Lucifer (4)
Threshold.
Some call it the tipping point — the minimum quantity of stimulus required to set a phenomenon in motion. It goes without saying that people have thresholds too. Everyone's is different, and even then the measure is never fixed; depending on circumstance and condition, it can rise or fall. A man hardened to pain, say, would hardly make a fuss over being cut by a blade, while someone like me, unaccustomed to suffering, would raise every manner of clamor. Environment, circumstance, and a hundred other factors are forever pushing a person's threshold up or dragging it down. It's not for nothing that humankind is called the animal of adaptation.
I was no exception. Stimulation far too intense had driven me over the edge, and having been taken this extravagantly to climax, I judged I could endure any manner of caress for a while yet.
Such was my reasoning — and it left me wide open. Where Rihardt had been hammering me with stimulation that allowed no respite, he now shifted to caresses soft and unhurried. Nothing remained but his tongue lapping at my groin, no other stimulus at all. And that very gentleness, landing on a body already worn to rags, was what broke me completely.
Schlop, smack, shluuurp.
The sounds around me, the smells, the scenery — none of it registered. There was only the movement of Rihardt's tongue, the way it sucked. How long did he keep it up? How long did I pant beneath him? Then the vicious climax arrived — one that crested out of stillness, surging like a wave from calm water. Strength flooded my legs, and I ended up arched into a hip-bridge. Unruffled by my sudden movement, Rihardt drew his tongue away and pulled back.
"Nghik, hngh, ah, aahn—!"
The sounds spilling out of me bore no resemblance to the speech of a sane person. Well — it felt that good. I hadn't the slack to think of anything else.
"My, my. That was the last one already?"
I looked up at him through glazed eyes. He'd given me chance after chance, however much I'd pretended otherwise. Could it be — was he going to let me refill my count? A vain hope. He made no offer of any kind; he simply contemplated me.
"What are we to do with you now?"
"I'll, endure it, I, I c-can, endure, it, sir."
"Will you, now?"
"I will, endure, I'll endure it."
Rihardt smiled, as if my wrecked state delighted him past all restraint.
"Guess you'd better hang in there, hm?"
"Yessir! I'll, I'll hang in there!"
I laughed along with him. Because I felt good. Terribly so.
Ahhak, heuk, aaahng?!
Moans spilled out of her — impossible to tell whether she was twisting in agony or in bliss. It hardly sounded like Lucy's voice. She was so thoroughly undone that you would never credit it to a woman so poised, so composed. Beads of sweat, clear as glass, gathered in fine droplets — on her forehead, on her chest, on her thighs. Her whole body was soaked through. Perhaps because of it, the maid's uniform she wore clung tight to her, skin showing faintly through the fabric.
Rihardt caressed such a Lucy with meticulous devotion — fierce at times, gentle at others. Her face looked ready to burst into tears at any moment, like someone overwhelmed by pleasure too vast to bear. Was she breaking apart, in a different sense than I was? Watching the scene, I felt envy.
Why was I the only one made to suffer? Why did the agony have to be mine alone?
"You came, didn't you?"
"I, I didn't come, I, I didn't."
Lucy couldn't hold out. Rihardt surely already knew her denial was a lie. And yet, as if the lie itself were precious, he pressed the question again in a voice like honey.
"Oh dear. Looks like I'll have to put in more effort, doesn't it? Until Lucy can come properly, I mean."
"Huuuk, huup, huu—"
She couldn't even manage an answer; only ragged panting reached him. How long would this torment of a tableau go on? Past tonight there would be tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that, too.
Had she crested once more? A moan tore out of her, huge enough to split her open.
"Heahk, it feels good, I'm too sensitive— hngk!"
Lucy's efforts were in vain. However hard she struggled, Rihardt would torment me all the same. Unlike her, I would receive nothing but torture of pure pain.
'I envy you, Lucy.'
Of course the treatment differed. Beneath everything Rihardt did to Lucy there coursed, unmistakably, affection. 'Rihardt genuinely loves you.' Warped and twisted though it might be, affection was still affection. I hadn't even been granted the crooked version.
I'd thought I had cast off every last shred of jealousy. I suppose emotion can't simply be thrown away after all. It was unjust. I'd believed we stood in the same predicament — we didn't. Look at you, loved this thoroughly by Rihardt. You, looking so blissful, were unbearable to me. Even as you endured all of it for my sake, jealousy of you kept welling up. So this was me — this petty, this envious. I knew such feelings were wrong. I knew they were feelings I should never have harbored. And still I was coming to hate you, Lucy.
I really am a fool, aren't I?
"Ah... ah."
Lucifer, who had been trembling all over, suddenly collapsed. It was the first I'd learned of it — that consciousness itself could be severed by pleasure.
"Too much for her, I take it?"
