The Last Night
The last night he had spent with Serina would forever stand among the greatest regrets of Lean's life. What he had lost to a single moment of carelessness was simply too great — not merely his body, but the full measure of his strength as well.
Gathering up Serina, who had fainted after taking blow after blow to the abdomen, Lean carried her in his arms and made for his room. As he walked, his thoughts turned to the young priest.
What exactly is he scheming?
Ervan had set two conditions before him: that he lend out the Holy Sword for several hours as the price of access to the Order, and that should he succeed in bringing the Saintess to submission, his manhood would be restored to him that very instant — terms impossible to refuse.
And yet the proposal made no sense to him at all. The latter he could roughly fathom, given the premise that excessive violence could not be laid upon the Saintess; the former, however, yielded no answer no matter how he turned it over.
The Holy Sword belonged to this Letan Order from the very start. These were the people who had once owned it and kept it in their care, so he could well understand the desire to examine the blade, even if it meant borrowing the Hero's power to do so. Not one Hero in all their generations would ever have permitted such a thing.
But that was a matter already concluded — settled long ago under the very condition of taking the Saintess's maidenhead. He simply could not grasp why men who had always possessed the power to pacify both Hero and Holy Sword would want to borrow it away now, of all times. The questions only deepened.
Which was precisely why Lean had decided to show Serina every card in his hand. What the Order wanted was not a Saintess confessing her love to the Hero, but a Saintess offering her apology — and with the goal that simple, he judged a straightforward approach would do. If he set his mind to it, he could summon the Holy Sword back this very moment; all he had to do, then, was faithfully carry out the Order's demands.
There was, however, one great problem: his own present state. The fury that had begun welling up the instant he laid eyes on Serina already stood at the edge of its breaking point, and he was certain that if anything ugly happened here, he would no longer be able to hold it down. A woman who had lived more demurely than anyone, yet turned into a spitting cat the moment she stood before him — he might have swallowed her violent rebellion, but had the profanities she habitually spat come with it, he felt he would have wrung this Saintess's neck right then and there.
Lean laid Serina down on the floor of the room and calmly worked his fists, clenching and unclenching them.
Goodness me. She looks every inch an angel when she sleeps.
Catching himself admiring her fair form, Lean snapped back to his senses and picked up the rope he had brought along. He began by binding her limp hands firmly together, then spread her legs and wound the rope around her thighs and calves as well. With both sides secured, her legs fell naturally open into an M-shape even as she lay.
Savoring the sight until his mouth watered, he tensed his groin out of habit — and felt nothing there but a hollow void. The bitterness of it settled on his tongue.
If only she had licked him with devotion instead of biting with those lovely lips. If only she had smiled, sincerely, whenever they held each other — that alone would have been enough. But he knew full well that such a thing was impossible now, and so he had been left with no choice but to nurse a plan of another kind altogether: rescuing her, the woman the Order's long gang rape had ruined.
And on that final day, he had truly believed it was possible.
"Hero. Please violate me."
At least in that moment, sincerity had shown through in Serina. So what if the holy law had driven her to it? The fact that she had mounted him of her own accord, taken a man's body into her mouth, and sucked and caressed it would remain true for all eternity.
Which was why he believed that everything twisting into this shape was due purely to Serina's misjudgment. While their bodies lay pressed together, each licking the other's sex, Lean had already cast aside the plan of sending her back to the Order entirely. Even without that agonizing step, it had seemed that patient effort would win her heart in time — and so he had meant to strike the gang rape, the one part that even he recoiled from, out of the process altogether.
And then the woman had severed his cock and fled. Grinding his teeth, Lean stuffed the underwear he had taken beforehand from her room into her mouth, and only then drew back from her for a moment.
The thought that he could now handle the Saintess however he pleased, that she could defy him no longer, filled him with a satisfaction that bordered on excess. All that remained now was the work of making her suffer.
"Mmph!"
For Serina, convulsing under the fist he drove into her belly, he felt not the faintest thread of sympathy. Reckoning up the humiliating moments he himself had endured these past two months, pain like this was nothing. If anything, he found himself wanting her to hurt far worse — wanting, with an appetite that startled even him, to break her completely.
