#115

My skin trembled. Johannes’ platinum eyelashes lowered, half-covering his silver pupils. He seemed to glance at my bare chest. For an instant, I flinched and hunched my shoulders at the sensation of a cold blade tip grazing one breast.

Johannes had raised his index fingernail and gently scratched my nightgown hem, pushing it outward. He stared like that for a long while. My breathing grew uncontrollably ragged. Though only his gaze touched me, the tense tips of my breasts tingled. My flesh must be glistening vulgarly under Johannes’ eyes.

In that moment when even the night chill seemed to cease flowing. Suddenly. I felt the bony palm of a beast broadly cup my breast mound, wet with another man’s saliva, from below. Thus holding me in one hand, Johannes began kneading me with gentle force, as if trying to relax my tension.

His thumb slid smoothly over the moist flesh.

“Why do you look surprised….”

He muttered as if to himself.

“As if I wouldn’t recognize the expression of my woman reaching climax. That’s impossible… Inette. How many times have we joined bodies already. How many times… have I embraced you.”

“……”

“…How many times have you cried in my arms.”

He spoke as if with a knife in his mouth. It wasn’t that his whispered words to me pierced my heart. I couldn’t fully understand with my mind not working properly anyway.

But the atmosphere of him drawing close to my nape was that deadly. Only when his oddly cold exhalations closely brushed my skin did I realize. That he, his whole body, was convulsing slightly. Yes, he was trembling faintly. Like someone trying to suppress himself somehow.

My temple, having completely yielded its neck to the beast, tilted sideways pressed by his horn. It felt like I would be bitten soon. I panted deeply in my chest with my mouth tightly shut. Don’t end it here, Johannes. Johannes, just a little more. Just a little, more….

Show me your wounds before me.

“…You said those words to that bastard were insincere, but it seems even that was all lies to appease me. Did it feel good, Inette?”

“……”

“I’m asking if it felt good….”

A question as if through gritted teeth. As Johannes glanced up at me, the breath flowing down my neckline to below my collarbone briefly rose along my ear. I turned away without answering, fearing that if I spoke, my voice would betray my excessive anticipation and urge him on.

This isn’t enough. Get angrier, Johannes. Please. Please….

“Ah….”

I let out a faint cry of surprise when Johannes pushed his right arm under my armpit, pressing my back against his left shoulder with his hand. I flushed bright red with a short scream. The posture of having my back pressed down like a package felt like when I was about to be spanked by my mother, so I felt a bit ashamed even amidst the dizzying intimate heat.

“Tell me it was a mistake, Inette.”

I shook my head with my lips tightly bitten. Johannes’ breath stopped for a moment. I felt the increased trembling as the strength in his fingertips pressing me down intensified. Johannes’ other hand dug into the back of my thigh, pulling up my nightgown to around my waist.

His hand came down as if grasping my buttocks, then shamelessly caressed up the inside of my thigh. He seemed to be trying to confirm my recent climax that way. Passing over dry thighs without much moisture, he finally fondled the outer surface of my innermost undergarments.

My underwear. Already soaked through since the moment our eyes met. My heart clenched at Johannes’ sign of trying to swallow and hide his suddenly roughened breathing. Hurry. Johannes. Hurry. I felt like I might cry from impatience.

“Actually, I’m not surprised.”

It was a tone feigning composure. But the edges of that voice trembled near my shoulder. Sometimes largely, sometimes finely, I felt the sensation of his convulsing fingernails spreading open the edges of my underwear and entering inside.

Perhaps conscious of his body’s trembling, it was a touch carefully probing so as not to leave scratches on the tender flesh below. The fingertips, barely the soft part of his hand that seemed covered in rawhide, rubbed against me, already drenched long before. And at that moment. My back was pressed down even more heavily.

“Mm, ah….”

“I always knew you’d be like this someday….”

He seemed to mutter as if spitting it out.

I was dying of anticipation. Ah, how much longer will you remain composed? What are you holding back so much? Isn’t this enough to anger you? Even as I hunched over his shoulder with both hands clutched to my chest, I kept swallowing down the urge to cry out while trembling. But then.

“Ugh.”

My body felt like it was floating, then suddenly everything went dark. Johannes had stood up abruptly, taken off his long outer garment and thrown it over me. Johannes roughly grabbed my shoulders as I flailed from having my face covered, wrapped the front closed, then turned away like the wind.

I hurriedly chased after him, barely extracting my head from inside the coat.

“Wh-where are you going? Johannes.”

