Ayame held onto him like the water itself had turned unreliable.

Her fingers were locked around his shoulders, nails pressing into the muscle there, and she breathed against the crook of his neck in long shaking pulls while the last waves of her orgasm moved through her and refused to fully let go. She’d never felt anything like it. Had heard descriptions — the women in her houses spoke frankly among themselves when they thought she wasn’t listening — but description hadn’t prepared her for the actual experience of it, the way her entire body had simply stopped being hers for those long shuddering seconds, seized by something enormous and given back afterward in pieces.

Her legs were useless. She could feel it — the water holding her up more than her own knees were — and a distant part of her that still had access to pride found that enormously embarrassing. The rest of her didn’t have the capacity to care.

Nathan held her while she recovered.

His mouth moved against her skin; kissing her breast, the swell of it above the waterline, then trailing upward along her collarbone, her throat, finding her lips and covering them while she made small helpless sounds against him that she couldn’t quite suppress.

"Hmm— hnn— hmm—"

He kissed her thoroughly and without urgency, his hand moving in slow circles at the small of her back, and Ayame felt the last of the trembling in her thighs begin to quiet. She breathed. Found herself again, degree by degree. Let her fingers loosen on his shoulders.

Then he pulled back.

Stepped away from her entirely and rose.

The water ran off him in sheets — down his chest, his stomach, the hard lines of his abdomen — and Ayame blinked, still blurry-eyed, still finding her footing, and her gaze traveled downward by pure reflex.

She stopped breathing.

She’d had her hand on him earlier. Had stroked him, felt the weight and heat of him under the water, thought she’d had some sense of the scale of it. She’d been wrong. Completely, embarrassingly wrong. What the water had obscured and what now stood fully visible in the moonlight were two different things entirely — thick and hard and flushed dark, jutting out from his body with a frank and total confidence that made her mouth go dry.

It looked impossible.

She’d felt it pressing against her stomach earlier and thought nothing of it beyond the abstract warmth of it. Now she was looking at it directly and revising every assumption she’d made.

Nathan’s hand reached down and touched her cheek, light fingers against her jaw, and she understood.

She gulped.

Then she positioned herself.

Knees finding the floor beneath the water, sinking into the soft sediment, until she was level with him — his cock directly in front of her face, dripping water from the tip, the head flushed a deep pink. Up close it was worse. Better. She wasn’t sure which word applied anymore.

She reached out and wrapped her fingers around the shaft.

Hot. Immediately, startlingly hot — far hotter than the water, hotter even than when she’d first touched him, the skin there blazing like something running at a higher temperature than the rest of him. And thick — her fingers circled him and fell short, the pads of them nowhere near meeting her palm, his girth simply not accounting for the possibility of being fully contained by one hand.

She began to stroke.

Slowly as she watched his face.

"You’ve never held one before, have you," he said.

She raised her gaze to his and smiled. "Never."

Something shifted in his expression — not surprise, he didn’t seem to do surprise, but a satisfaction that settled in behind his eyes. "I’d have thought," he said, his fingers brushing back through her wet hair with casual ownership, "that a woman running several pleasure houses would have considerable experience."

"I protect them," she replied, keeping her strokes steady. "I’m not one of them."

"Then I suppose you’re a virgin."

Her amber eyes caught the moonlight as she looked up at him. She smiled slowly and said nothing, which was answer enough, and watched the corner of his mouth curve in response.

"Lick it," he said.

She looked down. A bead of precum had gathered at his tip — clear, catching the light — and she leaned forward and registered the scent of him first. Warm and close and distinctly male, nothing she had words for, and then she extended her tongue and licked.

"Sluuurp~"

He groaned. Low, controlled, his hand closing in her hair — not pulling, just tightening — and she felt the tension move through him from that single point of contact outward.

She filed that away and licked again.

"Sluuurp~ sluuurpp~"

Clumsy. She knew it was clumsy, no elegance to it, just the flat drag of her tongue against his head and shaft while she held him in both hands and tried to understand what she was doing by doing it. But his grip in her hair told her everything she needed to know about whether clumsy mattered right now.

"Yeah," he said. Voice lower than before. "Like that. Go around."

She went around.

Her tongue traced the ridge beneath his head, circled the tip, lapped at the slit where another bead of his taste had gathered and took it onto her tongue. Salt. Heat. Something that sat at the back of her throat and made her want more of it, which surprised her.

