Ch.36
The camp went quiet in pieces.
Welf's snoring was the last to settle into a pattern. Ouka shifted once in his tent, the canvas rustling, then nothing. Chigusa's cough faded. Somewhere out in the crystal tree line, Ryuu's footsteps kept their circuit, regular as a clock, getting fainter as she moved to the far side of the perimeter and then growing again as she came back around.
I counted the circuits. Three full rotations while Hestia's breathing slowed against my chest, her arm still locked across me, her fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt like she'd sewn them there.
She wasn't asleep.
Her breathing was slow but the rhythm was wrong. Too even, too controlled. Her thumb moved against my ribs in small circles, barely conscious.
The crystal ceiling hummed above us, purple-blue light filtering through the tent canvas, turning everything inside a bruised twilight. The shape of her face against my chest. The curve of her cheek. Her lashes moving.
"Bell."
Quiet. Half a whisper. My name in a voice that had been crying three hours ago and hadn't quite finished.
"Yeah."
She lifted her head. Her blue eyes were dark in the crystal light, the whites still faintly pink from earlier. Her hair was loose, the twin-tail ornaments taken off and set somewhere beside the bedroll, and the black strands pooled across my chest and arm and the thin pillow we were sharing.
"I couldn't feel you," she said. "Through the falna. When the pass parade happened and you didn't come back, I tried to read the connection and I couldn't find it. For sixteen hours I couldn't feel you."
Her voice cracked on the number. Sixteen hours. She'd counted.
"The Dungeon interferes with falna readings past certain depths," I said. "I was on Floor 18. The connection was still there."
"I didn't know that." Her fingers tightened in my shirt. "I thought you were dead. I thought my only- I thought I'd lost-"
She stopped. Swallowed. Her jaw worked and her mouth pressed flat and her eyes got wet again and she was fighting it, trying to hold the pieces together because she was a goddess and goddesses didn't fall apart twice in one day.
I put my hand on the back of her head. Her hair was soft. Warmer than it should have been.
She kissed me.
She pushed herself up on one arm and pressed her mouth against mine and it was hard and shaking and tasted like salt from crying she'd done before I was awake. Her hand came up to my jaw and held it and her lips were rough and her teeth caught my lower lip and the sound she made into my mouth was closer to a sob than anything else.
I kissed her back. My hand stayed on the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair, and my other arm went around her waist. She was so small. My arm went around her and my hand covered the entire width of her lower back and she fit against me in a way that still caught me off guard every time.
She pressed into me. Her hips shifted against mine. The thin dress bunched between us. The heat of her through the fabric, her thighs against my sides, and the pressure on my cock went from ambient to direct. She felt it. Her breath caught against my lips and her hips pushed down again, deliberate this time, and the friction through two layers of clothing ran straight up my spine.
She pulled back half an inch. Breathing hard. Her lips still touching mine, sharing air, her eyes open and wet and close.
"I need-" she started.
"I know."
"I need you to be here. I need to feel-"
"I know."
Her knee slid over my hip. The bedroll shifted under us, the thin padding compressing against the Dungeon floor. Outside, Ryuu's footsteps reached the near side of the perimeter and started to fade again. Hestia heard them. Her eyes flickered toward the tent wall and then back to me.
She climbed onto me.
One knee on each side of my hips, her hands on my chest, her weight settling. She was light. Barely anything. Her white dress had ridden up her thighs and the bare skin of her legs pressed against my sides through my shirt. Her hair fell forward, curtaining both our faces, black strands brushing my cheeks.
She kissed me again. Slower this time. Deeper. Her tongue found mine and a small "mm" hummed between our mouths, muffled and swallowed. My hands went to her hips. Her skin was hot under the hem of her dress, the fabric bunched around my wrists. Hotter than human heat. The goddess-warmth that was always there, every inch of her running a few degrees above what made sense.
She rocked forward. Her full weight settled onto me and my cock was straining against my pants, pressed flat between us. Her hips rolled. The friction dragged a sound from both of us, mine trapped behind clenched teeth, hers muffled into the kiss. She did it again. Slower. Grinding the length of me through the fabric, her clit pressing against the ridge of me on each forward pass, and her breathing went ragged against my mouth.
