A Crueler Method
Crazy. I'm about to come just from having my breasts touched?
Over the past few days her body had grown so unbearably sensitive that the realization struck her like a blow. At the same time, the sight of Lean drooling over her sent a chill crawling up her spine. Her panties had soaked through long ago, honey trickling steadily down her thighs — and he, no doubt, was holding her steady so she wouldn't collapse, all while drinking in the spectacle.
"Saintess. Just in case, you understand."
"...Nnh... haah..."
Because if that weren't the case, there would be no reason for him to be kneading her chest and stroking along her legs quite so brazenly.
"Do you not have need of my assistance?"
Serina swallowed hard.
Lean was a vile Hero. Now that she'd seen through his scheme of refusing to return to the Order, he had surely decided to change his approach. Thinking so, she forced strength into the corners of her eyes. Her trembling lids steadied, and a passable smile curved them upward.
"......I'm quite all right."
Lean gave a small nod, and this time his hands began to caress her thighs.
"Then I needn't worry after all. I only asked in case the Saintess had been enduring some discomfort."
His hands wandered up her thighs until they nearly reached her groin, pressing there, smearing the honey that seeped from her across her soft skin.
"Holding anything in is bad for the body, after all. Isn't that so?"
It was phrased so brazenly that no other words would come to her. If she bent her will just this once and begged him, it meant he intended to ravish her like a dog from that point on.
Dream on, you insane bastard. However many times I'm forced over the edge, I will never lower my head before that cock of yours.
Lest the violence in her head show through, Serina slowly widened her smile.
"The Hero tends to me so well that I've no need to endure anything. Let's be on our way."
"Saintess, let us head back now. It's grown late."
"Ah— yes."
Serina took Lean's outstretched hand and rose to her feet. Stepping out of the house, she found the day already fading toward dusk. This had been the last household, so all that remained was to board the carriage and be on their way.
The two of them stood side by side before the old woman waiting at the door.
"My deepest thanks to you both. I hardly know how to repay you."
"Think nothing of it. Should any trouble arise in the future, send word to the Order — or you may go through whichever priest happens to be passing through the area."
"Would they truly come all this way?"
"There have been so many unsettling affairs of late that the Order will likely tighten its watch over these parts. And even should they not — since this road leads back to us, I'll see to it that word of your situation reaches them."
Leaving behind the grandmother, who kept bowing her thanks, they set off toward the edge of the village.
"Saintess. You've worked hard again today."
"...You as... well... Hero..."
"Are you not hungry?"
"...I'm f... ahh... fine..."
"Really? I suppose that's just how slender the Saintess is."
Lean, who had been kneading her plump rear through her panties, slid his hand upward. It crawled along her skin until it came to rest circling her navel, caressing.
"Every time I touch you, your stomach is so flat it worries me, you see."
"Hah?!"
A moment later the cord he'd tugged came undone in one pull, and Serina's panties whispered down her legs. Caught deftly in his hand at precisely the right instant, they dangled and swayed before her eyes. She grabbed his forearm on reflex and clung to him as if hanging on for dear life.
"Hero... could you not return my undergarments?"
"They chafe against your stockings anyway, don't they? Without these, you ought to be just a little more comfortable."
"That's... true, but... still, what if someone were to see..."
"It's dark all around us — no one could make you out from any distance. If it were up to me, I'd strip your belt and stockings as well, but I restrained myself to this much. I cannot yield on it, so I ask your understanding."
".........Yes. Let's hurry ba— ahhng!"
So startled by the moan that burst out of her that she clapped a hand over her own mouth — and she could see the sneer curving Lean's expression.
Has this mad bastard finally lost what little sense he had, now that the return to the Order draws near?
His fingers had slipped inside at some point and begun tapping against her inner walls. She had endured everything else, but this she could not — seizing his wrist hard, she tried to drag his hand free. Lean, in turn, peeled her grip away as if to say that defiance, too, would not be tolerated.
"H-Hero... what if someone... sees us..."
Her panties had been thin enough that the slightest breeze would have revealed everything; with not even those left to her, her predicament would be beyond hopeless, wouldn't it? Serina begged him desperately, but Lean's hand never stopped.
"Don't worry yourself. I'm keeping watch in every direction."
