Ch.14
A finger on my ribs woke me up. Light, tracing a line I knew was there but couldn't see in the dark, following the path of the scar Raynare's light spear had left across my right side. The skin was still raised and slightly numb along the edges where Akeno's healing had sealed it too fast for the nerve endings to sort themselves out.
I hadn't been asleep. Half-dozing, maybe. My body drifting toward sleep but my thoughts kept catching on the warmth of the girl lying on top of me and the unfamiliar hum in my chest where her energy had settled and the distant sound of Asia turning over in the guest room.
Rias was propped on one elbow, her chin on her hand, studying the scar with her fingertip. Her crimson hair was a disaster, tangled and spread across both pillows and my chest and one of her shoulders, and there was a red mark on her collarbone where my mouth had been earlier. She looked like a girl who'd been fucked. No other word for it. The Gremory composure was gone, replaced by messy hair and flushed skin, her eyes softer than I'd ever seen them.
"Does it still hurt?" she asked.
"Only when pretty girls poke it."
She smiled. A real one. Her mouth curved and her eyes crinkled at the corners and it was the least regal expression I'd seen on her face. She looked her age. She looked happy.
Her finger kept tracing the scar. Down the curve of my ribs, across the flat of my stomach, following a path that had stopped being medical and started being deliberate. Her hand flattened against my abdomen. Her eyes came up to mine.
"Ise."
"Mm."
She pushed herself up and swung her leg over me. One smooth motion, her thighs settling on either side of my hips, her weight on my lap, her hands flat on my chest. She was still naked, still flushed, still warm from the first round, and the wetness between her thighs smeared against my stomach. She noticed. Her face went pink and she shifted her hips and tried to pretend she hadn't just left a wet mark on my skin.
I was hard. I'd been getting hard since her finger started tracing the scar and my cock pressed against the inside of her thigh and when she shifted her hips the contact dragged a sound out of both of us.
She sat up straight. Her hands on my chest, her hair falling around her face, her breasts heavy and round in the dim light. She was watching me. Her blue-green eyes were open and searching, looking at my face for a reaction, and she was waiting to see if this was okay. If she was allowed to do this. If the girl who'd spent her whole life being positioned by other people was allowed to take what she wanted.
I put my hands on her waist. Thumbs against her hip bones. Squeezed once.
She rolled her hips.
My cock slid along her pussy, slick, and the wet friction dragged a groan out of me that I didn't try to suppress. She was soaked from the first round and from whatever had been building during the half-doze and the sound of skin sliding on slick skin was loud in the quiet room.
She rolled again. Watching my face. Her lower lip caught between her teeth and her breathing was already faster. She was testing her own rhythm, figuring out what her body wanted to do while sitting on me, and the concentration on her face was the hottest thing I'd seen all night.
"Like this?" she asked. Her voice was quieter than before, less sure.
"Like that."
She reached between us and took my cock in her hand. Lifted her hips. Positioned me against her entrance, the head pressing against slick swollen heat, and then she sank down.
Slow. Inch by inch. She was swollen from the first time, tight and tender, and the slide was wet and hot. I gripped her waist and watched her take me in. Her jaw clenched, her eyes fluttered shut, her mouth opened as she settled all the way down and her thighs pressed flat against my hips. She was wetter than before. The first round had left her soaked and my cock slid into her easier, slicker, and the sound it made going in was obscene.
"Oh-" Quiet. She held still for a second with me fully inside her, her hands pressing into my chest.
Then she moved.
She rolled her hips forward and the angle was different from missionary, deeper in a different direction, and she gasped and her nails bit into my chest. She rolled back. Forward again. Finding a rhythm, slow at first, her body rocking on mine, her breasts swaying with the motion. The wet sound between us was constant.
"Ah- mm-"
I let her lead. My hands on her waist, guiding, letting her set the pace. She leaned forward and her hair curtained us, crimson falling around both our faces, and the world shrank to her body above me and the slide of her pussy on my cock and her breath on my mouth. The view from below was unreal. Her breasts swinging above me, her stomach flexing with each roll, and the place where we were connected, wet and glistening.
She sped up. Her hips rolling faster, grinding down on each forward stroke, her clit pressing against me at the bottom of each roll. Her moans were getting louder, rhythmic with her movement. "Ah- ah- nn-" Each one punched out of her by the motion. The slick sound between us was getting worse, louder, and her face flushed deeper and she bit her lip and kept going because stopping wasn't an option her body would accept.
I grabbed her hips harder and pulled her down as I pushed up and she choked on air and her hands flew to my shoulders. My cock ached inside her, oversensitive from round one, every nerve sharp, and the friction was making coherent thought difficult.
"Ise-" She leaned close. Her forehead almost touching mine. Her hair everywhere. Her eyes open, blue-green and intense. "You said you chose me."
