Nothing Beneath
Before she could even make sense of what he had said, Laniakea's body rose into the air. Hyperion had caught her by the waist and lifted her, and she had no chance to speak before he laid her down upon the bed. He set her there with care, yet the urgency with which he climbed up after her was unmistakable.
Facing her, he cupped her cheeks in both hands. Laniakea, who had been about to look away, was made to meet his eyes, and Hyperion, as if he meant to wait no longer, brought his mouth down on hers at once.
Something warm and soft met her lips, and a moment later a wet tongue pressed in between them. Her mouth, held stubbornly shut, barred the one who meant to enter without hesitation. He might have drawn back then. He did not. Slowly, refusing to give up, he licked along her lips with his tongue.
"Mm……."
The tickling sensation made Laniakea clench her fists. Far from gathering any strength, though, she only felt herself going softer and softer.
When she still would not part her lips, Hyperion's hand caught her earlobe and rubbed.
"Ah……!"
A sharp, electric thrill shot through her, and a moan broke free. Hyperion did not miss the opening. His mouth slipped swiftly between her parted lips, and his tongue slid in to sweep through every corner of her mouth.
"Nnh—mmph!"
Filled so completely with the sheer presence of him that breathing grew difficult, Laniakea writhed. It lasted only a moment. The scent and taste of the wine they had shared earlier spread through her mouth—the wine she had kept sipping at, little by little, until a faint regret had touched her when the glass was empty.
The instant that taste returned, Laniakea caught Hyperion's tongue of her own accord. Tongue tangled with tongue, and the deeper they knotted, the richer the bittersweet flavor became. Telling herself it was only the wine, she welcomed the one who kept pressing further inside her.
They tangled so mindlessly she could no longer tell whose mouth was whose, and sensations she had forgotten for days came rushing back all at once.
"Ah… nnh!"
Only their lips were touching, and yet her body stirred strangely. This heat was far too swift to blame on drunkenness. It spread through her entire body, and Laniakea felt as if she had become spring snow, melting away without a sound.
Hyperion was unhurried, and he was not gentle about it. Against that violent warmth she melted, helpless. Before she knew it the two of them had fallen back onto the bed, and even then he did not lift his mouth from hers.
Her breath was reaching its limit. Laniakea pushed at the hard body pressing her down, but Hyperion did not yield so much as an inch. If anything, he drove himself deeper into her mouth. This was no longer a soft kiss. He devoured her as if he meant to swallow even the last of her breath, and the moans that ought to have escaped became entirely his.
She put more strength into the hands that shoved at him, and still he did not move. Heavy as the body that caged her was, his tongue busied itself through every hollow of her mouth.
"Hah—!"
Laniakea's body jerked hard. At the same time a tingling shock raced through her from head to toe. Breathless, struck by a stimulation she had never expected, her eyes went slack and unfocused. When she could endure no longer and her body went limp beneath him, only then did Hyperion draw his lips away.
"Haa……."
He wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand and smiled, plainly pleased.
"So you're sensitive there as well."
Just as when he had bitten her ear—no, faster than that—her mind went hazy and the strength left her. Laniakea panted, then clamped her lips shut at once. She remembered how long, and how relentlessly, he had tormented her ear the last time. This time he might spend the whole day exploring her mouth. In the end she had already lost to her own breath and was left gasping.
"Was it too much for you?"
You call that a question! She wanted to snap it at him, but a body with not a shred of strength left in it struggled even to drag in a ragged breath. So Laniakea settled for glaring, and let her eyes say the rest.
"I apologize. I'm still unused to matters like this, and I've made it hard on you."
A lie. It was plainly a lie. If he were truly sorry, he could never smile like that.
At his teasing manner she tried to push herself up, but he was faster. Just as before, a single finger sent her collapsing back down. Stung now in earnest, she meant to wriggle out from under him—
"I'm sorry."
Hyperion drew her into his arms and murmured against her.
"I'm sorry. I couldn't stop. You're far too sensitive……."
Even as he spoke, his knee pushed in between Laniakea's legs and spread them. At last that knee reached the deepest place. He ought to have stopped there. Instead the blunt press of it bore down hard against her most secret place.
"Nnh!"
Laniakea let out another moan, and in the same instant Hyperion froze in surprise. Slowly he drew his knee back down. The knee, marked all over with small scars, was wet and gleaming.
"Ha……."
He let out a low breath, as if thrown. Unbelieving, he looked at his own knee, then back at Laniakea. As if she understood exactly what had startled him, she could not meet his eyes, and her face had gone red. Not even the ripest apple of autumn could have been redder than Laniakea was now.
Hyperion released the hand that had held her and felt along the top of his knee. Sticky, clear fluid clung to his fingers just as it was. That she had left it there was not the problem. What he had felt a moment ago, when his knee slipped beneath her robe and touched her, was…….
Hyperion opened his mouth.
"You're not wearing anything?"
"Ack—!"
At a question so blunt it made no attempt to spare her, Laniakea startled and struck his shoulder with her hand. He did not retreat.
"Underneath—you're wearing nothing? Don't tell me, nothing at all?"
"K-keep your voice down!"
Laniakea hit his shoulder even harder. Fortunately Hyperion asked nothing more. Instead, as if he fully intended to have his answer, he caught her face as she tried to turn away and made her look at him.
Under that stare, which seemed determined to see straight through her, Laniakea understood. Until she answered with her own mouth, Hyperion would not let the matter go. Swallowing the shame that welled up, she answered.
"Yes. I was going to take them off anyway……."
That really had been the reason. On the first night Hyperion had needed quite a long while to get her underclothes off. The second time he had undone the ties and stripped them away so quickly she could hardly believe he had ever struggled. The problem had been the third.
The night he had bitten her ear and tormented her until dawn, his hands had moved with peculiar slowness when it came to undressing her. No—he had not truly undressed her at all. As if he had forgotten every method of doing so, he had only kept stroking over the fabric. Just when it seemed he might loosen a tie, his hands would slip, again and again, to places they had no business touching. And when at last his fingers pushed in beneath the cloth, Laniakea had simply closed her eyes.
It was not that she disliked it. Being wound to the point of aching, only for him to go on so slowly, was more than she could bear. It was every bit as difficult as when he sucked at her body. So today she had simply taken them off beforehand, thinking that then, at least, she might be spared the hardship of being teased to distraction by his hands. She was going to take them off regardless!
That was what she had thought. Looking at Hyperion's face now, she had the distinct feeling she had made a very large mistake—the sort of thing that could not be undone.
He had been watching her in silence for a long while when his throat moved in a hard swallow. A faint smile spread over the face that had gone briefly still. Laniakea's instincts cried out a warning. She remembered all too well how he behaved whenever that expression came over him.
After regarding her quietly for some time, he spoke.
"I didn't realize you wanted to be touched so quickly."
"No—no, that's not—!"
Before Laniakea could finish, Hyperion's hands came up from beneath and closed over both her breasts, gathering them into his palms. Through the loosened robe they were half bared, and his thumbs stroked over them—more precisely, over their tips. He rubbed again and again, as if confirming what waited there, until something stood out, taut, against the soft curve. Under that stimulation the peaks of her breasts declared their shape more and more clearly.
Hyperion looked down at what he himself had drawn forth, satisfaction in his eyes, then slowly lowered his head. And without the slightest hesitation he took her breast into his mouth in a wide, deep bite, cloth and all.