Perhaps because that place had been wet all day long, even his smallest movement drew a lewd, unmistakable squelch from her. It was a place that had been fondled without pause for a week straight, a place trained to his touch. Skillful or not, there was no helping the fact that her body had learned to answer it.
"Nnh... ahng..."
"This is the last village, after all. I'm only doing this to ease the fatigue of a Saintess who has toiled for three days straight — so don't hold back. Feel it as freely as you like."
Even as her body shook, Serina tasted a sensation like her teeth grinding helplessly against each other.
Fuck, fuck, fuck...
The past three days replayed in her mind. He had fondled her chest and sealed his mouth over hers right before a young child's eyes. He had pinched and tormented her nipples while people watched from behind her back. Not once or twice, but all day long she had been handled like a toy from head to toe, then made to carry that feverish body about as they walked. What woman in the world spends the broad daylight trembling with her face and throat flushed scarlet? To any observer, she might as well have been proclaiming I'm in heat to the heavens. It wasn't a village she would ever return to, but the thought of them whispering all the same — how the Saintess had dripped and drooled her way through town in heat — was enough that shame alone refused to let her trembling die down.
"Nngh..."
Worst of all, from her standpoint, he never once finished what he started. And now a new dread seized Serina: how many more times would this repeat before they even reached the carriage?
Ever since the moment, just after leaving the inn, when she had been brought to her climax by nothing more than the fondling of her breasts, Lean had made it known that his methods had changed. Savoring her soft flesh as he did now, tormenting her nipples — that much remained the same. But Lean meant to leave her aching for it. And because of that, the outcome had changed entirely.
Lean no longer bothered to grant her release. The moment she let out a heated moan and tried to curl in on herself, his hand would still, and he would wait for her arousal to ebb before setting it moving again. Nor did he allow that arousal to fade completely. He left her poised at the point where even the slightest brush might set her off, and then kneaded only the places she felt least. That meticulousness drove Serina halfway out of her mind.
It was a feeling altogether unlike a man's own pleasure, and it came at her in waves. With himself, any interruption invariably snuffed his desire dead; even standing fully erect, he could rarely taste the same delight twice. But with her it was different. Just as on the nights she had climaxed again and again, the longer it went on, the deeper and darker the pleasure swelled within her. The sense of teetering on the brink had drifted far away with each brief respite — and yet her body, reheated anew, craved something beyond even that. As this repeated itself over and over, a problem began to bloom.
"Hah... hehk, hahk..."
Serina could barely gather her wits. Even before this, every climax had devoured a fearsome amount of her strength. She hung on the threshold each and every time, and her mind, parched with craving for the release that never came, had gone dry and brittle. This time especially, with not only her chest but her sex laid open to him as well, pleasure of an even greater intensity came crashing in. That she remained whole at all was the strange part.
She was moving now practically carried along, leaning her full weight on him.
"Oh — we're nearly there."
Only then did she realize she had been propped against a tree. At some point her saintess robes had been peeled off and hung bunched at her waist, and Lean had buried his face between her bare breasts, shaking it side to side. Before long he raised his head and pressed a brief kiss to Serina's lips.
"To tell the truth, I've been suffering to hold myself back since some time ago. I couldn't possibly show these luscious breasts to the one waiting at the carriage — so I'll just have a small taste of them like this, and then we'll go. You'll permit me, won't you?"
He sought no permission, of course. He gazed for a long moment at her face, half-devoured by arousal, then bowed his head and bit down hard on her nipple.
"Hahk — ahng!"
The nipple that had stood stiff and aching for so long was seized between his teeth, then dragged across his tongue again and again, and Serina's body leapt. But it was only the faintest jolt within his embrace. Even that, it seemed, he had anticipated — Lean had wound one arm around her back and was holding her pressed tight against him. Her wrists, too, were caught in his single hand, drawn up above her head.
Realizing she could slip away no further, fear took root in Serina, and her eyes began to glisten. What pride still remained in her kept her from dissolving into sobs, but it could not hold back the tears themselves. All she could manage was to brace her utterly strengthless legs against the ground.
Lean pinned her wrists all the more firmly and let his greed for her chest show without disguise. As his tongue went on tormenting her nipples, the fingers of both her hands curled inward, trembling as if bent out of joint.