Chapter 42: Slap Mark

Kat presented her ass to Arthur, insisting he should kick her ass to make things even.

Arthur looked at the sky, as if appealing to a higher power, but no god intervened on his behalf.

He let out a long sigh, his brow furrowing in annoyance. Kat’s loud voice and constant jumping to conclusions were starting to wear him down.

"Fine," he said, and his voice came out flatter than before. "You want it to count? Then hold still."

Kat braced herself with a smug little smile, clearly expecting a simple kick, but instead, Arthur moved to deliver a slap to her ass.

The sexual nature of the act didn’t even cross his mind at that moment as he committed to it fully, swinging with all his strength.

The slap landed with a sound like a firecracker, a sharp, deafening crack that echoed down the empty street and made Monica’s jaw drop.

Kat’s whole body pitched forward with the impact, her hips rippling in a slow, helpless bounce beneath the painted-on leggings.

A sharp gasp tore from her lips, a breathy, keening yelp that landed somewhere between pain and moan.

Kat froze for a second.

Her rear burned where his hand had landed; she could feel the shape of his handprint announcing itself through her leggings.

But that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the strange, treacherous gust of pleasure that had shot through her at the moment of impact. Her body reacted on its own, clenching without her permission.

No one had ever slapped her before. It was painful, and a bit humiliating, and yet...

She slowly turned around, her cheeks burning as she desperately tried to ignore the lingering reaction of her body. She puffed out her cheeks, scrunched up her nose, and glared at him with watery, indignant eyes.

"YOU... you can’t just... you were supposed to kick me, not.. not that!" she shrieked, one hand flying back to hover protectively over her own backside. "What is wrong with you?!"

"Whatever, you were the one that started all of this," Arthur rolled his eyes. "Fair is fair, or whatever."

"That’s not... I..."

She opened her mouth, but couldn’t find the right words. Strangely, she found herself intimidated by him after the slap.

"See you around, Kat."

Arthur turned and walked away without giving her a chance to say anything else. If his guesses about her destination were right, the two of them were headed toward the same gym.

And he had zero intention of spending that walk next to that woman.

Kat stood frozen on the sidewalk for a good ten seconds, hand still hovering behind her, her body still remembering his smack.

"Miss?" Monica tugged at her sleeve, blinking up at her with wide, innocent eyes. "Your face is all red."

Kat made a strangled noise.

"My mommy says girls get red like that when they like a man," Monica continued, with the merciless sincerity of a child reciting received wisdom. "Do you like the mister?"

"WHAT? No!" Kat’s voice cracked on the way up. "Absolutely not! He’s... he’s rude, and he slapped me, and I don’t... I don’t like him at all! That’s the opposite of liking someone!"

Monica considered this with the gravity of a supreme court. "You’re still red."

"That’s anger!" she said, also marching away, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

As she walked, she kept shaking her head, refusing — absolutely refusing — to acknowledge the way each step pressed her leggings against a backside that was still burning.

Arriving at the gym, the workout did not help. She’d hoped the exertion would burn the strange feeling out of her system, reset her, restore her to a world where Arthur was just an annoying classmate and nothing more.

Still, she couldn’t ignore the fact that he was there, sleeves rolled up, training hard, his muscles flexing.

The worst part was that her eyes kept finding him, her panties getting damp in a humiliating way.

〇〇〇

Arthur, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed Kat was at the gym, mostly because he’d increased the weight of his training again, leaving his mind dizzy after every set.

"Fuck, that was a good one..." he mumbled, finally finishing his last exercise.

His breathing was uneven, and there was a slight ache in his head, but he couldn’t stop the smile from curling across his lips. He loved training like this, the exhaustion, the burning muscles, and the feeling that he’d pushed himself as far as he could.

Then, as he was leaving, he passed the stretching area. Kat was on a mat, mid-stretch, one leg extended, torso folded forward in a way that, by accident, presented her huge ass perfectly to his eyes.

She probably felt more comfortable doing it, noticing there was no one in the stretch area at that time.

Arthur probably shouldn’t stare, but his eyes were caught by her perfect ass. And then he noticed something there, on the light gray fabric of her leggings: an obvious wet spot.

Kat, sensing eyes on her, lifted her head from the stretch. She followed his gaze downward, and noticed what he was watching.

First she grimaced, annoyed, but then her cheeks flushed as she realized what he could be seeing. Was it possible that her wetness was showing?

Before she could say anything, Arthur luckily left. But getting up, Kat noticed how her leggings were showing an embarrassing spot, and she immediately decided to go back home.

Kat’s apartment door barely survived the way she slammed it shut.

She stood with her back against it, chest heaving, her face burning with embarrassment and frustration.

"Okay," she muttered to the empty room. "A cold shower should help me forget that."

She peeled off her shirt, kicked off her sneakers, and marched to the bathroom. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of the leggings and pushed them down over the generous swell of her hips.

Halfway down her thighs, she caught her reflection in the full-length mirror.

There, on her left cheek, on that huge curve of flesh that turned heads wherever she went, was the clear mark of a hand.

He’d slapped her hard enough to mark her ass as his possession... And, for some reason, thinking about that made her clench her thighs together.

Trying to forget about it, she immediately stepped into the cold shower.

〇〇〇

Alan’s apartment was dark when he got home. He didn’t bother turning on the lights; he quickly made a cup of noodles and sat in front of his computer, the monitor light illuminating his face.

Wanting to have fun before starting work, he opened the Otaku Club enigma that Arthur had sent him earlier. This time, he gave it a proper read-through.

"Hm. Substitution cipher with a rotational trap on the vowels. Cute."

His fingers flew across the keyboard, solving it quickly. He snapped a photo of the solved grid, fired it off, and sent a message to his best friend.

[Alan: Solved it. Want the explanation too?]

[Arthur: Don’t you dare]

[Alan: ?]

[Arthur: The fun is in solving it myself. If you spoil it, I’m never sending you anything again.]

Alan rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. He agreed with Arthur, facing challenges was what made them interesting. Even if he felt like a big coward compared to his best friend.

Before he could type a reply, a photo came through. Arthur, mid-workout, skin gleaming, arm flexing as he held his phone up in the gym mirror. The caption read:

[Arthur: You’re missing out on the fun. You could’ve come to train with me.]

Alan grimaced the moment the image loaded. "This looks like hell," he muttered. "Who would ever want to be at a place like that?"

But then his eyes drifted past Arthur’s shoulder. In the background of the photo, he saw two busty older women who had apparently abandoned their exercises, their figures slightly blurred by the mirror’s depth of field.

Still, it was obvious that they were both looking in the exact same direction, their eyes glued to Arthur’s muscular back.

Alan leaned back against the chair and laughed. It was funny how his best friend never noticed these stares.

Alan stretched back in his chair until his spine popped. Then his gaze landed on the small object sitting on his desk, connected to one of his machines by a nest of cables.

The camera. Retrieved from the women’s bathroom that afternoon.

"Alright, you little thing," he murmured, pulling his chair closer. "Let’s see who you belong to."

He was reaching for the keyboard when his phone buzzed. It wasn’t a message from Arthur, but from an unknown number.

The message was nothing more than a bunch of numbers, but he understood its meaning with a single glance. With a long sigh, Alan copied and pasted the numbers into his decrypting algorithm.

His eyes moved slowly over the screen, reading the job he had been sent. If he could, he would leave it for later, prioritizing his best friend.

However, he had no choice, considering who had sent him the order. He could only sigh, thinking he would take a look at the camera once he was finished with that.