14. Melting Point (7)
14. Melting Point (7)
Maya's nails dug into the bedsheet, clutching it as if to tear it apart. A tingling current that began in her feet climbed through her lower belly, scrambling her thoughts into a jumble.
This is... what in the world... she had never felt anything like it in her life.
She clamped her mouth shut and fought desperately to keep any sound from slipping out.
The Troupe Leader kissed my foot.
The fact that he had done it excited her even more than the sensation itself.
"I'll do the other one as well."
Wonderstein kneaded her leg with the delicate precision of a musician handling an instrument, pressed his lips to her foot, and worked his tongue with slow gentleness.
Slorp. Smack. Schlurp.
The sounds—coarse, inexcusable—echoed around the room.
"Hnnnh..."
If Wonderstein had seen her face just then, he would have thought his treatment was working. Across her perpetually pallid face bloomed a wash of pink, and lips that usually pressed into nothing but a straight line now quivered ceaselessly, pursing and parting with every quickened breath.
"Hih... hnnnh..."
But bent low over her feet, he missed the change entirely. He simply focused on the treatment in silence. For her, that was a stroke of luck.
Once he had licked every inch of her soles, he looked up and asked the same question as before.
"Do you feel anything?"
She had just barely grown accustomed to the pleasure; now she schooled her face into careful blankness and shook her head.
"No. Nothing..."
"Understood. Then let's go a little farther."
A little farther? How far did he mean?
Maya imagined him licking his way up her calves and thighs in turn. Then, at last, she pictured his face buried between her legs. Her ears flared bright red.
But her hopes had run too far ahead. The next target Wonderstein set his sights on was her toes.
He drew each toe into his mouth, one by one, and began to suck. His tongue slipped between them, leaving a slick trail of saliva. Compared to the thicker skin of her soles, the aphrodisiac in his saliva absorbed far more readily there.
The pleasure was several times sharper than when he had licked the bottom of her feet.
"...Nngh!"
A cry forced its way out between her fingers and lips. A thread of saliva pooled under her tongue escaped and trickled down her chin.
"Miss Maya?"
This time, Wonderstein caught the sound. Maya flung herself face-down onto the bed at once, so he couldn't see her face.
"I-I'm just tired... S-sitting in the same position so long... my back hurts..."
"Ah, I see. I understand. Then we can continue with you lying down like that. I'll simply move around."
She nodded, wiping away the drool with the sleeve of her cardigan. He took hold of her waist to pivot her body toward the foot of the bed. Lost in savoring what she'd just felt, Maya unconsciously turned her hips to follow his lead.
"Hm?"
Wonderstein's eyes widened when he saw her lower body move. Startled by her own stupidity, Maya scrambled for an excuse.
"I-I used telekinesis..."
"Ah, I see."
Wonderstein accepted the lie without a flicker of suspicion. Normally, he would never have let himself be taken in so easily by someone else's deception.
But because he believed she was a disabled girl with no use of her lower body, he showed her limitless patience. Even when she pushed a flimsy, half-nonsensical excuse, he brushed past it as if he understood everything.
Watching him care for her with unfailing kindness for an entire month, never once showing a trace of irritation, Maya felt a pang of guilt. But having come this far, there was no way she could reveal the truth now.
"I'll continue, Miss Maya. Focus, and tell me if you feel anything."
"...Yes."
She'd never meant to keep the lie going this long—no, originally, she hadn't meant to lie at all.
It had started as a way to vent her anger at Ella.
When Maya opened her eyes in the ward, the first thing she saw was Ella standing beside Wonderstein with a perfectly untroubled face. The woman, her memory supposedly restored, treated the Troupe Leader exactly as she had before. The same dissatisfied expression, the same sharp words she flung at him without a care.
To be honest, in that moment, Maya had felt a flash of satisfaction that the grinning, clingy version of Ella who'd stuck to the Troupe Leader's side was gone. But the Troupe Leader's attitude got on her nerves. Even when Ella snapped at him, he only managed an awkward smile and never once called her out on her behavior.
Ella had tried to kill him—even if she had been under the influence of an enemy's magic, that was still what happened. That he would go easy on her didn't sit right with Maya at all. She'd gotten hurt trying to save him, and yet...
Watching the scene in silence and chewing on her resentment, Maya had—in the heat of the moment, when the doctor arrived—blurted out the lie that she had no sensation in her legs.
Seeing Ella's face darken and her confidence falter felt good. But the moment she saw the Troupe Leader kneel before her and bow his head, she realized she'd made a mistake.
Why had she ever thought he only protected Ella? He was the kind of man who would throw himself into danger without a second thought to rescue a village of strangers. Strong enough to face a Reaper, an avatar of a Demon God, in single combat, and yet he never flaunted it. He was foolishly, almost absurdly, kind and humble.
Maya had planned to withdraw the lie after a few days by claiming her mana flow had temporarily tangled and caused a misperception. But the moment she saw him roll down her stockings to carry out the treatment the doctor had recommended, greed got the better of her.
