Aclysia was wiping the floor clean of her own love juices. “Sorry,” John declared, helping her by grabbing a washing cloth himself and taking care of the table they had soiled. Breakfast was ready, but the place to eat it at had to be wiped off.

“It took me by surprise, Master, nothing more,” Aclysia stated, still only wearing an apron and her skin flush with recent pleasure. She was bent over, presenting her juicy ass and wet cunt. A drop of her lubricating juice drooled from the pretty pink pussy. John turned away before he could forget himself and returned to the table.

“Word controlled magic is pretty fuzzy sometimes,” he said as he began wiping his cum off the table. It wasn’t exactly the kind of work he liked doing, but it was one of the prices he had to pay for having sex on every surface in the house. The mundane worries that came with exceptional joy. Aside from the minor grossness that he naturally felt at the fact that he was wiping away sperm, it wasn’t that different from cleaning anything else though.

Under normal circumstances, John had no problem mentally guiding which of his words were affected by his Libido perks. When things got hazy and heated, though, impulsive thoughts meddled with those reasoned boundaries. In such a situation, a simple command as ‘cum’ could easily go out and affect more than he would have consciously bargained for, courtesy of that consciousness being clouded by lust.

For any person other than Aclysia, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. All commands could be resisted at the ease of a thought and the word-triggered orgasms required a certain level of horniness. Whether that could be reached just by standing in the kitchen and watching him fuck, John wasn’t quite sure. If anyone could enjoy that enough, it would be the weaponized maid. Regardless of the state of mind, however, Aclysia had her own, Artificial Spirit related, perk that made obeying his sexual commands a thing of ecstasy. Two things stacked to make her getting caught up in these things (as long as she was in hearing range) an inevitability.

Of course Aclysia could have resisted the commands regardless but who would say no to a free orgasm? Particularly one of the immensely intense variety? Aclysia’s Libido, and her sensitivity by extension, was so high and her double reward for obedience so intense that she had squirted where she stood. Just another thing that made John feel like a sex god.

He returned to the kitchen with the now dirty washing cloth and wrung it out in the sink. Aclysia rose from her position on the floor and grabbed a dry towel instead, to make the cleaning of the floor complete. In doing so, she also kneeled before John, whose dick was unapologetically erect. Before the weaponized maid could think about anything else, she was already kissing the engorged head.

Her mouth opened to take in the rod, but then she realized she had actual work to do and cleared her throat. “Master, do you not require a shower?” she asked, likely to distract herself. Although her hands were working on cleaning the floor, her eyes were glued to him, darting between his dick, his abs and his face. “I am sure the other three would be delighted to have you in there.”

“Sure, they would. I just wonder, what would I shower for?” John asked, himself looking between her eyes, lips, the cleavage the apron created and her protruding butt. “I just used my dick and it’ll get wet again during breakfast, guaranteed. Somebody will want to give me a blowjob under the table.” He looked at Aclysia and her entranced expression. With a mouth slightly agape, she seemed hungry for more than the little taste she had carelessly indulged in. “Let’s finish cleaning and setting the table,” he said, his arm twitching, ready to grab her white hair and slam her throat down his cock. “Then that somebody can get to doing exactly that.”

And Aclysia proceeded to do exactly that.

______________________________________________________________________

Thorne used to own a shopping centre.

A vertical tube with floor upon floor of shops set around it in ring after ring. To each shop belonged a set of rooms for workbenches, staff and other such necessary things. The shops had been connected to vast storehouses via teleportation, a luxury made affordable through the quantity of people using it and the specialized design. That shopping centre hadn’t been the only one of its kind. It was a standardized construction by a specialized architect, and contained in its own, extensive Illusion Barrier. Access was scattered over the city through complicated, Fateweaver procedures that tethered doorways in real space, invisible to mundane people, to the doorways inside.

That shopping centre had been quite a problem when Fusion took it over.

Basically, everything about its design was enabled by existing inside a category 2 city – a place where there was a high concentration of Abyssals and Illusion Barriers, but no large, all-encompassing city barrier. Once John had decided to put an IBMA into action in New York City, this shopping centre had therefore put a number of questions in motion.

Number one, was it even worth it to maintain it? Easily answered, yes. There was no higher concentration of (admittedly low to mid-level) crafters on the entire east coast. Business boomed when concentrated in a single spot. A person that went out to buy a pen could suddenly remember they also needed a lightbulb, new cushions and, while they were already there, ice cream also sounded lovely! It was very easy to get someone to buy more if there was more on offer. As such, dismantling this infrastructure would have been foolish, to say the least. Customers aside, all the craftsmen that John would have had to compensate for throwing them out of their old workshops would have been a massive headache.

Second question was where the shopping centre was ACTUALLY located. Since access was granted through dimensional shortcuts, for a lack of a better term, finding the building itself was harder than one might think. Thankfully, Scarlett had the necessary data stored and the answer was, quite simply, in Bayonne, the district bordering the harbour that the old Thorne HQ barrier had been located in.

That made enough sense, given that it had been squarely in the Thorne controlled area. As a related fact, people still called that district of the Hudson Barrier the Thorne Turf, or just Thorne for short. A remainder of the old anarcho-capitalist days that would likely survive history.

Having located the building, preparations had to be made. The access from doors at other locations would be lost, but that was a thing of limited range anyhow. Physical adjustments had to be made, road networks planned around it so public and private transportation had an easier time reaching it. Double and triple checks made sure no Protected Spaces layered on top of the shopping centre. If such a case was found, the offending barrier had to be dissolved ahead of the IBMA being activated. If not, there could have been an awkward melding of structures.

