Chapter 10: A regular day?
The water had finally run cold. Jin left Sori steaming in the bath chamber, a vague silhouette through the mist, and dressed in silence. His muscles protested with a deep, liquid ache that felt earned. He wandered the fortress corridors, the stones holding a chill that seeped through his boots. His mind was a jumble of sensation and aftermath—the scalding water, the relentless rhythm, the shocking volume of his own release. It should have felt like a defeat. It didn’t. It felt like a border had been crossed, and the map was now illegible.
As the day continued, he passed through the library. It was a tomb of knowledge, shelves towering into shadow, filled with books bound in strange, leathery hides. Dust motes danced in slants of weak light from high, narrow windows. He wasn’t looking for a book. He was just moving, putting physical distance between himself and the epicenter of her.
He found her in a small solar adjacent to the library, a room with a vast arched window facing the eastern mountains. She was already dressed in a flowing white gown of simple linen, a stark contrast to the decadence of before. Her silver hair was dry and gleaming, falling like a cataract down her back. She sat on a low divan, profile etched against the glass, watching the sunrise stain the peaks with ribbons of amber and rose. Ueno was a grey coil of contentment at her feet, one eye slit open.
She turned to him as he entered. The soft smile on her lips was new. But her eyes held a new intensity, a focus that was sharper, quieter, than her usual playful cunning.
“There you are,” she said, her voice morning-soft.
Jin stopped, leaning against the doorframe. His body braced automatically. Oh, another round, he thought, the assumption etched into his synapses after the shower, after everything. His tired muscles twitched in anticipation.
She rose and crossed the room to him. Instead of a grab or a taunt, her arms slid around his waist. She hugged him tightly, her face burying itself in the plain fabric of his tunic, against his chest. It was a clinging, full-bodied embrace, the kind a wife might give a beloved husband returned from a long journey.
Jin stiffened. His hands hovered in the air, unsure. He was surprised, disarmed. A warmth that had nothing to do with lust spread through his ribs. Seeing her like this, seemingly vulnerable, softened by the dawn light, made his own face grow hot. He felt a blush creep up his neck.
He finally let his hands settle, one patting her head awkwardly, the other circling her back to return the hug. It felt… good. Surprisingly, profoundly good. A simple human anchor in this weird, gilded cage. Maybe the bathroom incident had drained more than just his body. Maybe it had scoured something in her, too.
“I missed you,” she murmured, the words muffled against his chest, spoken in a voice of such innocent sweetness it made his heart clench.
He turned redder, his patting becoming a gentle stroke of her silken hair. “I was only gone a little while,” he replied, his own voice low, reassuring. The husband’s voice. In that moment, it wasn’t a performance. It felt natural. It felt right. He held her, and the simplicity of it was a balm.
Then he felt the clever fingers at the buttons of his tunic.
They worked swiftly, popping them open from the top down, exposing his sternum, his stomach. The embrace never broke, but her head tilted back to look up at him, that soft smile still playing on her lips even as her hands moved with purpose.
“Sori?” he asked, confusion wrinkling his brow.
She sank gracefully to her knees before him. Her fingers found his belt buckle. The soft snick of the leather being undone was obscenely loud in the quiet room.
“What are you doing?” His voice was a mix of genuine puzzlement and dawning realization.
She looked up, and the softness in her eyes crystallized into gleaming, familiar mischief. The smirk was back, a predator’s curve. “I told you,” she said, her innocent tone now layered with a dark, promising honey. “I missed you.”
She yanked his pants and smallclothes down in one firm pull. The cool library air hit his skin. In that moment, the dichotomy slammed into him. From the outside, he’d been utterly tricked by her scheme, lulled by a performance of tenderness. A flash of indignation sparked. But from the inside, beneath the blush and the confusion, a tidal wave of raw, eager gladness surged. She was still the same. He was still wanted. The game was still on.
She didn’t give him time to reconcile it. She took him into her mouth, and all thought fragmented.
“Oh, gods,” Jin gasped, his head thumping back against the doorframe.
It was expert. Devastatingly so. Her mouth was searingly hot, a vacuum of perfect, slick pressure that seemed to pull the very core of him upward. Her tongue worked intricate, maddening patterns along his length. One of her hands cradled him at the base, a gentle counterpoint to the avid suction. The other braced against his thigh, nails biting in just enough to sting.
He couldn’t deny it. She was very, very good at her job. His hands flew to her head, not to push her away, but to sink into the silver waterfall of her hair, fisting it, guiding her rhythm only because the sensation was too much to bear passively.
“Where… where did you learn…?” he panted, the words splintering.
She pulled off with a wet, obscene sound, looking up at him, her lips glistening. “A thousand years, prince. I’ve had time to practice.” She dove back down, taking him deeper, and he saw stars.
The conversation became ragged, punctuated by his sharp inhales and her low hums of satisfaction.
“This is… this is different,” he managed, hips beginning a shallow, involuntary thrust.
She released him again, breathing softly. “Too vulnerable for you? No tiles to brace against? Just you, coming apart in a library?” Her grin was wicked. “I missed all of you. Your control. Your noise.”
She swallowed him whole again, and his control evaporated. The loyal husband persona, the careful protector, shattered into a million pieces under the relentless expertise of her mouth. He was just a man, unraveling.
“Sori… I’m… I can’t…”
The warning was a weak, frayed thread. She ignored it, redoubling her efforts, her throat working around him. The coil in his groin, already wound tight from the earlier marathon, snapped with catastrophic force.
His climax wasn’t a single event. It was a seismic eruption, drawn out and merciless.
The first spurt erupted, a hot, thick rope that seemed to last forever, pumping into her mouth for a full five seconds of blinding, toe-curling release. He cried out, a strangled shout that echoed off the library shelves.
It didn’t stop. A second volley followed, just as long, just as copious, a flood of seed that she accepted with a greedy swallow. He moaned, a continuous, ragged sound, his knees buckling. Her hands held him up.
“Yes… just like that… give it all,” she whispered against him before taking him back in.
The third, the fourth, the fifth—each was a prolonged, pulsing shot, five seconds of intense, draining ejaculation. His vision swam. His seed was a seemingly endless supply, each spurt rich and voluminous, spent from the depths of the reservoir she had spent the morning filling. He lost count, babbling, chanting her name, cursing, praising.
By the eighth spurt, he was screaming, tears of overwhelming sensation at the corners of his eyes. The ninth, tenth, and eleventh were shuddering, weakening deluges, but each maintained that impossible, lengthy duration, a final, drawn-out testament to his complete surrender.
The twelfth and final spurt was a weak, hot trickle, a five-second sigh that left him hollowed out, gasping, sagging against the doorframe, held up only by her hands and her mouth until she finally, slowly, pulled away.
She looked up at him, licking her lips slowly, a drop of white escaping the corner of her mouth. Her blue eyes were victorious, satiated. “See?” she said, her voice hoarse. “I really did miss you.”
Jin could only breathe in ragged, shuddering gulps, his mind utterly blank, his body a trembling void.
Meanwhile, Ueno, curled on the rug, lifted his snout and sniffed the dusty air, now tinted with a new, salty-sweet scent. He chuffed once, a bored sound, and settled his head back on his paws, waiting for the noisy, tedious human things to end.