Chapter 7

The base plan began. Its purpose was to fill a woman’s body with pleasure. The first goal was to fully draw out the peaks of her br*asts.

He had a goal, but no method, so he simply dove in with all his effort. Night after night, he sucked her br*asts until his jaw ached, as if he were a baby. It was quite exhausting, but the joy was in reducing the time it took for the flesh to emerge.

By dawn, the flesh he had melted all night would be swollen and red. Watching her n*pple struggle to tuck itself back inside, the maid would knock on the door.

The tiny bit of flesh, just the size of a fingernail, was as hard to tame as she was. If he lost focus for even a moment, it would hide beneath her skin again. That was both cute and troublesome, and like a child with a favorite toy, he often found himself thinking of it even in the training hall. Even while working, he longed for dawn to seek her out.

That day, he was idly handling some trivial tasks. Wondering how best to train her body, his eyes caught on something he usually overlooked. A useful item was right before him.

A clip. Yes, the square metal clip used for papers. He could see her looking at him like he was an animal. He couldn’t exactly deny it.

Once the idea took root, it quickly grew in a more mischievous direction. He had his servant hint to the maid to swipe a few of the clips she usually used. By the next day at lunch, several metal clips touched by her hands were in his grasp.

Just feeling the cold metal in his hand set his waist on fire. He couldn’t remember how he spent the rest of that day. By then, even his lieutenants had started to notice, some probing to find out what woman he was hiding. They said love and sneezes couldn’t be concealed.

Love. Whether such a soft word fit the stubborn emotion, the uncontrollable obsession and desire, he didn’t know. But no other word came to mind. Love was a convenient word.

Love. That word suddenly took hold of him.

All afternoon, the tiny sound of clips rattling in his pocket nearly deafened him. It was as if she were calling to him, “Come, come and love me.”

By then, his thoughts were thoroughly tangled, and his nightly acts of violation felt almost like tender courtship. Teaching pleasure to the one he loved, sharing the fire within their bodies.

Sweating in the hot summer sun, he dreamed of her all afternoon. He dreamed of her waking up, finding him there, him freezing like a fool, and her laughing and opening her arms to him. Dreams of forgiveness. Dreams of loving and being loved.

With the same nervous heart as the first night, he sought her room. That night, it happened to be a dark new moon, and the clever maid had lit candles in her room.

It was mid-summer, after her nightgown had changed to rough, loose linen. Her white skin showed faintly through the thin fabric.

Unable to control his rising passion, he tore her nightgown apart. Her gentle breaths were covered by the sound of ripping cloth. His hands cast shadows, like black shapes tearing the white cloth. Shadowy hands moved over her ivory body.

Her neat nightgown became a handful of rags in an instant. He tossed her pendant, glowing dark green in the candlelight, aside carelessly. It was the moment he had longed for all day.

His impatient lips bit her br*ast. The salty taste of sweat on her skin mingled with the heat of the night. Usually, he would wait until her n*pple emerged on its own, but that night, there was no time for patience.

He sucked her peak fiercely, pushing up the *reola from below with his fingers. The tender bead buried in her flesh was forced out. As soon as he saw its rosy tip, he dug it out with his nail. She stiffened in surprise.

To comfort her, he gently stroked her sides, fully exposing the flesh outside her skin. She furrowed her brow and murmured something, but the night was too short for a pause.

He pressed the tiny bead between the jaws of the clip and—snap!—clipped it as if it were a bundle of paper. The sound of her surprised breath was sweet.

When he clipped the other br*ast too, her white body jumped as if protesting. The rebound made her br*asts bounce. The clips on her peaks fluttered like flags in the wind. The square metal reflected the candlelight in a crimson shimmer.

It was a beautiful and vulgar sight. To remember it alone made his heart ache with one-sided love, so he impatiently plunged into her folds.

She let out a soft m*an, overwhelmed, but her trained insides soon released sticky fl*id. He gently pressed her weak spots, twisting the clip holding her peak. She writhed in unfamiliar pleasure.

