Learning Night
She had lowered herself as she was told, but the posture felt like a humiliation without meaning, and Euphemia started to rise.
A hard press.
“Hngh!”
Perzen’s large hand bore down on her shoulder, and she had no choice but to set her half-lifted hips back against the floor.
“Come a little closer.”
The voice was so imperious she did not dare complain about the shoulder throbbing beneath it. Euphemia shifted her knees with care and crept forward.
She settled between his legs, her eyes brought level with a view that left her no choice but to stare straight at his groin. She was no deviant, and looking so fixedly at a man’s sex was more than she could bear, so she dropped her head.
“Lift your head.”
Perzen did not permit the evasion. Still she hesitated.
“If you don’t want to, we can always go to the bed.”
He rose from the chair and took a step without the slightest pause. He did not get far.
“W-wait…!”
Euphemia’s characteristically slender hand had caught the hem of his trousers. For an instant he wondered how much more desperately she would cling if he shook her off now.
He sat back down, obediently enough.
In the silence that circled them, only Euphemia’s face—forced to stare at his groin—reddened, little by little.
In truth, from the moment Perzen had decided to get her with child, there was nothing particular in his willingness to indulge her flimsy excuses. A woman’s fertile window ran roughly two days to either side of ovulation. Five days, in a word. Missing a chance to finish inside her tonight would throw no great wrench into the plan. Bluntly put, he could have her every day from tomorrow without skipping once.
But Euphemia had no way of knowing that. So long as he did not try to enter her, she would, at least for today, do her best to obey. He meant to use that to drag her pride down further still. And if tonight branded itself on her as a memory that left her unable to refuse his bed, so much the better. Kindness without a reason always hid a thorn. This woman was far too naive.
Having settled the thought, Perzen broke the lingering quiet.
“Euphemia. Do you mean to sit here until the night is gone? I don’t take you for pure enough to fail to understand the situation… but if you’re still hesitating, I can give you a push.”
He caught both her hands and laid them between his thighs. Her grip tightened on reflex—then loosened halfway. Resist once more, and this time he really would take her to the bed and reproduce that night she had floundered in pleasure.
Yes. At least…
This time, anyone could see it: Perzen was taking the lead to satisfy his own lust. Her will did not exist in it, not by so much as a handful. She took what thin comfort she could from that, and slowly undid the button at his waist—the one that kept his trousers from sliding down.
A soft rustle. She drew his underwear down.
“Why…”
What she found was not erect in the least, and Euphemia could not hide her confusion.
“Did you think I was some beast that goes into heat the moment I look at you?”
Even his flat voice seemed to sneer at her as something worthless, the way his gaze did, looking down from above.
“Sitting between a man’s legs—what hundred-year scheme are you weaving, that you’re so damned slow?”
At the quiet prod in his words, Euphemia bit her lip hard and reached out. She had never touched a man’s sex with her own hands. The feel of it was nothing but strange.
Little by little…
It grew. It was less a stroke than a clumsy kneading, and still Perzen’s cock swelled, bit by bit. That was all. However much she swallowed her shame and worked her hands, it stayed only half hard, still soft and slack. She did not want the comparison, and yet she knew something far harder and hotter than this had once filled her without a gap. Perhaps that was why it seemed to whisper that even her charm as a woman was a shabby thing. The feeling left her bleak.
“You haven’t a single talent. It would be generous to call you a white. You’re simply colorless.”
“I never wanted your praise for being accomplished in bed. So I suppose that’s a mercy…”
“If you mean to keep at it with hands that clumsy… yes. Your mouth would be better.”
“What do you—ah!”
He caught her hand and drew her face in toward his groin.
“N-no…!”
A strange, yielding softness met her cheek, and Euphemia flinched back in horror. But his voice came down low beside her ear—there would not be a second time—and in the end she gave in. Hesitant, she slowly buried her face.
“Did you even wash properly? You… smell.”
He did not, in fact. Or rather, he did: a faint lavender. He had only just come from the bath, and the scented oil still clung to him. Euphemia invented the complaint anyway, in the small hope that he might feel even a little shame.
“If you can smell through fragrant oil and pick out what’s underneath… what, are you a dog?”
“No…”
“Euphemia. Are you trying to tell me you’re a bitch?”
“That’s not—!”
