My first instinct was to doubt it. My second instinct was to reject it. Thankfully, I was at least able to grab some kind of control over my brain-mouth filter before anything actually came out of my mouth, and while awkwardly staring at Zahri wasn't that much better a response, at the very least very least I wouldn't be scrabbling to apologise for whatever my brain decided to spew out on reflex.
It took me a couple of seconds to actually process what the hell had just happened, that yes, an attractive woman had just propositioned me for sex, and after looking at her calm, serious expression, that no, she wasn't joking about it. I felt bad about not saying anything, but it came so out of left field, and was so unexpected compared to anything that I was used to that I genuinely didn't know what to say.
"Um, thank you?" Fuck, that definitely wasn't it. I suddenly realised I hadn't even remembered to cast my influence spell, so I didn't even have that helping me not sound like a moron. I hurried onwards before she had a chance to respond. "Do you mind if I take a moment to think about it?" In terms of answers to the question 'do you want to have sex?', what I said was somewhere just above openly laughing in her face, but I was so thrown that my options were either think things through to come up with an actual answer later or panic now and say something even more dumb.
Thankfully, Zahri shrugged, seemingly (hopefully) unbothered by my answer, so I closed my eyes and took a moment to calm down and centre myself. The sensible part of my brain was aware that I should be a lot less thrown by this, compared to the whole 'fantasy world' and 'fighting for my life' things, but unfortunately just knowing that your anxiety is dumb isn't enough to actually get it to stop.
Right, breathe and think about things. The chance of it being some kind of joke to mess with me was basically zero, given that she was sat there waiting for my answer as I attempted to piece my brain back together after everything screeched to a halt. If it was a given that it was a genuine offer, the question there was did I want to take her up on it?
Reasons to say no immediately started coming to mind, my mind flooding with worst case scenarios. There were a lot of ways that this could go badly, from being caught (quite literally) with my pants down if something bad happened, to if the rest of the party burst in while we were in flagrante delicto, but even I knew those reasons were bullshite. The real reason I wanted to say no, the reason I had to force my leg to stop vibrating under the table, was my own anxious fear.
That part of me that was just willing to go with the flow, that was avoiding asking questions or prying into the differences of this world, the part of me that didn't want to take risks because it told me that opening myself up to vulnerability was asking for someone else take advantage of it, was what was trying to persuade me to say no, compared to revealing my inexperience to someone that I didn't (couldn't) completely trust, and giving them that power to hurt me.
Despite my visceral urge to turn her down, an echo of a thought I'd had this yesterday came back to me. The circumstances were different, but the idea was the same. I had real, tangible power now, and the ability to ignore or deal with a great many of the consequences that previously I would have been stuck with. Why should I be afraid? Yeah, some of it was fucked up brain chemistry, and I had (or had had, I guess) the prescription to prove it, but that was all that was left when I had the ability to escalate past other people's attempts to hurt me.
That should probably not have been as comforting a thought as it was.
So, trying to think past my own anxiety, without that fear, what did I want to do? Did I want to break an 8-year cold streak with a friendly, attractive compatriot of mine, or did I want to sit here and drink? And given how obvious the answer to that question was, did I want to let myself stop myself doing it?
I opened my eyes, and looked at Zahri, locking eyes from where she'd been watching me think. "Sorry about that, you took me somewhat by surprise." I explained to the cleric. "The answers yes, if the offer's still open."
She grinned in response, a wide, excited, full face thing that showed off teeth. "Upstairs, then." With a swipe of her hands, she grabbed both of the empty mugs and wandered over to the bar, dropping them off before heading to the stairs. I stood up, ignoring the sound of my heartbeat in my ears, and followed her.
I took a quick moment while I was alone on the stairs to recast my Beguiling Influence. I wasn't sure if it would actually help, but it wasn't like it would hurt. Pushing open the door to the shared room, I saw that Zahri had cleared one of the beds from where armour and other sundries had been piled there, and was sat on the edge of it, removing her boots. As I walked in, she looked up and threw something at me. Fumbling to catch it, I managed to grab the heavy key by the teeth.
