Ch.24
The tatami smelled like smoke where the lightning had hit it. Faint wisps curled up from the scorched spots near her shoulder, thin and grey in the lamplight, and neither of us moved to put them out. Her head was on my chest and her breathing was slowing and the wings behind her back were folded flat, the Devil wing tucked under my arm and the Fallen Angel feathers pressing warm against my ribs.
We lay there. Her heartbeat came through her chest into mine, still fast but coming down, and the incense had burned to ash in its holder and the shrine was quiet except for us.
"This was my mother's shrine," she said.
Her voice was different. The teasing register was gone. This voice was lower, softer, worn at the edges.
"Shuri Himejima. She was a miko here. She purified spirits and tended the grounds and lived alone because the clan had already disowned her by the time I was born." Her fingers were on my chest, tracing absent patterns. "She fell in love with a Fallen Angel. That was enough for them. But having me was worse. A half-breed. Fallen blood in a Himejima body. They called it contamination."
I didn't say anything. My arm was around her shoulders and her hair was damp with sweat against my skin and I held her and listened.
"He was gone when they came. My father. On assignment for the Grigori. Important business." Her voice went flat. "They came to the shrine at night. I was ten. My mother put herself between me and the door and told me to run." Her fingers stopped moving on my chest. "I ran. She didn't."
The room was quiet. Outside, wind moved through the trees on the shrine grounds. A branch scraped the side of the building.
"Rias found me a year later. I was living in the streets, purifying spirits for food. Her family's people tracked me down. The Himejima clan had come to kill me and Rias stopped them." She paused. "She was the first person who looked at my wings and didn't flinch."
"Second," I said.
She was still for a moment. Then she lifted her head and looked at me and her violet eyes were clear and serious and she searched my face. Whatever she needed to find there, she found it. She put her head back on my chest and her arm tightened across my stomach.
"Second," she said.
We lay there for a while. Her breathing evened out against my ribs. The scorched tatami had stopped smoking. The warmth of her body along my entire left side, the cool air of the shrine on my right, and the Boosted Gear's gem pulsing faintly on my arm, a slow green rhythm.
She sat up.
She straddled me in one smooth motion, rising from beside me and swinging her leg over, and she was looking down at me with her hair hanging loose around her face. The ponytail was gone, ruined, and her black hair fell to her waist in tangled waves. Her shirt was open and sliding off one shoulder. Her breasts hung full and heavy above me and her thighs were warm on either side of my hips and the wet heat of her was against my cock, slick with cum from round one, and I was hardening because there was no version of this where Akeno Himejima straddled you half-dressed and you didn't respond.
She reached between us. Her hand wrapped around me, the slide easy because I was slick with her and she stroked me slowly until I was fully hard. Her grip was warm and unhurried and she watched my face while she did it, her violet eyes steady, no teasing, no performance.
She lifted her hips. Positioned me against her. The head pressed against her entrance, the heat and the wet and the swollen softness from her orgasm.
She sank down.
One slow drop. I slid into her and the heat was immediate and enveloping and different from round one. Hotter. Swollen. Everything more sensitive on both sides, the friction sharper, and the wet grip of her pulsed around me as she took me in. The wet sound of entry was obscene in the quiet shrine, slick and audible, and a flush crept up her chest. She didn't look away.
"Nn-" Quiet. Under her breath. She settled with me fully inside her and her hands found my chest and she rolled her hips.
Slow. The rhythm was hers, deliberate, patient. Her hips rolled forward and back in long grinding strokes, each one dragging her clit against me, each one making her breathing catch with a small hitch. I put my hands on her thighs. Her skin was damp with cooling sweat and warm underneath. I didn't grip. Didn't guide. Let her have this.
She rode me slow. Her hair swayed with each roll and her breasts moved, heavy, the nipples dark and hard. Her eyes were half-closed and her mouth was slightly open and the sounds she made were quiet, private. "Mm." "Nn." Small catches in her throat. The wet sounds between us were continuous, slicker than round one, the cum from before making everything wetter, and her face went pink when the sound reached a particularly audible squelch. She kept moving.
