The Morning After Is Bitter
The morning after your first experience has a bitter taste.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was already high in the sky.
Apparently I had passed out nestled in Vincent's arms.
"Ahhk!"
I tried to push myself upright, but between the slick fluids still coating my body and the toll taken by Vincent's impossibly oversized cock from the night before, every inch of me was ruined — leaving me nothing more than a woman wriggling helplessly in a man's embrace.
After bearing the brunt of his weight through repeated thrusting all night long, my body was screaming.
As I groaned through pain that felt like my spine might snap in two, the cock still buried inside me hardened and swelled, growing even larger.
I froze in shock and looked up at Vincent — but he was still asleep.
I had to wash myself off before he woke up.
When I saw the dried white fluid trailing down from between my thighs, a sense of crisis reared its head.
At this rate, I really was going to get pregnant.
Yesterday, Vincent had imposed a penalty as part of our binding vow.
A penalty that would force me to ovulate whenever I broke one of my oaths...
And into my uterus, plunged into heat along with that forced ovulation, Vincent had poured himself out again and again until he was completely drained.
No — it was an amount that could only be described as dumped inside me.
Even as I sobbed and begged him to stop, he held me down and refused to let go — not when the sun rose, not when morning came and everyone else was waking to begin their daily routines.
When the act reached its climax, I blacked out entirely in Vincent's arms.
My head ached.
My whole body ached.
From the feel of it, Vincent hadn't stopped even after I lost consciousness — the seed pooled inside me seemed to slosh around with every movement, leaving my insides heavy and bloated to the point of discomfort.
It was very likely already too late, but at the very least, I didn't want him to see me in this state.
Extracting the engorged cock swelling deep in my belly proved harder than I expected.
The monstrous thing, already large enough to compress my organs, seemed eager to boast of its overwhelming authority as if to say it had never once slackened on the job — and the crown of its head scraped against my already oversensitive inner walls, resisting its own retreat.
Afraid Vincent might wake, I clamped my mouth shut and tried to smother the sounds, but the moan leaking out of me was not the kind of thing a person could hold back.
"Ughh! Hnngh, uuuuugh!"
Those brief moments of drawing him out of me stretched into an eternity, and when I finally checked how far I'd gotten — only to feel from my belly that the end was still nowhere near — I wanted nothing more than to weep.
"Why is it so big...!"
At last the head caught against my entrance, and with the desperate resolve that this was the final stretch, I tensed my legs and pushed myself up — then, with a lewd pop, Vincent's glans and the seed that had been dammed up behind it came spilling out of me like water.
"Haaaahhk!"
For a moment, I think I actually came.
Because of it, I had to catch my buckling knees with my hands to keep myself from collapsing.
It never used to be like this — ever since Vincent got his hands on me, my body burns up at the slightest touch, like a cat in heat.
Slowly, carefully, I climbed down from the bed and took a deep breath to calm the trembling excitement humming through me like a faint vibration.
I looked around for the clothes I should have been wearing, but there was nothing of the sort anywhere in sight.
I approached the door and tried pulling it, then pushing it, but it didn't budge an inch.
I could have shattered it with my internal energy and fled, but if I did, that monster would surely open his eyes.
That's the reason I don't even bother escaping through the wooden walls — a feat that would hardly be impossible for me.
This is a man who falls asleep every night braced for demon ambushes.
He seems soundly asleep now, but the moment I begin circulating my internal energy, he'll wake as if he'd been waiting for exactly that — I know it.
I had just barely drawn up a thread of my inner strength to try the door when the sound of Vincent stirring forced me to abandon the attempt.
Fine, then.
I'd think about escape later. Washing myself came first.
The day I first met my master was the day the Hero was born — the one fated to slay the Demon King.
That prophecy had been the seed of our ruin, sown at the very moment the villagers were being torn apart with great fanfare by the hated demons.
Why had the prophecy named such a precise date, such a precise location?
And even granting that — why had the whole continent been made to hear of it, until it reached the Demon King's own ears?
The Empire had received a prophecy accurate down to the day and the place, and yet it never sent so much as a single guard to protect the Hero destined to save them.
