Self-Imposed Constrictions

John paused as he eased the door open, taking a final glance back at Lerianna. She was still clad in her lingerie, though she'd long abandoned the heels. Laying there like that, with her shyness and defensiveness finally at rest, she looked even more beautiful, and pleasantly peaceful. There was a gentle smile on her face, and she was fully relaxed for perhaps the first time John had ever seen. Even when he would play with her hair to help her relax while using Siphon on her libido, there was always an undercurrent beneath the relaxation. There had been a similar tension even after she got her inhibitor from Tricia - and John was glad to finally understand the reason why.

"You're cute when you sleep," John whispered, smirking as her ears twitched, flopping against the pillow. "Goodnight, Lerianna."

John closed the door as gently as he could, the jiggle of the handle still obnoxious in the silence of the hallway outside. Most of the others locked their doors when they slept, so it wasn't a concern for many, but as always, the kittens were piled up in various places downstairs, strewn about the couches and chairs of the lounge. Thankfully the only one he seemed to disturb was Mika, who lifted her head up just long enough to give him a long, sleepy blink, then immediately passed back out.

"Rest easy, little one," John thought with a soft smile as he headed for the door. "Papa is just going to go check on his potions."

Thankfully the kittens were used to late night travelers passing through after so many months of insisting on sleeping in the most public place. The rest of them didn't so much as turn over as John made his way outside, apart from a single confused mewl he heard right after he shut the door behind him.

"I'd feel worse about it if I hadn't given them plenty of their own rooms to sleep in. Sometimes I think they just like having an excuse to get up for midnight zoomies, John thought, rolling his eyes. The few times they did use their bedrooms, they always piled in together, sleeping in a huge lump on whichever one of the unfortunate beds they chose. "But I need to keep myself busy until Shishun's awake. Knowing her, she'll be up early from nerves. I wonder if she'll try to sneak out?"

John's instincts were on the mark. By the time he had walked to the alchemy lab, gathered up the five finished draughts from the infusion table, and set five more to brew, he caught the faint sound of a door closing, followed by something slithering its way through the grass. John stepped to the window just in time to see a certain pink-haired Naga cresting the hill to the south before she disappeared on the other side.

"We’ll let her have a little while on her own. I don’t want her to think I’m keeping tabs on her, or hunting her down for this against her will.”

John couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he spent another hour working in the lab. With the draughts infusing he shifted his focus to construction again, working on a set of extraction chambers that could harvest more concentrated essences from low-grade materials. Most of it was going to require Yvara’s advanced enchantments, especially for containing the resulting substances, but John was able to get a patchwork frame up to start, and set a Build up for the rest that would only take four hours to finish instead of the eight if he’d done it from scratch.

“Guess manual labor is more efficient sometimes. I sure couldn’t put up a whole building from scratch in a day and a half, though. Could I? I do move crazy fast now.”

A distant memory flashed through John’s mind from when Sophia had hatched. Moira had lectured him for sprinting all the way to the Order manor, reminding him how he’d moved faster than most humans had a right to. What would he look like to a mundane person when he was running at full speed now? A blur? Just a flash of color?

“Alright, that’s enough time. Let’s go see what Shishun is up to.”

In spite of the size of her tail, Shishun never seemed to leave much of a trail to be followed. Even when she was in the desert area closer to the river, where the sand was often moist and held shape, she could move without a trace - almost certainly one of her stealth-oriented spells, though John had never asked. But John still didn’t need to start tracking in order to follow her. He found Shishun in exactly the same place she always went when she wanted to train on her own, outside of Barriers and away from the eyes of others. West of his house, far to the west, and slightly off to the south, where the plains finally faded off into the area of deserts and beaches leading to the water at the current southwestern edge of the world.

Finding her once he was there was a bit trickier. Especially when she wasn’t looking to be found. John gave the expanse of dunes a few good, long circles without any sign of her before he decided to play his trump card.

“Shishun, I know you’re out here. I’d appreciate it if you came on out.”

Silence reigned over the sands. The still air made the desert seem as if it were frozen in time, only a few grains of sand moving here and there where John’s steps had disturbed them.

“Ahem. I can make it an order, if you prefer?”

