What Needed to Be Done (1)
With a short, sharp friction sound, our lips collided, and Ethan pulled back just enough to stare down at me with a strange look in his eyes — for a moment, seemingly unable to process what had just happened to him.
It was only after taking in the sight of my face, burning hot enough that he could practically feel the heat radiating off my skin, that he finally seemed to grasp that he'd been kissed. Though even then, the bewilderment hadn't quite left him, the kiss had been so brief.
"...D-did that count as an answer?"
"......"
"I apologize for failing to persuade you with words. My eloquence simply wasn't enough to convince you, Young Master Ethan, so I had no choice but to demonstrate it this way."
Still, surely even Ethan could understand what this much meant. What woman in the world could shamelessly kiss a man she felt nothing for?
And in Lilith's body, I had never once kissed anyone other than Ethan. ...Strictly speaking, I hadn't in my previous life either, but that was neither here nor there.
I figured this would be about the time Ethan finally let go of my arms and legs — but regrettably, his grip didn't loosen in the slightest. If anything, it tightened, pressing me even more firmly against him.
"Young Master Ethan? If you could let go of me now..."
"...It's not enough."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"You said it yourself, Lilith. You told me a kiss was nothing to you. Don't tell me you've forgotten what you said back then?"
...Right. Come to think of it, I had said that.
The image of my past self, brazenly declaring that a kiss meant nothing, flashed through my mind. What on earth was it about that stupid bravado that had made me blurt out something like that?
"O-of course not!"
"Oh?"
"Did-did you take me for some insane woman who goes around kissing anyone without a second thought?! What I said back then was mere bluster... n-no, I mean, I only said it so I wouldn't burden you, Young Master Ethan..."
"What you were thinking when you said it doesn't matter. My point is that this clearly isn't enough."
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Open your mouth, Lilith."
"Ugh—mmph?!"
The moment his words left his mouth, my lips parted on pure reflex — and his face tilted at a forty-five-degree angle as his mouth came crashing down over mine from above.
A somewhat French kiss — we'd shared one once before. No, strictly speaking, this one felt even deeper than that. Back then, it had stopped at the point where his tongue slipped into my mouth while we faced each other head-on; this time, his mouth sealed over mine completely, swallowing it whole.
His thick tongue, digging in far deeper than before, stirred around the inside of my mouth as if it owned the place.
Slrk, slrk.
"Nnngh?! Mm, nngh...!"
Slrk, slrk, slrk.
"Ngh, mm... n-nngh...!"
The inside of my lips, my teeth and gums, the inside of my cheeks, behind my teeth, the tip of my tongue, the underside of it. Tilting our joined mouths at angle after angle as he pushed that soft mass of flesh deeper inside, Ethan left me feeling like the entire interior of my mouth was being ravaged.
In a sense, it was a kiss so intense it was hardly different from actual sex. Something long was being slid into a hole, exchanging bodily fluids — it was strange enough that for an instant, I genuinely caught myself wondering if this counted as the real thing.
And even after nearly a full minute of this, Ethan showed no sign whatsoever of pulling his face away. In the end, I had no choice but to make a decision.
Tsup.
"Nn, hah..."
Tsup, tsuup...
"Ngh, hah... haaah..."
I decided it was probably my own fault for panicking and dodging his tongue over and over, so I simply gave in and matched the intensity of the kiss the way he wanted.
Sure, he had shoved his tongue in out of nowhere claiming that a simple peck wasn't enough, but there was no way he actually intended to pin me down like this until tomorrow morning.
If I just went along with it — lips locked, tongues entwined, exactly as he pleased — he'd surely be satisfied soon enough and release me of his own accord. At least, that was the theory.
It wasn't as if I was doing this because I wanted to indulge Ethan's stubborn behavior. All I wanted was for this unbearably awkward stretch of time to end a little faster, that was all.
Besides, I'd been in a situation where I very nearly lost my chastity — if it ended with nothing more than sharing the inside of my mouth, I caught myself thinking that was a mercy in itself.
...And so, roughly three minutes passed after we'd begun sharing each other's lips.
Right in the middle of us using lips and tongues to share every sensation, something indescribable tugged at me from just below my solar plexus.
Tsuup, tsuuup.
"N-nngh?!"
...Wh-what was that? That feeling just now?
Our lips had been locked the entire time, nothing but a kiss — and yet out of nowhere, this strange sensation of something rising from the lower half of my body had me reeling.
My first thought was that Ethan might have taken advantage of my distraction to touch me, but both of his hands were locked around my wrists, unmoving. And because of that, my mind spiraled into even deeper confusion, utterly unable to identify the source of that shocking stimulus my body seemed to have felt.
'That felt exactly like when Ethan touched my chest... but why?'
In the moment of my flustered incomprehension, his tongue ran up and down along mine, which had briefly frozen stiff — and once I belatedly collected myself from that strange sensation, I resumed the deep kiss.
Tsuup, tsuup.
"N, nnh..."
Slrk, slrk.
"Nnnh, mm... hah..."
But as I focused my thoughts on the act of sharing saliva with lips and tongue, that same lewd sensation from before began swirling through my head all over again.