“…Where do you think I’m going?”

Johannes retorted coldly without even turning to look at me as he walked towards the doorway. What inhuman strength he had. He easily pulled out and retrieved the sword that had been stuck a third of its blade into the floor, then swiftly turned to face me.

The silver of his eyes gazing down at me seemed to be using all the coldness within to extinguish the flames of anger. His lips moved.

“You…. Don’t move an inch from here. Don’t even think about running away. No matter how much you run, you’re in the palm of my hand.”

Gripping the sword hilt with his beast-like hand, he strode out the window Henryk had fled through. Not knowing whether to stand or sit, I stood in an awkward posture, following only with my eyes the back of his departing figure. Surely this can’t be the end? Is this… all there is to a man’s anger at witnessing infidelity?

No….

No, no, no. I don’t want this…!

The scene before my eyes shook briefly from side to side. It was after that when a new spark flew in my mind.

“Don’t think I’ll let you go just because of this….”

“……”

“Don’t even dream of it….”

The reason Johannes muttered that, barely audible, while shaking his head. His back, about to pour out all the anger precariously built up like a dam about to burst beyond the window, seemed like that of a cruel lord setting out to hunt humans, but his monologue was clearly aimed at me.

A tone as if grinding his seething insides. But the anxiety firmly planted within like a wick. Anxiety he simply couldn’t hide. Ah… I see.

So you’re saying you can do anything, is that it? How nice for you. That there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

It was strange. With that one line from Johannes, the anger I thought I had erased while looking back at myself welled up again. As much as my body heated up, the lava that had cooled inside me seemed to boil furiously again.

Johannes, Johannes. Where exactly do I need to touch you to break you apart as I wish? It felt like two stone lumps hardened into sorrowful ash were desperately colliding and grinding inside my ribcage. Ah, if I can’t ruin you today, those stone lumps will grind me instead. Just me.

Again, just me…!

I stood up straight, putting strength into my trembling knees. I didn’t miss the sight of Johannes’ back suddenly stiffening as he was about to put his hand on the windowsill. That back seemed to hesitate, as if hoping I would hold him back.

Fine, it’s not like I can’t do that. I ran over in one breath and gladly embraced his waist. I pressed my cheek against his back. Perhaps changes in his body were rising up his spine, as the unusually prominent bone ridges touched me through the fabric. I whispered earnestly, as if pouring it onto that back.

“I, I was wrong….”

“……”

“Don’t go, Johannes. Okay? …Okay?”

“…Let go, Inette.”

You want me to hold on more desperately? More frantically?

“No, I won’t let you go.”

“Inette.”

It was a tone mixed half with self-loathing and half with anger. But I felt that the momentum had softened compared to before. As if he had been waiting for me to apologize while shaking my head in denial. As if he had been waiting for the moment to forgive me, he painfully tilted his head down.

But he needed to be angrier.

“Ah, Johannes, please don’t do this. If… if you hurt Henryk….”

“……”

“Before you return, I too… will be dead and gone, following him….”

“……”

Fierce silence.

Then a crack.

The sound of the windowsill breaking tore through the night. I stepped back half a step away from him. His dam seemed to have finally burst. Johannes twisted his shoulder to look back at me, still gripping the broken wood grain.

“You…. You really had to go this far….”

A boiling tone. Eyes shooting up diagonally from below, slightly tilted. Beneath furrowed brows like never before, a terribly cold gaze burned ice blue. Ah, finally. Finally…! I whispered earnestly while desperately suppressing my wildly trembling limbs so they wouldn’t be noticed.

“Why do you look like that…. Didn’t you know at all? Did you think I gave him my body without any feelings? Actually, actually…. As you said, it felt good. I’ve rather liked Henryk for a while now….”

“……”

“All this time you’ve thought of me as a filthy woman, Johannes.”

“What are you saying?”

Johannes whirled around abruptly. Was he somehow trying to suppress his unbearable anger? A rough expression with even unfamiliar wrinkles on the bridge of his nose, one I’d never seen before. Between his lips, which looked as if he was biting the inside of his mouth all over, even the tips of his canine teeth were exposed. Johannes’ shoulders and chest heaved visibly as he rebuked painfully.

“Filthy? How can you say that now…!”

“You said you knew I’d be like this. Isn’t that because you saw me as a lewd and loose woman?”

“No. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then?”

“I’m really asking because I don’t know. Who are you saying these, unfounded assumptions for…! Ah, ugh….”

Suddenly Johannes’ whole body jerked briefly.