"Hestia." Low. Against her lips.
"Don't talk." She kissed the corner of my mouth. My jaw. Below my ear. Her breath was rapid against my neck, warm gusts that raised the hair on my skin. "Don't tell me it's okay. Don't tell me I'm safe. Just- be here."
My hands tightened on her hips.
She sat up. Reached behind her back and pulled the blue ribbon loose. The knot gave and the ribbon fell across my stomach and her dress loosened and she pulled it over her head in one motion and dropped it beside the bedroll. No bra. She'd never worn one.
The crystal light caught her skin. Pale, flushed pink from her collarbones up, her breasts heavy for her frame, full and soft with dark nipples already drawn tight from the cool Dungeon air. She was breathing through her mouth now, short pulls, her stomach moving with each one. She looked down at me with her hair hanging forward and her hands flat on my chest. The tiny waist. The flare of her hips. The crystal light tracing the curve from her ribcage to her breast, catching the underside where the weight pulled them into shape. Four foot seven and built like an exaggeration, and the purple light made her skin glow and her eyes were wet and she was on top of me half-naked and trembling.
I sat up. Her legs adjusted around me, her thighs squeezing. I pulled my shirt off and her palms landed on my bare chest before the fabric cleared my arms. Her fingers spread across my skin. Warm. She traced the lines of muscle that Liaris Freese had been carving into this body for weeks, her fingertips dragging from my collarbones to my stomach, and her breath caught when she felt how different it was from a month ago.
"You got bigger," she whispered.
"Stats."
"I can feel it." Her thumbs traced the ridges of my obliques. "Here. And here."
I cupped her breast. She inhaled sharply, a quick pull through her teeth. My thumb found her nipple and circled it, slow, pressing the pad against the hard point, and she bit her lip and her eyes went half-closed. I rolled it between my thumb and finger and her hips jerked against me, involuntary, her grinding stuttering.
"Nn-" Through her nose. Lips sealed shut.
The camp. She remembered. Welf was ten feet away. Lili, six. Mikoto and Chigusa in the other tent. And Ryuu, somewhere out there, circling.
I leaned in and kissed the hollow of her throat. Her pulse was jumping under my lips, fast and hard. I kissed down her collarbone, lower, between her breasts, and then I took her nipple into my mouth. She arched. Her hand flew to the back of my head, fingers digging into my hair, and the sound she made was a choked "ah-" that she killed by pressing her own wrist against her mouth. Her other breast pressed against my cheek, warm and heavy, and I sucked and her hips ground down harder, her underwear damp where it pressed against my bare stomach.
"Bell- that's-" She trailed off. Her wrist was clamped against her lips and her eyes were squeezed shut and her hips were moving in small desperate circles. I switched to the other nipple and the sound behind her wrist was high and thin and if anyone in the camp was still awake they would have heard it.
I pulled back. Her nipple was wet and tight and she made a small frustrated noise when the air hit it. I kissed her sternum, the curve under her breast, her ribs, her stomach. She shivered. The muscles of her abdomen jumped under my lips. I hooked my fingers into the waistband of her underwear.
She lifted her hips.
I pulled the underwear down past her thighs. It caught around one knee. She kicked them the rest of the way without breaking eye contact and they disappeared somewhere into the bedroll.
I reached between us. She was wet. Past wet. My fingers slid through the slick heat of her without resistance and her whole body jerked, her teeth clamping on her lower lip, her eyes squeezing shut.
"Shh."
"I'm trying-" Hissed. Desperate. Her hips rocked against my hand.
I slid two fingers into her. Slow. The heat inside was intense, concentrated, and she clenched around them immediately, tight, her body pulling my fingers deeper. Her forehead dropped against mine. Her mouth opened but nothing came out except breath through parted lips.
I curled my fingers. The spot I knew from the church basement, the slightly different texture along the front wall. I pressed.
Her whole body shuddered. "'Nn- there-" Barely a whisper. Her hips moved on their own, grinding down against my hand, and the slick sound got louder as my fingers moved inside her.
