100x Rebate Sharing System: Retired Incubus Wants to Marry & Have Kids-Chapter 361 - 360 - Testing waters to lick it

Viktor continued washing the dish, his hands over hers, unhurried, as if nothing unusual was happening. As if his cock wasn’t steadily pressing harder against her ass.

As if her body wasn’t doing a complete betrayal of everything her sense of self-preservation had been working toward since this morning.

He moved slightly, adjusting his angle on the dish, and the motion dragged him against her in a slow, almost rhythmic roll that was—

’That was absolutely intentional.’

’Why am I not moving. Why am I not—’

"By the way," Viktor said, casual, his voice rumbling against her ear. "You seem hurt."

Vivian blinked.

"...hurt?"

"Not physically." He took the dish from her hands, rinsed it, set it aside. His arms remained around her, hands returning to the basin, now picking up the next item. His hips hadn’t moved. "The way you look at things. Like you’re waiting for them to be taken away."

The warmth in her cheeks shifted. Something different.

"That’s—you don’t know anything about me," Vivian said, and her voice came out quieter than intended.

"No," Viktor agreed. "So tell me. What actually happened?"

The basin steamed softly. Outside, through the kitchen doorway, Vivian could hear Bella saying something that made Gwen laugh—short and surprised, like it escaped against her will.

Vivian watched the water.

"Our tribe," she said finally, her voice flat with the particular flatness of things said too many times in private and never aloud. "The elders. They negotiated with border lords three months ago. A labor arrangement, they called it."

"A labor arrangement."

"Slave contract," Vivian said. "That’s what it was. For the lower families—the ones without warrior ranks, without useful abilities. Women and children mostly." Her jaw tightened. "They were selling us. The elders were selling their own people to cover protection debts."

Viktor was quiet.

"We found out the night before the contracts were to be finalized," Vivian continued. Her voice remained controlled. She’d had three months to process this, and she’d used them efficiently because she’d had no other choice. "Gwen’s father—my husband—he found the documentation. He went to confront the elders."

She stopped.

"He didn’t come back," she said.

Viktor’s hands stilled in the basin.

"We ran that same night," Vivian said. "Gwen and I. We took what we could carry and we ran, and we haven’t stopped since." She exhaled through her nose. "The elders sent trackers. We lost them somewhere around the southern marshes. But by then we had nothing—no money, no contacts, no safe territory. Just the glamour spells and the hair dye and—"

She stopped.

Her throat had done something unexpected.

She pressed her lips together.

’Don’t,’ she told herself. ’You are not doing this in front of a stranger.’

Viktor’s hands came out of the basin.

He turned her.

Not roughly. Not gently either—just a firm, decisive motion that pivoted her body so she faced him, her back now against the counter edge.

Then his arms went around her.

’Fully.’

He pulled her into his chest, his arms wrapping around her shoulders, his chin dropping to the top of her head. One large hand pressed against the back of her skull, holding her face against his collarbone.

And pressed himself against her.

His hips fit to hers, and she felt exactly where he was still hard, felt the thick press of him against her belly, against the give of her stomach.

A moan escaped her before she could stop it—soft, surprised, barely sound at all. Her body flushed hot from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.

Her fingers, caught between their bodies, pressed against his chest. She should push. She should step back. She should say something that was a sentence constructed of actual words.

His hand gripped her waist. His other hand spread across her lower back.

And he held her there—against him, against the hard press of his cock through their clothes, his warmth surrounding her from the chest down, his arms keeping her from making a decision about whether she was going to step away.

He smelled like the kitchen and beneath it something darker, warmer, that she didn’t have a word for.

"’Hnnngh’—"

The sound that came from her throat was mortifying.

Vivian felt her knees go soft.

"I’m—" she started.

"Shh."

Viktor’s lips pressed against her forehead.

Soft.

Simple.

The kiss lasted no more than two seconds.

But the warmth of it seemed to seep through her skull and directly into her chest, spreading down through her spine in something slow and aching, and Vivian felt tears prick the backs of her eyes with a totality that blindsided her.

Viktor pulled back, not far. Just enough to look at her face.

His dark eyes held hers.

"You deserve to be cared for," he said quietly. "I’m sorry you had to go through that much."

