Vol.6 Ch.13.2 – Control II

We decided to freshen up before dinner and so we headed into Meli's bathroom.

I had only gotten glimpses of it earlier when the two of them had collected her toiletries and so I was more than a little surprised by what I found. A plant was growing along the walls of the bathroom and I couldn't quite tell what it was but it reminded me a lot of the plant Hermes' tholos had housed. It crawled along the walls like ivy but was as thick around as my wrist. And instead of dainty little leaves this plant had thick leaves sturdy enough to place items on. One particularly big one held large bottles of liquid soap and we used that to clean ourselves up.

The Underworld itself was cooler than the surface world, even more so now with Summer slowly rearing its head topside but even with the cool climate of the Underworld we had just spent hours walking through a fairly crowded village and so we were just sweaty enough that cleaning all the grime off felt amazing.

Meli had somehow managed to get cleaned up without me seeing her smallclothes, which had me quite intrigued. Whatever she was wearing for me, it had to be pretty amazing given the lengths she went through to hide it. Alisha, on the other hand, had shown no such hesitation, prancing through Meli's bath stark naked. Between the tease of Meli's underwear and Alisha showing off her gorgeous body I was quickly reaching the point where food was the last thing on my mind. Except my stomach had other ideas.

I would have felt embarrassed by the loud growl it let out if Alisha's hadn't followed suit a moment later.

“I guess dinner doesn't sound so bad after all,” Alisha admitted.

I would have agreed, but just then Meli walked past me and the way her butt swayed in the loose tunic she wore did a great job reminding me that I wasn't just hungry for food. And the way she smirked as she looked over her shoulder at me told me that she was having very similar thoughts about dinner.

And so we followed Meli out of her room and to the mansion's dining room. As we walked Meli explained to us that the mansion had two separate dining rooms, one for the servants and one for Meli and her guests and she had hurried to add that this had been done at her estate manager's insistence. And while I did understand Meli's wish to have a single dining room for everyone, right now I was quite happy that we wouldn't be having dinner alongside her maids and butlers, especially after the very filthy suggestion Alisha whispered in my ear on the way there.

**

The dining room looked like... well, like every other dining room I had visited on Anna's arm. Tables so long the people on one end couldn't talk to the ones on the other, white tablecloths, three sets of cutlery arranged around each plate and wine glasses so thin and delicate they looked like they might snap if you glared at them too hard.

When trying to make nice with the Trismegistian nobility I put up with this nonsense but here I was more than a little annoyed about it.

“They don't usually set the tables like this,” Meli said quietly.

“Apparently they're trying to impress their lady's guests,” I said, not quite keeping the disgust out of my voice.

“I can ask for them to change it.”

“Don't bother,” I said. “The only thing that really annoys me is this.” 'This' was the fact that, rather than seating us all side by side they had placed one set of plates and cutlery on the opposite side of the table than the others. And so I picked up the third set and carried it over to set next to the other two, then sat down so that Meli was sandwiched between Alisha and me. And she practically seemed to glow at that.

All of my women liked to sit differently. Yume enjoyed sitting next to me. Anna enjoyed getting sandwiched between me and one of the others. Selene was generally fine wherever but didn't like sitting too far away from me. And Alisha would take any spot so long as it was close to mine. And apparently Meli was like Anna in this regard. It made sense. Both of them were similarly starved for affection. Although, to be fair, things were getting better with Anna. She no longer felt quite as neglected. Having her lovers living with her was helping her come out of her shell, something I noticed even in her interactions with other nobles. And I hoped that being around us would similarly help Meli. It was a little sad to consider just how neglected she seemed. She lived in a town of people who adored her for the most part and she lived only a day's trip away from her loving parents. And yet she was more love-starved than even Anna had been, having endured this loneliness for centuries rather than for a single decade. I resolved to do my best to give her all the love and care she deserved, and Alisha seemed to be thinking the same thing.

Once we'd properly sat down Heinrich came into the dining hall and looked at us. He frowned at the plates, as if thinking that whoever had set the table must have made a mistake, but then he saw the content expression on Melinoe's face and clearly decided to let it rest.