We both heard it. The wet, rhythmic sound of my fingers in her pussy, unmistakable in the quiet tent.
She froze. "Oh god." Her face was red. Even in the purple crystal-light. "That's- I'm not usually this-"
"You're soaking."
A strangled sound in her throat and her face went darker and she buried it against my shoulder. "Don't- don't say that, someone will-"
I curled my fingers again and whatever she was going to say disappeared into a choked "ah-" against my skin. I kept the rhythm. Slow and deep, pressing on the forward stroke, her body clenching each time, the wet sound filling the tent. She couldn't stay still. Her hips rocked into my hand, chasing it, and her breathing was coming in short gasps against my shoulder and her fingers were digging into my back.
My cock was aching against my thigh, fully hard. Each time her hips ground down the movement shifted my pants against me and the friction was making my teeth hurt and I wanted to be inside her badly enough that my free hand was already pulling at my waistband.
I withdrew my fingers. The wet sound of them leaving her was obscenely loud. She whimpered. Her hips followed, chasing, and I pushed my pants down with one hand while holding her hip with the other. Her hand found me before I finished, her small fingers wrapping around my cock, and her breath stuttered.
"Bell-" Her grip tightened. She stroked once, base to tip, her thumb sliding through the wetness she'd left on my stomach, and my hips bucked into her hand.
"Yeah?"
She positioned me. The head pressed against her, slick, her wetness and mine mixing, and she held there. Looking at me. Her blue eyes dark and wet and scared and wanting and the crystal light catching the tears that hadn't fallen yet.
She sank down.
The first inch was tight. The resistance of her body, the stretch of her around the head, and then she opened and the heat swallowed me and she kept going, sinking, taking me deeper. The tight grip of her walls dragging along my length, the slick heat surrounding me inch by inch, so hot inside her it didn't make sense. She was small and I filled her completely and the end of her was there before she reached the base and she gasped and shifted her angle and slid the last inch and her hips met mine and all of me was inside her.
Her mouth was open. Eyes wide. Her hands flat on my chest, fingers spread, nails pressing half-moons into my skin. She was so tight around me that her pulse came through her walls, fast and hard, matching the one in her throat.
"Don't move yet," she whispered. "Just- give me a second-"
I didn't move. My hands gripped her hips, my thumbs pressing into the hollows beside her hip bones, and the effort of holding still while all that heat and squeeze gripped me from base to tip was making my jaw ache from clenching.
She shifted. Experimental. A tiny roll of her hips, barely movement, and the sensation traveled up my spine. Her lips parted and a soft "oh" escaped and her eyes unfocused.
She rolled her hips again. Longer this time, a forward grind that dragged her clit against my pelvis and shifted me inside her and her breath came out in a shudder she tried to catch and couldn't. Her walls flexed around me, a ripple of tightness from base to tip, and my fingers dug into her hips hard enough that the flesh whitened.
She started to ride me.
Slow. Close. Her forehead pressed against mine and her hands slid from my chest to my shoulders and her hips moved in long grinding rolls that barely lifted. She was grinding, pressure and depth, the head of my cock shifting inside her on each forward roll, her clit dragging against me, the bedroll creaking faintly under us.
The wet sound started quiet. The slick noise of her body around mine on each movement, barely audible under her breathing. Then louder as she got wetter, as each grind ended with a soft squelch that made her jaw clench. She pretended she couldn't hear it. Her forehead against mine, her breathing through her nose in fast controlled bursts. I could smell her. The sweetness of her skin mixed with the musk of sex and the clean stone scent of the Dungeon air coming through the canvas.
I pulled her into me on the next grind, matching her, rolling my hips up as she came forward. The angle changed. Deeper. She bit down on nothing, her teeth clicking shut, and a strangled "nn-" leaked through her sealed lips.
"Right there?" Against her mouth. Barely voiced.
