Drip.
Saliva flowed stickily down below my chin.
Friede’s tongue parted my lips and burrowed in, gently licking and tasting the inside, then caught and entwined my tongue as it reflexively tried to escape.
A hot and moist, soft yet tingling sensation. I shuddered. It felt as if all my nerves were trapped in this small piece of flesh.
“Mmh…”
Friede’s tongue pressed down, entwined, pushed and stroked my tongue that was trying to pull away out of fear of that sensation, toying with it freely.
The now familiar scent, the familiar taste of saliva filled my mouth completely. Like an overpoweringly thick floral fragrance that made me dizzy.
“Haa, mmh…”
After painting my entire mouth with her scent like that, Friede entwined my tongue and pulled it, naturally inviting it into her small lips.
As if begging me to give her the same sensation she had given me.
My tongue, which had reflexively squirmed at the heat so different from my own mouth, gently licked the inside of Friede’s mouth.
“Eep…!”
Friede’s arm holding my head shook. Hot breaths leaked between our pressed lips.
Then she lightly tapped my still tongue with the tip of hers, so I closed my half-open eyes completely and moved my tongue to color her mouth with a lemon scent.
“Mmh, huu, haah…”
Without realizing it, my left arm that had stretched forward naturally wrapped around Friede’s back as it arched backwards, twitching.
It was an instinctive movement. Whether it was my instinct or Brunhilde’s, I didn’t know. Perhaps both.
“Hah…”
A moist echo like a child’s palm touching wet mud mixed between rapid breaths and moans.
The kiss growing increasingly passionate.
Saliva that couldn’t be fully drunk spilled and soaked both our chins, and for some reason my chest tips and between my legs grew hotter and hotter.
What had started as a slight tickle that made me want to gently scratch turned into a tingling sensation like touching my tongue to an electrode.
Muscles surprised by the tingling stimulus tensed and relaxed repeatedly. Each time, the stimulation grew stronger, and soon I began to feel heat as well.
It’s hot.
No, yearning.
An urge similar to impatience, similar to longing.
My chest tips and between my legs felt so hot and tingly, it seemed unbearable unless I rubbed and pressed to soothe them.
Like that, Friede and I entwined our tongues, rubbing and mixing saliva endlessly between our lips.
Until the transmitted taste and permeating scent mixed completely, becoming indistinguishable whose was whose.
After intertwining our tongues like that for a long while, Friede finally separated her adhered lips.
“Haah…”
A long arc of saliva stretched down, gathering and dripping on both our chins, and breath full of heat spread like steam.
“Ah…”
I looked up at the face of the girl straddling my lap with half-raised eyelids, not even thinking to close my blankly open mouth.
A flushed complexion. Dreamy, unfocused eyes with a strange sensuality. Long eyelashes. Black hair stuck to her cheeks with sweat.
Sweet heat continually leaked from between her slightly parted lips, and below her lips was thoroughly wet with a faint sheen.
My face was probably just as flushed as hers. Embarrassingly so.
“Hilde…”
Friede murmured my name in a voice excited with heat.
The way she lightly licked her own lips with the tip of her tongue looked far from satisfied, very far indeed.
…Well, that’s to be expected.
A kiss is one of the quintessential forms of foreplay.
An act of warming up before the main pleasure, the main teasing.
If it were a course meal, it would be like the appetizer or soup provided before tasting the main dish.
In other words, after kissing, it doesn’t end there…
“…Is this okay?”
It means the next stage awaits.
“…”
I nodded slightly while averting my gaze, turning my eyes away instead of answering.
A silent affirmation.
It would be ridiculous to refuse at this point. Since it wasn’t my first time experiencing this, I might as well just accept it.
…Honestly, well, it’s not like it’s particularly unpleasant.
No, rather than unpleasant, it’s more like, you know, the feeling itself is, well, that is…
If I had to say whether it’s good or bad, honestly…
…It felt good.
I couldn’t deny that. The disgraceful display I had shown then made it impossible to deny.
Anyway.
“Heh…”
Having received permission, Friede embraced my head again and extended her tongue to lick up my chin and cheeks.
Like a dog welcoming its owner. Like a cat leaving its mark, saying ‘this is mine’.
Suu…
Friede’s sticky wet tongue traced heat on my cheek as it slowly moved down to touch my neck.
Without realizing it, my head tilted slightly upward. As if offering my pure white neck to her completely.
“Mmph…!”
My entire neck felt like it was on fire.
‘Hey, why are you so good at this…!’
A pleasure so vivid it couldn’t be denied.
Friede gently licked my neck with her tongue, lightly bit with her teeth to leave a tingling sensation, and soothed it with her heated breath.