“My lady, if you are ready for dinner I would have the chef send the first course.”

“Please go ahead, Heinrich,” Meli said. “That would be wonderful.”

“That sounded a bit dismissive,” Alisha said after Heinrich had left.

“He will stay there and watch me eat if I don't tell him otherwise,” Meli said. “He takes his caretaker duty very seriously.”

“How long has his family been in your employ?” I asked.

“Is it that obvious?” she asked. She'd told us that everyone in her village was free to pursue their own career path, regardless of their parents, but it was clear to me that her estate manager had inherited his duties.

“He's old but he's clearly not older than you,” I said, “and some of the decisions your estate manager has made must predate him. He also seems like he was born into this role.”

“I want to make it clear that he, too, had a choice,” Meli said. “But Heinrich chose to step into his father's footsteps, as his father did before him. He will eventually have to chose one of the staff to carry the torch though, because his children are all gifted in other areas.”

“So three generations, then?”

“Four, all told,” Meli said. “But even the fact that I am older than the great-grandfather he never met doesn't stop him from treating me like a child.”

“I guess it's hard to see you as his senior when you look like you could be his granddaughter,” I mused.

“Oh no,” she said, “he's been treating me like that since he was a kid.”

I chuckled. “That must have been a sight to see.”

“He learned it from his dad.”

I smiled but internally I was beginning to assemble a very different picture. It made sense that Meli was so ready to fly the coop. She was centuries old but apparently she'd been treated like a child for most of that time. I couldn't really blame Heinrich or his family for this, either. They didn't really do anything wrong. They didn't know that this behavior was exactly wrong for her.

I shook myself out of it when Lucille arrived carrying three plates of food, balancing them as expertly as any tavern maid and setting them down in front of us with a little flourish. Just in case I pulled out my poison detecting crystal and tapped it against mine and Alisha's plates. Nothing happened.

“What was that about?” Meli asked as she saw me futzing around with that crystal.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, then quickly asked: “So, what do we have here?”

I was honestly a little worried about the food. We were in the Underworld but the food was served to us by a demigoddess' personal chef in her own mansion. I was worried he would try to wow us with foods that were exotic for the Underworld but would be commonplace on the surface, but it turned out I needn't have worried. He had understood the assignment and had created a menu of Underworld delicacies. Or at least that's how Melinoe described it.

The first course was... I suppose you would call it crayfish. Except the crayfish caught in the Underworld were far larger than the small but delicious little things found in the rivers on the surface. These were closer in size to lobsters and, unlike surface world shellfish, didn't turn red when cooked. Instead the shell retained a gorgeous turquoise color, specks of white making it look like a starry sky on our dinner plates.

The crayfish was halved lengthwise and placed atop a bed of what looked like tiny black spheres. I poked at it a little dubiously but when I tried it it turned out to be a stew made of rice grains. It tasted briny like the ocean, with a note of white wine and garlic and shallots. When I asked where the black color came from Meli told me that it was squid ink. Not an ingredient I would have expected in the kitchen but it certainly worked. I was glad the dish was served on a black plate though, because I was pretty sure the white napkin I used to dab at my mouth afterwards would be unsalvageable.

“This is excellent,” I said after my first bite of the crayfish. It was sweet, far sweeter than normal seafood. Coming out of freshwater it was nowhere near as briny, to the point where it needed the briny rice stew to balance it. “But the black color isn't really ideal, considering...”

“I'm rather looking forward to seeing where I can leave black stains later,” Alisha said lewdly.

“Don't get me in the mood yet,” Meli said quietly. “We need to at least finish dinner.”

“Don't worry,” I said, “we will.” And then I very deliberately rested my hand on her thigh.

Her gaze snapped up to meet mine, shock and desire warring for dominance as my hand gently squeezed, squishing the meat of her inner thigh. I could feel warm wetness even through her tunic and whatever smallclothes I wasn't allowed to see yet.

“Go on,” I said, “finish your food.”

“Asshole,” she mouthed but turned back to her plate and kept eating, doing her best to focus on the food.

