Penny Weighs In, Hwa opens her mouth

Penny walked into the private dining room like she owned the place, but the moment her eyes found Kevin’s face, her expression fell. She shrunk in on herself and hesitated with the door still open behind her.

Kevin shook his head. “No. Don’t do that.”

The blonde siren’s expression shifted several times, through surprise, confusion, alarm, until it finally settled on something somewhere between curiosity and hope. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t act like you’ve done something wrong.” The DM lifted one hand to beckon Penny in, and she let the door swing closed behind her as she approached the table where he already sat.

“It’s—it’s hard. I hurt you, and now you’re in a position where if you decide to take **** on me, there’s not a lot I can do about it.” For all the vulnerability she displayed, Penny’s voice was as smooth and inviting as ever. The siren could wield her power like a weapon when she chose to, as she did in the challenge to help immobilize the giant statue, but even when speaking without effort it was impossible to ignore the allure she exuded.

Kevin shook his head again. “You didn’t, though.” When Penny slid into a seat opposite him and shot him a quizzical expression, he explained, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what they—Lily, and whoever is behind this whole show—is doing to you, and to the others. What the ‘abilities’—transformations, curses, whatever you want to call them—that she’s inflicting on all of us mean. And about why they picked the women that they picked to be here.”

Penny’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

The DM leaned forward until his elbows rested on the table, while his fingers steepled together beneath his chin. His voice was smoother than it had been in some time, more confident. “Alright, the first thing to keep in mind is that none of this is random. There’s some random chance that Lily probably can’t predict in what the audience picks, but if all of the options offered work towards her end, then that doesn’t actually matter.”

When Penny nodded, not disputing the point, he went on, “I’ve read through enough summaries of other seasons of Harem Hotel to know that, even if Lily was telling the truth when she said her goal isn’t for all of us to sleep together, it is at least one of the most desirable outcomes. The thing that hosts are usually judged on isn’t necessarily how much sex the people on their season have, it’s how much drama and entertainment the season produces. Sex isn’t the only way to produce that, but—”

“It’s an old classic,” Penny supplied, and this time it was Kevin’s turn to nod.

“Exactly. But, again, if all she wanted to do was get all of us having sex, she didn’t need all the subterfuge of pretending that wasn’t the point. That’s what got me thinking about the details of the transformations and why those matter.”

“Alright…”

Kevin leaned forward, met Penny’s gaze, and there was a fervor in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. The intensity of his gaze left her squirming in her seat. It took him only a moment to notice the flush that rose in her cheeks as Performer kicked in, and his gaze inadvertently dipped down to where the tips of her sizable breasts now poked through to tent the front of her costume’s white blouse.

He coughed and quickly averted his gaze. “Sorry. But—that’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The Bard transformations are designed to turn you into an exhibitionist. They are a bundle of abilities and effects, designed to push you to stand in front of the group and, well, turn you on and make you more likely to act on it.”

“Yeah, I mean we all figured that out once we saw the hidden text in the abilities.” Penny’s tone betrayed no hint of shame or embarrassment, and even she wasn’t sure if that was the result of her skilled control of her voice or the absence of inhibitions the transformation inflicted. After a moment, she added, “Well, most of us. I’m not sure that Blue has really grasped what’s going on.”

Kevin shook his head. “Don’t sell her short. Blue’s impulsive, but she’s not dumb. That—actually, that’s a good segue into my next point: why she—Lily—picked all of you in particular. See, in almost all seasons of Harem Hotel, the women that are selected to be in the harem are people who knew the Master before the season started. Ex-girlfriends, work crushes, childhood friends, that kind of thing.”

“But most of us hadn’t met you before the show started.”

Kevin turned his eyes back on Penny and shook his head again, decisively, before stating firmly, “None of you knew me before the show started. No matter what Lilith might try to say now. I’ll get back to that, though, I promise.” The siren swallowed as she found herself once more the focus of the DM’s attention, but didn’t interrupt as he asked, “First, let me ask the question: why did they do this differently, for this season?”

“You’ve got a theory, I take it?”

“Yes!” Kevin leaned forward again, but this time his eyes seemed to stare though Penny, as though he was examining a piece of a puzzle rather than a person. The sensation left her squirming—nervous, but distractingly aroused by the intense attention.

Kevin didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know exactly what kind of restraints Lily was working with, but it doesn’t seem like she had any problem bringing in women—even powerful women—from across the globe. I have to assume that she could’ve brought in basically anybody. Again, I don’t think any of this was random, so what were her criteria? What made her pick the women that she did?”

“None of us are fully human?” Penny voiced the statement as a question, and Kevin nodded, but then gestured for her to go on. “Um—all of us are good looking?”

“I mean, you are, but look at what happened to Blue in the first round.”

“I’d almost forgotten, that happened so early on that we barely saw her before she transformed. She was a scrawny little bird though, wasn’t she?”

