Susan woke up almost an hour later to an empty room. She tightly held the blanket up to her chest to make sure that no one was there before calming down. Then, she noticed the note beside her on the bed. Reading it, she understood that Apex would come back in two hours with Lunch, giving her ample time to rest and recover.

“I’m going to kill him…” She said as her embarrassment turned into rage. “To take advantage of me like that. I thought we were training, and he suddenly pulls a move like that. What an asshole.”

She spent the next few minutes seething in anger and thinking of ways to mutilate him as her anger slowly cooled down to a slightly mellow level. Then she noticed that the note had something else written on the back.

Sorry about the stunt I pulled. I got you some chocolates as an apology.

She snorted at the words. “As if chocolates are going to make me forgive him,” she angrily said, noticing an unmarked box on the table. She threw the note on the ground and got out of bed to check it out. “Are these also White House chocolates?” She mumbled while examining the unmarked state of the box. Inside were individually packaged spheres of chocolate, which made her expression soften slightly.

“Truffles…” she said. “He’s lucky that I like these.” Unwrapping one of the truffles, she ate it. Unable to help herself, the moment the chocolate hit her tongue, she moaned. Shakily, she grabbed the box and collapsed into the armchair. “God, these are amazing.”

As her mind moved away from the anger of her trainer’s actions, a different sort of thought emerged in her mind. As she ate the third chocolate, the thought of herself standing naked in front of him flashed again in her mind as a mild heat gathered in her abdomen.

She shook the thought off and continued eating one chocolate after another ravenously. Eventually, more and more such thoughts started emerging as she felt a mild heat in her abdomen.

“Damn… did he lace these with something?” She paused halfway between putting the eighth truffle in her mouth. “No, I’m getting paranoid. If they were laced, then it would’ve been much more prominent…I guess spending two months in a coma has a way of messing up your hormones.”

She tried to shake the random thoughts out of her head, but the image of Apex looking at her naked kept flashing in her mind, keeping her distracted.

“No, I shouldn’t…” She spoke to herself with a thoughtful expression. “He could come by in the middle. That would suck. I’ll do it tonight instead. I should have plenty of time once he leaves after dinner.”

As the minutes passed, she had wiped the entire box of chocolates clean and was back in bed watching TV, getting herself updated with the current affairs of the world, and looking for traces of Apex changing things on her planet. As the hours passed, the inappropriate thoughts and desires intermittently kept coming back to her. Still, it was a manageable level, and she held off until Apex came to the room with their lunch for the day.

“How’d you like the chocolates?” He asked as he entered the room.

Her response was a faint huff as she crossed her arms and turned her head away.

“Going by the mess you made, I think it’s safe to assume that you liked them,” he said. “Though, please keep your surroundings clean. I would rather not have to handle irradiated foil wrappers and boxes every time we hang out.”

She didn’t say anything and huffed even more emphatically before turning away.

Apex looked at her with a sigh. Swiping his arm and shooting thin tendrils at the garbage all around, he immediately cleaned up the surroundings and then sat on the bed beside her.

“I’m sorry about what I did before,” he said sincerely. “I wanted to play a joke on you. In hindsight, it was distasteful and very rude. I am willing to accept whatever punishment you deem fit.”

After a few seconds, she slowly looked back at him with a stern expression on her face.

“I know what you are doing,” she said. “And I also know that this bed, the furniture, hell, probably even this crappy robe, is something you made for me. But doing something like that is still not acceptable.”

“Crappy robe? I tried to make it as comfortable as possible for you.”

“It’s a hospital robe, dude. It’s open in the back. Every time I walk away from you, I’m conscious about giving you an eyeful of my ass. Calling it crappy is generous.”

“Noted. Do you want me to get you something else?”

“Don’t divert from the topic. What you did was wrong.”

“I understand completely,” he nodded. “I will make sure that no such thing happens again. How about we eat now? Food’s going to get cold.”

“After that stunt you pulled, I am not eating lunch with you,” she said. “You get to watch me eat while giving me either a shoulder or a foot massage. Consider that your punishment, Mr. Chancellor.”

“That’s a better punishment than I’d expected,” he chuckled. “Done.”

“Just like that?”

“Did you expect me to refuse?” He asked. “Giving a foot rub is barely a real punishment. Why would I say no?”

“I just thought that considering your…stature. You might find it degrading.”

“I’m not someone with just impotent authority holding me up, Sue,” he said. “My authority and confidence stem from the power that I possess. I didn’t inherit it from anyone. Hell, I wasn’t even elected. I just took a stand and made things happen.”

“Way to ruin my mood. I thought you’d be humiliated and refuse, giving me appropriate grounds to keep things between us strictly professional. And wait… that means you aren’t even a real chancellor. You’re a fake.”

“Gaia was never going to be like the Republic, Susan. I have far too much hands-on control for that.”

“Fine, I guess I can at least get a massage out of this hollow victory,” she said. “And you can call me Sue. I don’t mind.”

Apex gave her a smile and walked behind her. “Open the food, start eating, don’t worry about me,” he said before putting his hands on her shoulders.

Immediately, a comfortable groan escaped her lips, and her eyes closed instinctively. “God…right there.” She said as he placed his hands on the sides of her neck and massaged with his thumbs along her spine. “I just want to…lie down.”

“Come on, start eating,” he said. “I’m only going to do this for twenty minutes tops before moving on to the second part of the massage.”

“Yeah, I think…I’m going to wait for you to finish,” she said. “This is too good. Oh~ That’s the spot.”

As a few minutes passed, Susan was barely conscious, with her eyes drooping as if she was about to fall asleep at any time. Since she’d decided to delay eating, he ended up moving to her head and massaged her head as well, making her release increasingly prominent sounds of pleasure and comfort that gave him all the more motivation to keep going.

Soon, twenty minutes had passed, and the woman was melted in her chair, looking like she was nothing more than a limp, boneless suit of skin. He let go of her and stepped away from her to drag the chair on the opposite side of the table to her side.

As he was about to lean over and grab her foot, she held his hand and shook her head. “I’m gonna…take a rain check on that foot massage…”

“I was just about to bring out the massage oils,” he said. “As you wish. We can postpone this to dinner instead.”

“Maybe…tomorrow,” she said with her lips pressed together. “I need to recover after such an…intense experience.”

“Sure. Shall we eat?”

“You start...I still need a minute to recover.”

He chuckled and opened both sets of containers.

“Get up, we still have some training to do.”

“More?” She asked tiredly.

“Yes, more. Don’t act surprised. You knew about this. We’ve only covered your invisibility. The psionics part still remains,” he said. “We have to test it to see the extent of your power.”

“Would it be fine if I took a little nap first?” She asked. “Whatever you did left my body feeling like jelly…see?” She tried to get a firm grip on her fork, but kept failing.

“You’re the one who asked for the massage.”

“Just let me rest for a bit before we continue, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Where’d you get those chocolates?” She asked him while taking her time.

“Take a guess.”

“White House?”

“Not the one on this planet. I have a small cocoa plantation in the White House on Gaia B. That’s where the chocolate was produced. I brought them here after you got mad at me.”

“You got me chocolates from another planet?” She asked with wide eyes.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I can teleport things between different bodies. ”

“You got me chocolates from another planet to try and make up with me, Apex,” she said with emphasis. “It most definitely is a big deal.”

“As long as it got you to forgive me.”

“Oh, no. Don’t get me wrong,” she raised a shaky finger. “I haven’t completely forgiven you with just some chocolates and a massage. You are on thin ice. If you pull something like that again, you can expect hell from me.”