"Sluuurp~~ schluppp~~ sluuuuurp~"

She worked him with growing confidence — not technique, she had no technique, but intention — her hands stroking the base of him in rhythm with her mouth while her tongue learned the topography of him stroke by stroke. The obscene wet sounds of it carried across the still water and she found she didn’t mind them. Found she was somewhat proud of them, actually.

Above her, Nathan’s breathing had changed.

She looked up at him from beneath wet lashes, lips working against his cock, and watched his jaw set.

She sucked.

His fingers pressed into her scalp.

"Open," he said.

She opened her mouth and let him in.

Lips sealed around him, cheeks hollowing, and she sucked — cautious at first, uncertain of her own pressure, watching his face for the tells that would tell her if she’d gotten it right.

His eyes told her she’d gotten it right.

"Hmpff~ hmm~ mmmnn—"

The sounds came out of her muffled and continuous, her lips dragging slow against his shaft while she worked up and back in a rhythm her jaw was still figuring out. He was thick enough that she felt the stretch of him at the corners of her mouth, felt her lips pulled full and tight around him, and the intimacy of that — of being this open around him, this full of him — sent heat pooling back through her belly despite everything he’d already taken out of her.

"Tongue," he reminded her, fingers stroking slow through her wet hair. "Use it while you move."

She dragged her tongue upward on the next pull back — flat against the underside of him, pressing into the vein there, feeling him throb against it — and Nathan’s exhale came out long and controlled through his nose.

"Like that," he said. "Keep doing that."

She kept doing that.

"Schluppp~~hmmpff~~sluuurp~~"

The sounds her mouth made were obscene and she’d stopped caring entirely — her focus narrowed down to the heat of him on her tongue, the small involuntary tightening of his hand in her hair every time she found an angle he liked, the rhythm she was slowly constructing out of instinct and observation. She was getting better. She could feel herself getting better in real time, finding the pressure that made his stomach tighten, learning where to press her tongue on the down-stroke to draw that low controlled sound from the back of his throat.

"Good," he said.

She sucked harder.

"Schluppp~~ sluuurp~ hmmnn~"

Her jaw was beginning to ache — she could feel the unfamiliar strain of it, muscles she’d never used this way making their presence known — and she ignored it entirely, hands working the base of him in rhythm with her mouth, compensating for the half of him she couldn’t yet take. Her tongue circled his head on every pull back, lapping at the steady bead of precum gathering at his tip, the taste of him now familiar enough that she chased it rather than cataloguing it.

Above her, Nathan’s breathing had gone genuinely uneven.

Still controlled — he would be, she was learning that about him, control was something he wore like a second skin — but shorter between pulls, held fractionally longer on each exhale. His hand had tightened in her hair by degrees he probably hadn’t noticed. She noticed.

She looked up at him.

Made eye contact while her lips were sealed around him and sucked.

"Sluuuurrrp~~"

His jaw set hard. The hand in her hair closed fully. She felt the tension run through him from that point outward — down his arm, across his chest, the muscles of his stomach going tight above her — and something deeply satisfied unfurled in her chest at the sight of it.

She did it again. Held his gaze and sucked slow, hollowing her cheeks, pressing her tongue flat against the underside of him while she pulled back to the tip and then pushed forward, taking him as deep as her throat allowed before drawing back and starting again.

"Sluuurp~ schluppp~ sluuurp~~ hmmnn~~"

"Use your hand and your mouth together," he said, voice lower than before. "Move them the same direction."

She adjusted — hand twisting slightly on the base of him as she bobbed, moving in the same rolling motion, stroking what her mouth couldn’t reach in perfect time — and felt him throb hard against her tongue when she got it right.

"There," he said tightly.

She worked him like that. Hand and mouth and tongue, all of it together, the wet obscene rhythm of it filling the quiet of the spring while the fireflies drifted their cold light through the trees above and the waterfall ran its patient commentary behind them. Her knees had gone numb against the floor. Her jaw ached genuinely now. Her lips felt swollen and used and she kept going, kept sucking, kept watching his face unravel by degrees in the silver moonlight.

"Faster," he said.

She went faster.

"Schluppp! Sluuurp~~~ schluppp~~ sluuurp~~"

His hips moved. A small roll forward, controlled, meeting her on the down-stroke, and she felt him at the back of her throat and breathed through it this time instead of pulling away — held it one second, two — before drawing back and pressing forward again to meet the next roll of his hips.

