The Line Yet Uncrossed
Aria lit a fire with magic, set her damp outer clothes nearby to dry, then pulled the blanket around herself and quietly let the soft patter of rain drift into her ears.
How long had she been lying like that?
Click.
Rohen emerged from his bath, looking distinctly awkward. He carried the rain-soaked coat in one hand while wearing the one piece of clothing that had managed to stay dry — his underwear — and somehow the whole picture was unbearably comical. He sneaked a glance at her, spread his clothes out beside the fire she'd built, then shuffled back around, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. The sight was so much like a puppy fresh off a scolding that she felt guilty even meeting his eyes, and she lifted the edge of the blanket for him.
"Get in. You'll catch a cold."
"……"
Rohen settled in beside her, pulled the covers over himself, and stared off at some meaningless point in the distance. The bed wasn't exactly spacious. The fact that not a single patch of their skin touched was proof enough of how painstakingly careful he was being.
Watching him, Aria wondered if she had crushed his spirit too thoroughly, and let out a sigh. At this point, his reading her moods wasn't going to change anything anyway.
……Well, if nothing was going to change, then perhaps there had been no need to resent the consideration he'd learned about a woman's bed from another girl in the first place. He was no longer a boy but a man. With a fiancée waiting for him, expecting him to remain ignorant of women was a rather laughable wish.
So, in the awkward silence, Aria slid the blanket down a little and said,
"My chest. Do you want to touch it?"
Flinch.
Had he heard that right? When Rohen's eyes, previously fixed on nowhere, swung to her, Aria swallowed an awkward laugh. Was he really going to make her repeat herself?
"I said…… you can touch my chest."
Whether this was the right way to lift a deflated man's spirits, she couldn't say. But she'd never had Lapis's gift for gentle words, so perhaps this was the better option regardless.
Shhhk.
And so, at the end of that mortifying repetition, when Rohen's outstretched hand closed softly around her breast, Aria flinched and turned her head away. When she touched herself, she felt nothing unless she prodded right around the nipple — so why did being handled by someone else feel so impossibly strange? Perhaps it was because his hand was rough, thick with calluses. Rather than simply being kneaded, she felt, with painful vividness, that she was being violated by a man.
Creak.
'Honestly……'
What could possibly be so enjoyable about groping a lump of flesh like this?
Somewhere along the way, the deflation had drained from Rohen's face and been replaced by unmistakable arousal. He shifted behind her, pulled her into a tight embrace from behind, then laid the underside of her breast across his broad palm as though weighing it and began to rock it with gentle, relentless motions. Being handled like some casual toy stirred a faint trace of displeasure — but he was spilling hot, ragged, uneven breaths right against her ear, and it left her unable to say a word. She couldn't claim to be small without embarrassment, but next to Lapis she couldn't call herself large, either……
"Ah!"
When his fingers finally caught her nipple and began rolling it in slow circles, Aria let out a moan by pure reflex and shuddered. It was an unfamiliar pleasure that tickled and yet didn't, and her toes curled tight as she pressed her lips shut — but his hand kept circling the nipple that stood erect like a cat arching its back, teasing and tugging, and it felt like a male's decree that he would not rest until he wrung out the shameless cries of a female in heat.
But no matter how much Rohen wanted to hear her moan —
if she herself found it humiliating, how could she possibly let it past her lips? However the shape of it differed, it was still nothing but a beast's wail, and Aria could not bring herself to do it.
So she simply whined under his relentless teasing for a long while, and when Rohen's hands slowly withdrew, she bowed her head, gulping down scorching breaths. Just how long had he toyed with her? Her pink nipples, engorged to the point of looking bloodshot, stood stiff and twitching with little convulsions.
But far more shameful than that was the stain soaked into the bedsheet beneath where she sat — unmistakably not sweat from her fevered body, no excuse she could offer even if she tried, and wafting up in sharp relief: the thick, honeyed scent of a female in heat.
She herself could smell it this strongly.
So what must it be like for Rohen behind her? He simply wasn't showing it in his actions. Wasn't she, for all purposes, a female presenting her hindquarters and shamelessly seducing a male?
Aria hastily drew her legs in——
"Ah……!"
——and it accomplished nothing, because a hand was already turning her body forward.
She had occasionally wondered why intercourse between a man and a woman happens at night often enough that it's literally called "sleeping together." Now, finally, Aria understood. The thought that Rohen could see everything — her panting, her disheveled, shameless ruin — drove a shame into her that words could not contain.
Besides, she had clearly already gotten him off once. And yet there it was, swelling grotesquely upright again, jutting out past the waistband of his underwear and proudly flaunting its signature tangle of grotesque veins.
'Still……'
That thing was ever faithful to its desires. Wasn't that rather better than its owner? Once the thought occurred to her, even its grotesque, monstrous appearance somehow began to look endearing. Of course, being faithful to desire meant its reactions to her and to Lapis were probably no different…… but at least it was consistent, wasn't it?
Shhhk.
And so Aria reached out and, carefully, took hold of the member jutting out at her and stroked it up and down.
Squelch.
Perhaps because of the sticky bead of precum welling from its tip, every pass of her slender fingers over the rigid length sent lewd, discordant sounds ringing through the room. Before she knew it, the thought of embarrassment had slipped her mind entirely — her hands braced on the bedsheet, she swallowed dryly at the sight of Rohen above her, panting as he received her service. The image of the man she loved drowning in pleasure at her touch gave her, in an entirely different sense, a strange and stirring intimacy.
