So You Were a Masochist?
"Are you a pervert?"
"..."
Kyle was using my own words against me — the ones I'd said about not wearing a bra not making me a pervert — to back me into a corner. I started resenting the me of just a little while ago. No matter how out of it I'd been, how could I have forgotten something that important?
And so, to keep from becoming a pervert, I was walking toward the bed with my hands covering my braless chest. It looked like I'd be sleeping next to Kyle like this tonight.
Ugh.
For some reason, just thinking about Kyle made my nipples ache even worse. I forced myself to ignore the sensation and did as he'd asked, making my way to the bed.
"Come here."
The moment I reached the bed, Kyle spread his legs and pointed to the space between them. A signal to sit there. Probably so he could touch my lower belly, like last time.
"I-I don't want to. You said we were going to sleeep..."
I refused. I didn't want to be held by him in this state, and I was so embarrassed I just wanted to go to sleep already.
"It'll only take a second. Be a good girl?"
Coercion wearing the mask of a question. Kyle said it with a smile, undeterred by my refusal. Whenever he spoke to me like that, refusing him somehow became impossibly hard.
In the end, I did as he asked and sat down between his legs. The heat of his body against my back was even hotter than usual.
"Good girl."
While I was distracted by that intense warmth, Kyle wrapped his arms around me from behind and offered the praise. And then the fabric of my pajamas grazed my left nipple.
"Hngh?!"
A lewd moan slipped out before I could stop it. I shuddered as the fabric teased that sensitive peak. It felt as though I'd blacked out for a heartbeat and slammed right back into my body. The stimulus itself hadn't been strong, but the shock it sent through me was overwhelming.
The touch was gone, but the tip of my breast was broadcasting a signal more intense than anywhere else on my body. Terrified that another jolt might come, I couldn't pull my attention away from my left nipple.
"Kyle... w-wait a sec, hngh?!"
I tried to peel his arm from my waist so I could fix my clothes. But the moment I lifted my arm, the pajama fabric brushed my nipple again — and once more, I lost all control of my body. My hips bucked on their own. A moan spilled from my lips.
"Let go for a second..."
I had to get away. This was a dangerous feeling, different from anything usual. I couldn't feel his warm body heat, or the steady pressure of his arms, or the voice that usually resonated through my eardrums. The only thing I could feel was my left nipple, flushed with blood and flaring with presence.
The comfort I'd felt when Kyle held me had vanished without a trace. All that remained was the tension of not knowing when the next touch would come.
"Did you like having your nipple pinched that much?"
Kyle ignored my plea to let go and whispered the question against my ear. At the same time, he palmed my breast over the pajamas and pressed down on my protruding left nipple with his index finger.
"Haah!?...?"
It was strange. I should have immediately shot down his ridiculous question — but the moment he pressed my left nipple, my body could do nothing but twitch and moan on its own.
"You like it just from being pressed?"
Kyle lifted his finger from my left nipple and asked the question with a wicked little lilt. My body had just been startled. How could he misunderstand like that?
"W-what... There's no way that's true!"
I shouted my denial, pushing back hard against his assumption. Kyle fired right back.
"Then why did you stay still when I pinched you? Wasn't it because it felt good?"
He brought up what had happened inside the dungeon. When I'd told him to stop touching my chest, Kyle had pinched my nipple hard as his way of refusing. I'd frozen because the sudden, sharp pinch had startled me — but Kyle had started arbitrarily deciding it was because I'd liked it.
"That's not it. My body just locked up because I was surprised. It only hurt."
I'd endured it for his sake, and now he was making this absurd assumption. I was speechless.
"Is that so? It really only hurt?"
"Yes. It only hurt. It was unpleasant."
Kyle wouldn't let it go, asking again and again with that same relentless persistence. I drove the point home. The answer would be the same even if he asked a hundred times. I couldn't understand why he kept pushing.
"Then if it only hurt, why is your nipple standing up like this?"
"Hngh?!!"
My left nipple had been hard since the bathroom. Kyle had noticed, and now he was pressing it with his index finger again as he asked. At his touch, I shuddered and moaned on reflex once more. And even as I did, a question surfaced.
Why is it actually standing?
When a man gets sexually aroused, blood rushes to his genitals on reflex and they swell. It's the same for women. When a woman gets excited, blood gathers mainly in the clitoris or the nipples, making them more sensitive — and making them grow.
"Only the left one I pinched is standing up nice and hard."
"Nngh..."
My nipple had grown more sensitive than usual, large enough to show clearly through the fabric of my pajamas. Just as he'd said — unlike the right one, only the left one he'd pinched.
Then that meant I...
"The pain turned you on, didn't it?"
"What...?"
Kyle cut straight through my thoughts and kept going. I tried to argue, but no more words would come.
Nipples that stand up on reflex when you're aroused. Right now, I was making the nipple Kyle had pinched stand at attention.
"..."
Kyle spoke as if driving a stake through me.
What?
My mind locked up at his words.
A masochist? Me?
What was a masochist? Someone who liked pain. Someone who got aroused by being hurt, by being mistreated. Kyle was saying I was that. That I had that kind of inclination. That I was a masochist.
