So Many Weak Places
Soft flesh pushed into his mouth. Even that was not enough. Hyperion only grew greedier.
His wet tongue dragged across the cloth again and again, and the thin fabric soaked through in moments. The mere bite of his mouth on her breast had already bleached her thoughts white, and when his tongue closed over the peak, the damp heat left Laniakea unable to hold on to herself at all.
"Hah—ngh!"
By day, Hyperion was calm and severe. She was no longer as afraid of him as she once had been, and yet whenever she saw him standing before others, he still felt less like her husband than like the Emperor. He had spent most of his life beyond these walls, and still no one looked more natural ruling from within the Imperial Palace, set above everyone else.
That same man had thrown away every scrap of his daytime propriety and coldness, and was burying his face in her breast as if he had lost his mind. Watching a Hyperion she had never known, Laniakea trembled at the persistence with which he hunted her chest.
His tongue licked the risen peak again and again. Beneath the wet cloth, the shy little thing that had shown itself was worried this way and that by the rough play of his tongue until it softened and gave.
"Hah, hnn—! Nngh, ah!"
Every time Hyperion's tongue brushed past, Laniakea jerked—and the motion only offered her breast to him all the more.
A thick, wet pull.
With the sound of him sucking hard at the soaked cloth, a tingling rush ran through her whole body. They were not even kissing, and still Laniakea could not breathe.
The tongue that had ravaged her breast for a long while finally drew away, and Hyperion lifted his head.
"Hah……."
As he slowly let the breath out, his gaze would not leave the labored rise and fall of Laniakea's chest. Those were not the clear blue eyes she was used to seeing. In the deeper blue, beneath the night lamps, a desire that never showed itself by day was stirring.
Perhaps this is his true face.
The thought had barely formed when Hyperion, who had been watching her in silence, moved his hand and closed it around what he had been sucking only moments before.
"Ah!"
The sensation, striking her in an unguarded instant, washed Laniakea's mind white all over again. She could not even think of pushing his hand away. Clutching the bedsheet, she spilled short, broken breaths.
Hyperion tightened his grip on what he held and kneaded it slowly. Beneath the wet cloth, the place that had risen made itself known all the more. He set a nail to the peak through the fabric and scratched it lightly.
"Hah—!"
In that instant, Laniakea's toes curled. Her waist lifted of its own accord and her body thrashed. It did her little good. He was already over her, and the slightest pressure of his weight kept her from escaping.
"Ah, ah, ahh! Th-there! Stop! D-don't—ah!"
The rasp of nails on cloth and her broken moans filled the room. But his stubborn nature did not stop for her pitiful pleas. He scratched at what he had marked to his heart's content—and then, the moment his thumb pressed down on the protruding tip and rubbed—
"Aagh!"
Laniakea's hand, clenched in the sheet, went white with strain, and her body shook as if lightning had struck her. The world before her eyes turned white. Sound vanished. She could not even hear the breath leaving her own mouth. Every sensation in her body slipped away somewhere beyond her reach, and the only thing she could still feel was Hyperion, touching her.
Arched at the waist, she trembled for a long while before collapsing onto the bed with a soft thud. She could not so much as twitch a finger properly.
The day he had bitten her ear, she had thought she finally understood what a climax was. She had not known there were degrees of it. That had already been more than she could bear, and this was worse…….
Instinct whispered the moment she barely came back to herself. Hide it. Hide the weak place. Otherwise…….
Following that instinct, Laniakea curled in on herself. Hyperion's hand was faster. He caught the arm she crossed over her chest to cover herself and pressed it down without hurting her.
Laniakea lowered her eyes to her own chest. Both sides were soaked through; she could not even say when he had sucked them so. When he released her arm, his hand calmly swept her gown aside.
"Ah……."
Laid bare, Laniakea let out a moan and turned her face away. He had sucked so long that even through the gown her breasts were damp. Under the lamplight the reddened tips glistened obscenely—and her nipples stood completely erect. The body she had looked at all her life felt unbearably strange to her.
She had been staring at herself in a daze when she remembered, too late, what she had been trying to avoid, and she put strength into her limbs. She could not pull free, not even though Hyperion was barely holding her down. Truly, not a shred of strength would enter her body.
At her futile effort to escape him, Hyperion spoke.
"You have a great many weak places."
The hand on her arm fell away, but Laniakea could not be glad of it. His palm had already closed around her bare breast, with nothing between them.
"S-stop…… this is strange. Wh-why am I like this……."
"This?"
Hyperion spoke as if he did not understand, and tightened the hand that held her. Soft flesh slipped out between his fingers. He caught her nipple between them and moved slowly.
"I don't know what you mean."
"Th-this…… stop……."
"Laniakea."
His voice was calm, unlike his quickened breath.
"If you do not tell me precisely what you want me to stop, how am I to know?"
As he said it, he rubbed what he held between his fingers.
"Hahk—!"
The same dizzying, electric pleasure from before rushed over her again. Through her blurring vision she thought she saw him smile, but she had no mind left to spare for it. He kept her filling his hand and moved in a slow circle.
Savoring that overflowing softness to the full, he felt the blood gathering low in his body. He did not need to look to know. Having once learned pleasure, what lay beneath him would already be swollen fit to burst.
Once, he might have found this bodily response a nuisance when it rose now and then, and despised it a little. Now he was glad of it. Before him was his wife, coming undone under his hands—his wife, the one he was meant to desire, the one with whom he could be as wanton as he pleased and bear not the slightest guilt.
He was the Hyperion whose very existence everyone had forgotten for years. First Imperial Prince, and yet inside the Imperial Palace there had not been so much as a palm's breadth of space that was his. A prince no one welcomed.
Then one day a woman called his wife appeared, swore eternity with him, and made a place for him to stay when he came. When he arrived at the palace a wreck of blood and dust, Laniakea had not known what to do with herself as she guided him. He had half expected her to take him to the servants' common facilities, the way the Empress once had. Instead she led him to a place she called his room.
The moment he stepped inside, Hyperion knew. Even though its master never came, the room was kept immaculate at all times.
He knew Laniakea did not love him. She, too, must have come here under something closer to the Empress's threat than an invitation. Even so, she had made a place for him—cleared the finest room and left it waiting for a man who might never arrive. Remembering it was enough to make his heart swell past bearing.
Laniakea would not know. In the bitter cold of the border, whenever the others called up what they cherished and loved, he had been startled to find himself remembering the face that had welcomed him. Then, at some point, he began to remember her hands, her breasts, her legs, until even the voice that had simply answered yes left him so stirred that he had to ease himself with his own hand, though morning was nowhere near.
And the woman he had only imagined was here before him. What was left to hesitate over? Loving her was his right, and his duty. So Hyperion meant to give her every ounce of his ardor and his devotion. He would never let a night with him become a painful, dreadful memory.
As happy as he was, he wanted her drowned in pleasure, giving him glad sounds.
He slid his knee between the legs of the woman who could not gather herself, who spilled moans without cease. Her slick, soaked sex met him, but he did not stop. He pressed harder into the space between her thighs. At the same time he caught the tips of both breasts—still caught and swaying between his fingers—between forefinger and thumb, and twisted them lightly.
"Ahh—!"
With a loud moan, Laniakea's body shuddered again. Against the knee pressed to her, he felt a sudden rush of wetness spill. Hyperion rubbed what his fingers held, and thought, This is only the beginning.