"'Nn- yes- there- don't stop-"
I did it again. And again. Each time she ground forward I pulled her hips and rolled up and the depth hit the same spot and her sounds got less controlled. "Ah-" slipping out. Then "ah- ah-" rhythmic, matching our pace, bitten off at the end but starting again on the next thrust. Her lips were parted now, no more nose-breathing, her mouth open and her eyes losing focus and the crystal light catching the shine of sweat on her upper lip.
The sweat between us was slick where her stomach pressed against mine, and her breasts slid against my chest on each forward roll, the nipples dragging across my skin. The bedroll was damp under my back. The tent was warm, our combined heat trapped in the small space, the cool Dungeon air locked out by two bodies pressed together.
Outside, Ryuu's footsteps came back around.
Closer this time. Or maybe the same distance and the tent was thinner than I thought. The steady pad of boots on crystal grass, approaching, and Hestia heard them and her body went rigid. She stopped moving. Her pussy clenched hard around me, every muscle locking, and her nails dug into my shoulders and she buried her face in my neck.
The footsteps passed the tent.
Paused.
One beat. Two. The grass didn't crunch. The boots didn't move. Ryuu was standing outside our tent, six feet of canvas between her and us, and Hestia was sitting on my cock with her face in my neck and neither of us breathed. Buried to the hilt and she was clamped down so tight it hurt and the wet heat of her was pulsing around me.
The footsteps resumed. Continued past. Faded into the tree line.
Hestia exhaled against my throat. A shaky, ragged exhale that shuddered through her whole body. Her hips moved again. Harder now, grinding down with purpose, and the wet sound was louder and she didn't freeze this time. Past caring. Her grinding was less controlled, faster, her body chasing it.
I rolled my hips up into her and she bit my shoulder. The teeth sank in, sharp bright pain, and the squeeze of her body tightened around me at the same moment and my hands clamped on her ass and I thrust up harder. She bit harder on the next one, muffling whatever was trying to get out, her voice vibrating through her teeth into my skin, and the indentation was going to be visible tomorrow.
Her hips were rocking now, short fast grinds, her clit grinding against me on every stroke, and she was making continuous sounds into my shoulder, choked "'ah- ah- nn- ah-'" catches that came faster and higher as her body wound tighter. Her walls were fluttering, the irregular clenching that came before she broke, and her fingers were digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks and the sounds she was muffling were getting sharper.
I was close. The tightness and the heat and the squeeze on every downstroke had been building pressure at the base of my spine for minutes and my cock was throbbing inside her and my grip on her hips was bruising and I was fighting not to just take over and drive up into her at the pace my body wanted.
"Look at me."
She pulled her face from my shoulder. Her eyes were glazed. Lips swollen, red where she'd bitten them. Her cheeks were wet, tears and sweat streaked together, and her hair was sticking to her face in dark lines.
"I'm here," I said.
Her mouth trembled. She kissed me. Messy and desperate and tasting like salt, her lips sliding against mine, and her hips sped up and the grinding became frantic, her whole body rocking, the wet slap of her against me filling the tent. "'Ah- Bell- I'm- nn- I can't-'" Words fragmenting between our mouths. "'Don't stop- please- ah- AH-'"
Her nails dragged down my chest. All ten of them, a long rake from my collarbones to my stomach, and the lines of fire they left made me hiss through my teeth and slam up into her and her back arched.
Her toes curled against my calves. Gripping hard, the tendons in her feet flexing. Her thighs clamped. Her breathing stopped, a held inhale that locked her entire body, and then her eyes went blank. Her mouth opened and nothing came out. Every muscle rigid, her back arching until her hair brushed my knees, and her pussy clamped down so hard I couldn't move inside her.
I clapped my hand over her mouth.
The scream hit my palm. Muffled, high, sustained, her jaw open wide against my fingers and the sound vibrating through my hand and up my arm. Her body shook in hard pulses, her walls clenching around me in rhythmic waves, squeezing from base to tip and releasing and squeezing again. Her nails embedded in my chest, crescent marks deep enough that the skin broke. Her stomach contracted in visible waves, the muscles rolling under her skin, and her eyes rolled back and her thighs were shaking against my hips.
The clenching pulled me over.