My cock ached inside her, oversensitive from the edge she'd left me on during the blowjob, from the denied orgasm, from coming hard in round one. The friction of her slow grinding was sharp, each stroke building sensation faster than it should have, the wet heat of her gripping me on each forward roll and loosening on the back.
She leaned forward. Her hair fell around my face and her forehead touched mine. Warm skin on warm skin. Her breathing against my mouth. Her eyes open, close enough to see the fine violet grain of her irises.
"Ise."
My name in her real voice. Quiet. Close. Different from Rias. Rias said "Ise" like a claim. Akeno said it like she was tasting whether it was safe to say, without armor.
I put one hand on the back of her neck. Holding. Her hair was warm and damp against my fingers. She exhaled shakily and her eyes closed and her hips moved faster, the patience eroding, the grinding becoming urgent.
"Ah- nn- Ise-" Faster. Her thighs squeezed my hips and her fists on my chest pressed harder and her breathing was getting shorter, the catches more frequent. Her forehead was still against mine and her mouth was open and she was breathing into my mouth and I was breathing into hers.
I touched her face. My thumb on her cheekbone, my fingers along her jaw. Her eyes opened at the touch, violet and glassy.
"Stay with me," I said. Quiet. She kept her eyes on mine and her hips kept moving and her mouth was open and her breathing was falling apart and we were so close our noses were touching and her mouth went slack and her eyebrows pulled together.
She came quietly. Her body went rigid, hips pressed down hard, pussy clenching around me in slow deep pulses that gripped and released, gripped and released. She didn't scream. A long shuddering exhale through parted lips, her forehead pressing harder against mine. Her hands on my chest opened and closed, opened and closed. Her wings trembled once behind her back. Her thighs shook against my hips. A long "nn" that broke into my name, whispered, barely there.
Her eyes were still on mine when it hit. She held the gaze through it. Wet and wrecked and open. That was harder than the screaming.
Her body relaxed on top of me. Heavy, warm, her chest against mine. She was breathing hard and her pussy was still clenching softly and I was still inside her, still hard, and she knew.
"Don't move," she said against my mouth. "Let me-"
She started rolling again. Slower. Her body flinched at the first stroke, oversensitive, her face tightening, her teeth catching her lip. But she kept going. Each grind made her flinch and then moan, the pain and the pleasure layered, and after a few strokes the flinches softened and the moans got longer.
"Nn- ah- it's- a lot-" Her voice was thin. She kept grinding through it.
I rolled us.
She went onto her stomach on the tatami and I pulled out of her. The withdrawal made a wet sound and she whined at the emptiness, short and bitten-back, her hips pushing back toward me on instinct. Cool air hit my cock, wet and glistening, and the contrast with the furnace heat of her body was sharp.
I grabbed her hips and pulled them up. She got on her hands and knees and I pushed her forward toward the kotatsu table. Her hands found the edge and gripped, her fingers wrapping around the wood.
"Ise-"
I pushed into her from behind.
Deeper. She was soaking now, three rounds of wet, slick and swollen, and the slide was frictionless and the angle let me go further than before. She gasped and her arms straightened and her fingers went white on the table edge.
"Ah- oh- that's deeper-" Her head dropped between her arms and her hair cascaded onto the table surface and her back arched, pushing her hips back against me.
I thrust. She moaned, loud, the quiet over. Her voice bounced off the shrine walls. The kotatsu shifted on the tatami and her knuckles were pale on the wood.
I set the pace. Hard, deep, each thrust sinking into slick heat and pulling back against her grip, and the sounds between us were obscene. The wet slap of my hips against her was loud in the shrine and the squelching of each thrust was louder and her moans were loudest. The kotatsu scraped forward by fractions with each stroke and her grip on the edge was the only thing keeping it steady.
