It Was All Your Fault
"Are you all right?"
Conrad had come up beside her without her even noticing, and now his hand was on Regina’s shoulder. Because his touch was over her clothes, the mana between them couldn’t properly mingle.
Regina swallowed hard, then lifted her arm and bit down on Conrad’s lips without the slightest hesitation.
Her tongue slipped into his mouth, which had parted in surprise, and moved languidly within it. Conrad, instead of pulling away, accepted her and hooked her tongue with his own.
“Hngh!”
It had started with Regina, but Conrad’s tongue was far more relentless.
Before long, his thick tongue filled her mouth, stealing every last breath from her.
Regina seemed to forget how to breathe through her nose and shoved at Conrad’s chest, but the force behind her hands was so weak that he didn’t even budge.
Only after he had thoroughly tasted her lips to his satisfaction did Conrad finally draw back.
“Haah, haah.”
Regina panted, her face flushed red, and the sight sent blood rushing south through Conrad’s body.
He wanted to tear her dress off right then and there, press his skin to her bare flesh, and mark that pale throat with a blossom of his own. At the sight of the desire burning in Conrad’s blue eyes, Regina’s throat bobbed. Her hands tightened on the armrests.
She wanted to avert her gaze from Conrad’s shadowed eyes, and yet she also wanted to surrender herself to him completely.
The faint exchange of mana between them muddled her thoughts. Her head grew hazy, and her breathing turned shallow.
"Conrad."
Regina rubbed her cheek against the palm that was merely stroking her face. The soft mana seeping through their contact made her burn even hotter.
"Tell me you want me, Regina."
He had coupled with her more than once to restore her mana, but Conrad wanted more than that.
On the surface, it was a relationship formed by contract, yet deep inside he already knew that wasn’t all there was to it.
He simply couldn’t explain exactly what that feeling was. Possessiveness, perhaps—or something else entirely.
Regina could not look away from the way Conrad was staring straight at her, and for a moment she held her breath.
Her fingertips tingled, and she curled them into fists, but the frantic pounding of her heart refused to calm.
Conrad did not press her for an answer. Then, when the sound of her heated breathing split the silence, the reply he wanted spilled from Regina’s lips.
"I want you."
Conrad’s hand closed around the back of Regina’s neck. He drew her in with that grip—gentle, yet firm—and Regina parted her lips.
Conrad swallowed her whole in one motion and lifted her into his arms. Where their lips met, saliva slipped free, and he extended his tongue to lick it away.
Even that movement, like a savage beast licking at her, made excitement come before fear.
Regina squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again, and the hesitation in her gaze was gone.
"Conrad."
Her lips parted as she murmured his name, and she reached out to pull him closer by the neck. Conrad followed her lead obediently.
The mattress sank beneath their combined weight.
Regina turned her body and straddled his waist, her white, slender fingers brushing over the thick column of his neck above the collar of his shirt.
"I want to bite you here."
"If that's what you want."
Every time they spent time together, Conrad left dark marks on her neck, and somewhere along the way Regina had begun to want to leave something similar on him as well.
No, more precisely, she wanted to know why he kept trying to leave traces on her in the first place.
Then I just have to do the same thing back.
Regina lowered her lips carefully and parted them to bite down on the strong line of his throat. When she sucked hard, she could feel the pulse beneath his skin.
"Kh—!"
Conrad frowned.
It was an intense sensation.
It was no easy thing for the strongest knight in the world to bare his throat to her so completely. If she put just a little more force into it, blood might well have risen.
When the small red mark remained on that vulnerable spot, Regina felt a strange sense of satisfaction.
To think that the emperor of this empire, a Sword Master, was baring his throat to her and letting her leave marks there. She licked the reddened trace several times, then bit again beside it.
As she left one love bite after another, Regina, seated on Conrad’s waist, gradually found herself sliding lower.
When she realized something large and hard was pressing insistently against her from below, she rubbed her hips against it.
"How long are you going to—ngh!"
At Conrad’s groan, Regina stuck her tongue out and dragged it slowly along his throat. There wasn’t even enough time to undo the buttons on his shirt, so she tried to seize the hem and tear it away, but she didn’t have the strength.
Without hesitation, she used magic.
In an instant, Conrad’s upper body was stripped bare. Regina let her fingers trail over the exposed skin and pressed her lips against it.
"Regina."
At the sound of his voice, raspy as though it had been scraped from his throat, Regina felt her mouth go dry.
The length already pressing against her bottom was growing harder and harder, lifting with unmistakable insistence.
Feeling the full force of that menacing hardness, as though it might drive straight into her at any moment, Regina’s own lower body began to grow wet.
As mana and aura flowed back and forth through the skin where they touched, a familiar heat bloomed everywhere they met.
When Regina straightened, she took in Conrad beneath her, his face flushed red as he breathed in a heated haze.
Her hand reached downward.
"Why is it so—ah!"
Regina’s vision spun. Conrad had climbed onto her before she’d even realized it, and a crooked smile touched his mouth.
"It was all your fault."
His lips curved, but the blue depths of his eyes were surging with dark waves. Meeting that savage gaze, Regina found herself holding her breath without meaning to.
Her fingertips trembled with both tension and a hidden expectation. Conrad’s lips brushed her ear.
"Ah—!"
He licked the edge of her ear, then nipped the tender lobe, and heat flashed through her body.
With an itchy, tightening sensation coiling in her lower belly, Regina reflexively twisted her hips.
What had begun as a way to replenish mana had, somewhere along the line, turned into a thirst for each other.
"So sweet."
Conrad stripped her disheveled dress away in one motion, his lips moving by her ear. As his hand roamed over every part of her body, Regina’s mind went blank.
The lips that had been teasing the upper reaches of her body now trailed lower and lower.
Flustered, Regina clenched her legs, but Conrad paid her no mind.
"There isn’t a single place on you that isn’t sweet."
When those soft lips touched the spot just above her most intimate place, Regina jerked in surprise. But she was only a fragile mage, and no match for the strength of a knight like him.
If she had truly wanted to escape, she would have used magic. Yet she had no desire at all to gather mana.
All Regina could manage in defiance was to clutch lightly at his black hair.
"Th-there—ah!"
Something wet and hot dragged slowly along her below. The obscene sound of sucking, of shamelessly feasting at the wellspring between her legs, reached her ears and made Regina’s lips part on their own.
Her lower body clenched, and liquid gushed down in a rush. Her sensitive flesh quivered as it welcomed Conrad’s tongue delving inside her.
"Hah, too m-much, ngh!"
The sweet moans she had been making were soon soaked with dampness. The fierce stimulation was far more than Regina could easily endure.
Her fingers tightened, wrinkling the bedsheets, but the sensation kept crashing over her again and again. Her breath slipped rough and fast between her lips, and her mind turned into a complete wreck.
Every time Conrad’s tongue moved, it left a wet stain on the sheets.
He pried apart her reddened flesh and, at last, found the pearl hidden within. He scraped it lightly with his teeth.
"Haaah!"
A sweet cry echoed through the bedroom, and liquid spurted wildly from Regina’s center. Conrad licked it all up without leaving a drop behind, then lifted his upper body.
When his blue eyes lowered, Regina came into view beneath him—flushed red with arousal, utterly undone.
It was he and no other who had made her, always so cold and composed, look this breathtaking.
At that thought, a secret satisfaction bloomed deep inside his chest.
"The night’s only just begun."
Conrad brushed a finger across Regina’s reddened eyes and could say with certainty that he would be able to torment her all through the night, just like this.