'I don't even know something as simple as which food he likes……'
That she would come to learn which part of his cock felt best to touch before anything else — it was utterly ironic. And she'd always been sensitive to other people's gazes to begin with. When she felt the stare of an aroused male sweeping over her — from her swaying breasts down across every inch of her body — a tingling warmth pooled low in her belly. The hand stroking him was one thing, but it felt as though he were savoring her entire existence…… and above all, where that gaze finally converged was the space between her legs, clumsily closed as it was.
"Idiot……"
It wasn't as if he'd be seeing anything. It wasn't as if he'd be putting it in.
But contrary to the curse that slipped from her mouth, Aria let her legs fall open to either side and showed herself to him. At once she felt, with raw clarity, the fierce throbbing of the member in her hand — already hard, growing harder still. His precum flowed thicker with every stroke, and its briny musk mingled with the scent of her own damp heat rising from between her thighs, beginning to intoxicate her the way wine might.
Chk.
Then, with her free hand, she gently spread herself open and showed him the flesh within — and the fingers gripping the bedsheet clenched with such sudden violence that the fabric creased all at once. The veins stood out along the back of his hand; from that, Aria understood just how narrowly Rohen was holding himself back from that final line.
'Not really……'
He didn't have to hold back. Even if he pressed her down beneath those thick hands, blanketed her with that solid chest, and pushed inside — spreading her apart with shameless, artless strokes — Aria had not the slightest thought of running.
Only — to Lapis. And to her mother and father. Until she had made her case and been accepted for what she was, Rohen believed that crossing that line would be an unforgivable thing. As long as he had no intention of giving her up and letting her go, no matter how tangled the outcome became, she would have indulged his needs as often as he liked even without their bond made official.
'Ah……'
Together with the veins swelling grotesquely thicker, the member throbbing violently in her grip told her that his release was close. And as she quickened the pace of her strokes, Aria suddenly wondered —
If she pulled her hand away at the very last moment, how would Rohen react? Standing at the threshold of climax, in this room where the only female in existence was her — would he still stubbornly cling to that patience? Would he not simply bear her down at once, bury himself inside her, and spill his thick seed to the hilt?
Even if it was a scene no better than being used as a vessel for his seed — a worst imaginable first experience — it would also be the moment the half-shell called "siblings" collapsed completely. And so Aria found that she didn't think it would be such a bad thing at all.
Thud!
The instant the thought completed itself, Aria ripped her hand away from him — and stared at Rohen.
"Hah……!"
No — she never even got the chance to stare. He seized both her arms, hauled her into his embrace, crushed his mouth against hers, pried her lips apart, and drove his tongue inside. Not a trace of tenderness anywhere in it — nothing but the pure greed of a male in heat ravenously devouring his female. And in the instant their eyes met, when she glimpsed the desire rippling in those red eyes of his, Aria squeezed her eyes shut. So this was what the eyes of a starving wolf looked like, the moment it finally ran its prey to ground and began to feed.
"Hnngh!"
Soon, with their bodies pressed flush together from behind, Rohen was grinding himself roughly against her soaked heat — and when his thick hands clamped hard around her hips, a wanton moan spilled from Aria's lips. She couldn't twist around to look, but she didn't need to: the force was violent enough to leave his handprints blooming on her skin. Yet what mortified her most was that she could feel, with perfect clarity, the wrinkles of her most hidden place stretching taut as his hands pulled her apart.
'Ah……'
Come to think of it — right there behind them, hadn't there been a large mirror? The moment she realized it, Aria clenched herself tight with a shame beyond words. But she was no match for the grip holding her spread, and the result was that even her most forbidden place betrayed her — winking shamelessly, as if it, too, were seducing the male.
Creak! Groaaan!
The cheap bed of the inn shook violently under their grinding, gasping imitation of intercourse, and Aria clutched Rohen's back with both hands and panted. To be baring even the most secret, lewd, shameful part of herself was like a dog rolling belly-up in total submission, and the embarrassment refused to settle — and yet, at the same time, the fact that even those parts of her could stir Rohen's arousal filled her with a strange satisfaction.
……Though honestly, she couldn't be sure. Even without him inside her, this situation already felt so much like truly making love that perhaps she was simply reading everything in the most flattering light possible, drunk on it as she was.
"Hah…… ah……!"
Every time the hard length brushed across her swollen bud, the moans she'd been holding back escaped her of their own accord.
"Hnggh!"
At the end of it, Rohen bared his teeth, sank them into the nape of her neck, and went still — and Aria felt scalding seed spatter across the mound of her sex, then shivered all over, her frail body trembling through a faint, distant climax. With her chin resting on his shoulder as she caught her breath, she couldn't see it — but how could she possibly not know about the semen pooling like a puddle against her heat? An amount like that would have more than filled her womb, clinging thick along every fold of her inner walls and still overflowing.
In the end, her wish went ungranted — the line between brother and sister, half-bloods both, was not perfectly stripped away. But the lingering heat of the room, and the lewd scent that hung in it——
spoke, beyond any doubt, of a man and a woman.
No — of what remained in this room: one female, and one male.
Yes. Aria thought that this alone was enough, and quietly savored the fading warmth, and the ache of longing tangled within it, as their body heat slowly cooled.