Welldark B2 Ch. 06

Swiftly, I followed Aclysia and took the hat off her head. She turned around, but I just wordlessly walked by her and reached the cash register first. I paid for the hat and then handed it over. "A gift," I told her, "not something you have to buy to make me happy."

"I... thank you, Karitas," she said, raising the hat in front of her lips to hide her smile. It was the most adorable gesture I had seen all day, grace and youthful embarrassment in one moment. The words 'I love you' almost poured out of me instinctively.

I would have meant them, because that was how I felt about her. It had been quite some time now since she moved in with us. Between our daily talks, the way she took care of the household, and the way she allowed me to take care of her, I had just about everything from her I could have asked for.

Those three words, however, I kept in my heart until the proper time. I trusted she did the same. We had made all but the formal confession, after all. "Nothing to thank me for, it's my honour," I assured her. Careful to not disrupt her backwards-combed hair, she put the hat back on. Then she circled around me, so she would be on my left side again. The tilted design of the sun-shield worked wonderfully and I could see her smile without difficulty.

Until she grabbed onto my arm and rested her head on my shoulder. There was no hat design in existence that would have let me see any part of her face in that position. Considering that I was reimbursed with her fingers locking with mine I was, all around, happy with the situation.

"Now, where did we leave Esther?" I asked, checking our environment. Each time the three of us were on a date, the raven-haired lady got a little better about giving me and Aclysia a bit of time to be amongst ourselves. It was something she had started doing on my request and had recognized as necessary, doubly so after an Anomalia Management Class had outlined that situation. My Queen wasn't a natural at conceding time to other haremettes, but she was making an effort and I loved her for it.

That being said, I had actually lost sight of her.

"Esther?" I shouted as loudly as I dared.

"In the changing rooms, my Karitas!" she responded.

'Could have guessed that,' I chided myself and moved over with Aclysia. We sat down on one of the benches. "What are you trying on?" I asked, intrigued. "I thought we didn't need any more clothing?"

"I was intrigued... and am... trying to get more comfortable," my Queen's voice came from the inside.

"Were the clothes you picked too tight?" Aclysia asked, not having the context that I did.

"No, it's... about a primary reason why I asked for the delay on your joining."

I was mighty proud of Esther that she even said that much. While I was wrestling with Taurus' pressure, she was dealing with her own demons. Personally, I believed I had the easier fight. Yes, sure, it was physically more exhausting, but I had a goal and ways to work towards that goal. Fighting long entrenched insecurity that had only been challenged relatively recently, that was an uphill climb at the best of times.

Whenever she could, Esther had avoided changing in these public areas by keeping her exact measurements at heart and just buying what fit them. Aclysia must have thought that was just a time-saving measure, it certainly fit with the rest of Esther's character. I had made the same mistake, although I had dispensed with it fairly quickly after getting other clues.

Aclysia did not have a proper response. I had to nudge her a bit. "She can't see you right now," I reminded her quietly.

"Oh... Oh!" she responded first to me, then to the initial sentence. "Is it a physical situation?"

"It is."

"May I ask of what kind?" Aclysia asked softly.

"The... disfigurement kind."

"I understand," was all the maid had to and could say. She turned to me and whispered, in a worried tone, "You should check on her."

I considered that for a moment, then nodded. The argument could be made that Esther was trying to be strong about this and that I should give her the space to unfurl further. What had been said was already a mighty leap though. She had been strong enough for a day.

I slipped swiftly inside the cabin and found Esther, dressing herself. She trembled, like only nervous wrecks could tremble. With big eyes, she looked at me. I smiled and embraced her.

After a minute, the trembling stopped.

___________________________________________________________________________

We only had a few definite goals for this shopping trip. One was to buy, in bulk, foods that had a long shelf life.

To get to Welldark City was a bit of a pain. The train directly from the station by the first-year housing only went there once an hour. Time spent riding was limited to about ten minutes. However, it was typically easier to catch the train that went from the dorms to the campus and from there to the city. That was a fifteen-minute ride, assuming one switched without issue (which was usually the case), and those trains were in a constant back and forth.