None of that mattered, though.
All that mattered was that, on that day, my parents threw themselves in front of demonic beasts — creatures that could tear a human body apart like wet paper — to shield me, and I survived.
And then, when my turn came, a goddess of death with hair black as the night sky appeared before me.
She dispatched the demons without a flicker of agitation.
In the most literal sense, it did not matter to her what the demon in front of her had done moments before to another human being.
She cut down the vermin before her with the numb, mechanical indifference of swatting flies — and yet granted each of them a beautiful death.
The demons swarmed her relentlessly, as if they were moths hurling themselves at a flame, until crimson flowers bloomed in glorious profusion around the black goddess — and not a single demon remained standing on two feet.
The goddess of black light standing amid that garden of flowers made of blood was so radiant, so beautiful, that she didn't seem real.
But she walked toward me, spoke to me — proof, step by step, that she was firmly rooted in reality.
"Are you hurt, little one?"
By the time her dance of death had ended, I had crawled out of my parents' cold embrace, clutching both their hands in mine.
"...Mom and Dad...?"
"They died protecting you."
"They've gone somewhere better now."
It didn't feel real — being told I would never see my parents' smiles again.
The small, childish faith that they had always been with me and always would be — a child's naive trust — betrayed me, and I collapsed under the cruelty of that reality.
Something wet my face. Rain, falling from the sky?
No — it was me. I was the one crying.
I had tried not to.
I had to burn their faces into my memory a little longer.
From now on, those beloved faces would become ones I could never see again, no matter how much I ached to.
I had to carve them into my eyes, even a second more, so they would stay in my memory for a long, long time.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have listened to them better.
It was already too late to hear the warm voices of my mother and father calling my name.
Sweeping away the tears that burst from me like a flooded dam with the back of my hand, I did my best not to look away from their final images.
The demons had been searching for the Hero.
Because of that Hero, they had come to our village and slaughtered everyone in it.
Was I that Hero?
Then it was true after all — my parents had died because of me.
As I bit down on the wail clawing its way out of my throat, struggling not to cry, a hand settled on my head — calloused from long years of work, but radiating warmth.
"It's all right to cry."
Was it, though? I was weak and powerless, and so my parents had died trying to protect me.
If it weren't for me, they might have lived.
My parents died because of me.
"Is it really okay for me to cry?"
There was no answer to my question.
"My parents died because of me. Is it really okay for me to cry?"
The goddess pulled me into her arms and told me:
"It is not because of you. It is because I was too late."
I couldn't find the words.
What fault could she possibly have, that she would take the blame for my parents' deaths onto herself?
It felt as if my brain were melting.
Was this really the right way to honor them...?
"Cry, child. For their sake."
At those words, I finally broke.
I cried with everything I had.
As if my wailing could become a requiem offered up to them.
Pouring my longing and my grief into the tears that flowed without end, I wept until my voice gave out.
The goddess stepped away for a time, granting me the space to offer my mourning in full.
By the time my throat was raw and fever burned through me and no tears would come anymore, she returned — and I fell asleep in her arms.
I dreamed that old dream again, for the first time in a long while.
It wasn't long after that before I began calling her Master.
A pleasant, languid warmth coils through my body even now.
At long last, the master I had dreamed of even in sleep was made mine.
From now on she would live as my wife — as Adela.
I reached out to pull Adela close, to breathe in her scent — but there was nothing of her on either side of me.
And yet last night I was certain I had fallen asleep holding her in my arms.
My eyes snapped open.
"Adela?"
Had she tried to run again?
I looked around. The room, to begin with, was nothing but a single spacious bedchamber.
The door out had been built so that it could not be opened by brute force alone.
Turning my head to search for her, I found myself locking eyes with Adela — who froze, eyes going wide as saucers.
That figure of hers was truly...
Adela had wet a ladle of water left out for washing her face and was using it to cleanse her body, wrapped in nothing but the thin-material blanket she hadn't touched during last night's heated first night.
So that's why she'd wailed so desperately about needing to wash — she'd slipped out of my arms the moment she woke, just to bathe.
The problem was her posture.
Her posture was very... how should I put it. Dazzling.