A bitch. At the excessive insult she trembled. But snarling with her face buried between his thighs would only make her more wretched. She shut her eyes tight and carefully took him into her mouth.
She had only the head of it, and only tapped at it with her tongue, and still it swelled full in a way her hands could not compare to.
This…
She could not bring herself to keep it in her mouth. Shyly, she put out her tongue.
“Lower.”
She disliked the voice that issued orders, but if she obeyed, perhaps she could bring him off sooner. She drew her tongue from the head down along the shaft.
“More.”
Her head was sinking entirely between his legs, and for a moment the revulsion rose—but there was nowhere left to retreat. She buried her face deep enough that the coarse hair pricked her cheek. When she licked carefully along the underside of the shaft and over his balls, Perzen swept her falling hair back, as if in praise.
She struck the hand away at once, as though the touch offended her, and lifted her eyes to glare at him.
“Ow…!”
His brow twitched. Then he struck her in kind—not the left hand that had hit him, but the back of the right, the one still holding him.
She snatched that hand back on reflex, and the cock, no longer held, came to rest across her face of its own accord. It was slick with her own saliva. The feel of it against her skin was not something she could call pleasant, so she said nothing and let her face fill with distaste.
Even that protest seemed to mean nothing. As if displeased, Perzen pressed her head down and forced her to take into her mouth the thing that might as well have been called a monstrosity. This, she was certain, she could not do. She shook her head—until he made as if to rise from the chair. Tearful, with no other choice, she opened her small mouth as wide as it would go and barely managed to take in half of him.
“Hnn… nn…”
Her jaw felt ready to come unhinged. The sudden thought that a thing like this had once stirred her insides sent a flash of fear through her.
“Euphemia. Don’t use your teeth. Purse your lips so they cover them, and slowly… suck. That’s all you have to do.”
The verb had struck him, for a moment, as cruder than he liked. He had searched for another word and found none, and so he had said it.
“Nn… hnn…”
The fullness was stifling, as if a small child’s fist had been pushed into her mouth. Even moving her head was more than she could manage, but if she could only make him finish—she followed him. She pursed her lips over her teeth and carefully sucked.
Each time, a wet, obscene sound filled the room, and Euphemia felt a fierce wish to stop her ears and simply die.
“Euphemia.”
As if that were not enough:
“I’d rather my wife not make such vulgar noises.”
That he should say it—the ache spreading through her jaw and the bitter resentment gathered together, and tears rose in her eyes.
“Let all the air out of your mouth. Then there won’t be a sound.”
Taking a man in her mouth was humiliation enough. She had no wish to make vulgar noises on top of it, so she did as he taught, emptied her mouth of air, and moved her head slowly. The sound did stop. That silence, at least, kept the tears from falling.
It hurts… truly, my jaw… feels as if it will break…
How long she worked at him with that clumsy mouth, she could not have said. The pain grew until it seemed her lower jaw would tear away, and she tried to pull back.
“Hnb—!”
Perzen pressed the back of her head and cut off the retreat.
“Ngh…”
With his short groan, the release she had so desperately wanted began.
“Hnn… nn—!”
It came thick, in heavy pulses, a sound almost of stretching. Between her teeth. Sometimes striking the back of her throat. Seeping into her tongue. Filling her mouth. Her mind was already a little hazy, and there was so much of it that for an instant she thought he was urinating into her, and the shock of that was no small thing. Then again—however much had soaked the sheets that night, how much more had still been packed inside her, and come leaking out when she woke?
When he finished, he used her tongue and lips as if to wipe himself, spending what had not yet come and drawing out clean.
Euphemia meant to spit it at once into any cloth or towel nearby.
“Ngh!”
He caught her jaw.
“Swallow.”
What she wanted, truly, was to spit the mouthful onto that smug face. She also knew, wretchedly, that she could not survive what would follow.
“Hnn… nn…!”
There in front of him, she ground the semen filling her mouth between her teeth and swallowed it down. On her side of it, the meaning was defiance: she had chewed his seed to pieces and killed it.
“I knew you had a healthy appetite… in a certain sense, you’re impressive.”
What reached him was badly distorted.
“Th—cough! Cough!”
There had been no flavor worth the name. It had been the worst thing she had ever tasted. Far too fishy. The texture, vulgar. She had wanted to correct the misunderstanding—but what had not gone down clung thick in her throat, and she choked on it, and the chance was gone.