"For privacy."
Seemed fair enough to me. I turned to the door behind me and locked it, leaving the key resting in the door. Turning back to Zahri, I felt my nervousness start to spike again as I tried to figure out what exactly it was that I should be doing here. Did I approach her, or start taking my boots off as well, or...
Shaking my head, I moved to a corner and started shaking my chain shirt off. I needed to take the armour off anyway, so I might as well start with that. By the time I'd unbuckled my gambeson and belt, leaving them in a small pile on the floor, Zahri had finished taking her boots off and padded over to me.
She grabbed me by the shoulders, bending slightly to put her face level with mine. I hadn't actually really paid that much attention to how tall she was before, but she must have been six foot, easily. I took a moment to properly examine her face from close up. Her skin was surprisingly smooth, the minor greenish tint to it giving her a aura of slight otherworldliness. A tongue flickered out of her mouth to trace around her lips, before being caught between her teeth. I pulled my eyes up to meet hers as she pulled hers up from where she'd been staring at my face. Eyes a blueish-grey colour that reminded me of steel bored into me as she grinned.
"Stop thinking so much." she said, and pulled me into a kiss.
Zahri was a very aggressive kisser, I noted, as she pulled me around so my back was to the bed. One of her hands had come up to the back of my head, and she was nearly pulling my skull into hers. Her tongue immediately invaded my mouth, moving over each of my teeth in turn. Groping at my chest over my shirt with her other hand, she slowly walked me backwards to the bed.
While a part of me would have been more comfortable with a conversation beforehand about what was going to happen, I did my best to follow Zahri's advice and start doing rather than thinking, one of my hands going around her back for balance while I dropped my other to her arse. Solid muscle met my groping, an almost non-existent layer of fat covering glutes of iron that I did my best to sink my fingers into.
The edge of the bed hit the back of my knees, sending me toppling backwards onto the mattress. Zahri came down with me, the hand on my chest darting to the side to stop her collapsing onto me as she stopped kissing me, letting me drop down onto the bed. We paused for a moment, and it suddenly struck me how similar the position was to the one the bandit leader was in when she'd invaded my tent the night before. The thought disappeared as quickly as it came as she shifted to told herself up with her left arm, using her right to pull her tunic off.
Muscles, not the absurd bulges of a bodybuilder or the rigidly cut structure of a weightlifter, but the solid frame of someone who had developed their bulk through long hours of manual labour greeted me as the top came over her head and landed somewhere on the floor behind her. In lieu of a bra, she was wearing a long strip of cloth as a binder.
I brought my hands up to her sides, caressing her skin and feeling the play of her muscles as she did the same to me, burying her hands under my shirt, grasping my pecs and rubbing her thumbs over my nipples. Leaning forwards, she hungrily kissed me again, practically pinning my tongue in my mouth. I was unable to resist the urge to catch her tongue between my teeth, holding it there for a second before I felt her pull away. Letting go, I worried for a second that I'd fucked up, but the grin on her face as she looked down at me persuaded me otherwise.
If anything, it spurred her onwards, her hands grabbing the bottom of my shirt and yanking it upwards, the cloth tangling up my arms for a couple of seconds before she pulled it free and haphazardly tossed it to the side. Her hands immediately came back to my chest, one hand returning to a nipple while the other traced along my tattoos, pausing as she came to the one on the inside of my left forearm, that of a pair of scimitars crossed over a whirlwind.
Emboldened by my previous lack of failure, I kept my hands active as well, feeling around her binder to figure out how to get it off. It took me a few moments to find the knot, and a few more to actually loosen it, given how tightly it had been done, but I was able to create enough slack to just tug the whole thing downwards, her tits popping free with a bounce. They were huge even on her large frame, and the greenish tint of her skin was more prominent on them, the areola in particular being a solid dark green. I grabbed the right one, the flesh spilling over the sides of my hand as I palmed her nipple, leaning forwards to capture the left one in my mouth, finding it heavy with the taste of salt and sweat.