Rihardt, who had been watching the fainted Lucy like a lost cause, turned his eyes on me. Those eyes were dry and desolate, as if warmth had never once dwelt in them. So you were a man with eyes like a parched wilderness all along. Why had I never seen it? Blinded by love, that must have been it.
"Thanks to Lucy's efforts, a great deal of time has passed."
It sounded like he meant that would be all for today. So I stared at him, unblinking, and puzzlement surfaced in his eyes at the look I gave.
"What, feeling shortchanged? Wished I'd tormented you a little longer?"
Bold words from a man with no such intention. Even now, wasn't all of Rihardt's attention fixed on Lucy alone?
"Rihardt."
A voice worn completely slack came out of me. He looked at me, faintly surprised, then spoke.
"Mm. Karen."
"What would you have me do, Rihardt?"
I asked him the question.
"Hmm."
He considered a moment, then went on.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"What would it take for you to give me affection — the way you give it to Lucy?"
It was a wretched bit of begging. For the sake of craving affection, I had tossed away my pride and everything else besides.
Rihardt stroked his chin and gave a hollow laugh.
"After being put through all that, you still like me?"
"Is that strange?"
For the briefest moment, Rihardt's words failed him.
"Well. I'm hardly a normal person myself — no room for me to judge anyone."
He came closer and stroked my head, just as he had done for Lucy. And, laughably, some part of me took comfort in it.
"But Karen. You're not Lucy. I can't give you the affection I give her."
The words hurt. Far more than the blade that had carved through me, through my body, ever had.
"And yet."
"...And yet?"
"Depending on how well you help me, my affection for Karen might yet grow."
It was an offer. An offer sweet as a devil's whisper.
Lou, forgive me.
Your lamb is far too frail to endure such cruel trials.
Consciousness returned, and my very first thought was worry for Karen.
With me out cold, it went without saying that Rihardt would have turned his sadism on Karen Florence. 'This cripple — couldn't even endure that?' Searing self-loathing surged up through me.
I tried to push myself upright, and met a familiar weight. It was Rihardt. The old me, with no tolerance for such things, would have jolted wide awake in fright — but my senses had gone numb by now. Call it my threshold having been raised by the night before. He was the sort of man with deceptively solid shoulders and pronounced forearms on that lanky frame of his.
"Young Master Rihardt, you are heavy."
"You're awake?"
He reacted the instant I spoke.
"Yes. With someone pinning me down under all that weight, staying asleep was never an option."
"Your face has gotten a lot calmer. I'm a little disappointed to see you like this?"
"And what part of it disappoints you, sir?"
"You felt so good you fainted, didn't you? You could stand to look a little more embarrassed about it."
"I believe I have already shown you every embarrassing facet there is to show."
We were, after all, wearing not a single stitch between us even now. Out of nowhere, Rihardt pulled me into an embrace, his large hands clamping firm around the back of my head and my waist.
"We're not done yet. I still haven't gotten to enjoy the inside of Lucy, have I?"
Mwah.
My chest flared. Heat shot through my whole body, like downing hard liquor in a single gulp.
"...If this is how you intend to behave, then stop pretending I'm your accomplice and just treat me as your plaything."
He laughed, playful.
"If Lucy begs, I'll listen. Care to try?"
Digging my own grave was one thing — now he wanted me to climb right into it myself? The nerve of the man.
"I would rather die."
"You certainly seemed to enjoy it, for someone who'd rather die."
The topic favored him, not me. With no intention of prolonging it, I pivoted fast.
"Must you absolutely break Karen Florence?"
"Ah, that. I'll have to give it some thought."
Taking back his own word was not something Rihardt did. And now this Rihardt was wafting the scent of reconsideration?
"Did something... untoward happen while I was unconscious, sir?"
"It did, as a matter of fact."
He declined to elaborate. Somehow it felt less like a loaded hint and more like outright omen. I couldn't press him to the end, though — Rihardt's hands were already headed for my chest and my groin.
"That aside — shall we carry on with what we didn't finish yesterday?"
"...Your reputation will suffer for it, my lord. Is that what you want — to be whispered about as the heir of House Line, led about by the hem of a lowborn maid's skirt?"
"That sounds nice too."
"You've become a knight, my lord. Do try to keep some measure of decorum."
"Lucy can just endure it well enough, can't she?"
I shut my mouth. He only got to say that because I was the one who couldn't endure.
Catching my disgruntled stare, Rihardt snickered.
"Kidding. Just kidding."
"You're insufferable — your personality and your tastes alike."
"But what can I do? Lucy clinging to me and whimpering is just too adorable."
Quit sneaking your hand in there, for one. And keep it off my chest.
"Let's do this again next time."
"...Do I even have a right of refusal?"
Mwah.
Rihardt's lips pressed against my forehead. Then he flashed a devastating smile — the kind that would make any woman fall head over heels, and then some.
"Do you?"
Right. I knew all too well that the only choices I would ever be given were the unreasonable ones he handed me.