Aftermath (2)
The two of them sat side by side on the edge of the bed.
“Um… Saintess?”
Lowen looked down at Ariel.
She had been caught red-handed, spanking her own backside while she masturbated. Trembling like a rain-soaked puppy, Ariel carefully lifted her eyes.
“Y-yes……?”
“Could you let go of my arm?”
Embarrassment had painted her from the neck all the way to the tips of her ears. Under ordinary circumstances she would have burrowed into the blankets like a chrysalis, or crouched facing the wall muttering, “I want to die…” while dark clouds of despair gathered around her.
But whether she had grown or simply changed, Ariel clung tightly to Lowen’s arm even through her shame.
The soft, yielding press of her breasts. Because she wasn’t wearing a bra, that almost violent softness came through the single layer of fabric without the slightest filter. He always thought the same thing: if he used those as a pillow, he would sleep like a baby.
“Is it… uncomfortable…?”
“No, it isn’t uncomfortable, but…”
Ariel only hugged his arm tighter.
“Th-then… I want to stay like this…”
Her lips twitched as she barely held her embarrassment in check, yet her actions were bold. She was attacking him with a woman’s greatest weapon—her breasts—pressing them firmly against his arm. The deliberate way she pushed them forward was obvious. She wriggled her hips, closing the distance until their thighs touched, and mashed her pretty chest against him until the soft flesh squished.
Under the relentless assault, Ariel’s breasts conquered Lowen’s arm. Just like during a paizuri, his arm was half-swallowed between the two heavy mounds. Full, dense breast pressure squeezed his forearm.
“Bishop Lowen…”
Her voice was hesitant, as if she were gauging his reaction.
“I… I really have something I need to tell you, Bishop Lowen.”
Her eyes were serious. Her face was still as red as a ripe tomato, but Lowen met her gaze steadily.
“Hwaaaaah…!”
The moment their eyes locked, Ariel ducked her head in mortification.
…What is she trying to do?
He waited a few seconds. Then Ariel lifted her head again and looked at him. Her lightly raised eyes stared straight into his. Her pupils trembled as if an earthquake were rolling through them. She bit down hard on her lower lip and forced herself not to look away.
“So what is it you wanted to say to me?”
Lowen smiled gently down at her.
“Ugh……!”
Ariel’s shoulders jerked as if she had been ambushed.
“That’s… a foul……”
She muttered under her breath. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Lowen took a light punch to the forearm.
“I still can’t say it while looking into your eyes.”
With that, Ariel covered both of his eyes with her hands.
A warm, baby-powder sweetness. And beneath it, a thick, sour, faintly fishy scent. The smell made it unmistakably clear that she had been touching herself only moments ago.
Should I mention it?
He considered it, then decided against it after reading her mood.
“Bishop Lowen, I really did try to hold back.”
Ariel spoke in a self-mocking tone, as if confessing a sin.
“Because I promised… that I’d cut back little by little……”
Judging by the scent clinging to her palms, she had clearly failed to hold back and had masturbated to her heart’s content.
“But… but my body… the more I try to endure it, the more it… g-gets hotter…”
He understood. It wasn’t only lust. Desire was a small creature that grew larger the more patience you fed it.
“So you’re saying you masturbated?”
While spanking your own ass?
“Th-th-that’s not what I wanted to talk about…!”
She loved filthy things, yet the blunt word “masturbate” left her flustered and helpless.
“There’s a reason I… can’t hold back that kind of thing.”
Anyone listening would have thought she was saying, “I had no choice but to masturbate.” Forced masturbation? Was there even such a thing? It wasn’t as if she were under a curse.
“It’s because of a curse.”
The joke he had been making inside his head came straight out of Ariel’s mouth.
A curse. Well, it was a convenient excuse. There was no real need for her to invent lies at this point, though. A curse on a Saintess? Stretch the truth a little and a Saintess could raise the dead. The idea that such a being couldn’t lift a single curse on her own body was absurd.
“You’re thinking… I’m lying right now, aren’t you?”
Ariel narrowed her eyes.
“Of course not.”
“Hmm~ Did you know that when you lie, Bishop Lowen, you put on that gentle smile?”
Just as she said, Lowen was wearing the kindly smile of a saint.
“Why would I ever lie to you, Saintess?”
“We’ll know once I check.”
