Chapter 91: Back the way we originally came from
"Oh?" Selia smiled, only to reach out and slowly trace her fingers against the centerline of my chest. "Hungry for more, are you now?" she grinned as her hand reached my chin. She grabbed it with her fingers, locking it in place, and then leaned down.
Yet, just as her lips were about to brush against mine...
"Know the pain of having to hold back," she whispered while rubbing her hips to the sides while flapping her lips just a hair’s width away from mine.
Then, as if nothing ever happened, she pulled out and stood up before reaching out with her hand to help me up as well.
’Huh?’
My eyes widened as I stared at Selia’s extended hand, struggling to process what just happened.
Then, it hit me.
I’ve refused her advances quite a few times, always finding a proper reason to push actual intimacy for later. For when we know each other better. For after our date...
And now, Selia did the same to me!
’Oh damn...’
Judging by the wide grin decorating her lips, she was insanely satisfied with herself right now.
Could I really blame her for it, though?
If she were the one to keep on teasing me only to then suddenly cut my advances short and leave me with painfully blue balls over and over again, my pettiness wouldn’t allow me to miss such a great opportunity to pay her back.
As such, if anything, I only had myself to blame for the situation that happened right now.
"I see..." I sighed out before reaching out and grabbing Selia’s extended arm before accepting her help standing up. The moment I did so, however, my excitement became quite apparent — a natural result, with how our recent make-out session nearly made me drop the plans I had for our first time in favor of just going with the flow.
"Doesn’t feel all that good, does it?" Selia asked, set on rubbing the lesson in. "To be denied like that," she added, just in case I was missing the point of her lesson, even though she could clearly tell through our bond that I, in fact, didn’t miss it at all.
"Yeah, it doesn’t." I nodded my head in agreement. "And since it would make the lesson meaningless if you just decided to spare me now, I guess it’s back to marching for us?"
Selia only grinned before letting go of my hand, turning around, and then picking up the pace, all the while swinging her hips left and right, almost as if she wanted me to see just exactly what my earlier insentience cost me.
’I have to take her on that date as soon as possible,’ I thought, unable to tear my eyes away from the faint outline of her ass shaking with every step she made.
Thankfully, it wasn’t all that long before the constant effort of keeping up a good, marching pace cleared my mind from those thoughts. And it wasn’t all that long before I fell into a flow-state of sorts, with my thoughts turning off while I focused on nothing but the simple task of putting one leg in front of the other.
The path itself wasn’t hard, at least not initially.
It was almost as if the jungle of death held enough value for someone that they invested in making the path smooth enough for carriages, and while it was only wide enough for a single horse-drawn carriage to take, there were convenient turning points every few miles or so, where the path widened enough for the carriages to effortlessly move past each other.
All of it made perfect sense... or it would, if I could spot even a single carriage treading this path. Yet, no matter how long we moved, we’ve only encountered a single party of adventurers returning from the jungle and not a single carriage, putting the validity of this whole path in question.
I’ve only managed to solve the puzzle of this road several hours later, when it suddenly took a sharp turn to the right... while Selia continued directly ahead, through a much smaller dirt path made through the constant tilting of the ground of the traveler’s feet rather than a coordinated construction effort.
"I wonder where this road leads to," I muttered, turning my head over to look at the road we just got off.
"It’s an ancient one," Selia absentmindedly replied. "There are stories of how it was once one of the more important roads for some long-gone empire, connecting its interior with a grand harbor at the road’s end... But without that empire, and not a single memory left of its cities, that port has long since fell to ruin too. From what I’ve heard, it’s mostly used by smugglers and adventurers brave or desperate enough to hire said smugglers."
"An abandoned harbor, you say..." I muttered under my nose before turning silent as I fell back into my own thoughts.
Just a week ago, I would disregard the mention and quickly forget about it, as it would hold no significance for me whatsoever.
But now?
After I already made plans for using simple economy and technological development to take over this city and turn it into a base from where I would push my inventions out into the wider world?
With this perspective in mind, a harbor — even if an abandoned one — could be of great importance.
