasm, sharper, faster, and she pulled my head down and her teeth found my collarbone.
Lower this time. Right at the ridge where bone met the soft tissue below the throat. Her bite sank in and her body locked and the orgasm pulsed through her in contractions that clenched around my cock hard enough that I stopped breathing. Her hips stuttered against mine. Her leg trembled on my shoulder. The bite was deep enough to mark.
My edge hit. The clenching, the heat, the bite pain bright and specific mixing with the pressure, and I came inside her with a thrust that went as deep as the position allowed. The heat of it made her twitch, her pussy clenching around me in aftershock pulses. Her teeth released my collarbone. Her head fell back against the cushion and a long exhale carried my name like she'd been holding it back.
We stayed there.
Her leg slid off my shoulder. Slowly. She didn't have the muscle control to move it herself, so it slid down my arm and fell to the couch. She lay there with her legs open and her body boneless. Her chest heaving. Her eyes closed. Small twitches in her thighs and stomach, aftershocks rippling through her every few seconds.
I was still inside her. The warmth between us was everything. The Falna on my back pulsed once, bright enough to light the room blue-white for a single heartbeat, then dimmed.
Her hand found mine on the cushion. Her fingers laced through. Squeezed. The quiet was enough.
The Falna woke me up.
Blue-white light in the dark. Brighter than the glow from Babel's lights through the basement window. Pulsing. Steady. Coming from my back.
Hestia was already awake. She was kneeling beside the couch, her finger tracing the hieroglyphs, her blue eyes wide in the Falna's light. She was wearing my shirt and nothing else and her hair was a disaster.
"Bell." Her voice cracked. "They're all S-rank."
I didn't move.
"Agility S-999. Strength S-998. Endurance S-991. Dexterity S-996. Magic S-904." She read them like a prayer. "Level 1 cap. You've hit the wall."
The wall. Every adventurer had one. Stats stopped growing because the body couldn't hold more excelia at its current Level. The only way past was a Level Up, and the only way to Level Up was a great deed.
Hestia's hand pressed flat against my back. Trembling. When I turned to look at her, tears were running down her face.
"Hey." I sat up. Touched her cheek. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. The tears kept coming. "You need a great deed. To level up. You need to do the impossible and I can't protect you and I'm scared and I'm proud and I'm crying and I hate all of it."
She said it in one breath. Her chin trembled and her blue eyes were swimming and she was kneeling on the cold stone floor in my too-big shirt with tear tracks on her face and the Falna glowing through the fabric on my back.
I pulled her onto the couch. She curled into my side. Her face went into my chest and her shoulders shook once and then she was still.
"I'll be fine," I said.
"You don't know that."
I did. I knew exactly which great deed was coming and exactly how it played out. But I couldn't tell her that.
"I'll be fine," I said again.
She gripped my shirt. Held on.
Lili made breakfast.
She was at the small kitchen counter when I woke up for the second time, working over the portable stove Hestia had bought from the market. Rice, eggs, miso soup. The church basement smelled like a home for the first time since I'd moved in.
She was in her Pallum form, brown hair tied back, wearing a spare shirt of mine that went to her knees. She was stirring the soup with a focus that was a little too precise. Her back was to the room.
"Good morning, Bell-sama."
"Morning."
Hestia was still in bed beside me, face pressed into the pillow, one arm thrown over my waist. She stirred at my voice but didn't wake up.
Lili set three bowls on the counter. Filled them. The portions were careful. Measured. My bowl was full. Her bowl was full.
Hestia's bowl was smaller.
I looked at Lili. She met my gaze with her brown eyes steady, and the soup in Hestia's bowl was definitely, measurably, half the size of everyone else's.
"Lili."
"Bell-sama should eat while it's warm."
She set the bowls on the low table and sat down and picked up her chopsticks and began eating with the precise, efficient movements of someone who was absolutely not going to discuss this.
Hestia woke up. Stumbled to the table. Sat down. Looked at her bowl.
Looked at my bowl. Looked at Lili's bowl. Looked at her bowl again.
"Lili."
"Goddess?"
"This portion is small."
"Lili made the portions based on body size. Goddess is the smallest person in the room."
Hestia's mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes went to me. I was eating and not getting involved.
"I," Hestia said, "am a goddess."
"Goddesses have small stomachs." Lili took another bite. Her brown eyes were perfectly innocent.
The collarbone bite mark was visible above my collar. I knew because Lili's eyes had landed on it when she'd set down the bowls and had stayed there for a second before moving to my face. She hadn't mentioned it. She wasn't going to mention it. But the portion sizes were speaking for her.
Hestia pulled her bowl closer and ate in aggressive silence. Her blue eyes darted between me and Lili.
Lili ate her full portion without looking up once.