Lilith Rosewood's Melancholy (4)
A night of duty that had begun for a reason unlike any before it had left a strange current flowing between Ethan and me.
The reward he was supposed to earn only by taking a single bout off Harold in their sparring — groping my breasts — had gotten started without any mental preparation on either side, thanks to this bizarre situation.
I'd assumed it wouldn't matter, since we'd already shared a room once during the training camp at the inn, but apparently the mere fact of me sleeping beside him was getting under his skin considerably. …Though I could not agree with his claim that I'd been the one to latch onto him in my sleep.
Anyway, once I relieved this brief surge of desire that had boiled up in him, he'd settle down for a while. And going forward, up to two more times, I'd be able to accept it without issue, whether or not Ethan actually won a bout against Harold.
Just as I was quietly pressing my chest toward him with that thought in mind, my academy uniform — I'd come home and still hadn't changed out of it — suddenly caught my eye.
“Ah.”
“Wh-what is it, Lilith?”
“Nothing, Young Master. It occurs to me that I haven't washed up since returning from the Academy. I'll prepare a bath right away, so if you could just wait a moment….”
“…It's fine, Lilith.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Th-that is… even in your uniform… it's… fine….”
Ethan murmured something that somehow came across as shady, his face quietly flushing red.
The moment I saw that reaction, I could roughly grasp why he'd told me not to wash up first. …Whether or not I was wearing the academy uniform was, apparently, a matter of some weight.
Having once been a man myself, I could understand that much well enough. He'd only ever touched my breasts through my maid uniform, after all — from time to time he'd want to enjoy a different outfit.
Truthfully, if I hadn't understood it from a fellow man's perspective, I never would have granted an exception like today's in the first place.
So, letting that thought drift briefly through my head, I obligingly played along with Ethan's covert request. Since he'd said this once would count as two of his bouts, I figured I could indulge his demands a little.
“So what you mean is, having grown bored of the maid uniform, you now wish to grope the breasts of a girl dressed in her academy uniform. Understood, Young Master Ethan.”
“N-no, no! That's not — I never said I was bored of your maid uniform…!”
“It's quite all right, Young Master Ethan. Isn't taking relations with a girl in her academy uniform one of the situations every man dreams of? I understand completely.”
“…….”
Ethan, no longer able to argue back, just flushed in silence and let his gaze drift somewhere distant.
I couldn't say why, but something about Ethan's behavior today was oddly cute. Perhaps because, compared to our usual arrangement, our psychological positions were completely reversed — he was touching, and I was being touched.
Ordinarily, Ethan only got to touch my breasts as a proud reward after winning a bout against Harold, but this time he had asked me for the favor, and I was the one granting permission.
Either way, within the dynamic itself, I held the strange upper hand. …Even if it was only for this one moment.
“You may begin whenever you like, Young Master Ethan. I won't count the undressing time against the touching time, same as always.”
“…Mm.”
Ethan looked a little flustered by the layers of academy uniform spread out before his eyes.
Naturally — it was a very different garment from what he usually groped me through, in any number of ways.
But in the end, desire evidently won out over hesitation, and he brought both hands up over my thick uniform.
With those careful fingers, my uniform buttons began slipping loose, one by one, from the top.
— Pop. Pop.
“…….”
— Pop. Pop.
“…Hah.”
…This was, somehow, a little embarrassing.
I'd thought I'd more or less gotten used to exposing my chest by now, but the moment circumstances shifted like this, I found it strangely hard to suppress my embarrassment.
Perhaps because I could feel Ethan's desire in every deliberate touch of his fingers undoing my buttons.
His hands had brushed me only briefly in passing as he undressed me, and while I reacted faintly to it, nothing yet felt strange.
— Pop. Pop.
“…Hah, ah….”
He undid the buttons of my outermost jacket, and this time began working down the buttons of my dress shirt.
Perhaps because only one more layer stood between his hands and my bare skin and underwear, a distinct eagerness — an impatience — radiated from his touch.
Somehow, the emotion riding along Ethan's fingertips seemed to be seeping into me through my collar.
Three buttons. Four. Five.
Unable to bring himself to reach the last button, the one tucked inside my skirt, Ethan stopped at a total of six — and with his touch, the brassiere hidden beneath it all and the skin of my belly just above my navel came into view.
“…So you do wear a bra normally.”
“That is sexual harassment, Young Master Ethan.”
“You're holding that against me now…?”
…Ordinarily I went out of my way to take the thing off beforehand, so he could touch me comfortably, without anything in the way.
Today I was wearing one only because this was an impromptu request, made in a situation neither of us had anticipated.
Had he won his bout against Harold as usual and asked to touch me, the bra would have come off in advance, no question.
I let Ethan's moronic observation slide and quietly waited for him to peel away the final barrier draped over my chest — and his fingers, sliding into the valley between my breasts, gently pushed the black brassiere up and out of the way.
— Shhhlick.
“Nn-hah, haaah…!”
The feeling of my nipple brushing free as the bra came down wrenched a moan out of me before I could stop it.
The me of the first time Ethan touched my chest would have flushed with shame at letting such a sound slip, but I'd embarrassed myself far worse than this plenty of times already, so I resolved not to blush over something like this anymore.
…All of that notwithstanding, the situation itself — standing there with my chest bared before Ethan — was still purely, straightforwardly mortifying.
