In Kuroinu

Her heartbeat was the loudest thing in the room, steady against my chest where she'd pressed her cheek, and her eyelashes kept blinking against my skin every few seconds. My fingers were in her hair. I'd started running them through it without deciding to, just the idle motion of fingers through damp-at-the-temples and dry-everywhere-else hair that smelled like lavender and a little like sweat.

She hadn't moved. Her legs were still wrapped loosely around my hips and I'd gone soft inside her but she hadn't let me pull out and I wasn't going to push it. Her arm was across my chest and her fingertips were resting against my ribs and her breathing had gone slow and even and if it weren't for the eyelash thing I'd have thought she was asleep.

The moonlight had shifted since we'd started. It was lower now, coming through the window at a sharper angle, cutting a pale stripe across the foot of the cot. Her nightgown was a white heap on the floor. My pants were somewhere near the door. The room was cool and her skin was warm and I pulled the blanket up over her shoulders with my free hand and she made a small sound when the fabric settled.

"Haruto."

"Yeah."

Long pause. Her fingers curled against my ribs and straightened again.

"Was I... good?"

The question came out like she'd been holding it behind her teeth. Her face was still against my chest and she wasn't looking at me.

I kissed the top of her head. Her hair was warm under my lips.

"You were perfect."

She made a sound into my chest. Her face turned and her forehead pressed against my sternum and she curled tighter into me and her jaw was working. Her arm tightened across my ribs.

She stayed like that for a while. I kept my fingers in her hair and my other hand on the blanket over her shoulder and I listened to the quiet. Somewhere outside, an owl was doing its thing. Far away. The village was asleep and the window was dark except for the moon and nobody was going to knock on this door tonight.

"Look at your hands," I said.

She shifted. Lifted her head off my chest and raised her right hand and her fingers were glowing. Golden light, faint, steady, pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She turned her hand over. The light was coming from under her skin, warm and even, and it made the veins in her wrist look like gold thread.

"That's new," she said.

"Your healing magic?"

She flexed her fingers. The light brightened and dimmed. She reached over and touched my forearm, where the bruise from training had been three days ago, and the warmth that flowed from her fingertips went past the muscle and into the bone and my joints loosened.

"Oh," she said. She pulled her hand back and stared at it. The light pulsed twice, bright enough to cast shadows on the wall, and then settled. "I've never- that was barely a touch. That should have taken focused concentration and a prayer and at least thirty seconds of sustained contact. I just..." She wiggled her fingers. The light danced. "It's just there now."

"The power transfer."

"It's real." Her eyes were on her hand, the golden light reflected in her irises, and her lips parted and her breathing picked up.

She looked at me. The glowing hand lowered and she put it flat on my chest and the warmth spread through my ribs and my heartbeat kicked once, hard.

"Again," she said.

"Tianne-"

"Please." Her fingers pressed into my chest. The golden light pulsed against my skin. "I want to again. I want-" She stopped. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were wet and the quiet girl who'd knocked on my door an hour ago was still there but her jaw was set differently now and her eyes held mine. "I want you on top of me."

I rolled her onto her back.

She went willingly, her hair spreading across the pillow, and I settled between her legs and her thighs opened for me and she was wet. Slick warmth against my cock as I hardened, and she reached between us and wrapped her fingers around me with that gentle healer's grip and stroked, slow, feeling me grow in her hand.

"You're..." She looked down between our bodies at her hand on me and her lips parted and her grip tightened. "You're already-"

"You're naked under me and glowing gold. Yeah. I'm already."

She laughed. Quiet, startled, her belly shaking against mine. The tension in her jaw softened and her eyes crinkled and for a second she looked like a nineteen-year-old in bed with a guy she liked instead of a priestess doing her duty.

She guided me against her. The head pressed against her and she was wetter than before, slick and hot, still swollen from the first round but her body was softer now. I pushed in.

Easier. She was still tight but the resistance was gone. Her body knew mine from thirty minutes ago and the muscle opened and I slid in deep in one slow stroke and the heat was everywhere, wetter and hotter than round one. Her hips tilted up to meet the last inch.

"Ah-"

Louder than before. She heard herself and her eyes widened and her hand came up toward her mouth.

I caught her wrist. Pinned it gently beside her head on the pillow.

"Don't cover it."

She looked at my hand on her wrist and then at me and her lips trembled and she nodded.

I pulled back and thrust in again. Slow. Deeper than the first stroke. Her body had opened for me and the drag was slick and hot and the wet sound of me pushing into her was louder than round one. She heard it too. Her cheeks went red.

"Nn- that's-"

Her hips moved under me, rising to meet my thrusts, and the motion was less careful than the first round. She was figuring out what she liked. I pushed deep and the head of my cock pressed against the back of her and she made a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a moan and her grip on my shoulders tightened.

"There," she breathed. "Right- there-"

I angled my hips and gave her the same stroke. Deeper. The wet sounds were obscene now, filling the quiet room, and her thighs were slick where they pressed against my hips. She arched under me and her head pressed back into the pillow and her throat was long and pale in the moonlight and the sound she made was loud enough to carry through the wall.

She froze. Her eyes went wide. "I- sorry, I didn't mean to be-"

I kissed her. Her mouth opened against mine and I thrust into her while she was still mid-apology and whatever she'd been about to say turned into a moan I swallowed. Her arms came up around my neck and she pulled me down against her and her breasts pressed flat against my chest and her legs hooked around my hips.

Harder. Her hips matched me stroke for stroke, rolling up to meet me, and she was making actual moans now. The kind that came from her chest.

"Ah- ah- Haruto-"

The golden glow was building at her fingertips on my back. The warmth spread from her hands through my skin, pulsing with each thrust. My cock was aching from the pace and the tightness and every time she clenched around me the friction dragged through my whole body and I was hard enough that each thrust was a fight to keep control.

