Kotori's eyes fluttered awake.

She was somewhere luxurious and comfortable — a bed of some sort. The blankets were plump and airy, and the mattress was as soft as a cloud. Kotori felt perfectly relaxed, as if all the muscles in her body had all simultaneously agreed to take a vacation. There wasn't an ounce of pain or discomfort anywhere, and her mind floated in this fluffy heavenly space.

This must be a dream, Kotori sleepily told herself.

She snuggled backwards into the arms that were wrapped around her.

Saikawa Kotori had missed this feeling a lot. Ever since her third engagement had been broken off, she hadn't dated anyone properly. It had been over a year since she last shared a bed with someone, and she missed this physical intimacy terribly. Honestly, even back when she had  been sexually active, she had never even cared that much for sex. Ninety percent of the reason why she ever hooked up with attractive guys was for the morning after.

The afterglow.

The steady dribble of pleasure that soaked through her body.

She would space out happily and nuzzle against the surface of the human radiator underneath the sheets, inhaling deeply as she breathed in every ounce of her partner's mesmerizing odor. The smell would elicit a tingling sensation in her brain, and then she'd melt hopelessly into his arms.

Kotori knew that it was essentially the same as a drug — dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.

If she weren't so drowsy, she could talk about the receptors and the molecular pathways of neurotransmitters, but she didn't feel like it. Right now, she was riding an emotional high, and it didn't need to be ruined by science. It was important to occasionally embrace the joys of life, and the comfort that she found in the bedroom was one place where she never brought her work.

Instead, she drowsily listened to the breathing of the man whom she shared a bed with.

She especially enjoyed feeling the rise and fall of his chest. It was like listening to waves of the ocean. The tide ebbed and flowed, a gentle sonorous mass of water that had the potential to move coastlines, but was equally soft enough to caress the most delicate organisms in the rock pools of a sandy beach.

Kotori closed her eyes and leaned against the man.

+ + +

Gradually, as Kotori grew increasingly awake, the muddled confusion in her slumbering thoughts faded away.

She realized belatedly that this wasn't a dream.

She wasn't on Earth, and she wasn't human anymore. This wasn't the futon in her Tokyo apartment. She was in bed with a demon who had trapped her in bottle, tied her in chains, and stabbed her through the chest. Objectively speaking, it was quite horrible. By all reasoning and common sense, she probably ought to have hated him.

Demon Lords were supposed to be evil.

Only bad things had happened ever since this surreal fantasy nightmare started.

However, Kotori remained silent.

She didn't know what to feel.

She wasn't sure what to think either.

She curled her knees to her chest. Apparently, the wound in her chest was completely gone. There was also no trace of the poison from the previous day. The only reasonable inference was that the Demon Lord had revived, done something while she was unconscious, and brought her here.

Was it safe to say that it was finally over? What had happened to the human invasion? What about the Hero?

She had apparently missed a lot.

Kotori noted unhappily that her wrists and ankles were still bound. The configuration was different than before, in the sense that the shackles were black rather than golden. The material was different — somewhat softer in texture and smooth like snake skin. It wasn't metallic, but it still seemed very sturdy. Rope-like cords were fixed to the bed, but there still was plenty of slack. Judging by their length, Kotori figured that it was possible for her to climb off the mattress and take a few steps, but she wasn't going to be escaping very far.

The bastard had essentially tied her to the bed.

Kotori wanted to open her mouth to say something, but she discovered that she was silenced again.

The Demon Lord had replaced the collar around her neck while she was unconscious.

A fuming sense of anger suddenly burst up in Kotori's thoughts.

She had saved him! 

The only reason why everything had turned out okay was because she had stuck out her neck for him. And this treatment was what she received in return? If she hadn't done everything she had that other day, the Demon Lord would still be a headless corpse. The Demon Lord owed her! At the very least, he ought to treat her better.

The Demon Lord stirred beside her. Apparently, he noticed her agitation, and he rolled over to pat her head gently.

"Awake now?" He asked calmly, although obviously there was no way for Kotori to respond.

She glared at him with fury in her eyes.

The horned man smiled slightly, and he shrugged apologetically. He seemed to be in an extremely good mood. Mephistos appeared far more rested than Kotori had seen him in months. There was a slight glow to his face and the bags underneath his eyes were gone. Most likely, he had slept just as well as she had.

