Chapter 376: Where the loneliness ends (2)
He felt everything.
Not in the blunt, animal way he had before the Cradle—this was a new clarity, a sharpening that ran from his teeth to the soles of his feet. Every tiny tremor of her muscles registered under his palm like code.
The heat of her breath against his collarbone, the tremble of her inner thigh where it pressed to his hip, the soft exhale that escaped when his hand brushed the hollow beneath her ear—each was a note in a song he could read with his bones.
'Alive,' he thought.
He shifted his weight, angling his hips so the head of him hit that spot inside her that made her throat lose words. The bracelet at her wrist caught the lamplight—cold metal against warm skin—and he felt, through the thin ribbon of magic, the faint, disciplined resistance of the maid who'd been forged to obey.
The chain didn't stop her; it softened the danger. It made her texture different beneath him: controlled, taut, and deliciously restrained.
Elysia noticed it too. Between gasps, as he drove into her, her mind blinked at the change.
She had felt him before, of course—his hands, his mouth, his hunger—but now there was something else: a precision to the way he moved, as if his body mapped her from the inside out and adjusted without thinking.
He wasn't just stronger. He was closer.
At that moment a small clarity hit her between the sensory feelings coming from her valley.
It was the fact that, Damien was a fully Awakened man right now.
Damien felt the micro-contractions of her inner muscles—the tiny spasms that told him where to pull, where to pause. He tasted the salt of her skin on his tongue when he kissed her collarbone; he smelled the metallic note of the bracelet, the sweet, heavy scent of her arousal, the faint tang of the tea she'd sipped earlier, mixing with sweat and something older, lonelier.
His mana thrummed under his skin and braided with that heat, a soft halo that made her pulse flare under his palm.
'She thinks me different now. Good,' he thought, watching the slow bloom of trust in her expression.
His thrusts changed. Not simply harder—more intelligent. He matched the cadence of her breaths, pulled at the beat of her heart, timed his withdrawal to leave her aching for the return. Where before he might have obliterated her with blunt power, now he used the new edge of his body to play her like an instrument: tease the clit with the base of his cock, hit the curve at the exact angle that made her knees knock together, press his palm flat across the rise of her stomach and feel every little hitch she tried to hide.
Elysia couldn't name the technique. She only knew sensation—aftershock stacking on aftershock, each wave taller than the last. Her mind tried to form protest and became a single bright point of want.
"Master…" she breathed.
Damien felt it—down to the pulse at the base of his skull. He drove until the world narrowed to the slick, hot clamp of her, the way her hips tried to chase him and then went slack when the tide inside her turned. Her fingers clawed at his back; the mattress protested beneath them.
THUD!
'Now,' he thought, every instinct sharpened by the Awakened edge. He matched the hollow of her pelvis and pushed harder, farther, until the last reserve of him uncoiled like a snapped wire.
"Aah—!" Elysia's cry broke into the room, sounded like glass and prayer. Her muscles fluttered around him; delicious, obliterating pressure rolled up through his pelvis. He filled her—hot, shuddering, overflowing.
SQUELCH!
He felt the first hot pulse spill, then another, thick and raw, warm against the slick walls that clamped and milked him.
"Mmm--….Hnn…"
The sensation of her taking him, of her body drawing him in and holding him—so intimate—made the final spool of control snap.
'Good. Stay with me,' he thought as wave after wave of release rolled through him. He rode it down, breath roaring in his ears, fingers digging crescents into the warm planes of her skin.
THUD!
"Haaah…."
He stayed inside her as he came, chest pressed to hers, tasting salt and heat and the faint metallic whisper of the bracelet under her arm. The bed frame creaked. The lamplight made their sweat shine like oil.
"Haaaah…"
When the tremors passed enough for him to breathe without his throat burning, he felt the softening pressure around him—her muscles loosening with the aftershocks, clinging to him with a satisfied, exhausted longing.
A beat—only one—then Damien's awareness sharpened again. The Cradle had given him more than strength; it had given him endurance, a hunger that could be measured and then deliberately satisfied.
He did not fall away. He did not sink into sleep. Instead he gathered himself like a beast winding for another strike.
He was not satisfied at all.
'Round two,' he thought.
He pushed up a fraction, letting the head of him drag in the cooling slick at her entrance, feeling the tiny withdrawal that made her whine softly.
