Lucifer (1)
A proposal, by its nature, is something you bring out when two parties cannot see eye to eye — a tool for finding common ground. In that sense, Rihardt's proposal offered me more than enough common ground. In other words, it was an offer I had no way to refuse.
“As long as you endure my caresses, Lucy, I won't lay a finger on Karen.”
Depending on how well I held up, the sadistic acts he inflicted on Karen Florence would simply stop? It was an offer I could have accepted on the spot and still gotten the better end of.
“Is there a time limit?”
“I won't put a limit on time. It's a count-based system instead.”
“Count-based?”
“You come three times and we're done. How about it?”
It was exactly what I'd been hoping for. It wasn't as if a blade was going to carve into my flesh, after all. At worst, all I had to do was endure a bit of fondling. I could put up with that for as long as he liked — thirty minutes, a few hours, whatever it took. All I needed was to hold out long enough to make Rihardt look foolish.
The shame and wretchedness I'd feel along the way? Trivialities like that meant nothing to me. As long as Karen was tormented less, hurt less than she was now, that was enough.
“One condition, though — every time you come, you report it to me.”
“......Understood.”
“So that's an acceptance?”
What kind of question was that? I nodded.
“Then strip.”
At his words, I obediently began removing my maid's uniform. Or I tried to — if not for Rihardt's words, which came hot on the heels of the order.
“Leave the underwear on.”
“Leave it... on?”
“I find it gets me hotter that way.”
So partially undressed was better than fully bare? It wasn't beyond my comprehension. I had been a man once too, after all — I understood the aesthetics of what's hidden. And yet I had never once imagined that Rihardt, of all people, might possess an ordinary sexual appetite. Unable to hide my displeasure, I answered him.
“I didn't realize the Young Master had such lust for something as lowly as me.”
“I'm a man too, for what it's worth.”
“...If the Young Master desires it, then so be it.”
Either way, it was good news for me. The weather was chilly — from the standpoint of staying warm, wearing something beat wearing nothing at all.
I undid the buttons of my blouse, reached both hands behind my back, and unhooked the white bra I'd been wearing. Then I slipped my left hand up under my skirt and, using my thumb and forefinger, drew my panties down. And so my plain white panties — unadorned, undecorated, utterly unremarkable — fell to the floor.
Stripping off underwear I had worn the entire time left me with a strange sensation. My groin felt emptier than expected, while my chest, so long constricted by the bra, drank in a peculiar, illicit openness. Standing there before Rihardt in such an embarrassing state, I couldn't manage to calm down at all. Being paraded around in that puppy get-up had been mortifying enough, but standing in nothing but my underwear was no small trial either.
On top of it all, I was about to have this body violated by that man. The moment the thought took shape, my chest and belly grew hot, as though I'd swallowed a mouthful of fire. My body kindling like this was never a product of my own will. A woman's body reacting on the eve of the act belongs to the realm of instinct — call it a physiological phenomenon. At least, that was what I wanted to believe. Nothing in this world could make me more ashamed of myself than the idea that I was getting aroused by what was to come.
Meanwhile, Rihardt, having gotten a good look at my bra and panties, spoke in a tone of genuine regret.
“You really don't know how to make yourself pretty, do you, Lucy?”
“What use would I have for decorating parts that stay hidden?”
“To please my eyes, obviously.”
So there was no use for it after all.
“I'll simply have to gift you some proper lingerie next time.”
I don't need anything like that.
What was so endlessly entertaining about watching my expression contort? Rihardt smirked and beckoned with a hand.
“Come over here so we can begin.”
“.......Yes.”
I looked toward Karen to steel my resolve. As it happened, her eyes were already on me. I gave her an awkward smile. So I might well end up showing Karen — the woman I'd trained every single day — myself in a thoroughly wrecked state. In a way, wasn't this poetic justice?
Karen, I'll hold out for as long as I possibly can.
Only if I found the strength to endure would she suffer less. With that thought, my resolve hardened into something sure. A cause carried out for someone else's sake, I realized, propped up the heart far more firmly than I'd expected.
I stepped in front of Rihardt. He kept smirking, over and over. That face of his — barely-contained delight written all over it — was so damn loathsome.
“Turn around.”
I obediently turned my back to him. Rihardt immediately stepped close and wrapped his arms around me from behind — hard enough to drive the air clean out of my lungs.
“Ughk—!”
The breath escaping my lungs came out as a flustered little sound. Before I could even feel the humiliation, his scent engulfed me — his body heat and the coppery tang of blood mingling together. It was a smell that set my body tensing all on its own.
“I've thought this for a while now, but your skin really is lovely, Lucy.”
His front teeth closed on my earlobe. I sucked in a ragged breath at the unexpected stimulation — who would have guessed he'd ignore my chest and my sex and go for my ears first? Rihardt surely knew my body had gone rigid with surprise. And he didn't waste the opening.