"Ah- ah- harder- please-" Her back arched deeper and her breasts swayed under her open shirt, visible from behind, and her hair was wild across the table surface. I grabbed a fistful of it and pulled, firm, and her head came up and her back curved and the moan that ripped out of her was raw and loud and her eyes rolled toward the ceiling.
"AH- Ise- there- don't stop-"
Sweat on her lower back. My hands on her hips, gripping hard enough to leave marks I'd see tomorrow. Her thighs were trembling and her moans were continuous, every thrust pulling a sound out of her, every exhale a cry, the volume building. Her body was tightening around me, the grip getting harder, the pulses starting. Her fingers on the kotatsu edge were curling and uncurling, nails scraping against the wood, that same rhythm she didn't know she had, the one from round one.
"I can't- it's too- nn- AH-"
Lightning. And this time, more.
Yellow arcs crackling across her shoulders and down her arms, sparking where her fingers gripped the kotatsu. Then crimson light, darker, warmer, demonic energy bleeding through her skin alongside the lightning. Both energies running through her at once, and where they met my skin the sensation was electric and hot and cold simultaneously, the Fallen Angel's metallic bite layered with the Devil's deep warmth, and the combination surged through my cock and up my spine.
She came hard. Her body locked, her arms gave out, she collapsed onto the table with her face against the wood. Her pussy clenched around me in hard fast pulses and the lightning and demonic energy surged across her skin into mine. The dual transfer hit like a wall. Hot and cold, Devil and Fallen, pouring through every point of contact. The Boosted Gear's gem blazed green, bright enough to cast shadows across the shrine walls, and my chest filled with power and kept filling.
I came inside her. Driving deep, my hips flush against hers, both hands gripping her waist, and the orgasm rolled through me while the energy transfer was still pouring in. My vision went white at the edges and my body locked up and I was buried inside her as deep as I could go and her pussy was clenching around me and the power was flooding my chest in two colors.
"Partner." Ddraig. Low, focused. "Two energy types from one woman. Devil and Fallen Angel, separate signatures, both transferring simultaneously. Your reserves just doubled from the Gremory baseline. You are now solidly Mid-Class with room to grow."
I pulled out. Slow. My cock came out of her glistening and the withdrawal made a wet sound and Akeno's hips twitched and a small moan escaped her, oversensitive, and she stayed draped over the kotatsu with her hair across the table and her breathing ragged and her body sparking faintly.
The kotatsu had moved almost a foot. One cushion was under the table. A tea cup had rolled against the wall. The tatami had scorch marks in two places.
I sat back. My legs were shaking and my arms were heavy and the power in my chest was dense, dual-layered, the hot Devil energy and the cold Fallen Angel energy sitting side by side.
Akeno peeled herself off the kotatsu. Slowly. Her arms shaking. She sat on the tatami next to me and leaned against my shoulder. Her hair was a disaster. Her shirt was hanging off one arm. The Fallen Angel wing was half-extended, feathers standing on end.
"The table moved," she said.
"The table moved."
She let out a breath. Her hand found my leg, warm and light.
"Does it bother you?" she said. "That I'm the second."
I looked at her. Violet eyes, clear, no mask.
"Ask me that again when I'm not this satisfied."
Her mouth twitched. Small, tired, genuine. She let her head fall against my shoulder and her eyes closed.
"The ceiling and the table. You're bad for furniture."
"Mm." Her voice was fading, the consonants going soft. "Your fault."
She was asleep in under a minute. Her breathing went deep and even and the Fallen Angel wing settled over my leg, the iridescent black feathers catching the lamplight in purple and blue.
I sat there. The shrine was quiet. The incense was long dead. The scorch marks on the ceiling were going to be a problem in the morning and the kotatsu was a foot out of place and a tea cup was on the floor and the room smelled like sex and ozone and sandalwood and green tea that had gone cold hours ago.
Two girls now. The heiress and the half-breed. Crimson and lightning.
I closed my eyes.