A Fairy Tale Out of Reach
There was a story like that once — a fairy tale, really. The kind where a man and a woman whose acquaintance had gone no further than a single meeting were thrown together by some incident or other, and from there, at last, fell into a passionate and beautiful love.
The setting would hardly have mattered. Beneath a roof at high noon or in the dead of night, in some place wrapped in nature, or even in a shabby room with a gaping hole where the ceiling should be — none of it could have denied the truth between those two.
So why was she thinking of this now?
The answer given to Serina was an utterly simple one. She had dreamed a dream like this, once. There had been a moment she held on to for a long, long time: the image of a naked man and woman making love beneath the moonlight, the forest and the trees their only witnesses.
"Ahn— nngh, haahn!"
She had wanted to hear cries laced with nothing but rapture, without a single thread of shame in them.
"Does it feel good?"
"Mmh... g-good... it feels good. So... mmh..."
"If there is something you want, tell me."
"More— more, ah, ah... harder...! Nnh—!"
She had wanted to share an honest heart, to trade deep affection through communion rather than the one-sided sating of an appetite. With her in his arms — her, not him.
Not one bit of it had ever come true. And yet Serina did not crumble. Only a single thought went circling through her head, round and round: that she had already wandered too far to dream of a love so pure.
Because the woman she was now had no right to dream of such things at all.
"Hah— hah, haah, ahn."
Serina hugged the tree tighter. The force hammering into her from behind was so brutal that if her arms weakened even a little, her whole posture would come crashing down. Every time she was jolted forward, her breasts — already pressed flat against the bark — were crushed harder, the pressure mounting with each thrust.
She loathed this situation with everything in her. And she had come to love the thick length of him plunging rough and relentless into her from behind.
"Nnnghh—!"
"Saintess. If you are tired, you may lean forward and rest your weight. It will not hurt in the least."
Even as her hips shuddered and spilled their wetness—
"Nnh... haah... ahhn..."
—even as she moaned out strange, broken cries that told him she had gone over the edge yet again—
"Nnhk—!"
—Ervan moved without a moment's hesitation. Drawing back as far as he could, then driving in deep, he sought out only the places where she was weakest. Her womb fled inward, and he chased it down all the same, pounding at its entrance with the blunt head of him while his hand pressed insistently against her lower belly.
"Ngh— hah, hah!"
He knew better than anyone what happened when he ground against the mouth of her womb and kneaded the small bulge that rose there, slow as a massage — her whole response changed. His fingers had been roaming her lower belly for some time, following the shift of her womb, until at some point they came to rest just below her navel.
That spot marked the deepest reach of him — and the place her womb would have to stay, from now until this dawn was over. As long as her arousal refused to ebb, it would climb no higher and drift no further, and Ervan wanted, beyond counting, to watch the saintess come apart each time another climax piled itself onto the last.
"Ngh— haah, hii—!"
And so the positions had changed again and again across the past hour, but the method never once wavered. As though to announce his intention of ruining her completely, Ervan drew back until only the head of him caught at her entrance, then plunged home — over and over — while Serina came to wish that his violence, slamming into her hard enough to make the flesh of her hips quake, would simply never stop.
To summon any other thought was impossible; what she was given was so rapturous it bordered on madness. In the time it took this man to spend himself a mere two times, she had climaxed more than twenty, gushing until she drenched them both.
It was as if she had become addicted. Nothing hurt. Nothing tormented her. It felt good — it was rapture — it was so good she wanted to weep. Could this giddy, drunken heart be called happiness? She couldn't say. The only thought that rose with each merciless thrust was too simple for anything else. Just this: the sex was so good.
"Hah— aah, nngh!"
"Saintess. Would you turn your head this way?"
When Ervan, one arm banded around her chest, hauled her backward with all his strength, her spine bent to the point of pain and her upper body was lifted up. Serina turned her head back, and his lips — his body already pressed flush against hers — sealed over hers in an instant, biting savagely at her lower lip before beginning to ravish the tongue she listlessly offered.
"Mmh— mmh... I'm... going to... mmh...!"
The moment he pulled free of her, her wetness came pouring down. Serina shuddered head to toe with her eyes screwed shut, and Ervan caught one of her thighs and hauled it high — then drove deep, deep inside her.
"...Aah! Stop... this, I hate it—!"
"Did you not wish for it, Saintess? You asked me to be rougher."
"Ahn...! Too many times, I've... come... something's wrong with me...!"
