CHAPTER 154: HUMOR ME

Caius straightened up.

A look of disappointment flashed in Cynthia’s eyes but was gone in barely a second as she simply waved her hand, expecting him to start the set of poses right from the first.

Caius didn’t.

"What’s the matter?" Cynthia asked, "Have you forgotten them?"

Caius shook his head.

"No, I remember," he said. He meant it. His brain captured every single pose. He was just unwilling to replicate them for a second time.

"Can I try something, Professor?" He asked.

Cynthia paused and then gestured to show he had the floor. Woe betide her not to encourage creativity. But she didn’t think there was much to innovate about her poses. She had had decades to refine them, after all.

Caius began to take steps about, pausing every few seconds to move like he was about to perform one of Cynthia’s poses only to stop and then turn in the opposite direction while placing his hands and feet in ’strange’ positions. He’d tweak that new position a bit and then nod before doing it again with another one of the poses.

Cynthia’s brows furrowed in confusion and the one time Caius took his attention from what he was doing and raised his eyes to see her confusion, he couldn’t help but smile at the irony.

He had guessed it while she had been directing him to make the poses earlier but he was sure of it now; The poses were dance moves. Or at least they looked like it. Aggressive dance moves meant to allow a woman to contort her body in various poses that accentuated their femininity. i.e protruding hips and multiple gyrations.

In a way, the dance moves were familiar to those Caius had seen on TV in his old life/world but never actually participated in himself. Only these were way, way more intense. They were forcing the movements of parts Caius never knew needed to be moved during a dance. He could see how performing them would make one so focused and leave room for hardly any other thought.

Still, looking at the poses as dance moves gave Caius the idea that there could be a masculine style to complement them.

What he was doing now, was coming up with complementary styles for each pose and making a mental note of them. He had no idea if they would accentuate Mana points but, fortunately, that was not important. He didn’t need them to. He just needed to ’further’ the idea that he gave a damn about the poses and thus, further his agenda.

"Alright," he announced after ten minutes at it, "I’m done."

"That won’t help you," Cynthia said with a frown, looking like she was now at her limit of creativity allowance as she continued,

"You’re not really accentuating your Mana Points. The ones in your ankles look so hardly moved that they might atrophy. The same for your hips. It’s like you’re scared of moving them."

Caius smiled.

"Trust me. It’ll work," he said and held out a hand.

Cynthia eyed the hand in surprise.

"What?" She asked.

"We should do it together," Caius said gesturing with the hand he held out before he let it become still in a very gentlemanly, inviting fashion.

Now Cynthia understood why he had held his hands as he had while performing those subpar moves; He was simulating having a partner.

"My poses have never needed a partner," Cynthia said with her arms folded beneath her breasts.

"Are you sure about that?" Caius asked.

"I’m sure," Cynthia said, "And I ask that you get back to it. Or we might as well give meditation another try.

I was offering the poses as an alternative for Focus gathering but if you don’t have the discipline for it, we might as well go back to the tried and true method..."

"Cynthia," Caius called to interrupt the Professor’s rant.

Cynthia had looked off to the side in seeming annoyance but looked back again at him when he called her name.

Caius gestured again with the hand he still had held out and then let it go slightly limp in invitation.

"Humor me," he said with a dashing smile on his face.

Cynthia paused and then blinked. Once was not enough and multiple times didn’t do the trick. She really was mesmerized by that smile. But, of course, she shook herself out of whatever feeling was starting to set in and let out a scoff.

She took one hand away from underneath her breasts to grab Caius’s. When he pulled her, she allowed herself to be pulled and let out a small gasp when he placed his other hand on her back.

The gown she had on, left her back open and Caius’ fingers were now splayed against her skin. His touch felt warm. It also tingled.

She cleared her throat.

"What am I supposed to do now?" She asked.

"You dan- I mean, you perform your poses as normal," Caius said.

"Alright," Cynthia said, and was about to begin when Caius interrupted.

"Slowly," he cautioned her gently, "So I can follow along."

Cynthia furrowed her brows and then let out a breath. It was warm and sweet.

"Very well," she said.

And so it began.

With every move of the set of poses that Cynthia performed, Caius performed a complementary one. His hands never stayed in place. They moved up and down her back, grabbed hold of her hips, and even reached down to grab and lift her thighs at times.

Cynthia’s brows rose at the particular maneuver but she could hardly stop. She had conditioned herself to be focused while performing the poses. Only something truly adverse to what she was doing would pull her out of her focus and drive to complete the set she had already started. And, as new as the feeling of Caius’ hands on her body was, it didn’t detract from her poses.

At one point, his grip on her hips grew harder and he pulled her against his body. Cynthia’s hands weren’t touching him. Her arms, gleaming gloriously, raised her hands high above her head to clap once before spreading to perform a few complicated moves but while she did that like it was second nature for her, her face was two inches from Caius’s.

As a Vampire, it was only after Caius reached the age of Twenty-five that he’d stop growing and then mostly maintain that appearance for the rest of his immortal life.

In essence, at eighteen years, Caius was still growing. And ever since becoming a True Vampire and acquiring the physical ability befitting of his Vampiric Nature, he had grown a couple of inches and now stood at 6’0 in height.

Cynthia Kragsten was 5’7 without her heels but she closed some of the distance between her and Caius’s height by standing on her tiptoes as was required for most of the set of poses she was currently practicing. In any case, although her eyes rolled up to stare at Caius’s, they eventually came down to look at his lips. She watched them stretch into a smile.

And then he moved forward, causing her breasts to press into his chest. Her heart thudded in her chest a bit harder than usual and, for a brief second, she forgot what they were doing. She forgot why their bodies were in this seemingly compromising position.

Fortunately, her body remembered. Or, more accurately, it was reminded.

For something she had never thought was required, the way Caius moved his legs and used his chest to push her back, told Cynthia’s body what the next pose should be.

She performed the pose.

Her arms fell from their raised position above her head and swung a couple of times enchantingly as she leaned back so hard, she really should have fallen. But Caius had seen her perform this pose when she was showing him what to do and knew she had the grace and impeccable center of gravity to remain in that hard lean without falling.

His support wasn’t needed but still he gave it.

And that support gave Cynthia the confidence to lean even further back and place her body in a pose that accentuated the Mana points she was targeting more than ever.

When Cynthia snapped back up, her expression was incredulous as though she truly could not believe the synergy that the moves Caius had come up with—in less than a quarter of an hour—had with poses she had spent decades perfecting.