"Ng—" Elysia's fingers tightened, like she was trying to anchor herself to him. Her eyes were wet, pupils blown wide, and when she saw him look down, there was something like pleading there—not for gentleness, but for continuation.
"Heh…"
It was a smirk that appeared on his face, seeing the face Elysia was making.
It was a strange feeling….
'Being desired like this…'
After the limits that were pushed in Cradle, this was comforting.
The verdant eyes of Elysia looked like a home at that moment. A place where Damien felt that he could lose himself in.
"Master…" she whispered again, breathless and raw.
And that confirmed it.
That was answer enough.
Damien rolled, carefully, so that her legs spread wider. The movement was seamless and sure—no clumsy fumbling. He withdrew fully with an audible slap as skin met skin, then leaned back to rake a hand down her side, feeling the trail of gooseflesh and the heat that still clung to her.
SNAP!
He circled her with careful touches, thumbs pressing into the soft planes above her hips, tracing the indent where her waist met thigh.
"….Hiss…."
Her breath hitched at each press. He let his Awakened senses map every small reaction—every intake, every micro-shudder—so he could listen to what her body wanted next.
'….Feeling it like this….I guess my trait is a no joke….'
There was a savage, deliberate tenderness in that reading. He liked that his body could be precise. He liked even more that she trusted him with her responses.
Damien shifted again, angling himself so his cock hovered, slick and heavy, right at the spot that would make her forget anything but the falling. He didn't waste time. He pressed in slow at first—sensual, torturing—then with long, piston strokes that drove to the deep place in her pelvis that made her cry out.
SHOVE!
"ahh— nnngh—"
Round two was different: not the desperate first claiming but a focused, consuming devouring. He tested her limits—varying depth, changing angles, switching to short, brutal thrusts that slammed into that spot beneath her ribs then pulling out to stroke the seam of her clit with the base of him.
He could hear the little gasps that came before the full moan, the way her toes flexed with the electricity of a coming wave.
Elysia noticed everything about him now—how his hips had stiffer resolve, how his palms were steadier, how his breath was measured to match hers.
The bracelet clicked faintly when she moved; its magic hummed like a distant bell, a tether that kept her strength leashed and her surrender safe. She found that what she feared in restraint had turned to an odd comfort: he would take, he would push, and then he would hold her steady as the world tilted.
'Harder….'
She breathed…..she did not let the sound out….Even now, at that moment her reserved nature continued to stop her from doing so.
Yet….It was as if Damien knew it all.
His pace snapped forward—hard, rhythmic, unrelenting—each thrust a punctuation that met the cadence of her dripping, needy body. He felt the tiny spasms of her inner muscles chasing his, felt the way her breath shortened just before each peak, felt the tremor that signaled the cliff.
"Master—ah—now—" she begged, voice ragged.
He increased tempo—faster, machine-perfect. The room filled with the wet music of them: skin slapping skin, the slick squish as he drove deep, her breath staccato and pleading, his low grunts braided with her keening.
SQUISH!
Her nails raked down his spine. Her knees locked over the tops of his hips; their bodies moved as one heavy, heated gear.
"ah—ah—ah—"
He could feel the build in her like lightning coiling in bone.
'Push her over,' he ordered himself. 'Make her forget the silence she kept.'
He did. The next wave that hit Elysia was volcanic—louder, more complete than the last. Her back arched, her head dropped back so her hair spilled on the pillow, and her voice tore into a sound that blended worship and surrender.
"Master—! Aah—!—" she cried, every syllable a shuddering starburst.
"Mmmm--"
Damien met it with his own release sliding up fast, a hot, roaring answer to her intensity.
"—nnn—"
He steadied his grip at her hips and drove deep, slower now, savoring the way she clenched and then melted, feeling the tight, wet rhythm that pulled at his core.
"oooh—"
The second climax he shed into her was furious and slow, a cascade of release that seemed to go on and on, each pulse an affirmation.
When it was over—finally, slowly—he stayed inside her and collapsed forward, forehead pressed to hers, breath shaking hard enough to mist the air between them.
They were both spent in a different way now: not just emptied of heat but refilled with something else—familiarity, claim, an ache softened into a steady ember.
Elysia's hands drifted up to his neck, curling there like a tether. Her voice was a whisper that threaded through the hush.
"….If you want…you can go for more…"
It was a signal for him to go further.
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