I looked up at her.
"Did you mean it?"
I sat up. My arms wrapped around her, pulling her against my chest, her breasts pressed flat between us, my face buried in her neck where her pulse was hammering and her skin tasted like salt and sweat.
"Every word."
Her hips didn't stop. The rhythm changed with us sitting up, shorter strokes, grinding, and her arms came around my neck and her forehead pressed to mine and we were breathing into each other's mouths. Sweat slicked between us where our chests pressed together. Her thighs were shaking against my sides. Her hands went to the sheets beside us. Her chin tipped right.
Close.
I grabbed her hips and ground her down onto me, deep, holding her there, and she came with my name on her lips. "Ise-" Breathed, broken, so quiet I almost missed it. Her pussy clenched around me in waves and her whole body shuddered against mine and Destruction energy flickered across her shoulders, small crimson arcs that prickled against my chest.
I lasted two more rolls of her hips. The clenching and the warmth and her body still shaking against me, and I came inside her with my arms locked around her waist and her heartbeat against mine. The energy seeped in, warm, heavy, settling into my chest alongside what was already there.
We stayed like that. Sitting up, tangled, her head on my shoulder, my face in her hair. Her body still twitching around me in small aftershocks. The Boosted Gear's gem glowed steady green on my arm for a few heartbeats before dimming.
After a while she leaned back and looked at me. Her eyes were glassy and her mouth was swollen. Her hair was beyond saving.
"I've never done that before."
"Which part?"
"Been on top."
"How was it?"
Her mouth did the trying-not-to-smile thing. "I could get used to it."
I lay back and she stayed on top of me, chin on my chest, one finger drawing circles on my collarbone. The room was warm. The sheets were damp and wrecked. My body ached in ways that were half training damage and half sex damage and the distinction didn't seem important.
"Tell me about you," she said.
"What do you want to know?"
"Anything real. Where are you from?"
"Here. Kuoh." The lie came easy. I'd been practicing it since day one.
"What do you like?"
"Arcade games. Good food. Training with Ddraig." Those were true. "Watching people figure out that I'm not what they expected." Also true.
"What don't you like?"
"People who treat other people like property."
Her eyes flickered. She heard the Riser in that, even if I hadn't aimed it at him specifically.
"Why are you so different?" she asked. "From what I expected. From the reports Koneko gave me, from what I saw at the fountain, from everything. You talk like you've lived longer than you have. You fight like someone taught you things a high school student shouldn't know. You negotiate like a Devil and you're human. Why?"
"Maybe the boy you were watching wasn't the real me."
She looked at me for a long time. Her finger stopped drawing circles. Her blue-green eyes were sharp, the heiress surfacing briefly through the girl, and she was turning that answer over, testing it for weight.
She didn't push. She laid her cheek back on my chest and her finger resumed its circles.
"You know," she said, "I'm going to figure you out eventually."
"I'm counting on it."
Her hand slid down my stomach. Lower. Her fingers found my cock, half-hard against my thigh, and she wrapped her hand around me. Her grip was firmer than the first time. She'd learned.
"Already?" she said. Amused, warm.
"Your fault."
She stroked. Slow, deliberate, her thumb dragging across the head on each upstroke, and I hardened in her hand. My cock was sore, oversensitive from two rounds, and her fingers were sending sharp jolts up my spine that sat right on the line between too much and exactly enough.
She let go. Rolled off me, onto her stomach. Looked back over her shoulder. Her crimson hair fell across the pillow and down her bare back, and the curve of her ass in the dim light shut down every thought I was having. She had a small mole on her lower back, on the left side. I hadn't noticed it before.
I moved behind her. My hand found her hip, my thumb tracing the bone there, and I positioned myself against her. She was dripping. Two rounds of cum and arousal soaking the sheets underneath her, the wet evidence of the last hour glistening on her inner thighs, and when the head of my cock pressed against her she pushed back into me.
I slid in. One stroke. All the way. No resistance, just slick heat gripping me as I bottomed out, and the depth was different from this angle, deeper, and she gasped and her face pressed into the pillow.
"Nn- that's-" Her fingers twisted the pillowcase. "Deeper."
"Yeah."
I pulled back. The slick sound of withdrawal was loud in the quiet room. I pushed in again, harder, and she made a sound into the pillow, muffled and raw. The angle hit places the other positions hadn't reached and her body responded immediately, her back arching, her pussy clenching tight on each inward stroke.
I built the pace. Deep, steady. Each thrust bottoming out, each withdrawal slick and audible. Her body was hot under my hands, her skin tacky with sweat, and the flush was spreading down her back from her shoulders. She stopped trying to muffle the sounds. "Ah- ah-" On each thrust, strained, cracking, and then a broken "fuck- Ise-" that she'd never have said in daylight with her composure intact. Her hands were clawing the sheets.
