Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 81: Guilt **

"You enjoy these forbidden thrills more than anything else. Don’t you?"

If you thought that line would escalate into a super taboo, hot and clandestine, borderline incestuous, risky, hidden tryst, exhibitionist play against cold stone, you would be wrong.

But if you considered holding hands to be the lewdest act of all, then yes. It escalated into a super taboo, hot and clandestine, borderline incestuous, risky, hidden tryst, exhibitionist play, sharing a secret that could shatter families.

"How did I not recognize your scent?" Arkai asked. He still held her hand, their fingers interlaced as they walked a path through the fortress’s private winter garden.

He’d jumped a moment ago, startled by her voice when his nose, and every other senses for that matter, had detected only the crisp, clean scent of his own fortress’ corridors.

Walking among a collection of winter plants and sculptures of natural ice against the marbles, he looked at her with his dark, warm eyes.

Frozen fountains stood like crystalline castles. Leafless trees were sheathed in glassy rime, their branches bearing glittering icicles in the faint breeze. Snow lay in perfect drifts, gleaming under a sky the color of faded porcelain.

Cecilia smiled, giving their joined hands a playful swing.

"I did two things," she explained, her breath a visible puff. "First, I scrubbed myself raw three times and doused myself in perfume. Second, I asked Oathran how he does it. The trick, it turns out, is to coat your body in a thin layer of your own mana. It acts like a scent-dampening field."

Arkai’s eyes widened, then narrowed. "Of course," he murmured. "I should have expected such a solution from a woman who can live without a heart."

She raised her chin smugly, then bumped her shoulder playfully against his arm, a soft giggle escaping her.

"You’re not afraid any of them, or their people, will see you?" Arkai asked, his gaze scanning the serene, seemingly empty garden.

"You’re the one who put them in quarters with no view of this wing. And also," Cecilia raised her left hand, where a single, elegant diamond ring adorned her pointer finger. It caught the pale light and fractured it into tiny rainbows. "I have this. A little trinket to make me selectively invisible."

It was one of the five-star artifacts she’d rolled while feverishly ranking up his and Eastiel’s bonds.

[Presence Concealing Ring]

[Rank 1]

[Causes observers to not cognitively register your presence, unless directly engaged with your voice, scent, or physical contact.]

"Hmm," Arkai hummed. "Show me."

Cecilia chuckled and let go of his hand. One second she was there, the next... she wasn’t. Not to his eyes.

Arkai stared at the empty space where she’d stood. He blinked, his senses straining. He turned his head, scanning the pristine snow for footprints that didn’t exist. His eyes, usually so keen, found nothing.

Unease settled in his chest. An item like this... it could turn the world of spies, assassins, and kings completely on its head!

"Cece? That’s enough," he said, his voice tight. He didn’t like this. The inability to perceive her, even knowing she was near... He reached out slowly, his hand moving through the empty air where he thought she might be.

Then, a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind, pulling him into a warm embrace. A crisp, delighted giggle vibrated against his back. He turned, his tension melting into relief as she shimmered back into existence before him, her face alight with mischief.

"See? Even the great Black Wolf King can’t find me," she declared, her chin tilted up in victory.

Arkai sighed, dissolving into a soft, helpless chuckle. He shook his head. "Fine. I concede. The artifact is... formidable." He reached for her, his voice dropping to a warm murmur. "Now, come here."

He leaned down, capturing her smiling lips in a kiss.

Cecilia hooked her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. She met his kiss, deepening the hunger that stole the breath from his lungs. When she finally broke for air, her words were a whisper against his lips.

"Now... you understand. We really won’t get caught... unless something extraordinary happens..."

"You are trying to tempt me," Arkai accused, though his voice was already roughened. "And even if we are alone... Elder Brother and Eastiel will feel it."

"So?" Cecilia huffed. Her palm began a slow and exploratory journey down the hard plane of his chest, her touch leaving a trail of fire through the fabric. "They’re grown men. They can handle a little secondhand... pleasure."

"Cece..." he groaned. It started turning him on.