I wasn't being touched anywhere. I wasn't exposing my body to him in any way. And yet every time the sensitive membranes of our tongues met, that strange pleasure stoked my mind hotter and hotter, like a slow-burning fever.
Shhhlik.
'Just how long is he planning to keep this up...?'
Ethan kept his face pressed close against mine even as I floundered at the sensation of something other than my mouth growing wet. With my head practically buried back into the soft depths of the mattress by the force of his kiss, there was nowhere for me to run anyway.
It was only when the thought crossed my mind — is he actually planning to hold our lips together like this until tomorrow morning? — that Ethan's mouth finally, slowly began to pull away from mine. And between my lips and his, parted after so long a time, a thin strand of lewd fluid stretched like a thread — a symbol of just how deep that kiss had gone.
"...Haah, haah..."
"......"
"...A-are you... s-satisfied now?"
"......"
His expression was a strange one. The anger from before had clearly loosened its grip, but a lingering stubbornness still smoldered behind it.
And seeing that face left me just as flustered as ever. The Ethan I knew would have let me go around about now — but for some reason, today's Ethan seemed unusually relentless.
"...I-I only mention this in case you're laboring under some strange misunderstanding."
"......"
"As I said before, I have never kissed any man other than you, Young Master Ethan — no, more precisely, I have never kissed anyone else at all."
"...I know."
"Which is to say, the person closest to my heart, as of this moment, is you, Young Master Ethan. Even after everything I've told you, do you still require proof?"
"......"
He said nothing, simply gazing down at me with a flushed face, and I couldn't help but feel the weight of that gaze bearing down on me.
His expression looked almost conflicted, as if he were struggling to say something. But I decided it was best to assume that even he, in this situation, wouldn't genuinely go so far as to assault me... probably.
Fortunately, my guess proved correct. Upon hearing my sincerity, Ethan's grip on me began to slacken little by little, and he slowly drew back the body that had been pinning mine down so forcebly.
"I'm sorry, Lilith."
"......"
"It's my fault. I'm the one who's no good — I keep imagining the worst. I know in my head that you'd never abandon me and go to someone else of your own will, and yet... I'm just that pathetic. I doubted you again."
"...No, it's all right."
"I'm sorry for filling your head with needless worry when you must be exhausted. I know that when I do things like this, I frighten you — and yet for a moment there, I just couldn't bear it."
"......"
'For a moment there, I just couldn't bear it.' ...Hm.
Well, to put it bluntly, that wasn't exactly a comforting apology. Pleading a moment of weakness like that carried the unspoken suggestion that something similar could well happen again.
Still, his behavior tonight — the way he'd pounced on me so suddenly, the way he'd brushed so dangerously close to crossing the line — struck me as deeply out of character. Until now, he'd all but made a compulsive point of never doing the things I hated. This sudden swing toward the radical was strange.
'Wait, now that I think about it...'
When had been the last time I'd relieved Ethan's... urges?
My most recent memory of it was from around the end of last semester. I'd slipped out in secret without a word to him, he'd gotten angry, and as punishment, he'd... taken it out on me. That had been the last time.
Aside from that, the last "reward" I'd ever given him of my own initiative was back when he scored his first complete victory against Harold — and I'd repaid him in the bathhouse as his prize.
The moment I worked that out, an unavoidable thought struck me. What if the reason Ethan had lunged at me just now was that all the desire he'd been storing up for months had finally detonated all at once?
The person he loved most in the world, his lover (a temporary lover, granted), sharing his bed and falling asleep beside him every single night.
And it wasn't merely a matter of sharing a bed — we shared the entire space. Even now, we both took the utmost care not to embarrass each other, but we lived close enough that once or twice a month, one of us would catch the other mid-change without meaning to. Ethan and I had been living like that for close to half a year now, weekdays and weekends alike, genuinely every single day.
There had been winter break in the middle, granted, but the fact remained. And maybe, just maybe, his behavior tonight was partly my fault for neglecting him all this time. It hadn't been intentional, but the truth was I'd spent a full six months tormenting the man from the closest possible distance.
The reason he'd pounced on me so desperately tonight probably owed a good deal to the fact that I hadn't relieved him in all that time. If I'd let him touch my chest even once or twice over the past six months, he would never have spiraled into absurd imaginings about me running off with the Hero.
'...Which means, in the end, it falls to me to take responsibility.'
If I let him smother his urges halfway like this and simply moved on, there was a real chance they'd come roaring back with double the force next time.
And if that happened, there was a genuine risk that the line actually would get crossed — so if only to prevent that disaster, I had to relieve him at least once, here and now.
It wasn't as though I'd been withholding rewards lately because his skills had dulled or anything of the sort. It was simply that my standards for what constituted a deserving reward had gone up.
So if I chose to pay off that backlog now, Ethan wouldn't find it strange in the least. ...Probably.
'It's not as if I'm allowing this because I want him myself...'
I was merely soothing a man suffering from pent-up desire, and preempting whatever catastrophe that desire might otherwise unleash.
Whatever selfish longing I might harbor toward him played no part in it. None at all.