[145]
Every time the man embracing Chris’s waist from behind thrust upward, Chris’s toes stiffened. Whenever he squirmed trying to suppress his moans, his curling toes wrinkled the sheets.
Yuri bit Chris’s nape. It smelled of sweat.
At another time, he might have found a man’s sweat smell disgusting. But in moments of sharing a bed and mingling flesh, such unpleasantness disappeared.
This heat. The pleasure simmering below scattered, crushed, and destroyed his senses.
Satisfied with the neat teeth marks, Yuri’s throat rumbled with a low laugh.
“Kuh… nngh.”
Chris let out a moan without even realizing it.
He was struggling with the dick penetrating his deepest parts. Desperately trying not to lose his reason, he had no capacity left to gauge Yuri’s mood.
Every time his engorged dick rubbed against the sheets, a shiver ran down his spine.
Even this felt like an extension of the masturbation he had shown in front of Yuri before.
‘I should stop.’
The shame of showing such a wretched appearance. Yet the instinct that prevented him from stopping his moving hips reduced Chris to a pitiful beast.
Each time a chill ran up his spine, he tightened below. When a palm smacked his buttocks with a slap, Chris howled like an animal.
Whenever Yuri’s breath touched his ear, he unconsciously tensed, not knowing when teeth might sink in. With each movement up and down, it felt like sinking deeper into a bottomless pit.
Half rising, half falling.
He held on precariously. But with each thrust, Chris was sinking lower and lower.
Just as his head was about to bury into the mattress, a hand dug through his hair, lifted Chris’s face and roughly kissed him.
Saliva dripped from the corners of his mouth as their tongues intertwined.
“I should get you a bib.”
Barely separating his lips, Yuri whispered in a voice that seemed to be suppressing something.
His purple eyes were dark. Chris was confused, feeling like he both understood and didn’t understand the reason.
In truth, the current Chris would nod if someone brought the sun and called it the moon. He couldn’t form proper thoughts.
His best effort was to clutch the sheets while suppressing the urge to embrace Yuri tightly enough to crush him.
‘Would it be better to be tied up?’
His mouth went dry at the thought that had vaguely surfaced. Though he hadn’t spoken it aloud, his body stiffened with tension.
Yuri let out a moan like a sigh as he felt the tightness below.
“Chris…”
His hand moved along the smooth line of Chris’s back.
“Chris, Chris.”
Sometimes it didn’t feel real, even when measuring with his eyes or tracing with his hands.
Because Yuri’s time had stopped long ago, in some winter.
Before losing it, he hadn’t sensed what it was. After taking it back into his arms, no matter how much he embraced and explored, only thirst remained.
Yuri carelessly tore at the place scratched by loss. To never forget the despair that had dripped from those open gaps.
“Hah, Yuri… ngh!”
Chris mumbled, rubbing his cheek against the sheets. His tear-streaked cheek seemed to shine.
Yuri pressed his lips to the corner of Chris’s eye and, while ejaculating deep inside him, wrapped his other hand around Chris’s dick and stroked it.
“Hup!”
The sensitized body fluttered beneath him. Yuri pressed his lips against the spine of the man who had no wings to soar, and pressed the tip of Chris’s glans.
In the climax that turned everything before his eyes white, Chris exhaled a hot breath he had been holding for a long time.
His firm shoulders trembled like grass in the wind. Yuri slowly moved his fingers along that line, then buried his lips there.
It was a small, ticklish, almost awkward kiss.
In his daze, Chris felt a sense of security difficult to explain in words.
‘Was this what guiding was?’
It was different from before, when they would just mix bodies and stabilize energy before separating.
Unlike the past when he’d receive the man stiffly like a corpse, fearing he might accidentally touch Yuri’s body, now he clung to Yuri, begged, and moaned.
He felt lukewarm warmth in the gaze upon him.
Chris gently closed his eyes at the comfort his instincts whispered to him.
It was close to half-fainting.
In a voice that seemed both near yet somehow distant, Yuri whispered.
“Yes… it wouldn’t be bad to sleep a little.”
Though he spoke as if he would easily let go, that wasn’t entirely true.
After all, the countless nights Chris would live from now on were all mortgaged.
***
Upon arriving to check on the shoemaker, Yuri and Chris discovered Susanna Godrin.
She was checking last night’s sales with a cigarette filter in her mouth.
The way she clicked her abacus made her look like an ordinary bar owner to anyone watching.
