Wedges of love (Ai no Kusabi)/ The Space Between

The Man Who Came Back - Strangers

Original novel by Yoshihara Rieko

Ai no Kusabi Chapter 1

All was dark... But it was not a distressing darkness. It was a darkness in which the silhouette of things could be distinguished.
All was calm... The air-conditioner which usually made a pleasant atmosphere wasn't working, but the air was wavering, disturbed.
From the bed situated in the center of the room came a rustling of sheets. A shadow was shivering, and moving back and forth. His eyes had the look of one who could not sleep peacefully; as if his dreams had been oft interrupted.
No, that was not it.
He was not sleeping. It was that he was not able to get up.
In order to prevent him from moving, both wrists had been firmly shackled over his head. His outstretched arms were trembling slightly. Perhaps due to his impatience at not being able to free himself, he kept his hands fisted tightly. Nevertheless, he didn't seem to have the spirit or the desire to free himself at any cost. Was it because he had given up already, or was he just tired of struggling? That was not the expression to be read on his face.
Now and then, he couldn't avoid letting a low moan escape him. He doubled up his body, bending his knees as he raised his head. He made terrible sounds, as if he were desperately resisting an unbearable pain. However, underneath those sounds, his voice oozed a terrible libidinous charm, as if he were breathing sweet sighs into someone's ear.
"D... damn you! ... Sh... shit!" As the violence of his rising pulse made his throat spasm, occasionally he spat such poison from his mouth. Having abandoned stubbornness and pride, having no shame or sense of honour remaining, he seemed ready to burst into tears at any moment, and to reprimand himself, he bit his lip until it bled.
How much time had passed since he had been forced to take the sexual stimulant? He had lost all concept of time. In reality, only ten minutes had passed, but it seemed to him that it had been over an hour. The muscles of his inner thighs were tensed with pain. His feet were trembling convulsively. His incoherent sighs kept on, causing him thirst. His strained hips burned almost to the point of numbness. Ready to explode, he shook violently as if his veins would rupture into pieces. He couldn't stand it any longer! He was going mad with the need to come as hard as he could, but he was prevented from doing so by the ring which tightened around him, obstructing his ejaculation.
A few minutes later, the room's door creaked faintly, and slid open. However, consumed by the madness burning deeply inside his body, he was barely aware of what went on around him, and he didn't notice that a man had just come in.
The man approached slowly. His bearing was refined and elegant, as if a thick carpet had absorbed his presence. Silently, the man touched the switch near the bed, and instantly the room was filled with a brilliant light. The man on the bed half closed his eyes, blinded by the sudden brightness, and there was the other man; beautiful, but with a beauty that reflected not frailty or indulgence, but a great acumen. When he looked at him, he couldn't help the tears that spilled from his eyes. The tension, having already reached its limit, seemed to give way the instant he looked up at the man's face.
"How is it? Does it hurt a little?" The man had a strange voice that sounded soft, but at the same time strongly coercive to anybody who listened.
"P...please... no more," the man on the bed begged, choked with tears, but the other remained impassive.
"I told you to get along with the others, but at no time did I tell you to mount a female."