’No one would build a port on a random piece of coast. Before the age of great inventions, people would usually just adapt natural harbors for their use instead. And that means...’
In my mind, I could already see train tracks mirroring the path of the original road with trains going both ways to maintain an overwhelming volume of exports, effectively flooding the world with items produced off my designs...
Soon, however, I had to discard all those thoughts, saving them for later.
’It’s okay to dream about the future, but for now, it’s best if I focus on the present.’
There was a very simple reason for why I’ve decided to focus on the current moment instead — thanks to our increased pace, I could already see the tall trees of the jungle of death off in the distance! And that meant, it would be an hour, maybe two, before we would reach the territory controlled by the guardian beasts of that place.
As it turned out, we didn’t take an hour or two hours to reach it, but only managed to do so right as the sun started to set behind the horizon, forcing us to abandon our plans to complete our goal today.
"You know you can just tell me what to do, and I could be back in less than an hour?" Selia suggested, eager to complete the task even though the last rays of light of the sunset were about to vanish, basking the whole place in near-perfect darkness.
"Selia, please..." I shook my head, refusing to even think about such an option. "There’s no need for you to take this risk. We are not in any sort of a hurry, are we?" I asked while quickly searching through the few bags of supplies we brought along on the trip before pulling out a sealed bottle from within. "Wouldn’t it be better to just set camp, have a meal, some fun, and then some rest?"
Selia’s eyes jumped from the nearby lane of perfectly clear, open terrain behind which the trees of the jungle rose high up to the skies and the bottle in my hand.
Feeling that just the drink wouldn’t be enough to convince her, I quickly pulled out all the supplies for the day before ripping the bag to turn it into a simple piece of cloth and then setting it down on the ground.
"If my lady would be so kind as to rest down and relax," I pointed at the makeshift bedding, one that could hardly even keep the saintess away from the coldness of the ground. "It would be my pleasure to offer her a massage!"
This was my best bet.
According to my mom, my sister, and that one girl I had some fun with for a while back on Earth, I was perfectly predisposed to drop all my ambitions and make a living by giving massages. It was also a fact that I made more girls moan with my hands than I ever did in the... more common way.
"A massage, you say?" Selia looked down at the piece of makeshift cloth, then at my face, and finally at the bottle I set aside. For a moment, her face became a battlefield for different emotions fighting for domination. Then, with a look of rather considerable reluctance, she approached the cloth before getting down on her knees and then laying flat on it.
"I hope it’s not just your attempt to get luc... AAH!"
All it took was a single press of my thumbs against Selia’s lower back for her entire self to exude a long, deep moan. And by all means, just by feeling the knots on her back underneath my thumbs, I couldn’t be surprised by her reaction at all!
Still, while I was perfectly confident in my massaging skill, I wouldn’t be satisfied by just giving Selia one.
Sure, I used the perspective of a massage to stop her from trying to go into the forest alone when the night already took over... But who was there to tell me to keep the experience as plain as that?
"My lady, so you can better relax, a drink," I spoke in a soft, monotone voice while unsealing the bottle and bringing it over right next to Selia’s face while making sure to keep it just far away for the fumes of the alcoholic drink not to irritate her nose.
"Hmph..." Selia scoffed a little, slightly embarrassed by the noise she made just a moment ago, before propping herself up on her arms and grabbing the bottle before taking a swift yet considerable swig from it. "Haaa... ah..." she released a hot, bothered sigh before her face finally calmed down, melting from the warmth of the drink and even inducing a small smile on her lips as she laid back down.
"Now then..." I stretched out my fingers before pressing my hands together and then moving them around to warm up the joints of my wrists. "While I don’t expect to make any mistakes, be sure to tell me if you feel any discomfort," I requested while kneeling right next to her, with her clothed body on full display before my eyes, all within the reach of my fingers.
’Just don’t overdo it, man,’ I told myself as I finished up with my warm-up and reached with my hands over Selia’s back. ’Your goal is to get her to relax. So don’t be stupid enough to make her hot and bothered with it!’