In either case, walking to the station, taking the train(s), making it to the grocery store, returning to the station, taking the train(s) back and then walking home with a bag full of groceries was a logistical nightmare. This was exceptionally true for any kind of food that needed freezing or swift refrigerating, in the current season.

Wherever there was an obvious problem in Welldark, there was an obvious solution. On the student side, getting most meals from the cafeteria worked. No need to keep large stockpiles of anything around, particularly the kind of ingredients that needed a fridge, if all three meals in a day were already made elsewhere. An alternative solution was to buy the kind of bag that was lined with isolation.

For our situation ordering bulk deliveries was the best way. There was a service to have stuff dropped off at one's dormitory. One of the smaller perks of having our own mansion was that this drop-off was directly by our estate, while the rest of the first years needed to go downstairs at the daily delivery times and wait in line for their package.

The privileges of success were truly endless.

Welldark's service industry was largely centred around this delivery mechanism. The way it worked was pretty simple. AppDark had a tab that allowed for a 'crate' to be rented and then one could, when purchasing things at the store, decide to put them in that crate. They would then be picked up by someone with a car, put into an actual physical crate, bundled up at a distribution centre, and finally delivered to the destination.

There were a variety of crates, including those appropriate for transporting frozen goods, and so the entire system worked to get the groceries to people that didn't want to leave the house to eat breakfast.

The only drawback of all of that was that the goods arrived with a delay of one or two days. It was a pretty useful service, but it wasn't a miracle. People still needed to do the grabbing, the sorting, and the delivering. That still beat having to ride to the city whenever we wanted to pack up a new carton of milk though.

Speaking of milk, another benefit of this system was to have crates delivered at a specific time. Because milk had a limited shelf life, buying a month's worth of it would only work out if we bought the heavily processed variety. Instead, we bought all of our milk for the month at one opportunity, but had the packages delivered over the course of four weeks. Because they only packed the cartons up before delivering them, that meant we got what we wanted fresh.

To make a long story short: buying in bulk was the way to go about meal planning in Welldark.

We had a general list of what we wanted. Aclysia was a blessing, because she had a meal plan for the entirety of the next month. The list of necessary ingredients was always prepared. All of that was in her head too. A truly marvellous display of housewife material.

Our second goal was the alchemist shop. That was more of a 'my' goal than either of theirs, but we would need to get a crate for that anyway and we were all out already. That was, according to the paper Taurus had given me, tucked away in a side street, so we kept that for last.

Which brought us to our third goal for the trip.

The outside of the shop gave away what it was by being almost absurdly incognito. The windows were tinted black, the door a solid piece of wood, the building as non-descript as something in the gothic city could be. The name of the business spelled out what was implied by the secretiveness of its design: the Lucky Girl. It was a sex shop.

Esther and I had no need to spice up our sex life. A lack of need was divorced from a lack of want though. There were too many fun things one could do with a submissive that involved ropes and vibrators to own neither. That, and a great deal of other things.

We entered and I felt... a bit disappointed, actually. Past a small entrance area, everything around us was oversexualized to the point of absurdity. The shelves had tits, the floor was a carpet depicting naked women, there were porn posters on display, and everything was just steeped in big busty bimbo energy.

Now, I did not necessarily have anything against highly sexualized places or big busty bimbos. What I did not like about either was the over exaggeration of features. I loved big tits, not balloons, sultry lips, not duck beaks, and I most certainly loved smooth skin more than plastic. All of this focus on pure 'hotness' without the actual beauty of women made me dislike the place, especially after the many hours I had spent in Welldark's gracefully erotic Sexuality Branch.

This felt like walking into a cheap brothel after being used to a lady's club. The kind of establishment where the ladies had more make-up than face and the guy at the door looked twice as drunk as the clientele.