Kevin snorted. “Yeah, so if she can turn Blue from a five-foot-nothing stick figure into a porn starlet—”

“—she doesn’t have to pick based on physical appearance,” Penny finished. “OK, so then what criteria did she use to pick us?”

“Two things come to mind.” Kevin lifted a hand up, two fingers raised. “First—all of you are familiar and comfortable with the idea of magic as a real ****. Elsie was the only one of you who didn’t know that she wasn’t fully human, but she was also the only one who was familiar with my kind of fantasy stories and roleplaying games.”

Penny nodded, “And the rest of us might not have known just how much of magic and myths were real, but we all knew that the world wasn’t as mundane as they taught in school.”

“Exactly! Just how immersed you all are in myth varied a lot from person to person—you and Tess, for example, were more or less normal people who just happened to know that magic was real the whole time, while Hwa and Stheno were barely involved in human society. Blue and Hazel are somewhere in the middle—aware of modern humanity, but removed from it. None of you immediately rejected the idea out of hand, though. The premise of the show, sure, but not the fundamentals behind it.”

“Alright, so what’s the other thing?”

Kevin’s sudden quiet gave Penny pause. The siren studied his face as he suddenly turned to stare through the door towards the common room, where the others presumably remained. A few seconds passed as he worked to assemble the words he wanted in the right order, gave up, shrugged, and said, “None of you were happy with your place in the world.”

Penny quirked an eyebrow at that. “Myself, I’ll give you, but Hazel? That girl doesn’t know the meaning of uncomfortable. You could drop her anywhere and she’d be making friends and winning hearts in minutes.”

“Alright, I phrased that badly. You’re right—Hazel was perfectly happy doing what she was doing, but that’s actually kind of my point. What Hazel was doing isn’t what nymphs do.” The eyebrow remained raised, so Kevin went on, “Look, I don’t know how many nymphs are around across the world, but I’m pretty sure most of them aren’t living in and amongst humans, running a farm. Hazel was. Tess was probably perfectly happy to be in college, but I’m guessing most selkies don’t go and insert themselves more deeply among humans, they stay at the periphery. Most of Blue’s flock only cares about humans as something to steal from, avoid, or kidnap, and you—”

A wan smile graced Penny’s lips as her expression changed. “And I’m the only one of my sisters who wasn’t willing to just use people for my own good.”

Kevin deflated, slumping back against his seat. He was quiet for a moment, then gave a soft, “Yeah. So, what Lily brought me was a collection of women who wanted a change in their lives, but for whom magic wasn’t something they would reject out of hand.”

“So what does that mean?”

“That part didn’t really come together until I started thinking through what Kyle told me.” Before Penny could even ask, he quickly explained, “He’s the Favored Soul class trainer. I’ll—look, I’ll tell you all about that if you like, but it’d get us off track if we did that now. The point is, what he told me got me thinking about the kinds of stories the transformations were trying to tell. Which, in turn, takes us all the way back to the beginning of the conversation. The story that Lily told, through the Fling transformation, was that you and I already knew each other first. That we’d hooked up together already, and that you had broken my heart.”

Penny nodded along, expression pained, but when Kevin caught a glimpse of it, he regained some of his former momentum. “No, no, see that’s my point. She decided that. I don’t know exactly what she was trying to do—I’m still working that out. Probably something to do with the fact that in the stories, sirens are the ones that lure sailors to their deaths, but the details there don’t matter. What matters is that I don’t have to accept her version of things. You didn’t hurt me, Penny. Lily did.”

The blonde singer was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, the words chosen with the care of a surgeon picking shrapnel from a battlefield injury. “I understand what you’re saying, Kevin, but do you really think that it will be that simple? I can tell myself that I didn’t really do those things, but it takes conscious effort on my part—and nothing I do can take away the memories, even if I know Lily is the one who gave them to me.”

This time it was Kevin’s turn to flush. The expression he wore as his eyes flicked down to Penny’s chest for a heartbeat told the siren all she needed to know about what kind of memories flooded his mind in that moment. “That’s—that’s fair. I don’t know. My point is, in all of this, I don’t want you to feel like you have anything to apologize for.”

He slumped back in his chair once more, but Penny noticed that, despite his obvious efforts to control himself, his eyes kept flitting to her breasts when he thought she wasn’t looking. Her arms lifted above her head in a stretch that wasn’t purely performative—though she allowed herself to acknowledge the pleasant little thrill it sent through her when she felt Kevin’s eyes on her. They shivered a little at the zenith, then drooped as she let herself relax. “So what now?”

Kevin blinked a few times, tried to regain his focus, and finally let out a short, dark laugh. “Now, we figure out what we’re going to do about it. I’m assuming you came in because you had thoughts on Lily’s offer?”

“Yeah,” Penny agreed, “I came in here to tell you that I think you should take Lily’s deal. All of this,” she made a broad gesture that encompassed not just the room, but Adventuria as a whole, “is a little outside of what I’m used to, magic be damned.”

A few moments passed as Kevin searched the blonde’s face. Whatever he found there, when he spoke next, his words were quiet, “Does that mean you’d rather be, well—dating me?”

