Chapter 105: The Timetable
The air in the Oracle’s parlour didn’t just hang; it pressed. It was a physical weight, scented with sage-ash and the cloying sweetness of decayed roses. Aidan’s mind, trained for logistics and threat assessment, was already trying to break down the Elder’s words into a workable plan. A dozen a day. More if possible. The math was obscene.
“A schedule,” he said, his voice strangely flat. “You must have a roster.”
The Oracle’s lips peeled back from stained teeth in something resembling a smile. She gestured to a heavy, leather-bound ledger on a spindle-legged table. “The lineages of Crimson Hollow. Every woman from first blood to final chance is listed. Their cycles are charted. Optimal windows for conception are noted.”
Mei released his hand and stepped toward the book, her small fingers tracing a column of names. “Some are marked with crimson wax,” she observed.
“The most fertile,” the Elder grunted. “Priority. Their wombs are hungriest. They get first claim on the Vessel’s seed each day. The others… he takes them after. In whatever order strength allows.”
Aidan moved to stand behind Mei, looking over her shoulder. The pages were dense with elegant, spidery script. He saw names, ages, familial lines. Next to many, in stark red ink, were notes. Widow. Needs a strong son. Or, Third daughter, requires binding to the land. It was a crop rotation schedule for people. His people.
A hot, sick thrill coiled in his gut. His cock, already half-hard from the tension and the primal charge in the room, gave a thick, undeniable pulse against his trousers. He was a tool. A blessed, revered, exhausted tool.
“The days will be long,” the Oracle rasped. “You will rise before dawn. Cleansing rituals. Sustaining broths. Then the blessings begin. You will have assistants to guide the women in, to prepare them, to clean them after. You will not waste energy on courtesy. You will fuck. You will come. You will recover. You will fuck again.”
Each sentence was a hammer blow. Aidan’s military discipline locked his spine straight, but his breathing shallowed.
“And the nights?” Mei asked, her voice quiet but firm. She looked from the Oracle to Aidan, a possessive gleam in her dark eyes.
The Elder chuckled, a sound like gravel shifting. “The nights are for the Vessel’s keeper. For his comfort and his… maintenance. His seed must be kept plentiful, his spirit willing. That is your domain, little heiress.”
Mei’s chin lifted. She turned and placed a hand on Aidan’s chest, over his pounding heart. “He is more than a vessel,” she said, but it wasn’t a challenge to the Elder. It was a reminder to Aidan. A promise.
The Oracle waved a dismissive, gnarled hand. “He is what the village requires. The schedule begins tomorrow at the Stone Altar in the western grove. The first three are marked in crimson. Be ready.”
The dismissal was absolute. The audience was over. Aidan felt unmoored, led back out into the slanting afternoon light by Mei’s insistent tug on his arm. The vibrant green of the vineyards seemed too sharp, too loud, compared to the velvet shadows of the house.
Back in their room at the inn, the door closed, the world shrank to just them. The weight of what was to come crashed down on Aidan all at once. He sank onto the edge of the bed, head in his hands. “A dozen, Mei. A dozen. Every day. For two weeks. That’s… fuck, that’s over a hundred and fifty women.”
She didn’t offer empty comfort. Instead, she knelt before him, her hands on his knees. “You can do this. Your body was made for this. I’ve felt it.” Her fingers began to unbuckle his belt. “But first, you need to forget the number. You need to remember the feeling.”
Her practicality cut through his spiralling dread. He watched as she freed his cock, the thick, heavy length of it springing out already swollen and flushed. It looked ridiculous, a brutal weapon of flesh, yet in her delicate hands it became something else.
“See?” she whispered, leaning forward. Her breath was warm on the head. “It’s already eager. It doesn’t care about schedules. It just wants to fill a hot, tight cunt.”
She took him into her mouth without another word.
Aidan’s head fell back, a guttural groan ripping from his throat. Her mouth was a silken, sucking heat, and her technique was no longer that of a curious virgin but of a devoted expert. She knew how to use her tongue on the frenulum, how to hollow her cheeks, how to take him deeper until the head nudged the back of her throat. She gagged softly, tears springing to her eyes, but she didn’t pull back. She relaxed, swallowing around him, and took him deeper still.
“Jesus, Mei,” he snarled, his fingers tangling in her hair. He wasn’t gentle. The day’s pressure, the clinical discussion of his sperm as a commodity, the sheer fucking audacity of it all—it all fused into a raw, driving need to claim. To dominate the one thing here that was truly his. “Take it. All of it.”
She moaned around his girth, the vibration spearing through his balls. Her small hand stroked the base of his shaft, her fingers unable to meet. She slurped and sucked, a filthy, wet soundtrack that erased every other thought. He fucked her mouth in short, sharp thrusts, watching his massive cock disappear between her lips, her eyes glazed with adoration and strain.
He pulled her off, a string of saliva connecting her swollen lips to his glistening crown. “Not like this,” he panted. “I need to be inside you. I need to feel you.”
He yanked her up, her yukata tearing under his hands. He laid her back on the bed, her petite body a pale contrast to the dark linens. He didn’t bother with foreplay. He spread her slender thighs, revealing her already soaked, pink pussy. Her tight little hole fluttered, begging.
“This pussy is mine,” he growled, not a question, a declaration. He positioned the broad, leaking head of his cock at her entrance. “You remind me of that. Every night. You remind me what I’m fucking for.”
He drove into her in one brutal, sinking thrust.
Mei screamed, her back arching off the bed. She was so small, so tight, that the initial stretch was always a struggle, a delicious, painful fight for every inch. He bottomed out, his balls slapping against her ass, his pelvis grinding into her clit. She was impossibly full, her inner walls fluttering in a frantic, overwhelming rhythm around the invading girth.
“Yes!” she sobbed, her nails scoring his back. “Aidan, yes! It’s yours! All yours! Fuck me! Fuck their schedule! Just fuck me!”
He set a ruthless pace, each withdrawal and plunge a wet, slap of flesh. The bed rocked against the wall. He watched her face contort in pleasure, her breasts jiggling with each impact. This was different from the detached service he would have to perform tomorrow. This was heat, and possession, and a desperate, clawing connection.
“You love this fucking monster cock, don’t you?” he grunted, pounding into her. “You love having it split your tiny cunt open.”
“I love it!” she cried, her heels digging into his ass, trying to pull him deeper. “I love you! I love your big, perfect cock! Come in me, Aidan! Mark me! Give me everything!”
Her words, her utter abandon, unraveled him. The coil in his gut snapped. His thrusts lost rhythm, became frantic, jackhammer strikes. With a roar that was part fury, part release, he plunged as deep as he could and came.
Hot, frantic pulses of cum erupted inside her, flooding her deepest recesses. He felt her convulse around him, her own orgasm tearing through her, milking him for every drop. He collapsed on top of her, spent, their sweat-slicked bodies heaving.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. The scent of sex and salt hung thick in the room.
Mei’s hand came up, stroking his damp hair. “You will bless them,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “You will give them what they need. But this… what you give me… this is what you are. Not just a vessel. A man. My man.”
Aidan, buried in the scent of her skin and the warmth of her well-fucked body, felt the dread recede. It was replaced by a cold, focused certainty. He had a job to do. A brutal, intimate, never-ending job. But he had an anchor. He had a reason to endure it, and a secret, selfish part of him was already anticipating the raw, mechanical pleasure of the task itself.
He held her tighter. Tomorrow, the Stone Altar. Tomorrow, he would begin to feed the hunger of Crimson Hollow. But tonight, his hunger, and hers, was the only thing that mattered.