Her groan at my actions caused me to redouble my efforts, and as I switched breasts, groping the left one while licking and nibbling at the right, she brought her hands down to her waist, unbuckling her trousers and pulling them down. My mouth detached from her tit with a popping sound as she stood up to kick her trousers off, the cloth of her binding falling off completely as she did so to leave her clad only in her underwear, a pair of very damp-looking boxers. Those Zahri peeled off, revealing soaked thighs as she flicked the underwear to the floor.
My mouth went dry as I watched her nude form prowl towards me, not even stopping as she got to my waist and yanked my trousers down to my knees, followed by quickly by my boxers, letting my shaft spring free. Despite everything that had happened, the combination of anxiety and alcohol had left me at half-mast, and I almost went to apologise. Her actions interrupted me, though, one hand going down to my dick to lazily stroke it while the other slipped between her folds with a quiet schlicking sound.
She swapped hands as she climbed on the bed, her dry hand landing somewhere to the side of my head while the hand covered in her own juices went to my dick, lubing it up. A knee was placed on either side of my hips as she hovered above me, gazing down. There was a wide grin on her face, her eyes flickering up and down me frantically, taking all of me in as she positioned herself.
"Ready?" Zahri asked me breathlessly, her hand speeding up the pumping up and down my shaft.
As much as I wanted to just buck my hips and drive my cock into her, for once the rational part of my brain was agreeing with the part that came up with worse case scenarios. "Have you got a condom, or birth control?" The last thing I needed was to knock someone up I'd known for less than a week.
"Orison. It's fine." Was her confusing response. At my expression, she sighed. "Like a cantrip. Stops pregnancy."
"You have a birth control cantrip?"
"Yes." Her voice sounded mildly annoyed as she sped her hand up again, the gliding of her hand slowly bringing my dick up to full hardness. "Now, you ready?"
At my answering nod, she stopped pumping, holding my cock in place as she slowly lowered herself onto it, her vagina so soaking wet that there was no resistance. Despite how easily I slipped in, I could feel how tight she was, her vaginal muscles clenching down on me. She kept that same steady pace, slowly feeding inch after inch of me deeper into her pussy until her hips impacted mine, a moan escaping her lips as I bottomed out in her, the warm wet tightness causing me to let out a groan of my own.
Zahri took a couple of moments to just stay like that, so I brought my hands back up, one going to her hip for stability as the other went for her magnificent tits, rolling her nipple between my thumb and forefinger. A muttered "Fuck" was her response, along with a roll of her hips that provoked a similar exclamation from me.
Moving her free hand to the other side of my head, she leaned down while keeping me hilted in her, giving me another full, sloppy french kiss before she started to slowly pull herself off of me. The moment the cold air hit my wet cock I shivered and instinctively thrust up back into her with a wet slap, prompting another grin from her.
"A proper fuck, then." Zahri growled, and immediately picked up the pace, driving my pelvis back down into the bed with force, before swiftly pulling herself back up until only the head of my dick was in her pussy, before slamming back down again. I started meeting her thrusts, but there was only so much I could do against her raw strength, the half-orc strong enough to literally fuck me into the bed.
I quickly lost track of how long we fucked for, losing myself to the sensation of flesh smacking against flesh and the pleasure of sex. My hands found their way to Zahri's hips in short order and stayed there, giving me some illusion of control over the pace as I watched her breasts bounce and jiggle with every motion. This wasn't a romantic act of lovemaking, but a vigorous, almost animalistic fuck, done for the purpose of physical release.
One of her hands would occasionally move from its place on the bed to trace over my skin, either feeling up my chest or rest on my face, before it would go back to the bed to help support her as she pounded herself up and down, biting her lower lip as she did so. When I wasn't leering at her tits I was looking at her face, and the way that it was screwed up in pleasure.
