Chapter 2: Unholy Communion
The pressure built low in his gut, a tight, gathering coil of heat. He could feel it in his teeth, in the sudden tension that wired his spine straight. Aqua’s throat was a slick, convulsive vise around him, her ragged breaths vibrating through his flesh. Her eyes were shut, tears drying in salty tracks on her flushed cheeks. She wasn’t fighting anymore. She was enduring, a vessel for his use, and the sheer, degrading compliance of it was what finally broke him.
A raw, guttural sound ripped from his throat, nothing human about it. His hand clenched harder in her hair, holding her deep as his hips jerked forward a final, punishing inch. The release was a violent flood, hot and endless, pumping directly into the clenched passage of her throat.
Aqua’s body went rigid. A shocked, muffled gag reverberated through him. Her hands flew to his thighs, fingers digging in like claws. He held her there, emptying himself, feeling each pulse as a profound invasion. When it was over, he let her go, pulling out with a soft, wet pop.
She collapsed forward onto her hands, coughing violently. The sound was harsh and ragged in the quiet room. Strings of saliva and cum dripped from her swollen lips onto the filthy straw pallet. She retched, her shoulders heaving, but nothing came up. She swallowed convulsively, again and again, her face a mask of stunned revulsion.
Kazuma stood over her, his own breath slowing. The room came back into focus—the warped planks of the floor, the faint roar of laughter from below, the belt still coiled where he’d dropped it. He felt empty. Cleansed in a foul way. He watched her cough, watched the desperate workings of her throat as she forced down what he’d given her. A strange, cold detachment settled over him.
After a minute, her coughing subsided into shaky, wet breaths. She stayed on all fours, head hung, her hair a curtain hiding her face. A low, pathetic whine escaped her.
“You… you horrible… vile…” The words had no force. They were whispers against the straw.
“You swallowed,” he observed, his voice flat. He hunkered down in front of her. He reached out, not to strike her, but to hook a finger under her chin. He lifted her face.
She was a mess. Mascara (where had she even gotten it?) was smudged in dark rings under her eyes. Her lips were puffy, reddened. Her expression was one of shattered arrogance, a porcelain doll dropped on stone. She looked at him, and for the first time, there was no anger flashing in her eyes. Just a deep, swimming confusion and a fatigue that went to the bone.
He studied her face. The triumph was gone, leaving something more complicated. He wiped his thumb across her damp chin, then brought it to his own mouth, tasting salt and ale and the faint, bitter tang of himself. Her eyes followed the movement, wide and unblinking.
“Your turn,” he said quietly.
Before she could process the words, his hands were on her hips. He flipped her onto her back. The pallet groaned in protest. She let out a startled yelp, but didn’t resist, her limbs loose like a doll’s. He shoved the ruined, rucked-up skirts of her gown past her hips, exposing her completely to the waist.
The candlelight painted her skin gold. She was pink and swollen between her legs, glistening with a wetness that had nothing to do with him. The scent of her, musky and sweet, cut through the room’s stale air. She whimpered, trying to squeeze her thighs together, but he pushed them apart with a firm, impersonal pressure, holding them open.
He didn’t look up at her face. He lowered his head.
The first touch of his tongue made her jolt as if struck by lightning. A sharp, high gasp tore from her throat. Her hands flailed, then fisted in the rough wool of the blanket beneath her. He ignored her. He licked a slow, flat stripe from bottom to top, mapping her, tasting her. She was salt and heat and something uniquely, paradoxically clean, like rain on stone.
“Kazuma… don’t…” she pleaded, but her hips gave a tiny, betraying jerk upwards.
He didn’t answer. He focused on the work. He was neither gentle nor cruel. He was thorough. He used the flat of his tongue, then the tip, circling the tight, puckered knot of nerves that made her breath catch in ragged hitches. He listened to the sounds she made—the choked-off moans, the sharp intakes of air, the way her pleadings dissolved into meaningless syllables. He felt the tension coiling in her thighs under his palms.
Her hands left the blanket and tangled in his hair. She wasn’t pushing him away. She was holding on, her grip tightening with each pass of his tongue. Her heels dug into the small of his back, pulling him closer.
“Wait… oh… that’s… I’m…”
Her voice climbed, losing all coherence. Her body began to tremble, a fine vibration that grew into full-body shudders. He pinned her hips down as she tried to buck against his mouth, relentless now, his tongue firm and precise. He wanted to feel it. He wanted to witness the exact moment her pride shattered into pure, helpless sensation.
It came with a broken cry that was half-sob, half-scream. Her back arched violently off the pallet, every muscle tensed like a bowstring. She choked on his name, once, then a wave of spasms wracked her, pulling a series of raw, gasping whimpers from her throat. He held her through it, until the tremors subsided into weak, aftershock twitches and she went completely limp, boneless against the straw.
Silence pooled in the room, broken only by the ragged symphony of their breathing. The tavern’s noise below seemed miles away.
Kazuma slowly lifted his head. His jaw ached. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and looked at her.
Aqua lay sprawled, one arm flung over her eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. The skirts were still bundled around her waist, her legs splayed open, utterly exposed. A slow flush was spreading from her chest up to her throat. She was crying again, but silently now, tears leaking from under her arm to darken the blanket.
He moved up the pallet, lying down beside her, not touching her. The straw prickled through the thin sheet. They lay there in the dim, candlelit quiet for a long time, listening to each other breathe. The space between their bodies felt charged, a new and unexplored frontier.
Finally, she spoke, her voice hoarse and small. “I hate you.”
“I know.”
Another minute passed. The candle guttered, casting long, dancing shadows of the bawdy tapestry figures on the wall.
“Was I…” she started, then stopped. She cleared her ruined throat. “Was it… satisfactory?”
The question, in her broken, prideful tone, was so utterly, painfully Aqua that Kazuma felt a laugh bubble up in his chest. It wasn’t a kind laugh. It was exhausted. He turned his head to look at her profile. Her arm was still over her eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, the word rough. “It was.”
She lowered her arm then, turning her head to look at him. Her eyes were red-raw, her expression bewildered, like a soldier who’d survived a battle but couldn’t remember the cause. She searched his face, looking for mockery, for cruelty.
He just looked back, his own face unreadable in the gloom.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, she pulled her skirts down, covering herself. She rolled onto her side, facing away from him, curling into a tight ball. He stared at the line of her back, the tremble in her shoulders that maybe was a silent cry.
He blew out the candle. Darkness swallowed the room, thick and complete.
Just as the silence was about to harden into something permanent, her voice came again, a whisper in the black.
“We still only have twelve silver.”
A grim smile touched Kazuma’s lips in the dark. “Yeah. We do.”
Outside, a bottle shattered in the tavern below, followed by a roar of drunken laughter. The world, with all its dirty, desperate problems, was still right there on the other side of the door, waiting for morning.