His right hand slid down my belly like water and groped around my groin, while his left took a soft, deliberate hold of my right breast. Stimulation from three places at once, ears included. I could feel his intent to set me ablaze in a single stroke, and I twisted in his grip on pure reflex. Was even that much movement more than he'd allow? Rihardt's left forearm clamped down tight beneath my breasts.
“Ah-ah. You have to hold still.”
My squirming was quashed in an instant. I was now in a state where even struggling wasn't mine to choose. Was this what it felt like to be a frog caught in a snake's coils? From here on, the only thing left for me to do was feel — wholly and completely — whatever he chose to give.
His left index finger gave my right nipple a light flick. At the strange jolt it sent through my chest, I tried to clamp my thighs together — but Rihardt wedged his right leg between them and forced them wide.
Just like that, my groin lay bared. And onto that bared groin, Rihardt's hand rubbed, sticky and relentless.
“Ahhk, ahnn—”
His fingers worked my sex — my cunt, plainly speaking — without a shred of ambiguity. Taking care never to damage my hymen, he even slipped a fingertip just inside my entrance.
Squelch, squelch.
I couldn't believe those sounds were coming from my own body. It meant I was already soaked through. My face burned. Even Karen needed several minutes of fondling before her juices would flow — and I had gotten this wet, this easily?
Rihardt was not a man to let that pass without comment.
“Such sensitivity. Don't tell me you've been diligently developing yourself while I wasn't around?”
He was mocking me outright.
“Th-that's, hnn, not, mnh, true, ah—!”
I could state with absolute certainty: I had never once touched myself since becoming a woman. It wasn't that I lacked curiosity about how women went about it, but something about the idea put me off — psychologically, it felt wrong. Because it seemed as though it would make irreversible the identity I'd built over decades of living as a man.
“Then how do you explain your cunt being this dripping wet?”
Crude words. A vulgar turn of phrase, leagues away from the refined vocabulary Rihardt usually wielded. And, ridiculously enough, hearing it made my body burn even hotter.
“Th-that's because I— ahhn!?”
As if to say he had no interest in my excuses, Rihardt worked his right hand mercilessly. Under that touch, I hung my head and let out broken, intermittent moans.
Squelch, squelch. How much time had passed? The stimulation he kept pouring into me was steadily climbing past the point where I could bear it. It was like a snowball — small at first, swelling little by little, until before long it grew into something I could no longer handle.
Perhaps it was because he'd been through so many women? Rihardt's hands were skilled. Considerably so. He located every spot that made me react within moments and targeted them with focused precision. And with the very range of sensation itself different from when I'd been a man, I couldn't get my bearings at all.
Squish, squish. The way his fingers probed my entrance, adjusting their tempo with maddening control — it was infuriatingly masterful. At this rate, I was going to go over the edge in a matter of minutes. I bit down on my lower lip hard enough to draw blood. A gambit to smother pleasure with pain. But Rihardt caught on to my little trick almost immediately and shut it down — the left hand kneading my right breast pried my lips forcibly apart.
“Ahk—?”
He flashed a cynical smile.
“How shameless of you, Lucy.”
“Mmh, hck, wh-what, part, hah, are you t-talking about—”
“That arrogant face of yours, acting like you feel absolutely nothing — and yet the moment someone so much as touches your chest or your cunt, you come apart this easily. That's what.”
And what did any of that have to do with being shameless?
“Right — I haven't touched this place yet, have I?”
“Wh-where, hahng, hahk!?”
When Rihardt's index finger flicked my clit, a sensation like a spark of fire burst through me. Thud, thud — the pounding of my heart rang out loud enough to shake my whole chest. The wave of pleasure that came crashing after it, piercing the crown of my head like a violent surf, left me no means of resistance whatsoever.
My body convulsed. My pupils contracted; my muscles seized rigid. And through all of it, Rihardt continued his caress without a flicker of mercy. It was excruciating.
“I'm disappointed, Lucy. Coming this quickly?”
“I-I haven't — I haven't g-gone yet!”
A lie. I had gone over the edge, spectacularly. But I shook my head all the same, as if to say I refused to admit it. What would you do if I never admitted it, anyway? Perhaps he caught the defiance in my eyes — the corner of his mouth curled upward.
“Aha, so that's how you want to play it? Think you can handle what comes with that?”
“I-I don't, hck, know what you're, t-talking about—”
Rihardt, still behind me, turned my head and forced his mouth down onto mine. It was a kiss so intense, so primal and clinging, that even the right to breathe was denied me. Perhaps it was that damned kiss — something strange and persistent stirred low in my belly. It wasn't a climax, but something in the same family, apparently; love-juices seemed to be leaking out of me even now. Rihardt, still rubbing my cunt, noticed it too, and the amusement on his face deepened.
“The night is long, Lucy.”
You don't need to remind me of something I already know, do you?
I replied, scowling.
“I-I know that already, hah, too!”
“Such bravado.”
If there was anything I had overlooked, it was this: Rihardt knew the female body far better than I'd ever imagined, and his skill at caressing it was nothing to scoff at either.