Despite the man's soft voice, the look in his eyes chilled to the bone. "Mimea already has a male Pet to pair with her. I believe you knew that, didn't you? Raoul came to me, furious, saying that you had spoiled everything... For all that, I think it's only natural that I punish you."
" ... "
"Did you really think you could have Mimea or whoever you wanted? Every game has rules, doesn't it?"
At that moment, unexpectedly, a tinny feminine voice cut through the air from behind the man's back.
"It's not a game!"
Startled, the man on the bed cringed, and there was Mimea with whom he had met secretly so many times. He looked at her, astonished.
"She insisted on being allowed to see you. She says that love is blind, but you don't have the right to choose, and it seems that you don't understand that, so tell her clearly from your own mouth."
'What does he...?' his frightened eyes seemed to inquire. Perhaps he knew what the man would say next.
"Is it not true that it made no difference to you if it were Mimea or someone else; that all you were interested in was a body to use, no matter whose it was? Or isn't that so?"
A shiver crept up his back. He would never be allowed to deny it. That low voice paralyzed him, and the man's face was hard. He lowered his eyes heavily.
That was the catalyst that caused Mimea's sudden outburst. "That's a lie! It is, isn't it? Everybody knows that we're going to be kept separated. And do you know who Raoul has chosen as my partner? Jennah! Supposedly because of his pedigree. It's disgusting! That sex maniac's only qualification is his face! The thought of bearing his son makes me sick! You don't want anyone but me, do you? The only one you love is me, right?" But although her words were full of emotion, not even half of them reached his ears. He was concentrating all his strength on trying to keep her from noticing what so shook him. So he writhed and bit his lips to repress any moan.
Mimea had only been told that, as their relationship had been discovered, he was being punished.
Believing himself at the top of his class, he had committed the error of putting his hands on an Academy-born virgin. This was the gibe in everyone's mouth. However, it had been Mimea who seduced him. She was bothered by the thought that he was suffering for her guilt, but he who only days ago had looked at her with affection, now turned his back to her without explanation.
To Mimea, this was the most unbearable. His silence fed her nervousness, and it soon became fury. Her chest ached with all the feelings roiling inside her. Unable to bear it any longer, Mimea shouted hysterically, "Why are you so quiet? Why don't you look at me? Answer me!"
When she realized that not even in this way would she get even a fleeting glance from him, she knit her beautiful brows and bit her red lips. The back of he who had not even tried to deny the man's words suddenly seemed to her to be marked by the ugliness of treachery. At the limit of exasperation, words also failed. This is what her eyes seemed to reflect.
"It's over," murmured the man's voice from within his chest.
"Coward!" the desperate shout came from Mimea's lips.
He felt as if fire were burning his back, and he bit his lips harder. But what was he repressing so desperately, the sound of his panting breaths or maybe his own tears? Perhaps even he didn't know. Behind him, Mimea's lips trembled, and as he had done to her, she turned and gave him her back.
"This has probably been a lesson for you, too," the other man said to her.
Mimea left the room, walking quickly. After assuring that she had left, the man sat down calmly on the edge of the bed.
"Well, after all, I should think you must have expected such an outcome." As the imperturbable man whispered, he gradually pulled back the sheets. He awaited the revelation of the naked body of the one who lay there. Even in spite of the adolescent's wild appearance, the perfect proportions of his limbs made him terribly sensual.
The man let his eyes roam slowly. There was no excitement or discomfiture in the frozen serenity of his eyes. It was a dispassionate gaze, but when his eyes reached the place between the other's legs, they darkened for a moment.
The young man's erection throbbed, and in his mind grew only one thought: 'I want release! Please, let me go!'
"Do you want me to release you?" the other man whispered softly, temptingly.
The one on the bed nodded vigorously, and carelessly, the other man's hand separated his knees. He held his breath. It meant, at last, an end to the anguish that was driving him mad, he thought, but teasingly, the man's fingers turned suddenly aside to caress the valley formed by his legs. Unconsciously, he opened his eyes wide, startled.
"You have been doing it with Mimea behind my back. Did you think for one moment that it would be over so easily?"
For the first time, a shadow of terror crossed his eyes.
The other man always seemed so serene. Whatever happened, the man's voice never showed even the slightest harshness, but he knew better than any other how passionately violent was the man hidden under that mask. But, even so, he had not been repentant, thinking "Why did I do that?" Instead, he had shown a defiant face when the man found out about his relationship with Mimea.
He liked Mimea, her splendid features, even in spite of the arrogance typical of her breeding in a pure environment. He really liked her. She was not prejudiced against him like the others. She had been his only friend, but he knew that part of the secret pleasure he got from his meetings with Mimea was the electrifying excitement of betraying that man.
'I'll worry about it if I'm caught.' Thinking this way had made the matter seem less important. The regret he had felt was more for Mimea than for the man, but now he was cowed.
"I... only did it once.... with Mimea!" Though he knew that the man in front of him was not the sort of person who would accept such a clumsy excuse, he was so frightened that he could not help trying to justify himself.
"Once or a hundred times, it is the same to me. You did it with Mimea. That is enough."
" ... "
The man stroked him lightly with creeping fingers. "That you did it here is what pleased you most, isn't it?"
He moaned weakly, and when he felt the touch of a foreign body sinking gradually inside him and wriggling lewdly, he couldn't repress the sound of his suffocated breaths any longer.
"What is the matter with you? There is no point in trying to pretend now. Why don't you moan openly?" The man's voice was so soft it gave him the shivers.
Every time the man's finger moved, the continuous ache spread suddenly. Unconsciously, he contracted his inner muscles. It was not that he rejected the foreign digit inside his body. On the contrary, he pressed himself against it, and gave short thrusts of his hips as if encouraging it to go deeper.
"That's it. Good boy."
When this whisper caressed his ear and flowed down the nape of his neck, he was startled, and he arched his body backwards loosing a small, pitiful cry. The tension which was biting into the very marrow of his bones showed its fangs, and rushed up to his head. Every time this happened, his body shook with convulsive spasms. When the man's deeply inserted finger pressed that certain point, he became breathless. He felt as if every vein in his body were aflame.
If the intense sensation would make him faint, it would all be over then, but the man forced him to pant lewdly and heavily without letting him come. He sighed harshly through trembling lips and a tight throat, thrusting his hips furiously. At the tip of his erection clung a sticky thread of pre-come, and whenever an almost sobbing cry escaped him, more of that essence dripped weakly from him.
Something in the man's skilled caresses made them irresistible.
As the man shoved in two fingers to open and stretch that place even more, he begged, gasping, "Forgive me..." again and again as if he were delirious with fever.
"'I'll do this to you however many times it takes to make you sufficiently regret doing it with Mimea. You are my Pet, and I will ingrain that fact into the very marrow of your bones." This the man whispered softly into his ear as he unshackled his wrists.
That man's beauty was near perfect, inspiring of fear and respect, and his pale blue eyes were of burning ice. Was that fire fury at his wounded pride, or was it an expression of uncontrollable desire? Whatever it was, there was no doubt that beneath that damned excitement that twisted within him seethed dark whirlpools of jealousy towards Mimea.