I really didn't like it in there. The guy behind the counter didn't look like he would have cared if I had called his shop a run-down whorehouse. Dead eyes barely acknowledged our entrance. That was the final straw for me. If this had all been the passion of a fellow sexual enthusiast who merely followed a different school of thought, I could have worked with it. Evidently, we were in a sex shop that existed to make money. I didn't even know why a place like this existed in Welldark, but it did and I didn't want to be there.

"Let's go somewhere else," I whispered to my dates.

Esther nodded, Aclysia seemed slightly surprised but pulled along. Once outside, she asked why we had left and I gave her my reason. "You continue to intrigue, Karitas," she said afterwards. "I didn't take you for one so choosey in where he got his merchandise."

"If there is no other choice, I shall endure. From my heart of hearts, however, I speak when I say that I do not want any part of my sexual experiences to be a soulless, lifeless exchange of goods," I declared. "A sex shop need not be sleazy, there is much to be passionate about, one honest pervert to another."

Esther hummed in agreement. "There is another shop further out, on the way to the alchemy store. We will go there next?" she transformed that into a question with the intonation on the very last syllable.

"Sounds good," I agreed.

Even from the outside, that shop looked more promising. It did have the same tinted windows and solid door, likely a demanded aesthetic to keep the prying eyes of children from spying what they weren't supposed to. The building by and large had decisively more flair though. Three stories tall, it stood proud, like a proper business, with decorations that made it inviting to enter. The name was displayed in bold golden letters: For the Adult Mind.

We entered and the difference was highlighted immediately. There was an entrance area here as well, but it was more spacious and a curtain prevented people from peeping in. More importantly, the air smelled not of fresh plastic, but of rosewater and incense. Music played, of the typical store variety, not the cheesy porn beats.

This felt like a place that wanted to have customers, not transactions. This was validated by the "Hello!" that greeted us when we made it past the curtain. The store clerk was a woman, apparently in her mid-fifties, who was not afraid to address us with a smile. Proudly I smiled back. We exchanged a knowing nod. I had found one of my people. "Let me guess: you're here to buy toys?"

"What gave it away?" I wondered chirpily, while stepping into the first floor of the shop. My feet landed on firm stone. The toys, ropes, and other utensils were respectfully displayed and sorted, and the posters on the walls only depicted the most elegant of erotic poses of pairs in the act of lovemaking. Truly, this was the proper place for an honest man to shop.

Because I had good taste in women, Esther and Aclysia followed me to the counter. The greatest sign of embarrassment between the two of them was a slight bit of red in Aclysia's face. "You want some recommendations?" the clerk, not sure if she was the owner, asked.

"Just the first time we're here, mind explaining the layout?" I asked. The shop occupied the entire building and expanded upwards and sideways. "Although I might have some questions later."

"Sure, it's pretty easy. The first floor is the couple's floor, second is the women's floor and third is the men's floor. Gay sections are at the back of the middle and upper floor. Down here, you can find practically everything you should need though," she looked over to my two dates, "don't think you'll need to buy a fleshlight."

I nodded along until that final remark, where I finally shook my head. "Good to know, we'll be looking around then," I said. It felt nice just speaking at a regular volume. The other place felt like we would have had to whisper everything to fit in with the vibe. Sex toys here were treated as a casual commodity, which I much preferred over giving it that sinful, secretive paint job.

"There's such an interesting selection," Aclysia hummed, while standing in front of the shelf dedicated to ropes and other utensils for restriction. She pointed at a roll of latex tape. "Would that not hurt?"

"Sometimes that's the intention," I whispered to her, only to watch her get little goosebumps in the neck. Desperately, I hoped that was for enticed reasons. "Typically, tape used in BDSM is only self-sticking though."

"Tape seems economically inefficient," Esther remarked, holding a nicely tied black rope in her hands. "These are reusable."

"Tape is usually more friendly to the skin," I told her. "No rope burns to worry about."

"The Astral Body makes that a non-issue anyway," Esther stated. "We are buying this."

