Orgasm system: These beastwomen must moan!

Chapter 27: Run along

Stefan’s POV

The slave scampered away before I could say anything else, disappearing with the oversized water pot between tents like he had never been there.

"Run along, bro." I smirked wickedly.

Lily turned around. When she saw it was, she fixed me with an intense gaze. It was as if she was reading something in my face that I wasn’t sure I had put there.

The System chimed quietly.

[LILY’S CURRENT MOOD: Frustrated.]

I rolled my eyes at the notification.

"Thank you for the unnecessary announcement," I muttered under my breath, to no one.

"Is there something on my face?" I asked the woman, cocking my head slightly. But before she could reply which she didn’t even seem to want to do as she just stared on, I nodded in understanding.

That was how all these beastwomen stare, no big deal.

"Do you have something you want to say?" I asked her, raising my voice to be louder than earlier so she wouldn’t miss my words.

"You should recover fast. You should recover well. The two flowers need to be up." She said, her formal, slightly stiff delivery made everything sound like a verdict being read aloud.

However, I understood what she meant.

"I know you are eager to have me perform my magic on those women but I can’t yet. Actually recovery might take more than three days if care isn’t taken."

"My energy isn’t where it needs to be." I informed her firmly.

"What does it require?" She asked simply.

I shifted my weight, considering how to explain this in terms she had actually understand. "Food," I said. "Good food. At the right times. Dawn, midday, supper - whatever you call it here. Three times a day, consistently, or the magic won’t build back properly."

She blinked once. Processed.

"I understand. Come." She said.

She turned and walked, and I followed, because at this point following women around this camp was essentially my full-time occupation.

~~~~~~~~

My corner of Zinnia’s tent had started to feel like mine in the way temporary things sometimes do when you spend enough time in them, the particular indent in the fur where I always sat, the angle of light through the tent flap in the afternoon, the smell of animal skin and something faintly smoky underneath.

I settled onto the fur and waited. Lily had told me to wait here while she commanded some slaves outside.

Two slaves arrived shortly after, carrying between them food. Roasted tubers, still steaming. Meat on the bone, dark and glistening. Fruits I didn’t have names for, cut into wedges and arranged like somebody had decided presentation mattered.

The smell hit me like a physical thing.

My hand was already reaching for the nearest fruit , an apple, or something close enough to one when the System dinged.

[DAILY TASK REMINDER: Do not eat until noon.]

[Time remaining: 0:20:00]

Twenty minutes.

I sat with the apple in my hand and breathed through my nose.

Twenty minutes. After everything today, the two hours, the exhaustion, the hunger that had been sitting in my stomach like a stone since morning, twenty minutes was nothing.

I had survived worse waits than this. I’d once sat in a police waiting room for six hours straight maintaining a cover story while running on nothing but black coffee and audacity.

Twenty minutes was nothing.

And this wouldn’t be about the measly AP, it would be about self-discipline.

I held the apple, one part of me not wanting to put it down, and looked away from the food deliberately, the way you look away from something you’re pretending not to want.

That was when I noticed the slave who had stayed behind.

He was very young, shouldn’t be more than eighteen. Tall in that awkward, unfinished way of someone who’d grown fast but hadn’t filled out yet, limbs slightly too long for his body, slave cloth hanging off sharp shoulders. He was standing near the tent entrance with his head bowed, clearly waiting to be dismissed, clearly also very aware of the food sitting between us.

I quickly held the apple out to him so to silence that part of me which was begging me to put it in my mind and damn the consequences.

He raised his head and stared at the apple for a split second then he moved hesitantly to take it, the way you take something when you’re not sure if it’s a trick.

He didn’t wait for me to say anything before he put the entire thing in his mouth and finished it in one go, core and all, chewing noisily with the complete focus of someone whose body had overridden every other consideration.

My lips formed an O as I stared at him in surprise. "When did he last eat?" I mumbled.

I got so entertained by his action that I didn’t realize when my hand picked

up another piece of fruit and held it out without saying anything else.

Same result. Same speed. Same complete, unselfconscious hunger, like being watched didn’t register against the more immediate fact of food existing within reach.

A chuckle left my throat as I sat there genuinely surprised, watching him chew.

The System dinged.

[DAILY TASK PROGRESS: Help two slaves — 2/2 complete.]

[+100 AP]

The chuckle became a full blown laugh. Short, dry, sarcastic... That should be described as the laugh of a man who had spent all morning refusing to help slaves on principle and had then accidentally helped two of them anyway.

"Of course," I muttered.

Then the System dinged again, right on cue.

[DAILY TASK COMPLETE: Do not eat until noon.]

[+100 AP]

[CURRENT BALANCE: 1,040 AP]

"Finally!" I heaved a deep sigh. Then my full attention went to the food. I had earned it and it felt so satisfying.

I reached for the meat first.

The slave looked at me from beneath his lowered head, eyes tracking the food with an expression I recognized - the particular hope of someone who wants something and knows they’re not going to ask for it.

I kept eating. I was hungry too, and I hadn’t gotten anywhere in life by feeling guilty about wanting things for myself.

"I became something by being selfish." I rolled my eyes and kept eating.

But I also couldn’t have him standing there looking at me like that.

"Come here," I said, between bites. "Sit behind me and massage my shoulders. They’re wrecked."

He didn’t hesitate, he moved, settling behind me, his hands finding my shoulders with surprising steadiness.

I kept eating. He kept working. The tent was quiet except for the sounds of both of us doing the only things either of us needed right now.

By the time I’d worked through the meat and most of the tubers, my eyes were already getting heavy. The food had hit my bloodstream and the exhaustion was right behind it, the kind that doesn’t wait for a convenient moment.

I set the last piece of fruit down, lay back on the fur, and was asleep before the slave had even stopped moving.