My hips slammed up on their own, once, twice, and the pressure broke and I came inside her and my vision whited out. The heat leaving my body and filling hers, her walls milking me in waves that matched the spasms still rolling through her. My face pressed into her hair and the sound I made was barely a sound, just a grunt trapped behind locked teeth, and my hands gripped her hips hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises on a goddess. The heat of my cum inside her and she clenched again, hard, and a muffled "'nn-'" hit my palm, aftershock, her body still pulsing around me.
I breathed. That was all for a few seconds. Breathing.
She came down in stages. The rigidity leaving her body piece by piece, her back uncurving, her nails releasing from my chest, her thighs loosening. I took my hand off her mouth. She collapsed forward onto my chest, boneless, shaking, her heart hammering against mine hard enough to feel through both our ribcages. Her pussy twitched around me, small involuntary contractions, and each one ran through my oversensitive cock and through her. She whimpered against my chest every time.
I held her. My arms around her back, one hand in her hair, and I listened to the camp. Welf's snoring, unchanged. No movement from the other tents. The fire had gone to embers and the orange glow through the canvas was gone, replaced by the crystal ceiling's purple hum.
Ryuu's footsteps were on the far side of the perimeter. Faint. Steady.
Hestia's face was pressed against my chest. She was breathing hard, gradually slowing, her ribs expanding and contracting against my stomach. I was still inside her and she didn't move to change that. The warmth where we were connected, her heat and mine. My cum inside her, the slick fullness of it, and when she shifted her hips it leaked around me and she shivered.
Her fingers found the marks she'd left on my chest. The scratches. She traced one with her fingertip, feather-light, and her breath caught when she felt how deep they were.
"I did that," she said. Tiny voice.
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
She pressed her lips against one of the marks. Her mouth was hot and her breath was still unsteady and she kissed each scratch line across my chest with the focus of someone performing a very small ritual.
"The falna," she murmured into my skin.
A warmth on my back that wasn't her body or the bedroll. Faint. The hieroglyphs waking up, responding to the excelia spike, a blue glow reflected in the canvas above us.
"It's glowing," she said. She lifted her head. The blue light caught her face from below and her eyes were wide. "Bell, it's glowing. The excelia from- from this-"
"I know."
She stared at me. Her hair hung in her face and her cheeks were flushed and she had tear tracks on her skin and she was still sitting on me with me softening inside her and the falna on my back was glowing blue through the tent like a lantern.
The glow faded after a few seconds. She put her head back down on my chest. Her ear over my heartbeat.
"Anyone awake would have seen that," she whispered.
"Yeah."
"Through the canvas."
"Probably."
She didn't say anything for a while. Her thumb resumed its circles on my ribs, the same unconscious motion from before, and her breathing evened out. My cock slipped out of her and she made a small unhappy sound and pressed closer. Warmth leaked down her thigh and onto mine and neither of us moved to clean it up. Her legs still bracketed my hips. Her bare feet were warm now, tucked against my calves where they'd been cold an hour ago.
"Don't leave," she said again. The same words from an hour ago. The same voice.
"I'm here."
Her arm tightened across my chest. The tent smelled like her and like sex and the thin padding under us was damp with sweat and everything else.
Outside, Ryuu's footsteps came around again. They reached the point nearest our tent and I tracked them by sound.
The footsteps slowed.
Slowed.
Didn't stop. Kept going. A little faster than before.
Hestia's hand found mine. Her fingers laced through and held on and she pulled our joined hands against her chest, between her breasts, and both our pulses were still fast.
She fell asleep holding on.
I lay there. The scratches on my chest stung faintly. The crystal ceiling hummed through the canvas and Ryuu's footsteps continued their patrol, regular and distant, and I counted circuits until I lost track.
In the morning the marks on my chest were going to be visible. The camp was going to be awkward. Lili was going to be silently furious and Mikoto was going to turn colors and Ryuu was going to look at everything except me.
That was tomorrow. Hestia was asleep on my chest with her fingers in mine and the Dungeon hummed above us and the fire was dead and the perimeter was secure and I was alive.
I closed my eyes.
I slept.