— Squish!
“Ngh, mmh!”
As that thought crossed my mind and I began counting down inside my head, Ethan's two hands came down roughly on my chest, now exposed with nothing left in the way.
I started silently counting in my mind, steeling myself to endure as much as I could of the stimulation pouring into my breasts.
— Squish. Squish.
“Beautiful breasts again today, Lilith.”
“Hah… th-thank you….”
— Squish. Squish.
“And so soft, no matter when I touch them. Your breasts, Lilith — every time I touch them, my heart just… settles.”
“Ah, yes…hah… s-so I've… heard….”
Yet again, Ethan prattled on with his nonsense as he kneaded my chest.
The old me would have treated answering such drivel as letting myself be toyed with, and pointedly ignored it — but my thinking on that had shifted somewhat lately.
So I answered with studied nonchalance even as he fondled me, feigning perfect calm.
The least shameful way to get through this time, I'd decided, was for me to accept the situation as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
There was no need to dodge his questions at all costs and steer the conversation elsewhere, no need to put on an act of composure to hide what I was feeling.
I could take the conversation at face value — just the ordinary exchange between an employer and his personal maid — and I didn't have to conceal that my body was responding, either.
Reaching climax from having your breasts touched isn't anything to be ashamed of, is it?
It was far more shameful, honestly, to hide an ordinary physiological reflex as though it were something disgraceful. All I had to do was accept it, naturally, as it came.
So even as Ethan fondled my chest with his usual languid expression, I simply answered back with composed indifference.
“This is your weak spot, isn't it, Lilith? When I pull your nipple like this and draw your whole breast along with it.”
— Puuull.
“Nn-hah, hah, haah…! Haaah…!!”
“How is it? Feels good? Hm?”
— Pull. Puuull.
“S-somewhat…. Th-that is… yes….”
“……Hm?”
“It's just… a n-natural… physiological reflex…, that's all…. That your hand…. f-feels good when… it touches me….”
“…….”
Convinced there was no point in forcibly smothering what I was feeling, I gave a quiet nod and declined to deny it.
Though if I reacted like this, there was a chance Ethan would grow bored of me instead — lose that usual insolent attitude of his….
“Y-young Master Ethan…? What are you….”
“…You seduced me, Lilith.”
“I beg your—? What on earth do you—. Ah, haaah?!”
Without warning, Ethan brought his face down to my right breast, and an oddly unfamiliar sensation began tormenting my nipple.
It didn't take long to realize what it was — Ethan's lips, which had begun suckling at my breast.
— Suck. Suck.
“Y-young Master… Ethan?! W-with your mouth…?!”
— Slurp. Slurp. Slurp.
“T-touching me with your mouth is…. I-I haven't given permission for… nnhaaah?!”
Ethan suckled at one breast with an aggressive determination, like an infant at the nipple.
The pressure of his lips tugged my breast taut, while inside his mouth the tip of his tongue worked busily, rolling my nipple this way and that.
That unfamiliar, brazenly stimulating sensation sent my pleasure climbing fast.
And all the while, his right hand, kneading my left breast, showed no sign of tiring, goading that nipple in turn.
Fingers first, and now lips and tongue besides — pleasure came flooding into both breasts in an instant.
That strange, achingly familiar feeling: soon — just a little more, and I'll come.
“Nn-hah, haaah, haaaAAAAH…!”
The instant that thought surfaced, a moan so rough I could barely control it tore out of my throat —
and pierced through by pleasure that lanced through my whole body, once again today I was brought to climax by Ethan's doing.
— SQUELCH!
“Nnhah, hhnngh…?!”
Timed precisely to the moment my body shuddered through its peak, Ethan's right hand seized my left breast hard and twisted.
— Suck. Suck.
“Haah, haaAAAH…?!”
And at the same moment, the lips on my right breast caught my nipple and areola lightly between his front teeth, teasing the very tip of my breast with his tongue until the last second.
“Haaah… haah… ha, haah….”
…And so, once again, the one-minute rule went dutifully unobserved.
Even setting aside the undressing time, he'd had his way with my breasts for a solid five minutes or more.
Blowing past the time limit was old habit by now, and to be fair, this was technically one session's worth of his second bout anyway.
The impromptu suckling at my nipple, I decided, was something I could simply let pass.
“Y-your time… is up…. Young Master Ethan….”
“…Sorry. I actually knew a while ago.”
“That's… fine…. The timing was, m-mine to keep, after all….”
“…Going to wash up?”
“…Yes. After all, I must w-wash the saliva that some thoughtless young prince has left… all over my breasts….”
“…….”
Saying it deliberately for Ethan's benefit, I gathered a change of underwear and sleepwear from my drawer and stepped into the washroom.
I set the discarded clothes and the fresh ones in a corner of the room, then doused my whole body beneath the hot water spilling from the magic fixture.
“Hooooh….”
With the clean stream running down my body and the crisp sound of water in my ears, something hardened deep in my chest seemed to wash away and drain down beneath my feet.
Somehow, it felt far more refreshing than ending an ordinary day usually did.
That inexplicably uncomfortable feeling that had gnawed at the vicinity of my heart since the afternoon seemed, before I knew it, to have dissolved.
And the gloomy mood that had arrived alongside it had, at some point, sublimated away without a trace.