“You’ve lost a little weight, Lord Heinreid.”
With all the necessary cleanup concluded, I addressed my former master—Lord Heinreid—as he lay limply in my arms.
Strictly speaking, he was no longer Heinreid—he’d been given a new false name and identity. But no matter how long he tried, he couldn’t seem to get accustomed to it. Every time I called him by that name, he would look back at me in puzzlement, so I’d resigned myself to using his old name except during his periodic interrogations.
He’d fallen half asleep, but at the sound of that familiar name, he looked up at me drowsily.
“Mmm... Have I?” he replied. “I don’t really feel any different—you sure it’s not just in your head?”
“Please don’t try to brush it aside. You can tell, can’t you? You’ve obviously gotten thinner.”
I stroked a confirmatory hand along his slender back as I rebutted his noncommittal response. His shoulders twitched slightly, and he fixed me with a reproachful glare.
That isn’t why I touched you...
He sighed. “Well, I haven’t been moving around much for the past while. I’ve probably just lost some muscle.”
“You never had much muscle to begin with.”
“Well, sure, maybe compared to you, Sir Knight.”
He gave me a sharp-edged smile and punched a fist into my chest. Although it wasn’t hard enough to hurt, I coughed involuntarily at the direct impact to my lungs. He seized the opening, starting to turn away from me, and I pulled him back into my arms. He complained that he was too hot, but I absolutely wasn’t letting him get away.
“You’ve been taking your meals properly, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Karl’s the one preparing them. You know there’s no way he’d slack off on that.”
I fell silent. Even if it had come up naturally in our conversation, it still irritated me to hear someone else’s name on those lips. In the time since he’d begun to catch my eye, I was well aware that I’d become quite petty, but I simply couldn’t help it.
Lord Heinreid stared at my face for a few moments, carefully observing, then reached out a hand to stroke my hair with a wide, obnoxious smirk.
“There there,” he teased. “Don’t worry—you’re cuter.”
“Are you trying to placate me?” I asked, exasperated. “In any case, very well—you say the cause of the problem is a lack of exercise. Then I shall compose a training regimen you can carry out here in your room and have you perform it daily. How does that sound?”
“Training?” His hand froze, and he narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously. “By your standards...?”
I wasn’t quite sure what that gaze meant. Since the start of his confinement in this tower, Lord Heinreid’s expressions had become surprisingly rich and varied; I never tired of watching them.
A small silence had fallen over the room. I suddenly felt his toes tickling at my leg.
“We’re already doing plenty of indoor exercise, aren’t we?” he said with a leer.
“Don’t be crass. In any case, I’m the one doing the moving.”
“Oh, so that’s how you’re gonna be? Want me to show you just how exhausting it is on my side of things?”
“Absolutely not.”
There had already been countless occasions when I’d let my guard down and he’d tried to seize control. I had no intention of letting him push things any further, even if he was only joking.
As he stared at my scowling face, he broke into a smile once again. I knew that if I let him be, he would keep on teasing me without end. I pushed away his mischievous foot and climbed on top of him, boxing him in.
“I take it you wish for another round of exercise?” I asked.
“You feeling me up just now got me in the mood. You’ll help me out, right?”
He didn’t show any nervousness at the suggestion of a second round. Had it all been deliberate? His hand reached out to stroke my cheek, but I caught it in my grip and planted a kiss on his wrist. Watching his ticklish smile from the corner of my eye, I couldn’t help but reflect on how much things had changed.
Until recently, even as he’d accepted my advances, he’d remained thoroughly passive. But lately, he’d begun making invitations of his own more frequently. In fact, he was the one who’d enticed me into the act we’d just finished earlier.
The first time he’d asked me to lie with him, I’d been so surprised that I couldn’t help tactlessly asking him why. With a slightly uncomfortable—no, a bashful air—he’d replied, “You made me this way.” In the privacy of my heart, I’d rejoiced. I was changing Lord Heinreid. And he recognized it and acknowledged it as my influence. Even after I’d declared that he was mine and locked him away in here, he still had a certain strange elusiveness to him. Hearing those words from his mouth, how could I not be overjoyed?
As I ran my tongue along the wrist I’d captured, I reached down to his chest, to the sensitive spots I’d neglected earlier. I lightly scratched at one, and a longing sigh slipped from his mouth. Those crimson eyes, already beginning to tear up from the pleasure, wavered expectantly. Not one to betray his hopes, I pinched his nipple as hard as I could between my index finger and thumb, eliciting a high, sharp cry. I pressed my lips to his, swallowing up the sound. He moaned sweetly; his tongue welcomed me in. He obediently offered it up, lacking the strength or the will to tease me, and I savored the taste of him to my heart’s content.
I had just finished cleaning up his rear, but now I loosened him briefly once more, then shoved myself in a little hastily. At last, his tears welled up and softly scattered.
Shameful as it was to admit, the moments that inflamed my arousal the most fiercely were when I caught sight of that tear-streaked face. I couldn’t say whether it was protectiveness, sadism, or sheer depravity—it all became muddled together as my reason crumbled.
With each thrust into his body, the tears spilled endlessly down his cheeks. It felt like a waste to let them simply fall, so I brought my lips to the corners of his eyes.
In hindsight, even at that moment, the poison was coursing through me. Not the venom that had once spread across the nation, nor the bitter liquor I’d been made to drink—a soft, sweet poison, eating away at my mind.