Aside from the question of those third parties, there were other, infrastructure related problems. Would being integrated into a category 3 barrier mess with the teleportation? Would water, electricity and internet access need to be put in place? What about the people that worked there, did they want housing next to the real location now that the doors were no longer a thing? What were the costs for all of these things?

It had been a stream of minor issues that John had to delegate to appropriate parties. Luckily, all of that was already in the past. The Hudson Barrier had been established months ago and those problems had been solved before then. Now John looked at the concrete tower in front of him with minor annoyance at its ugliness.

It wasn’t that tall, roughly equivalent to a four-story house, but was quite broad. Round, grey and featureless, it grew from a circular depression in the ground, surrounded by staircases that led to the boring glass doors. As unappealing and plain as it looked, the shopping centre burrowed deep into the earth to make room for the many floors and underground storages.

“Is it wrong that I think the scorch marks make the building look better?” John asked his girlfriend, as they walked up to it. He was referring to the black spots that the Lake Alliance had left on the exterior. Unsurprisingly, it had been on their list of targets. Towards the bottom, judging by the little force they had sent there. Given that it was a place where private individuals went after their business, that fit into the Lake Alliance’s scheme to hit Fusion’s property first. From the reports John had gotten, the soldiers attacking this position had retreated to help wrecking Manhattan instead, likely as a response to Chemilia’s counterattack at the time.

Whatever the reason was, the shopping centre had gotten away with minimal damage to its awful exterior.

“Nah, it does look better.” Rave nodded. “Was thinking about prettying it up somehow.”

“Yeah, was considering it as well, but didn’t take the time to think about the how yet,” John told her. “I don’t want to drill into the walls and have people hit a cable and put half the teleporting pads out of business or something like that.”

“How about ya put a crown on it?” Rave suggested, causing her boyfriend to look at her in a very confused way. “You know, like a metal thingy held by gravity?”

“Oh.” John understood and looked at the circular thing. “I guess that could work? A simple iron construction, held in place by a weighted flagpole at the centre of the roof? We could hang banners and similar things from it. Would at least hide the ugly façade.”

“E-x-a-c-t-l-y,” Rave spelled out and they wandered inside. Business was slow but steady. People were still getting their affairs in order from the attack a few days ago, so some shops were closed and customers were rarer than usual. John wasn’t bothered by this, little customers meant little queues.

Since her previous clothes had been adequately ruined, to the point that Aclysia just tossed them into the trash, Rave was now running around in her usual combination of cropped top and yoga pants. The clothes were also the reason why they were at this place right now. Just the two of them, the remaining girls had been left at home. Perhaps as a gesture of respect by the larger harem.

The inside of the shopping centre was a lot more aesthetically pleasing. White tiled floors and artificial light combined into a welcoming atmosphere. Each shop had a front window and was separated from its neighbour by a decorative marble pillar. Each window had the exact same width, each pillar the same design and everything was made from the same materials.

“Beatrice would love this place,” Rave stated, looking over the metal railing at the edge of the walkway. The inside was shaped like a doughnut, ring after ring stacked around a central hole. They were currently on the uppermost floor, making the view downwards quite impressive. Surrounded by over a dozen elevator shafts, the building extended down infinitely, it almost seemed like. The distant floor was little more than a white dot.

“I love this place,” John stated. “Beatrice would probably find some potted plant that’s angled incorrectly.”

Snickering, Rave stepped away from the railing. “That does sound like our passive gal.” She took John’s arm and the two started walking, ignoring the attention they got from bypassers. “Ya have any specific shop in mind?”

“Not really,” he admitted, smiling the smile of a guy on a date with his loving girlfriend. “The only shop I really know around here is the one that I got Eliza’s boots from. Since they do leatherworking, that wouldn’t really do it.”

They wandered around for a little while, commenting on things they saw in the windows and sometimes changing floors. After about twenty minutes, they passed a shop that sold accessories of all kinds, little things of different decorative value to be worn on a person. “We should get two of these.” Rave pointed at basic, black chokers.

“Why?” John asked. “I mean, chokers are hot, but why should we get more? Eliza has hers and that’s a special one.”

“We feed them to Aclysia and Bae,” Rave answered. “I think it would be a nice addition to the maid outfits.”

“Hmmm…” The mental image appeared quickly in John’s mind. The colour scheme fit and, as he had already said, chokers were indeed very hot things to look at. “Yeah, sure, let’s do it,” he said, and they headed inside. Two minutes later, they were back out. “You know that I love you?”

“Ja,” Rave responded swiftly and kissed him on the cheek, “but do feel free to tell me why this time.”

“Because you don’t get hung up staring at all the other things in there for ten minutes,” he said. “You don’t care to look around for vain things like earrings or new tongue piercings or whatever else fancy things. You know what you want, you get it, you move on. It’s wonderfully simple, being with you.”

“Could say the same, but then ya suddenly decide to play 15d chess again,” teased his girlfriend and, in a rather odd, spontaneous gesture, bit his shoulder. “You smell tasty!” she defended herself when John broke out laughing.

“I thought I smelled sexy,” he responded, still chuckling. “What did I get this cologne back for? I might as well rub myself in barbeque sauce if that’s what you wanted.”

“Ya can smell tasty and sexy, those two are closely related!”

“What tells you that?” John wondered.

“My stomach. I get butterflies when I am with ya, so that’s proof, right?”

“I don’t think the scientific community would let that fly,” John suggested, then suddenly stopped in his tracks and pointed at the window of the shop a few metres in front of them. “You will wear that,” he decided.