“I’ll undress you. Raise your arms, please.”
Then, she lifted her head slightly to face me and spoke.
Her two hands that had been gently rubbing my sides at some point were now placed on the fastening straps of my breastplate.
“Haah… arms…? Mm, okay…”
I obediently raised both arms and draped them over Friede’s shoulders as she requested. To make it easier for her to remove my breastplate.
Clink.
The metallic sound of the iron pressing against my chest and back coming off.
The quilted jacket soaked with sweat was slightly more puffed up than usual. Because the flesh wrapped inside it had swollen a bit with excitement.
“May I lay you down?”
Friede, who had set aside the removed breastplate, asked while supporting my back with one hand and gently pressing my shoulder with the other.
I relaxed my waist and responded to her touch by lying back. Thanks to the thick cloak, my back wouldn’t hurt.
When I bought this cloak, I never imagined it would be used for this purpose.
Tug. Tug.
Friede, straddling my body, undoes the knots of my quilted jacket one by one.
From between the collarbones, gradually downward. All the way to the last knot at the bottom. To embrace my naked body contained within once again.
…How did we end up in this kind of relationship?
A relationship that certainly can’t be called right, but has already gone too far to turn back.
As I yielded my body to Friede’s touch, I stared blankly at the ceiling of the ruins, recalling the past from a dozen or so days ago.
The moment when my life as ‘Adventurer Hilde’ came to an end.
* * *
A dozen or so days ago.
After driving away Imelia and Irina, Friede supported my fallen back and thighs and ran.
Not back towards the city of Vespian that I had left, but in a direction that took us even further away from the city.
With the momentum of a kidnapper fleeing at full speed after abducting a bride.
A desperate escape. I couldn’t resist. The body that had only just begun to recover little by little no longer had the strength for that.
No, I didn’t even have the presence of mind to attempt resistance in the first place.
At that time, I was in a state of indescribable mental confusion, my head spinning. Like a teenage girl who had just found out she was adopted.
So instead of flailing my barely moving limbs and struggling to be put down, I quietly yielded my body and blurted out the questions that arose in my mind randomly.
Friede earnestly answered my questions while working her two legs hard to run.
* * *
From Friede’s explanation, I learned that even if we had driven away Irina and Imelia, returning to Vespian was essentially suicidal.
Apparently, right after I left the city, paladins from the temple had been searching for ‘Adventurer Hilde’, turning the guild upside down.
It must have been Imelia’s doing.
In that short time after I encountered them, while I was going to the inn to leave a letter, she must have gone to the temple and revealed my identity to them.
That the wanted criminal Brunhilde from the Kingdom of Rhine was hiding among the adventurers in this city.
“…So what happened? What about you, and Amy and Kikel?”
“I, I told them it was a serious situation and to evacuate for now. To the Magic Tower.”
Once the church learned that I was Brunhilde, it would be difficult for Amy and Kikel, who had been in the same party with me, to get away unscathed.
To avoid being dragged to the church on suspicion of knowing and concealing my identity, Amy and Kikel immediately fled to the Magic Tower, she said.
Judging that even if they were to make excuses, they should do so from within the Magic Tower.
It was a wise decision. Even paladins couldn’t forcibly drag people away or interrogate them aggressively within the Magic Tower’s domain.
It was a bit surprising that the Magic Tower accepted even Kikel… well, Amy must have handled that part skillfully. Friede didn’t know what method she used, though.
Anyway, we fled like that for a whole day.
Halfway through, I too got out of the princess carry and ran on my own, so we were able to escape much further than expected.
Although we couldn’t be relieved by that fact, since our pursuers would likely include many just as swift as us.
“Um, shall we rest here for a bit?”
When the moon had set, the sun had risen, and the moon was shining brightly again, we hid in an abandoned house in a deserted pioneer village to soothe our tired bodies.
Of course, we couldn’t relax comfortably like when we returned to the inn after finishing a quest. It wasn’t that kind of situation, nor that kind of environment.
“Haah…”
Above all, my mind was terribly complicated.
The brief conversations we had while running were far from enough to resolve the questions and concerns that filled my mind.
“…Friede. Let’s talk.”
There were overflowing things I needed to ask, matters we needed to discuss.
Not something that could be finished in a word or two, but truly enough to talk all night and still not be enough.
“Talk…? Ah, yes, we should. Talk. I understand.”
Friede, who had been wiping the sweat from her face with her sleeve while catching her breath, nodded with her usual hesitant attitude and came to sit beside me.
And so began a long, long story of questions and explanations.
…Though it didn’t end as I had intended.