The hand in her hair tightened.

"Good girl," Nathan said quietly.

Ayame moaned around him — low and muffled, "mmmnn—" — and felt his cock throb hard against her tongue in direct response to the vibration of it, and understood immediately that she’d found something worth remembering.

She hummed again, deliberate, lips sealed tight, and watched his composure crack just slightly at the edges while the moonlit water moved in slow rings around her kneeling body and his fingers pressed into her scalp and she sucked him deeper than she had yet and refused to stop.

Then she felt the shift before it happened.

The hand in her hair stopped being passive.

Fingers gathered at the back of her skull — both hands now, bracketing her head with quiet finality — and Ayame had half a second to understand what was about to happen before Nathan’s hips rolled forward and he set his own pace entirely.

"Hmmff—!"

The sound punched out of her muffled and startled, her hands flying to his thighs on reflex, not pushing — just landing there, gripping, steadying herself against the new reality of it. He wasn’t brutal. But he wasn’t asking anymore either, his hips finding a rhythm and keeping it, driving forward in long measured strokes that pressed him deeper than she’d been taking him, to the back of her throat and then back, over and over while she knelt in the water beneath him and tried to keep up.

"Schluppp~~~ghhk... hmmnn~~sluuurp—"

Messy. She couldn’t be anything but — tears pricking at the corners of her eyes from the depth of it, spit gathering at the corners of her stretched lips, her carefully maintained composure dissolving completely in the face of his cock using her mouth at his own pace. Her cheeks had gone blazing scarlet, heat she could feel in the tips of her ears, and she stared up at him through watering eyes with her lips pulled full and tight around him.

He looked down at her and kept going.

"Hands down, Ayame," he said to her.

She moved her hands off his thighs and let them fall to her own lap, and something about the surrender of that position — kneeling in the water with her hands folded uselessly in front of her, holding nothing, bracing against nothing, entirely at the mercy of the pace he set — made heat twist through her belly with absolutely no business doing so given the circumstances.

"Hmmnn~~ ghhk~~ mmphff~~"

She tried to work with it. Tried to keep her tongue moving on each forward stroke, to suck on each pull back, to be active within the rhythm he’d taken from her — and mostly managed it, her lips dragging against him, her tongue pressing upward, doing what she could in the space he left her. Spit ran down her chin and dripped into the water below and she didn’t have the capacity to be embarrassed about it anymore.

His pace picked up.

"SLuurrrp!! ghhk... hmmnn~~ schluppp!"

Her moans came out continuous and involuntary now, vibrating against his shaft on every thrust, and she heard his breathing go ragged above her — properly ragged, not the controlled shortness from earlier but something with real edges to it, something coming loose. His grip in her hair tightened. His hips snapped forward and she choked softly and he eased back one fraction before driving in again, and she took it, held it, breathed through it.

"Mmmpff! Hmmnn!" Her eyes were watering freely, her cheeks soaked, her jaw aching in a deep bone-level way she’d be feeling tomorrow. She kept her lips sealed. Kept sucking. Felt him swell slightly against her tongue with every passing stroke and understood what that meant even without experience to confirm it.

Nathan’s hands tightened in her hair.

"Pull back," he said, voice rough at the edges now. "Now."

She pulled back.

His cock left her mouth with a wet obscene sound — "schluppp—" — and she gasped, the first full breath in what felt like minutes, her lips red and swollen and parted, and then he had himself in his own hand and he was stroking fast, right in front of her face, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him.

She stayed exactly where she was.

Knees in the spring floor, hands in her lap, looking up at him with ruined eyes and wrecked lips and her soaked hair hanging around her flushed face, and she didn’t look away.

"Hagh..—" Nathan’s exhale came out hard and short. His wrist moved faster. "Don’t move."

She didn’t move.

He came.

The first stripe caught her across her cheek and she flinched — reflex, pure reflex — eyes closing as he groaned above her, a low rough sound finally fully off the leash, his hand working through it while he finished across her face in long hot pulses. Her cheek. The bridge of her nose. Her parted lips, where she tasted him directly and swallowed without thinking.

The sounds of the waterfall returned to her slowly.

Fireflies. Moonlight on still water. The quiet of the deep night around the treeline pressing in on all sides.

Ayame opened her eyes.

Looked up at him.

Reached up with two fingers and drew them slowly across her cheek, collecting what he’d left there, and brought them to her lips while he watched, she smiled.