A flash of gold glittered between her narrowed lids.
“Whoa—!”
Lowen’s hand covered Ariel’s eyes.
“I knew it…! I knew you were lying…!”
She puffed out her soft cheeks and huffed. She was trying to look stern, but it only made her look adorable.
“All right. Let’s call it a curse.”
“It is a curse!”
“Saintess, it’s a little late to start saying that now.”
“It’s real!”
As if outraged that he wouldn’t believe her, Ariel peppered his forearm with little punches.
“Hmph…! Since you won’t believe me, Bishop Lowen, I’m going to buy you mint chocolate.”
“I like mint chocolate.”
Ariel’s face twisted in pure disgust. She could eat it if she had to, but she considered mint chocolate the devil’s own confection. Blue-toned colors killed the appetite, the sharp scent was pure toothpaste, and despite the word “chocolate” in the name, there was no chocolate flavor to be found.
“Well… everyone has different tastes, I suppose……”
Deciding to respect Lowen’s preference for mint chocolate, Ariel continued.
“Ever since I was little, whenever I used too much divine power, my body would heat up.”
She calmly explained her constitution.
“I think of it as a curse for now… but I don’t know the exact reason.”
She had asked people around her, searched the libraries of the Holy See, even studied curse lore trying to find the cause. In the end she never discovered the true origin. The worst part was that the whole process had piled stress on her until her mind was frayed. While trying to calm herself with scripture, she had walked in on two people having sex in the archive stacks. That was how she finally realized the heat flooding her body was sexual desire—and how she had fallen headlong into filthy things.
“Anyway…!”
Ariel hugged his arm even tighter as she spoke.
“Because my body got so hot… I… I had no choice… but to… c-c-comfort myself alone……”
While spanking your ass, right?
Listening to the story, Lowen simply nodded as if he understood. It was an outlandish claim, but watching her squirm with embarrassment made it easy to believe. After living with her for over two months, he had observed that when Ariel lied she put on a benevolent smile and spoke with careful, measured clarity.
“Hmm… come to think of it…”
He remembered the day the cathedral in Baram-sae Forest had been attacked by monsters. Ariel had unleashed the large-scale divine magic known as the Purification Blessing, and that same night she had apologized naked, begged him to spank her, given him a handjob with her full breasts, and finally, unable to hold back, tried to take him into her ass. He had thought she had simply gone into heat like a bitch in season… but there had been a reason?
Of course, her nature was lewd to begin with.
“S-so now we get to the main point.”
Ariel stood up from the bed.
“The main point?”
She walked slowly toward the door.
—Click.
The sound of the lock turning reached his ears.
“B-Bishop Lowen.”
Ariel traced the doorknob with her fingertips.
“Yes, I’m listening.”
Standing with her back to him in front of the door, she hesitated for a long moment before speaking carefully.
“I… this time I really worked hard to protect people.”
“I know.”
Ariel moving on pure instinct to shield others. Ariel protecting people from the clock-tower explosion. Ariel shielding the knights amid the flames. He had been right beside her, so he knew better than anyone what she had accomplished. She hadn’t been chosen as a Saintess for nothing. Recalling how she had fought desperately against the Flame Knight to protect the others made him truly understand that she was a Saintess. As her temporary guardian, he felt genuine pride.
“And… I used divine power to protect them. More than half of it…!”
An ordinary cleric would have collapsed long before. They would never have withstood every attack; everyone there would have been burned black and dead. It was only because Ariel possessed such vast divine power—because she had pushed that power until it overloaded—that everyone had survived that hellish inferno.
“So…… so……”
She paused again.
“I-I’m still so hot, you see……”
Ariel lightly lifted the hem of her skirt. Her pretty backside, covered in vivid red handprints, greeted him.
“I want you to cool me down, Bishop Lowen….”
“Cool you down?”
“I mean… I want to do it with you….”
She turned her head to look back at him. Through the fine silver strands of her hair, moist violet eyes peeked out.
“D-dirty things……”
Ariel hiked her skirt all the way up and thrust her hips out. In that slightly bent, awkward stance she presented the lush shape of her ass as if putting it on display.
“I want to do dirty things with you, Bishop Lowen….”
With both hands she spread her tightly closed cheeks wide.
“T-t-today… you can put it in….”
The soft pink chrysanthemum flower beckoned to Lowen.