Chapter 85: Hard at work while Saintess wants me to get hard and get to work
"You really are something else," Selia said while sitting cross-legged on the bed.
It was quite the risqué position to sit at, given the nature of her clothes, where only my determination not to look her way saved me from turning into a voyeur.
"Why is that?" I asked while humming some old tune the lyrics to which I’d long since forgotten, stripping the original song of all its intended meaning and leaving nothing but just the catchy yet calm rhythm of its beat. And while I hummed my mind away, I continued to carefully arrange exactly half of my coffee seeds on a simple, wooden tray right before me, ready to put them through the wringer of my recently obtained ability.
Seeing how her crossed legs weren’t enough to divert my attention from my task, Selia rose up and straightened her legs only to toss them up... and then drop them down onto my shoulders.
Just a few days ago, I would freeze on the spot, unsure what to do next. A few days prior to that, when dealing with someone I was familiar enough with to let them get away with something like this, I would slap their legs off my shoulders before they could properly rest them down.
But with Selia’s legs on my shoulders?
I merely rolled my eyes before turning my attention right back to arranging the seeds into a formerly line.
"When that bell rang, you froze, instantly jumping into a full-on panic mode, ready to ditch this town and run for your life from the very moment you first heard about that bell’s meaning," Selia leaned back on her left arm while using her right hand to count, currently pushing just one of her fingers up. "Then, you switched to a different mindset, planning how to make the most of the now quickly changing situation."
Selia straightened her second finger.
"Next, you went to plan out in what order you will bring certain inventions to make sure each new tool you would introduce would facilitate the benefits of the stuff you’d introduced before..." Selia raised another finger, "and now, you switched your focus back to what was our original goal for the day."
In the end, Selia held her hand up with a total of four fingers raised.
"And all of that," she shook her right hand, "in the span of what, two hours? Three?"
Selia started to pull in her left leg while pushing out her right... only to then quickly switch and reverse. Then, as my shoulders swung to accommodate the movement of her legs, she reverted right back, repeating the whole process over and over again until I had no other choice but to put my seeds aside and turn my face to her, giving her the attention she so desperately wanted.
"I’m merely trying to best react to the events around me," I explained with a shrug of my shoulder, pretending not to see anything below her conveniently raised skirt. With me kneeling down on her floor and Selia lying down on the bed with her legs resting down on my shoulders, it was an actual challenge not to look where my eyes were naturally poised to look.
’The moment I look, we are going straight to the action, all the duties and tasks be damned,’ I thought, fully aware of just how thin of a thread my willpower was hanging on. ’And there’s no way I’m letting our first time be just some sloppy, excitement-borne moment that we would come to regret later on!’
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, content with how my thoughts only reinforced my determination, allowing me to raise my eyes just the tiny bit enough to look past the temptation and over to where Selia laid down her head. And as I caught her intense stare...
"Tsk..." Selia clicked her tongue before pushing her upper body up and then leaning it forward, enclosing my head between her lap, her stomach, her chest, and then her face, all the while wrapping her arms all around it.
"Caught you," she stated with a sense of triumph in her voice.
"You sure did," I replied in the flattest of voices I could produce. "And now that you did, can I go back to my job? Or did you change your mind and stop caring whether or not we can replicate coffee in this world?"
For but a little longer, Selia kept my head hostage... only to then pull back as she released it, allowing me a fresh breath of air.
"For some reason, you really are no fun today," Selia complained as she pulled back and even dragged her legs off my shoulders before coiling them below her bottom, finally freeing me from the risk of constantly looking under her skirt whether I wanted to do it or not.
"That’s because I’m just one temptation away from pouncing on you and either getting my ass handed over to me as you retaliate, or having my way with you in a manner much worse than what I envisioned for the first time when we engage with each other in that way," I answered, hoping with all of my heart that this kind of answer would be enough to placate Saintess boredom.
Because by all means, what I was doing right now was perfectly boring.
The inn’s room, a place where Selia would push the limits of what we could do with each other, has now turned into a simple workshop where my only concern was the state of the seeds.
After all, that’s what I got this wonderful ability to manipulate their mana intake for!
And now that everything was finally ready, it just felt wrong to put it aside for later.
"I know!" Selia whined, only to roll on the bed and then push her face into the pillow while pushing her knees up while ramping her ass up, as if to leave one last big temptation for me to endure. "Why else do you think I’m trying to tempt you so damn hard?"
Hearing this, I couldn’t help but smile.
"Selia, just let me finish this thing. Then we can go on a date, enjoy each other’s company out in the public, maybe even enjoy something no one else in this world ever could and then..."
Selia froze, only for her ears to perk up. Then, she pulled her face out of the pillow and turned her head to throw me an intense glare.
"And then?" she asked, her ass wiggling a little in the air, as if mere mentions of my plans were enough to get her going at this point.
"And then..." I hesitated a little, "you know..."
Was there really any point for her to push me so far just to make me say it?
Given our connection, I was quite damn sure she already knew all about my fantasies of how I wouldn’t turn her all over while having my way with her in every way and position human biology allowed... and then in some only possible through the help of magic!
With that in mind, what would it change if I were to go ahead and say it out loud, save for how embarrassing it would be?
"Know what?" Selia grinned as she rolled on the bed again, only to end up lying down on her stomach, with her elbows on the beddings and her hands keeping her head up while she stared right into my face with those hypnotizing, blue eyes of hers.
"Please, just drop it..." I shook my head, resisting the desire to just lean in and get a taste of her lips, knowing full well doing so wouldn’t end up with just a kiss.
I would struggle to eat just a single chip out of the bag, so I had absolutely no confidence I could stop if I got to enjoy something infinitely more tasty than some random snack!
"Okay, okay, fine...!" Selia giggled before rolling off to the side, so that my body wouldn’t obstruct her view of the seeds I arranged. "But it should be fine for me to watch you work, right?"
Rather than answering, I nodded my head before turning both my body and my attention back to the seeds in question.
By using just half of the ones I brought over, I ended up with exactly a dozen of them ready for the testing. And so, after practicing my breathing technique for a while to calm down and clear my thoughts, I reached down and picked the first seed before closing my eyes and—while still practicing my breathing technique—falling as deep into my consciousness as I could, almost as deep as when I fell into that dream-like realm.
No matter how hard I tried, though, nothing happened.
No sliders appeared for me to adjust. No context window for me to fill in with the code, no projection of my hands that would allow me to write with nothing but light.
All I felt was the silence, the slight chill of the late afternoon... and then the presence of a small seed in my hand.
And then, I found it.
It wasn’t a slider, context window or anything I could connect to any previous experience of mine.
It just... was.
The feeling of this seed. The potential hidden in it...
And a projection of what it would grow into if sown in its current state, along with a myriad of invisible, feeling-based sliders—each controlling a different, extremely precise aspect of the seed’s inner nature.