Her eyes blinked up at him. "Do you want me to turn the Sense Sharing off? Just for us? Then it would be our secret alone..." Her fingers traced the line of his belt.

Arkai’s frown deepened, a war playing out in the darkness of his gaze. The thought of shutting them out, of having her, all of her, sensations and all, to himself, was fiercely compelling.

Yet, the idea of severing that connection, even temporarily, felt like a betrayal of the new whole they had become. He didn’t know whether to like it or not. Both options were unbearably arousing.

"We really... really won’t get caught now," she whispered again.

If you thought that line would escalate into a super taboo, hot and clandestine, borderline incestuous, risky, hidden tryst, exhibitionist play against cold stone...

Yes.

Yes, it was.

It always began this way. With the belief in perfect secrecy. We won’t get caught. Cecilia knew this was the essential first step. She had to make him believe it, truly believe it, down to his bones.

Because the illicit thrill wasn’t in the safety. It was in the risk. The longer the game went on, the more secure the players felt, the more the hidden, hungry part of them would begin to crave the very danger they’d engineered to avoid.

The safety became a boring stage and they’d start to play closer to the edge, testing the boundaries of their concealment, wanting the heartbeat skip of almost being caught.

She was leading him down that path, step by step.

So eventually...

The pristine, snow white garden would be stained in sin. And the man who had spent a lifetime building walls of honor would find himself poised to tear them all down.

"What’s... next...?" Arkai managed, the words torn from him between ragged breaths, his forehead pressed to hers.

"Which ’next’...?" Cecilia parried, her own breathing shallow, her focus divided between his eyes and the swelling base of his cock.

"Your husband... My nephew... what’s your next move against him?" he whispered.

Cecilia smiled. Her hand closed in a grip around the swell. "What’s yours?"

"Let me..." he grasped her face, his thumbs framing her jaw, his eyes blazing with a murderous need that had nothing to do with the pleasure she was stoking. "Let me kill him. Just... give me the order."

If Arzhen died, there would be no more forbidden connection between them, wouldn’t it? The "uncle" and the "ex-niece-by-marriage" would be just a man and a woman. The scandal would calcify into tragic history, not a living, breathing taboo.

Right?

But Arkai knew, in the marrow-deep place where his beast lived, that logic was a lie. Even if the opposite were true, even if killing his own blood-nephew to claim his widow seared the sin deeper, branding him forever as the monster who murdered family for covetousness...

It wouldn’t matter.

The nephew he had once cradled as a mewling cub, the baby he had once saved as a newborn, the boy who carried a fragment of his own name, the son of the brother he had loved like a second self...

For Cecilia?

Arkai would do it. He would paint the pristine northern snow a permanent red.

"I can’t promise you something the other two are already fighting over," she murmured, not loosening her grip. Instead, she began a slow stroking motion, her thumb brushing over the sensitive tip with each upstroke. "They want their piece of him too."

"Haa... ahh..." Arkai’s eyes fluttered shut, a groan of pure bliss escaping him. His hips pushed reflexively into her hand. "Then... something... let me... hurt him. Let me be the one."

She stopped the motion abruptly, the sudden absence of friction a sweet torture. Instead, she made a loose ring with her finger and thumb around his frenulum and began a slow, twisting rotation of her wrist. "Okay," she agreed. "You will hurt him. You can have that." She tightened the ring slightly. "But first..."

Arkai’s knees threatened to buckle. He braced himself against the wall behind her. "First... what?"

"First," she said, her gaze locking with his, "you choose. Do you want me to absolve you of this guilt? To tell you there’s no sin here, that our bond washes it all clean?" She leaned in. "Or... do you want to keep the guilt? To let it fester. To let the knowledge that this is wrong be the very thing that makes your blood burn hotter?"

A low growl erupted from the base of Arkai’s chest.

"Cece..."

Cecilia’s eyelids drooped, a sensual smile spreading across her lips. She looked at him, this pillar of northern strength brought to trembling ruin by her hands.

"You are everything I shouldn’t ever have, Arkai Dawnoro."

She gave him one last, firm, twisting stroke.

"But you’re mine anyway."