"You know how much I love it that you just declare that?" I asked. There was no doubt which one of us would be restricted with that rope. In her eyes was the clear statement that she was looking forward to that as much as I was. Having both my hands available while hers were impossible to be moved was deeply satisfying. We both knew, because we had used my Artefact to manifest some limited restraints before. Having actual ones was just easier. As I got more familiar with them, I would be able to reproduce them more accurately too. With that in mind, I turned to Aclysia. "Do you see anything that strikes your fancy?"

Aclysia moved around the room, upon my question. Her eyes sometimes lingered on the dildos around, but she did not seem truly intrigued by any of it. We changed rooms, to see if there was something else.

The main room had a broad sweep of everything. Finding the actual BDSM room was a revelation, however. There we found the kind of specialized equipment that partly was too much for me. Nipple clamps, for example, which I usually regarded as inflicting pain beyond what was fun. Obviously, I couldn't speak for the masochist afflicted with such torment, I just wasn't enough of a sadist to enjoy seeing that. The aesthetics disagreed with me.

As far as dom tools went, the selection was incredible though. I was instantly drawn to a selection of catalogues on Shibari techniques. I had done my preliminary reading on this, most certainly, but an actual book on the matter would be very helpful, now that I had both a willing woman and the rope to practice with. I brought it to the counter and placed it next to the rope. The clerk was letting us hold things by the counter until we were ready for check-out.

I returned to the BDSM room to both of my dates standing in front of a selection of egg vibrators. "Interested?" I asked.

"Intrigued," Esther confirmed for me, reading the packaging on one of the vibrators. The reason why these were here and not with the other vibrators in the main or women section was that these came with a remote control. The tag line 'in Master's hands' made the intended purpose very clear. "Although I am uncertain if you should be given this authority."

"Should he not be given the authority especially because he would tease us with it in... socially unacceptable situations?" Aclysia asked.

"Does that excite you?"

Aclysia's green eyes dashed between me and the package in Esther's hand. In that sensuous, deliciously restrained tone of hers, she confessed, "If that is 'in Master's hands', yes."

I really had to try not to stumble over my own dick after hearing that sentence. "That's what I love to hear," I said and grabbed two of the vibrators. Esther took one from me and put it back.

"We have budget restrictions," she reminded me. "Unless you forgo the alchemy equipment, carefully pick what you wish to afford."

I sighed but did not put up any resistance. She was right and the alchemy equipment would ultimately be of higher value. Putting an arm around Aclysia, I moved her towards a wall with various gags and masks proudly displayed on top of mannequin faces. There were even little graphs on the expected strain to the jaw. "If you had to pick one of these, which one would it be?" I asked her.

Ball gags were the most common, closely followed by ring gags and finally bite leathers. There was much more beyond that, in small quantities. Aclysia scanned the selection and eventually pointed, with a hint of shyness, to one of the ring gags. It was a simple one, just a metal ring with leather straps keeping it in place. I put a hand on the back of her neck, grabbing her possessively and dragged her close towards it.

It was the first time I was handling her in this variety of a rough fashion, but I already knew she was going to like it. The maidly virgin made it very obvious what she wanted her sex life to be like. The little gasps she let out while I manhandled her confirmed my hopes.

"Why that one?" I asked in the slightly deeper tone I used when domming. My mouth was right next to her ear, her face as close to the chosen gag as we could be while retaining store etiquette.

"I don't want to block my mouth from... being of use," she answered.

"Good girl."

It was fascinating that there were certain words that everyone of a certain persuasion just reacted the same to. This was the most basic and simultaneously heartfelt compliment a dom could give a submissive and, no matter how often it was repeated, it always had the same effect. Aclysia's smile left the diligent territory and bordered on lecherous, while her eyes reflected a sudden rush of serotonin through her entire brain.

It could be that easy, if the right person said it.

Had I had a mirror around whenever someone called me 'Master', I doubtlessly could have followed a similar reaction in myself.

Because I wanted to and because Esther was intrigued by them as well, we bought one of those ring gags. That brought us closer and closer to the edge of our budget. Sex toys weren't cheap and we didn't need to buy an entire library's worth of BDSM articles when we were only beginning to dabble in the exercise. Rope, a gag, and a remote-control vibrator, that was already plenty to start with.