A beat. Then two. Then… a shuddering in the sand before a pink mop of hair poked out of it, followed by the rest of Shishun’s upper body, the sand falling off her in waves, somehow effortlessly sliding off her figure without so much as a grain clinging onto her body or her outfit.

“I-I am here, Master,” Shishun said, obediently meeting his gaze without hesitation, despite the way John could see the dune behind her trembling as her tail fidgeted out of sight. “I take it that this is the day I will be required to indulge in selfishness?”

“I really don’t think you need to put it like that,” John said, a slightly sad smile curving its way along his cheek. “It’s not being selfish to want to do things for yourself. I’ve been trying to get you to believe me when I say that.”

“I am aware,” Shishun said dutifully, squirming a bit but still unerringly maintaining eye contact. “But my code requires that I maintain it as much as possible, save when you give me a direct order that might require its contradiction, Master. You are the only thing important enough to stray from my code… and my code does not allow for frivolities.”

“Look, I’m-” John sighed, trying to remember the last conversation they had about this. It felt like ages ago – John had only Purified Shishun a short while before he’d gotten sucked into the whole business of the war with the Northern Ashes and ran off on his trip to the West Coast, and he’d yet to really get through to her by then. Certainly not in the constant chaos his life had been since that day. “I’m not going to make you do something you’re uncomfortable with all day. But I want to know something that will make you happy, Shishun. Just one thing – something you really want to do.”

“I understand,” Shishun said, nodding just a little too quickly. John’s eyes barely had time to express his suspicion before she was continuing on. “I wish to train, Master.”

“No, no. I’m putting a ban on training as part of someone’s day – I let Sophia get away with it and she learned about self-harm. Still need to see what’s going on with her too, actually. I think it’s been happening longer than I realized, now that I say that out loud…” John trailed off on the last part and had to shake his head to clear it when he realized he was starting to ramble. “A-anyway, something that you want to do. Really want to do. Not because it’s part of your code, or because I ordered you to do it, or because you think it makes you more useful to me. Just because you want to, and it makes you happy.”

“Is that an order, Master?”

“Oh my god, I wish this was quicksand,” John groaned mentally, fighting the urge to mimic the sound out loud for fear of upsetting her.

“It’s an order that you have to tell me something you would enjoy even if I didn’t order you to do it, yes,” John clarified, not wanting to leave the snake-girl much room to wiggle, or rather, slither out of his insistence.

“W-well, there is one thing I could perhaps do. At least for a short while. Something I… think you are okay with?” Shishun’s voice quivered as she managed to whimper out the last part, and for the first time, her eyes started to flicker away from his own. That was all the clue John needed to know that it really was meaningful to the demure Naga.

“Of course. Let’s do that, then. What did you have in mind?” John strode closer to her as she finally showed signs of acquiescing, smiling as disarmingly as he could manage. “Is it something we can do out here?”

“Well, yes. I would prefer that, actually. If the others were to stumble upon us in the middle, it would be rather embarrassing,” Shishun warbled, putting her hands up to her face as she started to blush.

“Wait, is she-” John was halfway to thinking that he couldn’t possibly be understanding correctly when he remembered what had happened just yesterday. If Lerianna of all people could come onto him like that, he wasn’t sure anything was impossible in his love life.

“Sure, I think I know what you’re getting at. How do you want to, uh, start?” John asked, a little unsure of Shishun’s anatomy and how to accommodate her.

“Just stand still, actually, I can take care of the rest,” Shishun responded. John gave a nod and took a more casual stance, not sure what she had in mind. Shishun slithered closer, the blush on her cheeks spreading the whole while, and then did perhaps one of the only things that could’ve shocked John then – she spread her arms out wide and embraced him.

“A hug? You wanted a hug?” John said, giving a laugh that he tried to make sound as caring as it was amused. “Of course you can have a hug, Shishun. I- oh. That’s quite a- y-yeah, go ahead,” John murmured, voice abruptly getting quieter as he watched more and more of Shishun’s body begin to slink out of the sand and onto him. Shishun’s human form remained pressed against his in an all-too-familiar way, while the reptilian lower half tensed and undulated against him as it began to coil around him.

“You’re sure you don’t mind? I can stop at any time. I-it doesn’t even have to be an order, you can just…” Shishun trailed off, her lips now trembling almost as much as her voice, but she still continued to slowly coil herself along John’s form, working down his body and then right back up. John just stayed silent, continuing to smile at her and gently embrace the endearingly shy Naga.

