The Book of Firsts

Fifteen

"I’m starting to be nervous of meeting you on Friday," I said, as I sat with Kyou at the café table. "It always seems to be the prelude to drama."

"Only a trend if we hit a third instance," Kyou said. "Since Bran and Rin are in a faculty meeting going over the school trip arrangements, I think it will be an achievement to cause either of them trouble. Don’t you think you’re a little overdressed, Cheshire?"

"For tea drinking?"

"A good tea can’t be truly appreciated until all conditions are correct. Atmosphere is as important as the temperature of the water."

I gave him an amused look, but rose and went into the summer house, and came out a minute later bare from the waist down, though most correctly dressed above. Kyou’s expression was wholly appreciative as he watched me walk back.

"I’ll heat a fresh pot," he said. "This has cooled."

I played with my phone until we were both sitting again, correctly dressed. The scent when Kyou poured surprised me, and I sipped experimentally. "I didn’t know there was liquorice tea."

"You like it?" Kyou smiled when I nodded. "One of my favourites. Do you have preferences?"

"Masala chai, mainly. With plenty of milk and sugar. Otherwise, I like the green teas. Does this have sugar in it? It tastes sweet."

"Liquorice root has a sweet taste."

"Where do you buy it from?"

We talked about tea over two small mugs of liquorice, and then Kyou glanced up at the sky and said: "Let’s go inside."

"I have a great photo of my matching sunburn," I said, trying not to laugh. "Hidden in the cloud."

"It was fortunate we didn’t do that on a Tuesday," Kyou said, amused in return. "I was so distracted at the time that I didn’t even realise why everyone was looking at me so strangely."

"Has there been any progress on the investigation?"

"They’ve proven that many of the props had been moved, thus making it almost certain their fall was deliberately arranged. Because there’s no productions active at the moment, that ceiling hatch wasn’t likely to be open by anyone except someone making a full tour. Whether Rin was the target, and who was responsible are harder to pin down. They can use security cameras to identify almost everyone who entered the auditorium since the last time the hatch was opened, but that’s a two-month period, and will capture the entire student body, since assemblies are held there. They’re focusing on after-hours entries during the last week, but it’s not necessarily going to help."

"Aren’t there indoor cameras?" I asked, watching Kyou spread a large towel on the couch, and then obediently sitting on it at his gesture.

"Not enough, it seems. This school would not be attractive to students if there were cameras in every room."

He pressed me downward, and then lay beside me, hooking our legs together, before moving so that I was on top of him. The difference between clothed top and unclothed below was quite distracting, and allowed me to clearly feel Kyou’s increasing enjoyment as we kissed, his hands running constantly over my behind and upper thighs. When he was fully erect between my thighs, I made a little game of slowly shifting backward down his body until I was well-situated to put Rin’s lesson into action.

While I doubted Kyou counted as small, he was a lot easier to fit into my mouth than Rin, and I immediately tried to see how much I could manage. Not all the way, but enough to make him let out a muffled little cough at being so immediately devoured. I sucked lightly as I moved my head back, then began licking points around the base of his shaft, seeing if I could coax any more noises out of him. It was fun to find the things he particularly reacted to, and to give him more, and have him tangle his fingers in my hair because he was struggling to calm down. And he seemed to share Rin’s preference for me, once I started sucking hard, to not let up.

"Cheshire," he said, in the panting aftermath. "Is that really only the second time you’ve done that?"

I laughed, sitting up so I could see his face. "Do you three compare notes? Yes, I was putting Rin’s instructions into practice there."

He was looking at me with half-lidded eyes, apparently deep in thought. "What would it take to make you blush?"

"Is that your goal?" I considered the question. "I do blush, but not frequently. Next time I notice myself doing it, I’ll try to remember why. Talking about sex isn’t going to make me blink, not after reading so many of my Dad’s books."

"Your father writes about sex?"

"He writes a lot of gay erotica," I said, and grinned at Kyou’s startled cough. "I like to tell people that when they start to show off parental careers. No-one ever knows what to say."

Kyou, who had indeed looked dumbfounded, slowly smiled. "I’ve been picturing you as a victim of your parents' careers, always adrift. Now I’m starting to understand that you’re someone who enjoys a new set of toys with every school."

"Well, that’s true of this year, at least."

His eyes narrowed, and then he moved with unexpected speed, so that our positions were reversed and he was sitting above me, hands already pushing to spread my legs. "I don’t know about making you blush, but let’s see if I can win that tiny little mewling noise out of you instead."

"Mewling noise?"

"You made it last Friday."

"You must have had heatstroke."

He started to respond, then stopped, staring at my inner thighs. "Bran’s so inventive," he said, after a moment.

"You have no idea how difficult it is to buy swimsuits that cover all these marks."

Eyes sparkling, Kyou abandoned the challenge for the moment in favour of three dark spots circling my navel. Then he moved down, giving me another on my hip, and then the join of my leg. It was quite some time before he moved on to exploratory teasing, and a more purposeful sucking, and—

Mewling.

Not me. The proximity alarm in the Cheshire app Bran had created, which had an alert that sounded like a hopeful tomcat looking for romance. Kyou cursed, and sat up immediately, snatching his clothes from the coffee table.

"If it’s faculty, we’ll say I’ve been tutoring you," he said, already pulling on his underpants.

I reached for mine, attention worriedly on the gate just visible from where I sat. Very few people had keys to this garden, so there was every chance that whoever was approaching would only try the gate, or perhaps call out to Kyou. The sound of that heavy lock would at least be—

"What is it?" Kyou asked, pausing in his dressing, no doubt in response to the complete confusion blanking my face.

I looked at him, and then quickly back at the gate, but the strange movement had already ceased, and the proximity alert sounded before I could even manage to say anything. Whoever had been there had already left.

"This school is certainly exciting," I said, as I pulled on my pants. "And I think you’re this week’s star attraction."

Kyou stared at me, then ran swiftly toward the garden entrance.

"Don’t touch the bars," I said in a low voice, hastily following him.

I wrapped and fastened my skirt before approaching, and stayed back so that I couldn’t be glimpsed from outside, but close enough to see how the bars around the lock had a faint, glinting sheen, just noticeable in the sunlight. Kyou hunted in his pockets and pulled out a folded handkerchief, using it to wipe one of the bars. He showed it to me—a pale orange smear, glittering with something fine and barely visible.

"Glass?" I murmured, risking a cautious glance down the path outside and seeing nothing.

"I’m not sure."

He pointed back at the summer house, and we returned to put on our shoes.

"What did you see?"

"A hand holding a paintbrush," I said. "Ordinary small house painting brush, with a red handle. It came through the bars and painted them. Then I think it painted the outer side."

"Anything distinctive about the hand?"

I shrugged. "Black gloves that covered the wrist. Tiny bit of arm. I think maybe Caucasian?" Closing my eyes, I tried to recapture the image. "Looked slender, but not necessarily female. Couldn’t see any other clothing or their legs or anything."

He nodded, face grim. "Okay, that’s what I’ve just seen, but I only glimpsed it, and my reactions are slow. You get over the wall and find yourself an alibi. This is…"

"Drama." I nodded, grabbed my backpack, straightened my tie, and left.