"That, too, will feel good. You need only accept it."
Ervan pressed her forward and a moment later draped himself fully over her. Caught between the tree and the man, her chest was crushed hard against the bark, one cheek scraping raw along the trunk.
"Ngh... stop... I said... stop..."
"...Surely the finale should be crowned with the greatest pleasure of all."
She was no longer embracing the tree; she was hanging from it, held up entirely by him, weeping with the anguish of it — and still she could not escape the tangle of his tongue. He drove up into her with powerful rolls of his hips, and each time her depths were churned, Serina had to endure the feeling of every clinging inch of her flesh drawn out along with him, as if it would come away glued to his length.
Her body had gone strange; that much was certain. Her lower belly, hotter than it had ever been, was sending up signals of danger.
"Nnh... no... no more, I can't..."
"Nh— Saintess. I am going to finish inside you."
"Nnh— haahh...!"
When he spent himself against the mouth of her womb, the world blurred white before her eyes. The senses in her lower body, numbed by the long joining, came flooding back to life all at once, and the wave of pleasure broke over her in its entirety. Her body convulsed with the sweetness of it, and a pleasure deep enough to melt her mind was remaking even Ervan's brutal tongue into something sweet.
When she came back to herself, her own tongue — moving on pure instinct — was savoring his saliva. Serina did not dislike it. If anything, she found herself wanting to make the afterglow last. So she gazed up at him as though pleading for something, then let her eyes fall softly shut. That alone would tell this priest how much courage it had cost her.
She waited, and after a moment a breath drew near and spread warm across her lips. Serina thought that a smile had found its way onto her face.
"Haah... mm— mm..."
Each time their lips met and their tongues entwined, she could feel him still buried inside her, twitching and stirring. When his fingers, wandering along her arms, tapped twice against the backs of her hands, she opened both palms to him as he wished and laced her fingers through his, one hand and then the other. After that, there was nothing left for Serina to do at all.
Perhaps the long kiss had pleased him; at some point Ervan's strength came flooding back. He bent her down over the grass and covered her body with his own — and once more, she had to be made a maiden.
She no longer wanted anything but this. Anything else was only pain, the kind that edged close to death. Anyone, given that choice, would choose to drown in pleasure. She could not know by what means this priest had caught on to the fact that she treasured Lartel. Only — it meant that if she herself strove hard enough, she could keep him safe, and there was no reason to refuse. One truth had not changed: recover the stigmata, and everything would be set right.
And so she thought of the Goddess.
Only yesterday she had raged and carried on, swearing she was done playing the saintess for anyone — and yet the moment she belatedly understood that the Goddess was her one and only hope, her vanished faith came pouring back all at once. Pride? She had thrown that away long ago. She had, quite literally, died and crawled back to life. She never wanted to suffer like that at Lean's hands again. She wanted to live. If the Goddess wished it, she would lick even that Goddess's toes, here and now.
And that was what frightened her. Serina had no courage at all to be turned away. There would be no second chance; refusal could mean nothing but death. If the stigmata faded, no one in this world would shield her.
So... for one day, two days — no, even a single week. She would endure, and bear it, and bear it again, until she had taught herself, body and soul, how precious the Goddess was. Only after that would she call out to her with everything she had, begging her to restore the stigmata. Only then would the Goddess take this saintess called Serina into her care once more, and cherish her tenderly, as she once had.
Serina drew both arms back and laid her palms against his waist. Simply caressing that rough skin was enough. Ervan grasped her meaning at once; seizing both her wrists, he straightened upright, drawing her body up off the ground with him, her spine arching back of its own accord. As soon as he had settled his stance, he began to move again.
"Ahn— aah...!"
Her arms, hauled taut behind her, began to throb, and her back, bent past its very limit, started to cry out in pain.
"I hadn't realized you would want a position like this. Does it feel good?"
"Yes! I like it, I like it...! Aahh...!"
Of course, the pain vanished almost at once, swept away beneath a pleasure far greater. It was the outcome she had been counting on. To want a greater pleasure — that was the path Serina had chosen. If she felt enough to be sated, she believed, the man holding her would never be able to think of discarding the saintess either; he would be too consumed with craving her to try.
And this was all she could come up with. It seemed she really had become a fool. But what of it?
"Haahhh... nnh...!"
She had learned that if she became a fool who wanted nothing in this world but what felt good, a way to survive opened up before her. How could she possibly refuse that?
She never could.