Was she not already a Saintess defiled, violated countless times over by these men? Rather than live out the rest of her days as such a woman, a life shielded at the side of a man who loved her would be far better — even if her mind shattered in the process. All it would take, anywhere, at any moment, was for her to speak the words I love you to the man standing at her side, and that settled, protected life would be assured. If he could win just that one thing, Lean was confident he could carry Serina out of here at once, staking his very life on it. This, then, was nothing more than a step along the way — the means of gifting her such a life.
"Nnghh!!"
This time it was a kick to the abdomen, and Serina's eyes flew wide open. A gaze mottled with pain and fury found Lean's — but only for an instant. Kicked again in the same spot, she writhed for a long while, and down upon her came the stamp of Lean's bare foot.
"Mmph!"
"Saintess. You really ought to have done away with me when you had the chance. It's because you left me alive that this misfortune has come to pass."
Even as he ground his foot down on her lower belly again and again, a knowing smile crept across his face unbidden. The woman they called a Saintess lay belly-up like a dog, legs splayed wide. Where in all the world was there a posture that proclaimed total surrender so plainly? And yet with her noble femininity shining through it all rather than anything base — how could he possibly not love her?
"Nnnngh!"
It only made him want to subdue her further. He bore down harder, and he could see her face flooding with pain. Gazing fixedly at Serina's features as they went to ruin beneath the tears and drool that would not stop flowing, Lean slowly lifted his foot away.
"If you had only stayed quiet, Saintess, there would have been no need to hurt you at all. Fight me like this, and you leave me no choice but to make you love me."
Dragging her clothes down roughly, Lean stripped off her bra with practiced ease. Her breasts jolted once, and the nipples already drawn up tight and swollen began to flaunt their presence.
A natural result, of course. As if he had handled this luscious chest for a mere hour or two. This was the part of her he had kneaded and savored for over ten hours a day — and treated far more preciously than these zealots ever had, men who only dreamed of devouring her in turns. For a body carrying those memories, it would be strange indeed not to grow heated at his touch.
"Nnh."
For one instant desire got the better of him and he seized both her breasts hard before letting go; then, as though he could bear it no longer, he hauled at her clothes with all his strength. Each rip of tearing fabric painted Serina's face a deeper shade of red with shame. He flung the stripped garments aside and pried open, at long last, the place she was desperately trying to shield even with her bound hands. At the stain marring her snow-white cotton panties, he swallowed a sneer.
"Don't worry. I know exactly what it is you're afraid of, Saintess."
Crouching low, he lifted her bound arms upward and pressed his lips briefly to the smooth hollow of her armpit before drawing them away. Raising his head slowly, he brought his mouth to her ear and whispered.
"I will never kill you. So don't be afraid."
"Mmph — nngh!"
Each long lick along her underarm made her flinch and curl in on herself, her arms quivering. Having watched that tear-streaked resistance, Lean drank in the sight of her face slowly coming apart — then began to suck up the drool trailing from her small, parted lips as though it were a delicacy. His hands, naturally, were already busy roaming every inch of her body.
"Haah. You cannot imagine how I've missed this soft skin of yours, this sweetness. I'd thought all those hands on you must have worn you away to nothing, but it seems a Saintess truly is made of different stuff. At this rate, that pretty little cunt of yours must be perfectly intact as well?"
Lean sent one hand downward and hauled hard on the panties he had caught. At the sound of her last shield being torn away, Serina flinched and squeezed her eyes shut.
"By now I find myself terribly curious what sounds that pretty mouth of yours will make."
But the moment the gag was drawn back out of her mouth, her eyes flew open again. Lean knew only too well what the sudden dread rising in her was, and he moved his hand with evident relish. His fingers groped their way up her inner thigh, pinching down on her tender spots — the tension gathering in her legs was plain enough to feel. Watching those reactions, he let his hand drift slowly, unhurriedly, toward its destination. The barest pinch of the little bud standing proud, and her hips were already quaking.
"...Nnh."
"How is it? After so long without it, aren't you glad to taste my hand again?"
"..."
Serina was biting down on her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. It was exactly the response he had anticipated — and somehow, it pleased him all the more. Because the time of torment had only just begun.