“I’ll lend you a light if that’s what you need,” Yuri said instead of a greeting.
Susanna shrugged her shoulders.
“Ha, no thanks. I promised to quit.”
Her tone was neutral.
Yuri didn’t ask who she had made that promise with.
“But it seems you haven’t given up cigarettes.”
“Ah. Sometimes my mouth gets bored.”
That’s why Susanna habitually carried cigarettes.
She threw a lighter that had been next to the counter toward Yuri.
“Instead, I just carry around empty lighters with no fuel.”
Though it was natural, it was Chris who caught the flying lighter.
“Overprotective much,” Susanna grumbled before explaining.
“I’m not attacking your master, so watch it.”
If you could call her habitual provocations explanations.
Chris replied calmly, as if this was nothing new.
“It could break. If a fragment were to graze you…”
“Hey, Sobolev.”
Susanna wrinkled her nose and spoke to Yuri.
“Isn’t your dog looking down on his master too much?”
It was a statement meant to scratch at his pride.
After all, seeing happy-looking couples made Susanna spiteful.
After Miya left like that, living alone wasn’t particularly unpleasant. But being antagonistic toward those who reminded her of loneliness was beyond her control.
At least, that’s how Susanna justified herself.
“Looking down?”
Yuri responded to Susanna’s provocation with an expressionless face.
“Considering the overprotection you showed toward Miya Luciano, Chris is quite moderate.”
“Bullshit. Miya was truly fragile.”
When Susanna clenched her fist, the wood constituting the counter crumbled.
Yuri suppressed a sigh as he watched the Esper who casually committed destruction and remained indifferent to it.
“…She was a member of the Luciano family, come life or death.”
Moreover, Miya Luciano was someone who had protected Susanna in her own way.
Susanna would probably never admit this until her death.
‘If she had remained in the Winter Continent, she would have died.’
Susanna Godrin was too dangerous to be kept alive.
Moreover, beasts don’t share territories. If Miya hadn’t left the Winter Continent and called Susanna to the Spring Continent, that woman would be dead by now.
She would have been buried in a corner of one of the remaining religious facilities, in a grave for those without connections.
“Barging in so early, just to pick fights.”
Susanna grumbled, having nothing else to say. Yuri decided not to point out that she was the one who started the provocation.
With many things to do, persisting would only be tiresome.
Meanwhile, Chris seemed to think differently, as he returned the lighter to Susanna’s hand and in that moment, completely pulverized the small object.
“You crazy bastard! Are you determined to blow off my hand?”
“I didn’t blow it off.”
Susanna jumped up.
Understandably so, as telekinesis is easier to apply over a wide area, while focusing on a very narrow range is difficult. With just a slight loss of control, one could end up destroying an entire forest when trying to cut down a single tree.
It was a force that turned a small lighter to dust. If Chris had failed to control the range, Susanna’s hand would have been crushed along with it.
While Yuri showed his bad temper, Chris displayed none.
“My heart’s racing. If I had considered that an attack and retaliated, the building would collapse. You should be more careful in the future.”
Susanna grumbled that there was an unwelcome tenant living upstairs.
Chris, thinking of January, nodded slightly.
“Next time, I’ll crush it before putting it in your hand.”
“…Forget it.”
Susanna muttered like someone who had completely surrendered.
Meanwhile, Yuri gave Chris a glance. Chris looked back at his master wondering what he was thinking, but the man turned his head to Susanna without saying anything.
“Show us the way. We need to go underground.”
“Are you really here to pay the shoemaker guy?”
Yuri nodded at Susanna’s question.
There was something he needed the man to do while alive.
Shoemaker Tom left with the new identity he wanted. Chris, who was coming down after meeting January, paused on the landing.
His terminal had lit up.
“It’s Northern Light.”
Yuri, who had been sitting at the bar counter, approached him.
When Chris accepted the communication request, Anong’s face appeared.
“It’s been a while, Anong. Have you been well?”
-“I’ve been completely swamped with the arena business. Not just unregistered Espers, but there are also Espers who used to be at Northern Light and then left. We’re conducting inquiries focusing on them.”
So the Colosseum investigation wasn’t over yet.
Chris tilted his head, finding it difficult to guess why she had contacted him.
“Then for what reason…”
Anong’s gaze shifted from Chris to the black-haired man.
-“Yuri Sobolev, there’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