Just a little... just a little... it couldn't hurt to enjoy it, could it?
And somehow, deceiving him like that had stretched into a full month already.
With her face still buried in the pillow, Maya savored the sensation of him biting, sucking, and licking her. As his hair brushed across her thighs, she tilted her head just enough to steal a look at him.
His mouth was now trailing up her snow-white calves. Watching a handsome man work his tongue through a mess of spit, Maya muttered inwardly.
'Like a bitch in heat.'
Her own thought shocked her so badly she snapped her mouth shut. It was a crude phrase she would never have dared utter aloud. She never could have imagined herself calling a mentor she deeply respected something like that.
But seeing a man so noble and admirable bow his head at her feet, meekly obey her commands, and devour her body like a beast stirred something irreverent inside her.
I'm controlling the Troupe Leader.
Looking down at him, all kinds of lewd images flooded her head.
What if she lifted her leg right now and pressed her foot firmly against his face? Or sat down squarely on his face with her backside? Or peed right here and told him to clean it with his tongue?
Schlurp. Slorp. Slup-slup.
The sound of his tongue working tickled her ears. The soapy scent rising from his saliva teased her nose. Every time his tongue made contact, a scene replayed in her mind of him tasting her body, kneading it with sensual devotion.
What she was experiencing right now was an exquisite concert of all five senses—sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste—fused into a single rapture.
The filthy imagination whirling through her head and the carnal heat searing her whole body blended together like a cocktail. The intense pleasure it produced stoked a fire deep in her belly.
It's hot.
Below her navel—no, lower than that, deeper than that.
That place throbbed.
She pictured a firework detonating in slow motion underwater. Hot, brilliant flames. Beneath the water where they burst like foam, she floundered. She couldn't breathe. But it didn't hurt. The loss of control exhilarated her. An airy, dizzying buoyancy wrapped around her, impossible to tell whether it was real or an illusion.
A spectacle no illusion could reproduce.
A sensation no magic could provoke.
An emotion no logic could explain.
A rapturous current scorched her mind to a blank white.
Ah.
It was the first climax she had ever reached in her life.
Seconds, maybe minutes, passed.
When her head cleared, she realized the pillow she'd pressed her face into was soaked with her own drool. And another spot, too...
"S-stop!"
At Maya's cry, Wonderstein's tongue—which had already passed her thigh and was dipping into the crease just beneath her backside—came to a halt. He looked up at her back with an expectant light in his eyes.
"Miss Maya... do you feel something?"
Biting down hard to keep from letting out any moans, Maya nodded faintly without meeting his eyes. A smile spread across his face, broad with disbelief, as he asked again.
"Really? You really feel sensation in your lower body?"
"...Yes."
She couldn't bring herself to lift her head. She tried to collect herself, to hide what she'd just gone through, but her body shook on its own, trembling beyond her control.
Wonderstein took one look and nodded, as if he understood perfectly.
She had been living under the fear that she might never use her legs again, and now there was a path to recovery. Who wouldn't be overjoyed?
'She's been through a lot.'
He could perceive the intense emotion laced through her voice in every word. No matter how hard she tried to feign impassivity, she was still only a seventeen-year-old girl. Waking up disabled overnight—there was no way she hadn't felt despair. The excitement she was feeling now had to be proportional to all that suffering.
"There's hope. I'll add this to the massage routine going forward. So..."
"You've made your point. Please leave."
Maya cut him off in a tone that brooked no argument.
Catching something like a suppressed sob in her voice, Wonderstein rose without another word. He was protecting her pride. Before leaving, he tried to at least wipe down her legs, which were a mess of spit, but she pushed him away with telekinesis. He offered no resistance and let himself be nudged all the way to the door.
"Then rest well. Don't worry—I won't speak of what I saw today to anyone."
He closed the door behind him.
Maya lay face-down on the bed as if playing dead, waiting until his footsteps had faded to nothing. Only when she was sure that every part of her had returned to normal did she push herself upright.
She picked up the towel he had left behind. Using her own hands, not telekinesis, she began to wipe her legs.
Her legs were slick and gleaming, coated in the saliva he'd left behind. Here and there she noticed the red marks of his teeth.
Once her legs were clean, she tossed the towel into the laundry basket. Then she stripped off the pillowcase, drenched in her own drool, and threw that in too. Finally, she removed the thing that had nearly given her away earlier, the thing that had almost made her scream when she pictured him noticing it, and dropped it into the basket as well.
That place—today, his hands, his tongue, his breath had never touched it. And yet, in another sense, it was the part of her he had touched the most.
The lingering afterglow still pulsed there as she prodded the spot with her fingers, then pressed on it hard with telekinesis. But the heat from before wouldn't return.
Numbness. That was what her body was.
Still, a key existed.
Wonderstein.
He could unlock her locked-up body. Only he could do it.
The thought left her regretful and delighted all at once.