“So, what, you just sit there?” Siena asked, playing with John’s phone. He was having his girls take shifts entertaining him as he sat there. The apparatus was perfectly capable of taking just half his mana, so he could be playing phone games. That was pretty much his only solace in these boring times. However, the nightmare elemental had taken his phone away from him a minute after she arrived, due to a mixture of being annoyed of not having attention paid mostly to her and the usual sadism. At least she had the mind to operate it with normal fingers rather than her claws.

“Yup, for another thirty minutes or so,” John sighed. “I promised to do it, but that doesn’t make it less boring.” He just skipped the question why she even needed to ask. Either she was just teasing him or she had already gone to sleep when he had done this yesterday.

“What difference are three filled batteries even going to make?” Siena asked, looking at the things on the screen in a bored fashion. There was a short moment where she was grinning mischievously, but it didn’t last long enough to make John worried.

“About the extra expenses of a higher dragon getting towed,” John told her. “3 batteries are about 1% of the total mana expenses, don’t underestimate the power of that single digit.”

“Oh, I never underestimate single dick-its,” she made a bad innuendo that didn’t even make her chuckle. Her overly sensual voice was like soft silk running over the smooth, oiled legs of an attractive dancer, despite the poison she was often spewing. “It is a certain bliss to see you getting sucked dry like this.”

She walked close with such an overbearing catwalk that John’s eyes had to travel to the hypnotic bouncing of her chest and swaying of her hips. Her sharp high-heels echoed in the otherwise quiet hall. “Do you HAVE to give me an erection?” John asked as she half-climbed onto him, resting her left knee on his leg.

“Aww, what’s wrong big boy?” she purred in the tone of a woman that could tease someone into insanity. “Sounds like there are some pent-up frustrations, how about we just release...” she paused, one of her fingers trailing up and down the bulge in his pants, “…some of those principles that cause them.”

“You know where your lack of principles got you,” John reprimanded her, “I don’t want to live solely goal oriented. I am too powerful for a ‘the end justifies the means’ mindset. I may blow up a city if I go there.”

“No reason to go that far,” Siena continued, closing in on his ear with her fanged mouth forming yet more disgustingly sweet words. “I bow to your wisdom in this, Master, but how about you meet me halfway? We will do the things that could actually harm someone your way and the things that are just fun mine. Meet me inside me, so to say.”

“I am not quite sure what your way of fun entails,” he was naturally skeptic.

“Mhm, let’s start nice and simple. Dominating the willing in the bedroom, you are already doing that, take what you want from those who do you wrong, you also did that, then there is my question why you even mind having sex in the open, which you answered in my favour. My last suggestion would be to finally take your remaining inhibitions about sex in public places and throw them out,” she licked her lips, “how about it? I can think of a lot of pleasing things I can do to you in this chair.”

“Public? Okay, we can do that… eventually,” John had no doubt about where he was going in the metaphorical Pervert skill tree after yesterday’s tumble with Eliza. He still felt no pleasure at the thought of being watched by strangers, but hey, if he felt like taking one of his girls then and there, there was little reason not to. “In the definition that we could do it in like the bushes of a park or under a bridge or in a car in parking lot. I won’t do it on some town square though, and I also won’t do it on someone else’s private property with security cameras pointed at me.” He gently pushed her backwards, the lower part of his palm pressing against her big breast. ‘Okay, at least I still have basic desire control,’ he applauded himself. ‘Wouldn’t want to stick my dick into everything in every situation. I am degenerate enough as is.’

Siena backed off with a disappointed sigh, swinging her body around until she was just sitting on his legs. “Ah, another failed attempt at getting you to have some fun.” She stretched, pushing out her chest, the dark purple latex-esque layer that covered her blue skin shifted to give a spectacular view of her cleavage.

“Do you NEED to do that?” John asked; he was almost able to hear the zipper on his pants being undone by the stretching of the fabric around it.

“Need is such a versatile word,” she laughed, wiggling her hips as if she was trying to get more comfortable, but in reality, it was a move to remind him of the existence of her heart-shaped pillow of an ass. “Seeing you bothered like this does satisfy a need deep in me.”

John closed his eyes and did his best to convince himself that he was a Buddhist monk in the process of swearing off all worldly possessions. That worked well until Siena whispered right into his ear with her annoyingly sexy voice again.

“Are you annoyed by me challenging your morals all the time?” His lids slowly pulled back up to look into Siena’s snake-like eyes. The question came from a genuine place, if the worry in her eyes was anything to go by. “It is not my goal to annoy you,” she explained herself, “I just think you aren’t concentrating as much power on yourself as you should.”

“To answer your question first,” John was actually happy to take this conversation, as it forced some of his blood from his lower into his proper brain, “no, I don’t mind it, even if it gets a bit annoying at times. Not only does it force me to actually think about my principles on a regular basis, but there is also the chance that you are right about something. Maybe I am looking at some stuff too rigidly. The way I see it is that you are the force that is supposed to keep my mind expanding into every direction, no matter how immoral that may be. Stirwin and Gnome, mostly Gnome, are there to keep reminding me that not every problem ought to be solved in the quickest way. That make sense?”