It was a bit of a pain to pull the crayfish out of its shell with one hand but I made it work.

“It feels nice, doesn't it?” Alisha asked, doing her best to whisper in Meli's ear.

“It would be a lot nicer if we were in the bedroom,” Meli ground out, her voice strained.

“Be honest,” Alisha said, “the idea that we could be caught at any time is what makes it exciting.”

“I don't really see the appeal,” Meli muttered.

“Are you sure?” Alisha asked. “Remember that memory of Felix and me on the caravan wagon, the one where I didn't know the jerk had the cone of silence on? I seem to remember you liking that just as much as I did...”

“Why are you so mean tonight?”

Alisha grabbed hold of Meli's other thigh, squeezing just as I had, our knuckles touching between Meli's legs. “You've been keeping him on edge all day, teasing him with the smallclothes. He's been desperate to see just how lewd they are. Don't you think he deserves some recompense?”

“Wh-what kind of recompense?” Meli asked, and then we snapped to attention when Lucille barged into the dining room to take our empty plates away.

We sat there, feeling like caught teenagers, when Heinrich entered and asked: “Was everything to your liking?”

“Y-yeah,” Meli stammered out.

“It was wonderful,” I said. “Thank you.”

He nodded in gratitude. “The main course will be out momentarily.”

And the main course did come out. I was already prepared for another variation of cave salamander and mushrooms but evidently that wasn't all the Underworld had to offer.

“Mushroom wolf roast with root vegetables,” Meli said. “It's similar to cave troll meat but a lot of surface worldlers don't eat troll so I suppose our chef wanted to play it safe.”

I eyed it dubiously. I'd never had troll meat before. I generally balked at eating anything remotely humanoid and trolls just barely qualified.

“Mushroom wolf,” I said. “I wonder if it's similar to the flower wolf we fought in the Crystal Crown's dungeon.”

“If that is a giant wolf overgrown with flowers,” Meli said, “then yes.”

I nodded. Interesting. The flower wolf we'd fought back then had been corrupted by the Black Goat so even after Alisha had cleansed it we hadn't taken any of the meat. Anna had harvested a couple of plants but that had been it.

And without the Outsider corruption and knowing that this wasn't troll meat, I was quite curious about this.

The flower wolf had been overgrown with flowers, the roots burrowed under its skin, and this wolf was clearly similar but with mushrooms instead of flowers. Except the low and slow roasting the chef had done to it had caused the mycelial threads to shrink, pulling out of the meat.

The result was meat so tender it practically fell apart, as if the structural mesh holding it together had been pulled out, which I supposed it had been. It wasn't mushy as I had feared, either. It was the perfect consistency, perfumed with the flavor of really high quality mushrooms, the sauce rich with red wine and root vegetables, and served with a hearty dark bread to mop up all the sauce. The food was so good I almost forgot to keep teasing Meli but soon enough my hand found its way back to her thigh.

This time though she was ready for it. She didn't try to stop me, no. But to my surprise and delight the moment I squeezed her thigh I felt one of her small hands on my crotch. Directly on it. The warmth of her flesh and the little gasps and moans she'd let out had been enough to get me hard already and I couldn't hold back a groan when I felt her hand on my cock.

“Three can play at that game,” Meli hissed.

“You could win that game,” Alisha said quietly. “You could drive him crazy right here, right now.”

“And how would I do that?” Meli asked, her voice low with desire. This situation was everything to her. She was sandwiched between and teased by two people she deeply cared about and Alisha had just awakened her competitive spirit.

“I think you know,” Alisha said.

When Meli didn't say anything Alisha mused:

“This tablecloth sure is long... long enough to hide all sorts of things...”

Meli glanced at the tablecloth, then at my crotch, then up at me.

I kept my expression carefully neutral. What Alisha was suggesting would probably be the lewdest thing the demigoddess had ever done and that's exactly why it was so tempting.

“Will you reward me later?” Meli asked, almost inaudibly. The question had clearly been directed at me but when I answered, so did Alisha:

“Yes.”

Meli bit her lip, took a deep breath, and then slid off her chair and down onto her knees.