Loop after loop encircled John, and though she was being very careful not to actually constrict down on him, it was still a rather bizarre and unique feeling. Aside from a few times being snared by enemies, John had never been encased in such a manner, and never in a way that felt so comfortable and safe. She was even supporting her own weight most of the time, using her coils to hold herself instead of him as soon as she had him wrapped down to his feet the first time. Rather than suspending her body on his, he felt more as if he were being lifted up, fully embraced and contained within the countless coils she’d now made around him.

“I forget how long her tail is when she isn’t shrinking it at all,” John thought to himself as the seemingly endless tail continued to erupt from the dune behind Shishun.

She even coiled between them on the way back up, her tail slipping between their bodies, leaving just enough of him uncovered for their arms to remain linked around each other while their torsos were pulled apart. Some long-unused natural instinct within him was alarmed by the sensation, but John couldn’t even bring himself to entertain the thought when he was holding onto such a cute girl the whole time. Particularly when she looked ready to tear away and bury herself back in the sand out of embarrassment at any moment.

“I-is that alright?” Shishun finally asked when the last of her body had surfaced and wrapped its way around him. There were so many coils surrounding John that their hug almost felt more like they were reaching out toward one another across a gap – but Shishun seemed happy.

“If it makes you happy, then it’s fine. I feel quite comfortable, actually. Your scales are surprisingly soft, even with the incredible muscles you’ve got underneath there.”

“I-i-Ieee!” Shishun squeaked out, actually twitching with the effort it took her to remain in place. “Thank you, Master! Your compliments honor me as your weapon and-”

“Not as my weapon, as my friend,” John corrected, which only deepened the blush. “Don’t worry about your duties or anything right now. Just relax and enjoy yourself. That part is an order.”

“I- I will try, Master,” Shishun responded in a stammering voice, leaning her head against her coils. John could actually feel her scales heating up the more embarrassed she got – he’d never been this close to her for this long before, and he realized he’d never thought about how she must clearly not be cold-blooded, given the eternally room-temperature state of his new world.

“Is this kind of hug alright? I thought you’d prefer to coil around us both to stay closer,” John said absently, trying to take her mind off the compliments so she could loosen up a bit.

“It could be difficult to untangle myself if I coiled around us improperly. N-not that I would do that, of course… I mean, it’s just that I’m so nervous, I was worried about screwing it up. And besides, I can feel you just as well like this, mostly. I can feel everywhere I touch, no matter what part of my body. I can feel, um, all of you. Master.”

This time it was John’s turn to blush, even if it was a drop of dye in the vast ocean of his cheeks compared to the cherry blossom pinks of Shishun’s face that nearly matched the hair that framed it. His cock throbbed at the words, though not for the first time in their interactions, somehow having barely managed to keep itself in check as her smooth body continuously rubbed against it the entire time she was coiling him up.

“Stay in control. I don’t want her thinking she has to service me or something. This is about her.”

“Well, we can stay like this for as long as you’d like, Shishun. It’s your day.”

“I’m not sure how long I can take this, Master. I feel as though I might explode.”

“I don’t think you’re going to explode,” John replied, unable to hold back his laughter. “Well, I can think of one way you might explode like this. But most women don’t mind that wa-eeyyy!”

It didn’t actually hurt, but it did surprise John as the wind rushed out of him. Shishun’s whole body tensed up at his tease, the Naga going as stiff as he’d ever seen her, and constricting around him as a result. Shishun alternated between blabbering almost incoherently with embarrassment and spitting out apology after apology, her body twitching erratically as she **** herself to loosen up her coils, nearly dropping him through the center as she tried to control them while her brain was still in shock.

“F-forgive me, Master! It’s unthinkable for a kunoichi to bring harm to her Master, as penance, I will carve one thousand-”

“No, no, it’s fine, it’s fine,” John said, already laughing. “I don’t need to breathe anyway. Literally. I mean… you could keep going and I don’t even think you could hurt me until my bones start breaking. Plus… I kind of deserved that one. And we both know it. Now tighten up again, please. This is actually really nice!”

John somehow resisted the urge to add a comment about how cute she was when she was embarrassed to see just how tightly he could make the poor girl constrict around him on accident. Not easily, but he did it.