Only I Need Know
"……!"
When he suddenly buried his face against the nape of her neck, Laniakea startled and flinched. The hand locked firmly around hers, however, would not let her draw back. Far from allowing her to slip free, he hauled her toward him with all his strength, and she had no choice but to yield her body to him, utterly unguarded.
Soft lips pressed to her throat, then rubbed there, lightly. They could not possibly be hot, and yet she felt a fierce heat against her neck, as if fire itself had touched her skin. She had thought the kisses would stay as light as the ones he had given her face. Hyperion betrayed that expectation. Again and again he pressed his mouth to her throat with deliberate force, as though he meant to brand her, and each time he did not forget to tighten his interlaced fingers around hers.
Before long, the clasp of his hand began to feel like a signal sent just before the next shock — a warning that, from this moment, he meant to claim her.
His lips climbed slowly along the slender white column of her neck. The sensation was unbearably strange: hot, and ticklish at once. It was probably his hair, stirring against her nape. Dazed, Laniakea could not think at all. She only stared blankly at the black hair filling her vision, and all at once she wanted to touch it. Would it be as soft as it looked?
She was desperately turning her thoughts elsewhere, trying not to dwell too deeply on the situation itself, when—
"Nnh—!"
Teeth, only slightly bared, grazed her neck. They were not sharp, but the shock was more than enough to drag her back to herself.
"Laniakea."
He lifted his mouth and spoke her name. Hot breath fell across the place his tongue had just passed over, slow and clinging. It was a rough breath, and because of it she could not let the tension leave her body. If she grew even a little more defenseless, she thought, he might swallow her whole just as they were.
Hyperion exhaled that heat against her a few times more, then buried his face in her neck again. Unlike before, he licked upward without any pretense of restraint. Laniakea caught his shoulder and spoke.
"I—I haven't washed yet……!"
He had said it didn't matter if she hadn't. He had said he would never touch anywhere so intimate. In truth, a neck could hardly be called an intimate place; it was something she left bare often enough. And yet, when she thought about it, it was also a place no one else ever touched. Hyperion pressed into it without hesitation, as naturally and without pause as a man exercising a right he had been born to.
"It's all right."
The voice rose from beneath her face, and somehow it seemed threaded with laughter. She could not see his expression, so she could not be sure he was truly smiling as he spoke. What she could be sure of was that, at some point, her body had been laid down upon the sofa.
Collapsed against the armrest as if it were a backrest, she drew short, shallow breaths. Hyperion lifted his face from her nape and quietly watched her steady herself. Their hands were still tightly entwined. She had the feeling those fingers would not come undone until this was entirely finished, and once that premonition settled over her, Laniakea stopped resisting with her hand.
Still holding one of her hands, Hyperion leaned slightly forward and reached toward her with the other. His fingers brushed carefully over the nape he had been licking only moments ago, then climbed higher, until they settled on the round lobe of her ear and stroked it, gently.
"Ah—!"
He was not even holding her hard, and yet Laniakea startled and tried to sit up. The mere fact that someone else's fingers had touched her earlobe left a strange, tingling ache — as if a small bolt of lightning had run through her entire body and left behind an itch she could hardly endure. Faced with a feeling she had never known, she tried, carefully, to push his hand away. But he caught her wrist.
"So this is a weak spot. I'm glad I found it so quickly."
"A weak spot……? What do you mean?"
"The Ensis told me that every body has places that answer more keenly, more sensitively, than the rest."
"There can't possibly be any such—ah!"
Before she could finish, Hyperion set the edge of a nail against her earlobe and scratched it, lightly. Her body jolted hard, like a fish flung onto dry land. Certain now, Hyperion smiled. At the sight of that smile, clear and unmistakable, Laniakea's throat bobbed.
Ah. She thought she understood. When he smiled like that, she was going to be worn utterly to exhaustion.
A great shadow fell across her face. Hyperion came over her, and yet she did not feel a weight too heavy to bear. He must have been taking constant care that she not be strained. He lowered his face. Thinking he meant to kiss her, Laniakea closed her eyes — but his lips passed over her own, which had gone tense, and closed instead on the earlobe his fingers had been tormenting only a moment before.
"Hah—!"
Pinned beneath him, her body writhed. As if he had expected exactly that, Hyperion pressed her down a little with his own weight. Trapped between him and the sofa, Laniakea shook her head, trying somehow to free the ear he had caught between his teeth, but he held on with stubborn persistence and would not let her go. Even if she stayed perfectly still, the tingling was enough to scatter her wits — and he tugged at the lobe with his lips, or set his teeth to it. Each time, light flashed before her eyes and her mind went hazy.
Having kept her caged beneath him and had his way with her to his heart's content, Hyperion drew his mouth away at last. Laniakea was already panting too hard to gather herself. Heat had risen through her whole body, and between her legs she was wet. She was no longer ignorant of what that response meant. He had not undressed her. He had not even kissed her mouth. He had not touched her anywhere truly intimate — and still she had been aroused this far.
Hyperion whispered at her ear.
"Sensitive as this, and you truly didn't know?"
She could not understand it herself. It was not as though no one had ever touched her ears in all her life. Why hadn't she known? This very morning was proof enough. Hilde, newly made chief lady-in-waiting, had helped her choose her ornaments alongside the maid who dressed her. When Hilde moved to fasten the necklace, Laniakea had reached first for the earrings and put them on herself.
I wasn't unaware.
Instinct had recognized it before she did, and so she had naturally kept anyone else's hands away. What even she had failed to notice, Hyperion had just discovered.
She had not answered, and yet he seemed to have found his answer in her face alone. Still keeping her enclosed within him, Hyperion bared his teeth and bit her earlobe.
"Ah, ah……!"
At the motion — as if he might actually chew — Laniakea could not even think of pushing him away. All she could do was keep spilling short, broken sounds.
Why? Why is he doing this?
The moment she tried to feel wronged, she remembered why she had come to the Main Palace. She had come today to grow accustomed to her husband. He would not retreat — not until she had accepted, completely, everything he gave her. Would she even last until morning? The thought came, and still there was no fear. The sensation he gave her was never unpleasant.
Laniakea closed her eyes. Through the hand that still held hers, he was speaking to her. He was going to drive her to her limit once again.
"Hah……."
Hyperion let out a low breath and looked at Laniakea, fast asleep in his arms. Today she had learned her own weakness. And Hyperion, too, had learned something new about himself — that he possessed a talent for driving a person hard, then noticing with keen precision the instant just before the limit, and stopping. Laniakea, sleeping now as if she had fainted, was the result of that talent.
He did not need to slip a hand between her legs to know.
She was soaked there.