"I'm not!!"
No. Absolutely not. I was not some kind of sexual deviant.
"You said it only hurt? But you still got it standing up this hard. If you're not a masochist, then what are you?"
I didn't know either. But I was not a masochist. This was an absurd story. It didn't make any sense.
"I'm not... I'm not..."
I couldn't find a single word to refute him, so I just kept repeating that I wasn't, stubborn and petulant, like a child throwing a tantrum. Kyle started explaining all over again why I had to be a masochist.
"What's not? Compared to the right one I didn't touch—"
"Ugh..."
"—the left one I did touch is this different."
"Haahngh?!"
Kyle set both hands on my chest and, through the fabric of my pajamas, dragged his index fingers across my nipples one after the other — first the right, then the left.
Just as he'd said. When he scratched the right one, it simply hurt. When he scratched the left, my hips jerked and lights burst behind my eyes.
The reaction I'd only ever read about in novels — the way a woman looked when she was aroused. That was what came out of me the instant he raked across the nipple he had pinched.
"I-I'm nooot... hngh... hhik..."
It was miserable. That I couldn't think of a single word to throw back at him. That my body kept answering exactly the way he wanted it to. And more than anything — that Kyle thought I was a masochist.
"Hhik, I'm not a maso... hik... I'm nooot... hnnnngh, I'm not that kind of person..."
Tears came. I was terrified he would look at me and see that. Terrified he would decide I was some dirty deviant and start to pull away.
"Hngh... hik... hnnnngh, sniff... haaangh..."
I needed to stop. I couldn't. The person most precious to me had just condemned me as a masochist, and the injustice and the hurt tangled together until I couldn't hold anything in.
When I cried, Kyle pulled my shoulders into his arms and whispered against me. The moment his words landed, I felt my emotions begin to settle.
No matter what kind of person I am?... He doesn't hate me?
That it didn't matter what I was. That he wasn't going to pull away. The anxiety that had taken root in my chest simply... vanished.
"Hngh."
Once the fear was gone and relief rushed in to take its place, the crying started to ebb. I tried to steady my breathing and speak clearly, one word at a time.
"Hngh, h... even so — hik — I'm not a masochist."
The anxiety was gone, but the sense of injustice was not. Kyle had said he wouldn't care even if I were a masochist. It still mattered to me.
"I told you I don't care even if you are."
"Hnnngh!"
I needed to say I wasn't, but my voice wouldn't come. In its place I let out a thin, wordless whimper and shook my head and shoulders from side to side, trying to make him understand.
A signal. I am not a masochist. Fortunately, Kyle seemed to read it.
"You're not a masochist?"
I nodded hard, over and over, putting everything I had into the motion my voice refused to carry.
"Alright. I'm sorry I misunderstood."
He accepted it, and the hand on my shoulder began to stroke, slow and soothing.
"Hnnnngh..."
At Kyle's apology, the injustice and the hurt both dissolved at once. My whole body felt like it was melting. Like stepping back from the edge of a sheer cliff and sinking into a warm bed. I let myself rest in his arms and felt the afterglow of it settle through me.
"Then did Sera like having her nipples touched?"
Kyle broke the silence that had settled after his apology and put the question to her. Her fierce denials and her tears had forced him to take a step back — but Kyle was not a man who stopped there.
Everything so far had gone according to plan. Now it was time for the next step.
"Uuungh!"
Sera rocked from side to side in his arms and let out a thin, protesting whimper, as if to say he was wrong.
"It only hurt? You said you weren't a masochist."
He enjoyed her little tantrum and started herding her forward again.
"..."
Sera fell silent. She couldn't deny it. Not when her left nipple had stood up stiff and eager under his hands. If she told him he was wrong, she would be admitting she was a masochist who got wet from pain alone.
"You liked it, didn't you?"
As if he'd read the thought straight off her face, Kyle asked her again. It wore the shape of a question. The answer had already been decided.
"...Nngh."
Sera stalled, unwilling to say it. The idea that she'd liked having her nipples touched felt so perverted it made her skin crawl. But she knew perfectly well what denying him would mean. It would mean admitting she was a masochist.
In the end, she gave in. She nodded.
A humiliating admission. She felt her dignity being pared away, strip by strip.
"Sera. You have to answer."
Even that wasn't enough for him. He let go of her shoulder and pressed her for the words.
"...Yes."
She answered him quietly. It was the last scrap of pride she had left. She had absolutely no intention of saying, with her own mouth, that it had felt good.
Kyle caught the petty little rebellion for what it was. He set both hands on her chest again, over the pajamas, and closed his fingers around her breasts.
"What did you like?"
"Uugh..."
He kneaded her gently as he asked, crowding her toward the answer he wanted.
"Did you like the pain?"
He whispered it against her ear and drove the blade home. A warning. Stay silent, and he would brand her a masochist.
Sera jolted hard in his arms. Kyle felt the warning land, and nudged her a little further.
"Right. You liked the pa—"
"My nipples!!!..."
She shouted over him, cutting the words off at the root. Then she dropped her head and spoke so quietly that only he could hear.
"I-I liked having my... nipples touched... that's what I liked."