CHAPTER 77: THE TOUCH OF SELIA’S SOUL

It was one thing to hear from Selia that she was perfectly happy to help me out.

But after all that happened, to see her get herself comfy on the bed before pulling up her robe to reveal her thighs, before slapping her hand against them...

Even though I saw her thighs from much closer than any other part of her body and touched them for much longer, it wasn’t the kind of sight I could get used to.

And coupling it up with that inviting smile of hers...

"What are you waiting for?" Selia asked upon noticing my hesitation. She then locked her eyes with mine before quickly looking down, trying to track where exactly I was looking.

And as her eyes landed down on her thighs, she quickly brought them right back up to my face.

Her mouth then curved even further up, to the point the white of her pear-like teeth started to show between her lips.

"Not enough?" she asked in an innocent voice, pinching at her cloth to bring it just a little bit further, just this tiny bit closer to the barrier between decent temptation and outright seduction.

"Saintess..." I muttered while shaking my head. "That’s not very... holy of you," I pointed out, acting out a divine disappointment in order to hide my own embarrassment.

Selia, however, only giggled, adding even more charm to herself.

In the end, rather than letting her tease me further and further, I climbed onto the bed myself.

Given how I was going to sleep with my head on her lap, I would inevitably end up either on my back or on my side — in both cases, any excitement that I allowed to build up would be all for her to see.

And even with how we continued to shoot straight past every border and checkpoint on the list of possible means of intimacy... We still didn’t do it. And until we arrived at that point, it still felt weird to appear before her like that.

Or, to be honest with myself, I wasn’t exactly sure if, between the excitement she was building up in me and the embarrassment of knowing my pitched tent would be right before her eyes, I could even fall asleep.

Which is why, rather than enjoying the view of Selia finding the ultimately comfortable position only to then offer me her lap again, I just climbed up, turned over and laid my head down on the soft pillow of her thighs.

’It’s warm,’ I thought, closing my eyes before they would inevitably gravitate towards the two peaks hanging directly above my face.

Thankfully, all of my worries of whether I could fall asleep or not turned out quite unfounded.

Not because Selia gave me the courtesy of acting as if she wasn’t even here. It was quite the opposite, in fact.

Rather than just letting me slowly fall into slumber all on my own, she instantly moved her hands towards my head before running her fingers through my hair as she gently massaged my scalp.

That much, I was already somewhat... maybe not used to, but prepared for.

This time, however, her hands didn’t stop there. Instead, her fingers soon ventured out towards my ears, towards my neck — even ending up gently massaging all parts of my face!

’Haaah...’ I breathed out an inner sigh as the cool touch of her gentle fingers somehow, despite what any sane person would expect it to achieve, actually calmed me down.

Then, Selia started to hum in a low, steady voice, with barely any melody or rhythm to it.

Just a constant, steady sound that, like a wave, oscillated from slightly higher tones to a slightly lower range over and over again.

On its own, there was no pattern I could detect in her voice at all. It was only when her caresses lulled me to the border between awakeness and slumber that it finally made sense.

Her voice, that slight, throat-born hum wasn’t made to match any sort of musical rhythm at all. In fact, it would be wrong to even call it rhythm, given its lack of regularity.

Instead, the slight changes to the tone of her hum matched perfectly the movements of her fingers, as if she was trying to associate different forms of caressing with different ranges of her soothing voice.

Then, something unexpected happened.

Selia withdrew her hands, the sudden absence of which nearly startled me awake. Yet, before I could even react, my whole world — formerly lit up by the slight shine piercing through my eyelids — now went completely black as pretty much my whole face grew warm.

’What is she...’

I attempted to figure out the mystery of this sudden change, but my thoughts were too sluggish, my mind too relaxed.

And with Selia’s warmth, smell and presence now all over my face, the last of my thoughts finally dispersed, throwing me straight back into the familiar world of nothingness that I grew to respect if not outright crave.

"Finally, some peace..." I thought, breathing a sigh of relief.

As relaxing and soothing as it was to fall asleep atop Selia’s lap, especially for someone who spent so many evenings with all sorts of wildest ASMR recordings on... All of it made the rational part of myself quite darn tense.

While I wouldn’t go as far as to call it instincts warning me about something, it was more of a sense of wrongness, the lack of challenge that came with what could only be called a heavenly reward.

’What did I do to deserve such a girl coddling me up so much?’ I asked myself, taking my time to sort my own feelings before moving on to what I was even here, in this dream-like world for.

Sure, there was this thing of me apparently being the chosen one of her fate, someone who was destined to fulfill her destiny...

But what did I do to become that person? Was that even true to begin with? But wouldn’t that mean Selia was born unable to fulfill her fate by the world’s design, given how I had to be summoned into it before I could become her chosen one?

Or maybe that role, of her chosen one, wasn’t something set in stone, but a position one had to fulfill certain criteria to achieve?

"Shit..." I cursed under my breath as those thoughts started to plague my mind, distracting me from the very purpose I came to this realm to achieve.

Still, I couldn’t just keep on ignoring those feelings, those doubts.

It was one thing for Selia to assure me that everything was alright, as she wanted and a result she was happy with. But for me to come to believe it all? And to truly accept it by heart?

"Damn it..." my voice grew weaker, softer, devoid of strength. "I wonder what kind of face is she making right now..."

As if listening in to my wishes, the world of nothingness around me suddenly changed...

Only to turn into a perfect replica of the room I was supposedly sleeping in, just... much bigger, much grander, filled with so much more detail than I ever took notice of.

There were the doors, the window with its wooden shutters, even the safebox and, quite obviously, the bed.

And on it, just like I could already tell, there were the two of us in a position much different than the one I remembered falling asleep in.

My head was no longer down on Selia’s lap.

Somehow, at some point, she either pulled me up and then slid herself down — likely, a combination of both. And in the process of doing so, she moved my head from her thighs and into her bosom, resting its back into the nest of her chest before wrapping herself all around it in a tight, affectionate hug.

One of her hands gently pressed down on my eyes, shielding them from the light that made its way past the cracks and openings in the window and then into the room while the other...

Her other hand had already left the area of my face and neck, now moving across my chest in a slow, steady manner.

’What is she even doing...?!’ I thought, slightly panicked when I saw her thighs press into the sides of my hips only for her legs to then lock together just above where I was — just like I was worried — pitching a tent.

Strangely enough, despite escalating what was supposed to be a simple lap-nap into a full-on wrap-hug from the back in which she brought her bare legs just an inch away from my hard-on, she was perfectly careful not to allow her legs to drop, limiting herself to just the stuff I saw her do.

Then, the situation changed again, when all the sensations that should’ve been lost to my slumber — the feel of her warmth, her presence, even her robes rubbing against my skin...

They’d all returned, even though I was still locked away in this world of former nothingness!

And then I felt it.

Not the touch of her hand as she caressed my chest. Not even the gentle cover of her fingers over my eyes, protecting them from whatever little light managed to make its way to the room.

It was nothing physical, even though in that department I could feel it all, even as far as the soft touch of both sides of her cleavage pressing against my ears.

It was something beyond that. On the level that I’d continued to notice for quite a while now.

"Is it just me or..."

I gulped my saliva down, taken aback by the implications behind this discovery.

"Or is it the feeling of her... soul?"