TRHK Chapter 18

"That's—I'm sorry. I knocked and there was no answer, so I was about to leave, and then I heard someone coming and——"

Even I knew that was a lot of excuses. However reasonable the circumstances, the fact that I'd walked into someone's room uninvited in the middle of the night wasn't going to change.

"Could you move a little……."

The room was dark, and I was still trapped between hard things—Kahron and the door, specifically—and it was stifling.

Kahron gave a short sound that wasn't quite a laugh, and said it against the curve of my ear.

"If you came to give me what you owe, I'll gladly take it."

His arm circled my waist. The air around us turned close and stuffy all at once—or maybe that was just the heat coming up into my face. I took hold of his arm to push it away, but the more effort I put in, the more firmly it settled, until I was just resting my hand on top of it.

"Wh-what reward? More importantly, this arm——"

"You said you'd do everything," he said flatly. "Pretending you don't remember?"

The voice in my ear went flat in an instant. It carried the faintest edge of something almost like betrayal—as though I'd been toying with him—and I was caught so off guard I couldn't think.

"I didn't say I'd do everything. I said I'd do something—something……. What is it you want to ask for?"

I thought he'd let it go quietly. He was bringing it up again, which meant he genuinely had something in mind. I got there first.

"I don't have much money, for the record."

Being a bonded servant meant my pay was already on the low end, and whatever I'd been carrying had gone to Maylin's father. Kahron made a dismissive sound.

"What would I want with a maid's wages?"

Small or not, it's still money. I'd been the one to establish I had none, but having him dismiss it so flatly was somehow a point of pride.

"Then what?"

With deliberate slowness, the hand at my waist began to move upward. The dark made every sensation sharper. I put effort into pulling his arm back down, but it was no more use than before.

His fingers reached the underside of my breast. The way the hand was positioned—it could close around it at any moment, the way it had seized my backside once before. I felt a nameless sense of danger.

"D-don't."

"I was just thinking about you, actually."

"……About me?"

"I told you. You come up in my dreams sometimes."

He had said something about dreams before, I thought. What the hell was I doing in them——. While my attention had drifted, his hand found the tie at the front of my dress and began to work it loose, unhurried. The moment I understood what was happening, my heart lurched into chaos.

"Will you cry under me? Like in the dream."

Thud.

The tie came free and the dress fell to the floor. All that remained was a shirt reaching to mid-thigh. Nothing underneath—I'd come in a hurry, not having thought to put on undergarments in my hurry. I regretted it. Though would it have made much difference? It was a shirt and a petticoat either way. The suddenly bare legs felt awkward and cold.

"Ha——"

A hand closed lightly on the inside of my thigh and I startled badly, the sound coming out too loud. I pressed one hand fast over my mouth and grabbed at the back of his hand on my thigh with the other. Between my fingers I managed a whispered plea.

"W-wait. Can we talk first. Please."

The other hand ambushed its way inside my shirt without announcement. It came in along my collarbone and grabbed hold of one breast. The soft give of it between his fingers, the way they caught and pressed at the peak—if there had been light, he would have seen the look on my face.

"Oh—no, that's—talk, I want to talk——!"

"Yeah. Go on."

And how exactly am I supposed to talk like this!

The hand holding my breast seemed to be taking stock of it, weighing what it found. A breath of something that wasn't quite amusement escaped him.

"Doesn't fit in one hand. How were you hiding this."

"Don't——. Ah!"

The peak of my breast, grown tight without my asking, was caught and rolled between his fingers. I pressed both hands hard over my mouth and shook against the sensation of his hand working across me, kneading as it pleased.

"Sensitive."

The hand on my thigh resumed. I felt the large hand moving up between my thighs and a nameless fear of unknown territory became something physical in my chest. Strange. And frightening.

I had never had this kind of experience. Not once, in my previous life. No lover—no friends, even. My whole world had been a forest—of course not.

"Ha——. Ha."