Penny’s answering smile was gentle, but neither shy nor reserved. “If I’m offered the choice between dating a kind man and fighting off panty-eating slimes or insane sex cultists, or whatever else Lily has on offer, it’s not exactly difficult to pick.” She paused briefly and met Kevin’s eyes as she added, “I won’t be mad if you say no—I know this is your world, I’d understand if you didn’t want to reject it—but if it were up to me, I’d much rather just have the chance to get to know you on a couple of dates. You were—the man I remember from that weekend was sweet, kind, and good in bed. I wouldn’t mind having the chance to start over with him.”

“You will reject the nightmare witch’s offer.” The kumiho’s red eyes blazed as they focused on Kevin, staring him down like a fox focused on a field mouse it had caught out in the open.

Penny hadn’t lingered long after making her recommendation. It was her assigned night with Kevin, and while Lily had put a quest in her quest log that morning—something about exploring the social gathering spots of Adventuria—it had apparently vanished when the hostess had posed her question to the group. They’d agreed to meet up when everything was done so they could plan out the rest of the day, and with one final lingering look she’d disappeared.

Almost precisely sixty seconds had then passed before Hwa swept into the room. The Korean woman was wearing her witch costume once more, and with her newly enhanced curves the effect of the outfit was even more exaggerated. The corset top struggled to contain her massive breasts, which were smashed together to create a massive deep cleavage in their pale depths, while compressing her comparatively tiny waist even further. The ruffled skirts were lifted by her broad hips and while she’d added a pair of black tights to the ensemble, they stopped well below the bottom of the skirt and left substantial swaths of pale thigh on display.

To complete the look, she wore an expression that mixed cool disdain with boiling anger, chin raised so that she could look down from her full—admittedly unimpressive—height at the still-seated Kevin.

After the emotional rollercoaster that was his talk with Penny, the DM found himself welcoming Hwa’s open challenge. He raised an eyebrow at her and asked, “Do you intend to persuade me, or simply order me and expect me to obey?”

“Hmph. You should obey if you know what is good for you, but by now I do not expect such wisdom from you, of all humans.” The kumiho swept forward until she stood beside the chair at the table opposite Kevin, but did not take a seat. Instead, her blazing eyes narrowed and she held up a single finger on her right hand to display the razor sharp point of its nail. “First, you should know that kumiho do not ‘date.’ This farce of entertainment the nightmare witch intends is beneath me. I will accept you as a partner of necessity as you help me to resist her in our mutual captivity, but to lower myself to romance with a human is unacceptable.”

Kevin’s eyebrow rose, but he allowed her to continue uninterrupted. “Second, even you must know that any acquiescence to Lily’s wiles will only ever serve her agenda. When she offers, you deny. When she tempts, you reject. You are ill-equipped to outsmart her, mortal, and would do well to remember that.”

Kevin’s eyebrow crept higher.

“Third, as abhorrent as this realm may be, it at least offers us resources. Limited, yes, and likely within the scope of what the bitch believes she can defeat, but to have something is better than to have nothing.”

“That,” Kevin began, “is actually a good—”

“Finally, Hwa Sun-ah has demanded it. You will obey me in this, and rather than waste time in dispute, you will instead fulfill your half of the bargain.”

It wasn’t until she began to walk around the table that Kevin realized what Hwa meant. “Ah, um, look, I—”

Despite his protests, a few seconds later, he found himself staring down into Hwa’s exposed cleavage as the fox spirit worked to undo his pants. As conflicted as he might have felt on the topic, his traitorous dick harbored no such reservations, and by the time the kumiho’s dangerously manicured fingers dipped into his pants to withdraw it, he was at full mast.

A shiver ran down his spine as she stroked his length lightly with one hand, red eyes meeting his as he tried to muster the right words to object. “You and I have an agreement. I have upheld my half this morning, and am cooperating with your simpering girls despite myself. You will permit me to harvest your seed now.”

Then she leaned forward and, without waiting any further, wrapped her pillowy lips around the head of his cock.

“Alright, but Blue—”

Her lips popped free as she interrupted, “Speak not of your other women. You are with me, now. You should ensure that your attention is focused on appreciating the singular opportunity you have been granted to appreciate me.”

The next moment, she swallowed half of his shaft without hesitation. The kumiho’s long tongue swirled wetly around the head of Kevin’s cock, and she seemed to take the moan he let out as a sign of agreement. She spent the next half minute bathing him with her mouth, sucking wetly, then pulled back just enough to murmur, “Your flavor today is… improved. I do not know what you have done, but—be prepared to do it again.” Her lips pressed to the head of his dick as though to swallow it once more, but since she paused there and pulled back, it looked more as though she’d simply leaned down to kiss it. “Hwa Sun-ah demands it.”

Then she bent down and swallowed him again, and any response Kevin might have given about the fact that he hadn’t had the chance to wash after emptying himself deep in the enthusiastic Blue’s pussy was lost in a wet haze of pleasure.