The bed was creaking under us. Rhythmic. The headboard tapped the wall on each deep stroke and the wet slap of my hips against her ass was obscene and continuous and she buried her face deeper in the pillow because she could hear it and she was mortified and her hips were pushing back to meet me anyway.
I leaned over her. My hand flat on the bed beside her head, the other gripping her hip, and I drove deeper and her back arched hard and her head came up from the pillow and she turned to look at me over her shoulder and her face was wrecked, mouth open, eyes glazed, sweat on her temples.
The energy transfer started.
A trickle at first. The warm current from the first two rounds seeping through contact points. Then it built. Rias's demonic energy surged through every inch of skin touching mine, hot and sharp, pouring into me through my hands and my hips and my cock buried inside her, and my chest expanded with it and my arms burned with new strength and the Boosted Gear's gem lit up green on my arm, bright and steady.
The energy made me faster. Stronger. My strokes went harder and deeper and Rias felt the difference because her moans went up an octave and her thighs were shaking and her fists were white-knuckled in the sheets. I grabbed a handful of her crimson hair, not pulling, just holding, and her eyes found mine over her shoulder and they were wild and her mouth was open and she was making sound on every thrust, "ah, ah, ah, ah," continuous, matching my pace.
From deep inside my skull, Ddraig's voice. Low, focused.
"Partner. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."
I drove into Rias harder. The wet sounds were everywhere, the creak of the bed, the slap of skin, her voice cracking. Her chin turned right. Her left hand grabbed the sheets in a fist.
"Ise- I'm- I can't- ah-"
I thrust deep. Ground against her. Held there.
She broke. Her pussy clenched around me so hard my hips stuttered and she screamed into the pillow and the room went red. Crimson Destruction energy blazed from every point of contact, crackling across the walls and the ceiling, bright enough to read by, bright enough to turn the shadows crimson. Her whole body convulsed under me, her back arching, her thighs shaking, her pussy pulsing around my cock in hard rhythmic waves, and the energy poured into me and every nerve lit up at once.
I came. Deep inside her, my hand gripping her hip hard enough to leave marks, my forehead pressed between her shoulder blades. The orgasm ripped through me and I buried myself to the hilt and her body was still pulsing around me and the power was flooding my chest and the green gem on my arm blazed in counterpoint to the crimson light and for a second the room was red and green and nothing else existed.
The red faded. The green dimmed. The room went dark.
We collapsed. She was flat on her stomach and I was on top of her and neither of us moved. Her breathing was ragged against the pillow. My arms were shaking. I let my weight settle on her and she made a small sound that might have been a protest but her body didn't push me off.
After a while I pulled out of her and she flinched and a soft "nn-" escaped against the pillow. I rolled to the side. She didn't move. Her face was turned toward me, her eyes half-closed, her mouth soft, her hair a crimson wreck across everything. The sheets under her were soaked. Her breathing was evening out.
She shifted closer. Her leg came over mine. Her hand found my chest and settled flat over my heart, and her eyes closed.
Within a minute she was out. Fully, completely asleep, one leg thrown over mine, her body pressed along my side. She looked younger asleep. No composure, no mask. Just a girl who'd been chosen and believed it.
I lay there.
I was wide awake. The power humming under my skin was dense and unfamiliar and it pulsed with my heartbeat. Three rounds with a High-Class Devil. Ddraig had told me the power-sex loop would work, that intimate bonds with supernatural women transferred energy, and she'd been right. The difference was obvious. My muscles felt denser, my senses slightly sharper, and the Boosted Gear's gem on my left arm was glowing a steady, quiet green that hadn't faded since the last orgasm.
"Partner." Ddraig's voice, quiet, warm. "Your base reserves have approximately doubled. You are now operating at roughly Mid-Class-Devil equivalent. With Boost stacking, you can reach High-Class for short bursts."
I looked at my arm. The green gem pulsed.
"The Gremory girl's energy is rich. Dense. Her bloodline carries the Bael Power of Destruction alongside Gremory demonic reserves. The transfer was substantial."
"Is she okay?"
"She is a High-Class Devil. What she transferred is a fraction of her total. She will recover within hours. You will not lose what you gained."
I looked at Rias. Asleep. Breathing slow and even, her face slack, her hand still on my chest. She'd given me power without knowing it, and I'd taken it without asking, and the mechanics were straightforward even if the ethics were complicated.
But she'd come to me. She'd chosen this. And I'd meant every word.
Outside, the first pale light of dawn was touching the edge of my curtain. Asia was asleep. The Fallen Angels were in a barrier across town. Riser Phenex was in the Underworld, planning a wedding, and he had no idea what was coming.
I closed my eyes. This time, sleep came.