Her nails raked down my back. The skin broke and the sting was sharp and her fingers dug in and dragged and I sucked air through my teeth and my hips drove harder into her. The pain fed the rhythm. Her heels pressed into my lower back pulling me deeper.

"More- I need- I didn't know I could feel-"

I kissed her. She was shaking under me and moaning into my mouth and her hips were grinding up against mine. The priestess who'd prayed for three days, with her nails in my back and her legs locked around me and loud enough that Llusse was absolutely hearing this from whatever tree she was sitting in.

I went harder. Each thrust deep and deliberate and her body jolted under me and the sounds came out of her on every one, broken, constant. "Ah- please- right there- don't stop- nn-"

Her pussy was clenching around me in pulses. The golden warmth built between us, stronger than before, radiating from her palms where they pressed against my back. Bright even through my closed eyelids.

"I'm- it's- ah-" Her voice was breaking apart. Her legs tightened around me and her back arched and her chest pressed against mine and her heartbeat hammered against my ribs.

I pushed deep. Held there. Ground my hips against her clit and she jerked under me and her mouth fell open.

"Ah-!"

I pulled back and thrust hard. Again. Again. Her moans were continuous now, each one punched out of her on impact, and her nails were in my back and the golden light from her hands was bright enough to fill the room. It moved across the ceiling in shifting waves, painting the stone.

She came.

Her whole body clamped down. Her pussy squeezed around my cock so hard I couldn't move, rhythmic contractions that pulled me deeper, and her nails raked from my shoulder blades to my lower back and the sting burned in parallel lines and she cried out. My name, broken in the middle. "Haru- to-"

Loud.

The golden light flashed. The room went bright and the warmth hit me from where we were connected and flooded up through my spine and my chest and it was bigger than Filia's, bigger than anything, and Tianne's magic was strong and the transfer was-

I came. Deep. Hips pressed flat against hers. The clenching of her around me and the gold pouring through my blood and a warm settling into my bones. Her glowing hands on my back. Her heartbeat. Mine. The pulse matching.

She was trembling under me. Her face pressed into my neck. Her breath hot and fast against my skin and her chest heaving and her pussy still clenching in fading waves.

I stayed inside her. Held still.

The golden light pulled back from the walls and ceiling, receding to her hands, then her fingertips, then a faint glow under her nails. Moonlight and shadow. Both of us breathing.

Her grip on my back loosened. Her nails pulled free and the welts stung, raw, and her fingers spread flat and her healing magic pulsed once against the scratches. Automatic.

"Leave them," I said.

Her hands went still. "But I-"

"I want them."

She was quiet. Her fingers trembled against my back and the healing stopped and she left the marks where they were.

I pulled out slowly and she made a soft sound and her legs unlocked and settled on the cot. I rolled to the side and she came with me, turning into me, pressing her face against my chest. Her arm went over my ribs and she held on.

Her shoulders started shaking.

I put my hand on the back of her head and held her against me and she cried. Quiet. Her tears were warm on my skin and her breathing hitched in her chest and her fingers curled into the sheet beside my hip.

I didn't try to stop it. She'd spent nineteen years being the healer. Steady hands and a quiet voice and everyone else's pain. She'd never dug her nails into someone's back and screamed and lit up a room.

She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. Sniffed. Her eyelashes were wet and clumped together and her nose was red.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was thick. "I don't know why I'm-"

"It's okay."

"I'm not sad. I don't want you to think I'm-"

"I know."

She pressed her face back into my chest. My hand found her hair again and she was still trembling but the tears had slowed. Her breathing evened out. Hitched once more. Then steady.

Outside, the owl had gone quiet. The moon had moved and the stripe of light on the floor was narrower now. The cot was too small for two people but neither of us was going to move.

"Haruto." Muffled against my chest.

"Yeah."

"The golden light. When I... when we..." She paused. "I could feel it everywhere. Inside me. Like my magic was singing."

"Singing?"

"There's no other word for it. It was warm and it was everywhere and it moved and I could feel it reaching into parts of me I didn't know were there." Her hand came up and she looked at her palm. The glow was still there. Faint. Like a candle behind stained glass. "I've been praying since I was seven years old. Twelve years of devotion. And my magic has never done that."

She tucked her hand back against my chest and her forehead settled against my collarbone and her body went heavy against mine in slow degrees. Her breathing deepened. The glow from her palms spread where they pressed against my skin, faint warm gold.

"I should go back to my room," she murmured. "Before morning."

"Probably."

She didn't move. Her arm tightened across my ribs. Her breathing slowed further.

I pulled the blanket up over both of us. Her palm was flat on my chest, over my heart, and the light at her fingertips pulsed once more and went still.

She was asleep in under a minute. Her lips were slightly parted and her cheeks were still damp and her blonde hair was everywhere, across my arm and the pillow and her own face, and I brushed a strand off her cheek and she didn't stir. The glow on her palms hadn't faded.

I lay there. Her weight on my chest. The welts on my back burning where the sheet touched them. The room smelled like lavender and sex and candle wax from the stub that had gone out an hour ago.

I thought about Filia. What her face was going to do when she saw Tianne heal a broken bone in seconds. About Llusse, who was going to shoot her bow so hard the string would snap. About the fact that I now had two partners' worth of absorbed attributes running through me and the next time something tried to kill us I was going to be faster and harder to put down.

Tianne shifted in her sleep. Her hand flexed against my chest and the gold pulsed and she murmured too quiet to hear and her lips curved.

I closed my eyes. The welts on my back stung. Her heartbeat was slow and warm against my ribs.

I slept.

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