“I suppose…” Siena made a pained expression, as if every single word she continued with hurt her physically, “With my personal track record of immoral solutions, not listening to my advice may be wise.”

“At least you finally admit to that path being wrong,” John smiled and brushed through her silky greyish pink hair. “I know you won’t ever be something anyone could call a good person; you are the wraith that cuts down the betrayers in the night. You are twisted and operate under your own ideals first without considering society at large. That is exactly what makes you evil but also necessary and beautiful.” He almost succeeded in pulling her into a kiss, but a claw with an edge sharper than shattered glass rose between them.

“I don’t quite get that,” she said, “could you elaborate?”

“The murderousness and torture aside,” John told her, “a society without people that challenge the status quo will either forget what makes it good or become stagnant. I think that is the fate that befell Romulus, he didn’t surround himself with enough people who would say to him the things he didn’t want to hear and, when they did, he didn’t listen often enough to make it sink in. Until he was violently shook awake, of course.

“That’s why I need you, you will do despicable things for reasons I can’t agree with, but you will also make me think about when these things are necessary no matter how much I despise them. Where are my own moral boundaries and what must happen for me to become willing to cross certain lines? At your worst you show me an example of what not to do, at your best you will point out to me and force me to correct my own flaws. Is that clear en-“

His lengthy explanation was ended by the sudden removing of the separating edge and Siena’s lips pressing on his. “Yes,” she said with the sly smile of someone who had gotten exactly what they wanted. Did she get him monologing just so she could be the one to initiate the kiss? That was some petty level of trying to have control. “What is the second thing? You said ‘to answer your question FIRST’,” she continued the conversation.

“Right, second, I still don’t really get what you want in a guy, just because of how contradicting it seems.” John began to list, “I am supposed to be nice, but also ruthless, self-centred, but also give back to the community, but also concentrate power on myself alone, but also never abuse it. Do you want me to become a benevolent dictator or something?”

“I do like the sound of that,” Siena hummed. “Benevolent so they know it’s best to be under your boot and a dictator because you still keep it in place firmly. Yes, that does strike me as very pleasing.”

“…Well then, I guess I can try that,” John wondered how far off that was to his actual end conclusion of becoming a figurehead like Romulus was. That even Siena’s shady logic lead to that same conclusion was a bit weird. ‘As they say, all roads lead to Rome,’ he sarcastically remarked to himself. It was more than likely that Siena had a whole different set of ideas about what checks and balances should be put into place, or if something like a truly benevolent dictator even existed, but the direction was the same. “Can you stop that?!” he then asked when Siena revealed her naked breasts right in front of his face. The erection, so barely gone, came back immediately. “Is it possible to have this talk without you trying to tease me?”

“No,” Siena sounded almost offended. “Who, exactly, do you think you are talking to?”

“Fair point,” John sighed heavily. “I guess if it bothered me too much, I could just make it a rule.”

“What even are my current rules?” Siena wanted to know; it had been a while since they last talked about that passive he had exclusively to control her.

“There are none in place,” he responded and earned himself a Siena who straightened herself in shock, liquid shadows covering her nipples again.

“Are you serious?” Siena asked, gone was her docile sexy tone. “I could have tossed away that annoying violin already and gone back to torturing those who annoy me?!”

“Don’t you have a bit more of a requirement for actually torturing people than just annoyance?” John tried to get back at her by acting like a smartass. “Ow, ow, ow, stop that!” He got a nonverbal response to that in the shape of Siena twisting his free arm in a painful way.

The shadow spirit had long since figured out that cutting him a little bit didn’t bother John and cutting him a lot was farther than she wanted to go. Therefore, twisting his joints was the best way to cause him some prolonged suffering. “Yes, you could have! Jesus, woman.” She let go and John shook out his hand out of habit, not that Gamer’s Body needed the help to fix the pain. “I almost have to appreciate your capacities of finding out how to hurt people in the most effective ways. It’s an artform that should never be appreciated.”

“One that you allow me to practice again, why?” the nightmare elemental was confused.

“I trust you.”

They always said love was the most important part of the three magic words, but in this situation those three alone made Siena go wide-eyed. “Without any strings attached to me? You would trust me to leave your side and go about my own day?”

“Yes,” he told her and she looked at him as if he was insane. “Look,” he continued on, “if you want to prove me wrong, if you want to shatter how far we came, by publicly slicing apart the first thug you find, go ahead. I just don’t think you will, because I trust that whatever we got going by now is more important to you than instantly gratifying your urges.”

“I-“ Siena started, unsure how to respond to that. “You… are you saying that you are…?”

“I trust you,” he repeated, “I wouldn’t say I love you or have even fallen for you. I just can now believe that I someday soon will see something in your eyes. It will be nothing explicit, nothing really great about you, maybe just a little act of something I believe you would only ever do for me or maybe you will just appear in my thoughts when I least expect it while I am walking over a market and I will pick something up and think about how much you would like it. It will just be there and that will be that.” Love was such a flimsy thing.

Their talks stopped there, interrupted by the sound of Prussia’s Gloria.