The words landed like stones into still water.

Vivian’s mouth opened. Closed.

She wanted to say something rational. Something that acknowledged she’d known this man for approximately six hours and he had threatened her daughter’s life with his bare hands and she should not be standing in his kitchen feeling things she hadn’t felt since her husband had not come home.

She didn’t say any of that.

She looked up at Viktor’s face—those dark, patient eyes that saw too much and revealed too little—and felt, underneath her wariness and her grief and her exhaustion and the completely improper warmth pooling low in her belly where his body pressed against hers—

’Seen.’

"...thank you," she whispered.

Viktor’s thumb traced a single line along her jaw.

His cock pressed against her, still hard, still ’there’, a constant reminder underneath the warmth of everything else that this man was not a simple thing, was not a straightforward kindness, was something far more layered and dangerous and—

His eyes curved slightly at the corners.

Almost a smile.

"Now," he said, soft and quiet. "Will you help me finish the dishes?"

Vivian blinked.

Then, despite herself—against all reasonable judgment—

She laughed.

Short and real and slightly ragged around the edges. A laugh that didn’t quite know what it was doing there but had escaped anyway.

Viktor’s mouth formed that curve again, fuller this time.

He stepped back.

Just enough.

His hands released her, one trailing down her arm before dropping, and Vivian turned back to the basin on legs that felt like they’d been recently replaced with less competent versions of themselves.

She picked up the next dish.

---

She picked up the next dish.

The warm water ran over her hands. Behind her, she heard Viktor settle—not sitting, not leaving, just the particular quality of stillness that meant he’d positioned himself somewhere and was content to stay there. Like a cat that had claimed a windowsill and had no intention of being moved.

The back of her neck prickled.

She scrubbed the dish.

The sound of it—the soft rhythm of ceramic against cloth, water moving—was the only thing filling the kitchen. From the sitting room beyond the doorway came Bella’s voice saying something animated about arrow fletching, and Gwen’s response, and then Helena’s warm murmur threading through both. Vivian focused on those sounds. On the task in front of her. On the steam rising from the basin.

Not on the fact that she could feel Viktor watching her.

The way he watched was different from other men. Other men looked at. Viktor looked into—catalogued, assessed, filed information away behind those dark eyes with the patience of someone who had no particular hurry about any of it. It wasn’t leering. It was more precise than that, and somehow more unsettling for the precision.

She could feel it moving across her back.

Down.

She set the dish aside and reached for the next one.

Viktor chuckled.

Low. Quiet. A sound that came from somewhere genuinely amused with itself.

Vivian’s hands slowed.

"What?" she asked.

She didn’t turn around. She kept her eyes on the basin, water running warm over her fingers.

"Nothing," Viktor said.

The word had a smile in it. Not a kind one exactly—more the smile of someone who had thought of something funny that they were deciding whether to say.

Vivian’s jaw tightened slightly. "If it’s nothing, why are you laughing?"

"Not laughing. Just..." A pause. The sound of him shifting his weight. "Thinking."

"About what."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"I heard something," Viktor said, "about women’s bodies after they give birth."

Vivian’s hands stopped completely.

The water ran on, unconcerned.

"Oh?" she said, very carefully.

"That things get... heavier," Viktor said. "Specifically—" he paused again, and she could hear the particular construction of someone choosing their words with entirely too much enjoyment— "the backside."

Vivian turned around.

She turned around because she could not not turn around, because some things required eye contact, required the confrontation of being looked at directly.

She turned around with the dish still in her hands and water dripping down her wrists, and she found Viktor leaning against the far counter with his arms crossed and his head tilted slightly, looking at her with an expression of such disarming earnestness that it would have fooled someone who hadn’t been watching his face for the past hour.

"There is," Vivian said, "nothing like that."

Viktor’s eyes moved.

Not to her face.

Down.

Slow, casual, completely unambiguous about what they were doing, his gaze traveled the length of her—and landed somewhere specific, and stayed there, and he was quiet for a moment that stretched long enough to heat her face several degrees past comfortable.

"Mm," he said.

"Mm?" Vivian repeated.

"Yours just looks—" He paused, like searching genuinely for the word. "—quite full. And loose."