He rolled and pressed the peak of my breast in slow circles. The sensation sparked low in my belly with every pass, and my legs lost their strength. His body pressed me harder into the door. Something heavy kept pressing, insistent, against my lower back.

"No—this—this is strange——"

Like I was becoming not-myself. I couldn't find a better way to put it. Frightened but not averse. Strange but expectant. I wanted to run but my legs wouldn't work.

And then his hand moved to the space between my thighs.

"Ha——!"

If I hadn't gotten my hand over my mouth in time, the sound would have gone down the corridor and filled it.

"Oh. You're wet."

He said it as though he was registering a fact he found mildly inconvenient—but underneath, the voice held something he hadn't managed to conceal. I couldn't believe it, but I was soaked below—like I'd pissed myself.

"Ahn—no—hn——"

The part of me that had never once imagined another person's touch—Kahron's fingers closed across it in a neat, flat press, suddenly stuck there. He held the span of me with one hand—from the top to the entrance—and began pressing in slow circles, like kneading.

"Ha……."

I leaned my limp upper body against the wall, nearly in tears. It became too inconvenient to reach my breast from this angle and he finally just ripped the top of my shirt open. What spilled out he caught without ceremony and kneaded with far less restraint than before.

I could feel myself getting wetter under his hand. This wasn't the kind of massage I knew. The massages I'd given my mother and the old noblewoman were nothing, nothing like this. And what kind of massage even touches there?

"My hand's completely wet. You couldn't get this wet if I poured water on you."

"I—then take your hand away——"

"Want it inside?"

One finger pressed into me.

The finger pressed deeper inside—a sensation completely foreign to me. Drenched as I was, it didn't exactly hurt—but I couldn't make myself believe it. Kahron's finger was inside me.

"So much hotter than the dream. Ha……."

The breast he'd been working at was released abruptly and one of my thighs was hoisted and shoved to the wall.

"Ha——!"

With my leg held open, the sensation of his hand became impossibly distinct. I braced both hands against the wall to hold myself up, shaking, and managed to part my lips.

"Out—take it out—Kahron, this is strange——"

Kahron, with his rotten personality, did the opposite. The finger pressed deeper. He seemed to push it in to the point where the joint of his hand met me, as deeply as it could go.

"Ha——! No, please——!"

It was past the point of keeping my voice properly down. Inside me, his finger bent at the knuckle and swept across the slick walls. The saliva at the corner of my mouth I couldn't attend to. A second finger pushed in.

"Ah! Hss——"

His breath grazed my cheek, and then my mouth was swallowed up. Kahron pushed his tongue against mine, wet and sloppy, and pulled my attention away. Meanwhile the two fingers settled inside me did their strange thing—pulling back and pushing in, over and over.

Every time his fingertips drove deepest in, my toes shook. From below came wet, splashing sounds—enough that I wondered if something was wrong with me.

"Mm—ha."

This was too filthy to even call a massage. He let go of my mouth and urgently cupped my breast up, taking my nipple into his mouth.

"Ah——!"

I shook like I'd been struck and couldn't move at all, just bore whatever he did to me. I was going to come apart in both places at once—the fingers pushing in and withdrawing, the peak of me being worked over, my breast sucked at with real force. And against my lower back and hips, something heavy and dense kept pressing against me, wanting.

The night air had cooled the room but the heat coming off both of us was enough that my whole body was burning. I dug my fingers into Kahron's arm—not on purpose. Something unmanageable was moving through me and I needed something to hold onto. I felt the colors flooding my head turn dazzlingly bright.

"Ah——!"

Something flooded out below. Not water—but I was as soaked as if a bucket had been tipped over me, hips down.

When I started to collapse sideways, Kahron caught me. He pulled his fingers out and wiped them on my thigh.

"Hah. Hah. Hah."

My breath came ragged enough that my vision blurred at the edges.

First a kiss, then he'd grabbed my backside—and now this, something too shameful to even say out loud. Even without experience, I knew: people who did this to each other weren't ordinary to each other. That was how it worked.

But Kahron and I were nothing.

"What exactly were you doing in that dream?"