For once, I was happy with the effect that anxiety (and the considerable amount of booze I'd had on a empty stomach) had on me, as it had been eight years since I'd sex, and nearly a week since I'd masturbated, and I'd have come embarrassingly quickly were it not for them helping to slow me down.
Instead, Zahri was the first to come, squeezing in to my hips with her knees as she practically crushed herself against me, pressing her tits into my chest as she moaned and grunted into my ear. I could tell when it ended, half a minute later, as she suddenly went limp, dropping her entire weight onto me. She was still awake, as I could hear her groaning, so I kept thrusting (as much as I was able to), chasing after my own release.
It didn't take me long, Zahri just starting to push herself to her hands and knees as I snarled out the word "Coming!" in a voice I barely recognised as my own before slamming my pelvis full force into hers, burying myself to the hilt as I orgasmed, shooting rope after rope of cum into her.
Once I was spent, I dropped back down to the bed, suddenly exhausted. Zahri looked how I felt, tired and dishevelled, and she stretched as she slowly pushed herself to her feet, bringing her shoulders and arms back in a way that did interesting things to her chest. My dick twitched at the sight, but between the interrupted sleep, the days of walking, and the mental drain of everything that had happened yesterday and today, I didn't think I had it in me for a second round.
Thankfully, Zahri didn't seem to mind, her only comment when I cleaned the combination of sweat and sexual liquids off of us with the ring being "Feeling better?".
"Yeah, actually." That wasn't even a lie. I didn't know if it was the physical exertion or if there was something cathartic about fucking, but I felt relaxed in a way I'd not been since I came to this world, or possibly even before. "I'm surprisingly tired now, though. You enjoy it?" I hoped so, for the sake of my ego if nothing else.
A bark of laughter was her response to that. "Yes. Very much." She bent over to grab her underwear, and I found myself staring at her arse as she did so. I gave slightly more consideration to the thought of a second round, but my legs were wobbly enough that I couldn't really get them to co-operate with me moving off the bed, so I settled for just staying lying down and cleaning and heating the pair of boxers to try and get rid of the at least some of the liquid that had soaked into them. An idle thought of whether or not that was a normal amount of lubrication for a woman to produce in this world, or if Zahri different, or just really, really horny, but I couldn't work up the energy to think about it, so I let it float out of my mind.
Having pulled her trousers on by this point, Zahri watched me with a raised eyebrow. "You should nap. I'll lock the door, slide the key back under."
"You sure?" A part of me felt awkwardly stereotypical at that, orgasming and then going straight to sleep, but if anything, Zahri seemed weirdly smug about the whole thing. I briefly thought about trying to figure out why, but again, the lack of energy meant that I just internally shrugged, leaving it to my future self to figure out.
She nodded. "Get some rest." She'd put her binding back on by this point, although less tightly than it had been before, and was pulling her shirt back on. "You need it." Well, it was difficult to argue with that. I did put in the effort to pull my boxers and trousers up from where they had been dangling around my knees, though.
Zahri finished getting dressed, stepping into her boots and carefully lacing them up where she was standing, before turning back to me. "We'll knock. Should wake you. Can get decent, then open the door." With one last smile, she started walking to the door, stopping just before she opened it to turn back to me again. There was a pause as she looked for words, before settling on "Sleep well." before opening the door and stepping through. I heard the sound of the door closing, a key turning in the lock, and then the sound of metal scraping across the wooden floor, almost certainly the key being slid under the door.
After a couple of minutes of lying there, I worked up the energy to swing my legs around and lie properly on the bed, although I kept my boots dangling off the end. Thankfully, the wonder of Prestidigitation meant that there wasn't a wet patch, so I just let myself slowly drift off into sleep.
Just as I did so, I felt myself thinking '1170 + 840 encounter = 2010/2000, level up!' and everything suddenly got a little weird.