Her body, which had opened perfectly for him, now tightened like on the first night. Her beautiful brow twisted with longing, but he could tell her body was enjoying it—the wet, squelching sound was proof.

He gladly cooperated with her pleasure. He twisted the clip half a turn, then another half in the opposite direction. She swallowed sobs, tears wetting her eyes. Whether it was pain or pleasure was hard to tell, but her body honestly clenched around him.

Lost in the gap between, he thr*st into her mindlessly. Her beautiful body, awakened by force, shook lewdly. The innocent bud of spring had fully ripened, blossoming with the sensuality of a woman who knew a man. It was too beautiful to be called evidence of sin.

He had mentioned a routine. Confessing love while releasing his seed had been his previous habit. The strange thing was, after naming his feelings “love,” he could no longer speak the word. It was odd—on the night he took her first time, he had whispered “I love you” until his voice was hoarse.

Instead of spoken confession, he poured sticky affection into her deepest walls. He called it the thief’s language of confession. Pressing his forehead to her heaving br*ast, the clip brushed his temple.

It was a night of animal pleasure. Yet even at the peak, she made no sound.

Did she know? At the moment of cl*max, she always bites her lips to stifle her cries. That habit of restraint and endurance was so ingrained that, perhaps out of pity or using it as an excuse, he became completely absorbed in inscribing pleasure into her body.

He persistently teased her peaks, caressing her skin until it was raw. The redness of her tender flesh never faded. The most beautiful early summer nights of his life passed like a dream.

Like young leaves growing greener each day, her body matured day by day. Finally, she noticed the changes, and one day added an extra layer to her br*ast band. Imagining her surprise and embarrassment tickled his stomach. That day, he couldn’t resist leaving kiss marks on her tender skin.

Pleasure became a habit, accumulating in every corner of her innocent body.

When summer peaked and her nightgown thinned to a single layer, her two peaks ripened fully, always exposed even without special attention. Moreover, just a breath on them would make her body tense and rise, so sensitive had she become. Simply rolling them between his fingers would wet her body and draw sighs of joy.

Only God knows how happy and moved he was.

***

His dignified blue eyes shimmered as if stirred by waves. The man’s voice grew lower with each word, until the last was almost a groan. The heat-laden moisture drifted across the table.

Ariena subtly adjusted her posture, pulling away from the Saintess’s robe clinging to her body. The man, watching Ria closely, spoke.

“You seem uncomfortable. If you’re not feeling well, please let me know.”

“No, it’s just that your confession…”

“It must be shocking.”

Could shock alone describe it? Ria pressed her forehead, trying to calm her troubled mind. As if giving her time to settle herself, the man leisurely lifted his teacup.

Karil’s confession had been an unexpected shock. Yet the reason Ariena shifted uncomfortably was something else. A strange sensation, hard to name, was the cause. The longer the man’s confession continued, the more that peculiar feeling swept over her.

It was the tension of wind blowing over dry kindling where embers still lingered. A trembling, hard to distinguish as fear or anticipation. The dizzying sensation of stumbling and falling.

Every time that odd feeling brushed her, somewhere indescribable inside her tightened with heat.

The pendant dangling between her br*asts pricked at her nerves.

The sensation from her involuntarily *rect n*pples made her shiver. She had grown unconsciously accustomed to it. It was an incomprehensible change that had occurred in Ariena over the past summer.

She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when these changes began.

To Ariena, her body was merely a tool to fulfill her duties. She had been raised that way, so it was only natural. She was praised for her beauty, but that was all—she never cared for her body or examined her features like women outside the temple. So she was late to notice its changes.

Like the young lady in Karil’s story, Ariena’s n*pples had originally been buried beneath her flesh. Then, at some point, they started to push outward, and recently, they had settled outside her skin.

The flesh that had emerged outside only became more swollen and pronounced. Occasionally, the thin skin would peel, leaving a stinging pain, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. There was a sweetness to the ache, a sigh-inducing tinge of regret.