"You're a witch, aren't you?" He explained, somehow aware of the fact that Kotori was upset about the collar. "I can't have you muttering spells at me while I sleep. It's obviously a standard precaution right from the textbook. You don't leave your casters a convenient way to to use their magic once you've locked them up."

There was a lighthearted tone to his voice, and it was hard to tell if Mephistos was being serious.

Kotori was exasperated.

All of that had been a bluff.

As far as she was aware, Kotori didn't have any magic. She couldn't cast any magic.

"Hm? So you admit that you were lying then?" The Demon Lord spoke leisurely.

Kotori stiffened.

The Demon Lord had somehow known what she was thinking.

Could he read her mind right now?

"You are correct," the Demon Lord said simply. "As a result, it's unnecessary for you to speak."

He reached over to his nightstand, where he grabbed a small stack of papers. He dropped them in his lap as he sat up against the headboard of the bed. Without another word, he efficiently started to comb through his documents. A pen materialized out of thin air, and he started signing papers while sitting in bed. Clearly, he was hard at work getting caught up with a backlog of paperwork that had accumulated over the past few months.

Kotori's head went blank.

That was totally unfair. A cheat.

It briefly crossed her mind that it was bad for the Demon Lord's posture to do work in bed, but she hurriedly suppressed those thoughts.

Instead, she flooded her mind with thoughts of rainbow unicorns. Rainbow unicorns prancing across an endless meadow of purple flowers; rainbow unicorns with all sorts of different superpowers such as breathing fire, growing wings, and swallowing Koopa Troopas whole with sticky long tongues and laying them as giant spotted green eggs.

Kotori didn't want the Demon Lord to know what she was thinking about.

However, it took a lot of effort to keep her mind empty.

"So tell me, if you're not a witch, what are you?" The Demon Lord spoke as he multitasked, signing away at his papers.

La-la-la-la-la-lala...

"What is your objective?"

"Who do you work for?"

"Do you resent me?"

"Would you ever betray me?"

"What secrets are you hiding?"

Kotori wondered if she thought about sufficiently annoying thoughts, the Demon Lord would get out of her head. She focused her mind on a steamy yaoi fantasy about Haikyuu!! that she had derived from a doujinshi that she was particularly fond of on Earth. There was an omegaverse fanfic that she really liked where Kageyama was impregnated by Tsukishima, after which he gave birth to beautiful little babies. 

The Demon Lord rolled his eyes and snorted.

"You are a crude woman," he remarked distastefully.

Fortunately, it seemed to work. 

Praise yaoi. It was extremely useful in these kinds of circumstances.

Kotori continued to think about the smuttiest boys love doujinshi that she had ever read.

"I'm a simple man," Demon Lord Mephistos interrupted her thoughts. "All I want is the truth. Surrender all of yourself to me, and we won't need to go around in useless circles. If you wish to have your freedom returned to you, I require your absolute and unconditional loyalty."

The sheep girl didn't respond, and she continued to fill her head with empty thoughts.

"I'll give you some time to think about it."

There was only silence in the bedroom as the Demon Lord scratched away at his papers.

The sheep girl was curled in the sheets at his side, her back pressed against him.

Kotori suddenly squeezed the Demon Lord's hand tightly.

Mephistos looked down at the girl who laid next to him in bed.

Even now, the wall in her thoughts remained impenetrable as before. He had no idea what the girl was trying to express with her hands.

Her eyes were closed, but the expression on her face was comfortable.

She was entirely relaxed.

∎

ohko

Double procrastination chapter! Hurrah! Anyhow, I believe this scene captures many of the feelings that I was originally going for with this series. I wanted a soft cuddly kind of smut with a non-conventional relationship. Specifically, Kotori and the Demon Lord's relationship is twisted in certain ways, but it isn't all entirely bad.

I'm still debating to what extent this series qualifies as BDSM. It is slightly embarrassing to say it in public, but I probably have a fetish for light bondage. That said, I was planning to get rid of the bondage parts relatively soon(?). Maybe this is something you can help give me input on? The bondage will be replaced with a magic contract, but the question is whether I should get rid of it gradually or all at once. Either one of these is fine by me, but I'm not sure what all of you think.