Chapter 45: The Stone Altar
"Saving your life, Saintess," Leo said, his voice smooth and cold.
He did not pull his hand away from her inner thigh.
His warm fingers pressed gently into her soft flesh, keeping her pinned against the wooden shelf.
"Your holy mana was frozen," Leo continued, looking directly into her wide sapphire eyes. "If I let the dark poison stay in your leg, it would rot your veins from the inside out."
Seraphina’s chest heaved in shallow gasps beneath her thin linen undershift.
"B-But you touched me..." she whispered, her face burning with deep shame. "You touched my bare skin..."
"Would you rather lose your leg?" Leo countered bluntly.
Seraphina had no answer.
She looked away, biting her lower lip until it turned pale.
*RUMBLE!*
A sudden, violent tremor shook the stone floor beneath them.
Cracks snaked across the floor tiles near Sector Three.
Thick black mist hissed out from the broken floor, rolling across the aisle like dark smoke.
At the center of the vault, the ancient circular warding runes carved into the large stone altar began to flicker and turn red.
The containment barrier was failing.
"The seal," Seraphina gasped, terror replacing her shame. "The secondary rift is opening... without my prayer beads, I cannot cast the sealing light from here."
Leo did not waste time with words.
He stepped in close, bent down, and slid his strong arms under her back and bare thighs.
With one effortless motion, he lifted Seraphina into his arms.
Seraphina let out a startled cry, her hands flying up to wrap tightly around Leo’s neck in pure instinct.
Her bare legs dangled over his arm.
Her thin, semi-sheer chemise pressed flat against his solid chest, letting her feel every ridge of his hard muscles.
The sweet, heavy warmth of his Half-Incubus body heat washed over her skin like a hot bath.
Her heart pounded like a war drum against her ribs.
Leo carried her across the shaking room in three long strides, stepping up to the raised marble dais at the center of the vault.
He set her down onto the smooth, flat surface of the stone altar.
Cold stone pressed against her bare thighs and lower back.
"Sit still and focus your mana," Leo commanded. "The altar needs both our cores to stabilize the array. Channel your light through the stone."
Seraphina tried to sit up, but her legs were trembling so badly she could barely move her toes.
The cold stone of the altar made her shiver.
"I... I can’t," Seraphina whimpered, clutching the edges of her thin chemise over her lap. "My mana pathways are still numb from the poison... they won’t open."
Leo looked down at her.
"Then I will open them for you."
Before Seraphina could understand what he meant, Leo stepped between her parted knees.
He grabbed her slender ankles and pushed her knees wide apart across the altar surface.
Seraphina’s breath caught in her throat.
"Leo! No!" she cried out, her voice cracking with pure panic. "This is a sacred altar of the Goddess! You cannot... I am a Saintess Candidate! We cannot do this here!"
"Your Goddess is not down here to save you, Seraphina," Leo said calmly. "I am."
He leaned over her, his broad shoulders blocking out the dim light above.
His large, warm hand slid up her inner thigh, pushing the hem of her thin linen chemise up to her waist.
Seraphina squeezed her eyes shut, hot tears leaking down her flushed cheeks.
She tried to clamp her thighs together, but Leo’s arm held her firmly in place with impossible, unbreakable strength.
His rough thumb slid across the soft, sensitive skin of her inner fold.
Seraphina gasped.
She was already soaking wet.
The combination of the deadly terror from the hound attack, the intense heat of Leo’s Half-Incubus aura, and the forbidden shame of being exposed on a sacred altar had turned her body into a boiling furnace.
"Look at you," Leo murmured close to her ear, his deep voice sending shivers down her spine. "You claim to be pure, yet your body is dripping for the man who bullies you."
"Stop..." Seraphina sobbed softly, shaking her head. "Please... don’t say that..."
"Why shouldn’t I?" Leo’s fingers moved with steady, cruel rhythm, rubbing against the small, sensitive pearl hidden between her swollen folds. "Where is Noel? Where is your noble Hero? He locked you in this dark room and walked away with a smile on his face."
Every word hit Seraphina like a physical slap.
The truth was too painful to bear.
Noel had never touched her.
Noel had never looked at her with fire in his eyes.
Noel had left her to die in the dark.
And now, Leo Vance’s warm, calloused fingers were driving her straight into madness.
A sudden wave of intense, boiling heat erupted from Leo’s fingertips, pouring directly into her sacred mana pathways.
The numbness in her core shattered into a million pieces.
Her hips jerked upward off the cold stone altar.
"Ah! No... ahhh!"
Seraphina’s fingers dug desperately into Leo’s dark leather jacket.
Leo did not stop.
He bent his head down, pressing his warm lips against the soft curve of her lower abdomen, right above the waistband of her thin undershift.
He bit down gently on her smooth skin while his fingers quickened their pace against her weeping core.
It was too much.
Seraphina’s mind went completely blank.
Years of temple rules, prayers of chastity, and holy vows melted away into raw, overwhelming physical sensation.
Her back arched high off the marble altar.
Her toes curled tight.
"LEO!"
With a loud, helpless cry that echoed through the vast stone vault, Seraphina reached an explosive climax.
Her inner walls clamped down violently around Leo’s fingers, pulsing in long, shuddering waves of pure physical ecstasy.
At the exact same moment, a blinding pillar of pure, radiant golden holy light erupted from Seraphina’s core.
The golden light merged with the dark Black Sun heat flowing from Leo’s hands.
*WHOOSH!*
The combined wave of light and dark mana blasted outward across the vault like a shockwave.
The black mist rolling from Sector Three was instantly vaporized.
The cracks in the stone floor fused shut, glowing with bright golden runes as the ancient containment array locked into place with absolute finality.
High above the stone ceiling, on the dark upper walkway, Hero Noel stood frozen behind the iron air grate.
His eyes bulged out of his head.
His knuckles were white as he held the glowing seeing crystal with a trembling hand.
Through the glass, Noel watched everything.
He saw his pure, untouchable Saintess arching her back on the sacred altar.
He saw her slender pale legs spread wide around Leo Vance.
He heard her loud, shameless scream as she reached her peak beneath the hands of the tyrant of House Vance.
Noel’s breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps.
His left hand stroked his tiny, rock-hard shaft with wild, violent speed in the dark.
’She screamed his name,’ Noel thought in manic, dirty bliss. ’My Saintess screamed his name on the altar!’
The sheer humiliation was so intense it felt like fire in his skull.
With a choked, strangled groan, Noel exploded in the shadows, shooting a thick, hot rope of seed across the dusty stone floor of the walkway.
At that exact second, a deafening roar sounded inside Noel’s chest.
His stagnant mana core, locked for months, shattered its limits.
A massive, golden flood of divine holy power rushed through his veins, doubling his core capacity in a single breath.
The masochistic cuckold power surge was real.
Noel slumped against the stone wall, panting in the dark with a wide, twisted grin on his face.
Down on the marble altar below, the bright light slowly faded.
Seraphina lay limp on the stone, her chest rising and falling in deep, exhausted breaths.
Her thin white chemise was soaked with sweat, clinging tightly to her damp skin.
Her eyes were half-closed, filled with tears of sweet relief and lingering guilt as she looked up at Leo.
Her hand remained resting on Leo’s chest, unable to let him go.
*BONG!*
*BONG!*
In the far distance above the vault, the heavy morning bells of the Royal Academy began to chime across the campus.
Dawn had arrived.