God Of Crafting

"Don't move."

Claire's first words were perfectly aligned with what she muttered in her sleep.

Yet, even though she obviously woke up now, her voice remained as sleepy as before.

Still…

For some reason, none of the expected reactions came.

Obviously, why would Claire freak out when she was the one who knew how the two of us ended up like that?

With my own memory cutting off right as I lost consciousness after clearly overexerting myself…

All of a sudden, I forgot all about the bath and the naked fairy hugging me from behind as my thoughts drew to the obvious.

'Did I actually do what I did?'

Shocked by the memory of my own feat, I nearly fell into a state of disbelief-prompted withdrawal…

Only for the rubbing of Claire's thighs and arms to bring me right back to the risque reality.

"How much do you remember?"

'Oh, so that's how we start…' I thought, jerking a little as if to look back into Claire's face.

Only for the girl to tighten her grasp over my torso right away.

"Can you just… stop?!" Freaking out a little harder than I expected, Claire finally managed to get the message across.

"Do you think I'm holding you tightly like that just because?!"

Claire got the message across but never learned of the fact. As such, she readily provided me a believable line of thought not only to calm me down, proving there was some logic in this nonsensical development but also to give me a proper reason not to move.

"The last thing I remember…" Pushing all the questions I had down my throat, I focused on the direction Claire gave me. "Yeah, it has to be when I blacked out after getting out from under that rubble I used to…"

I stopped as suddenly as I started, realizing that… I wasn't so sure how to exactly explain the rest.

The rubble that I used for what? To cover myself from the exploding car? And did I really somehow dismantle the entire thing in the heat of the moment?

"Haa-ah…" A long sigh escaped my lips as my body slumped down, inevitably causing Claire to pull up as she stretched herself over my back. And with her head following the process, her mouth ended up just an inch away from my ear, making me strangely aware of the sound of her heavy, labored breathing.

"Can you tell me what happened next? And…" I hesitated for a second, strangely reluctant to acknowledge the situation we were in.

As childish as it might be, it felt that as long as I didn't bring that up, the whole topic could be ignored, put aside, and free of anyone's attention.

"And how did we end up the way we are right now?"

At first, Claire replied with nothing but silence, as if she was thinking about something.

Then, she grasped her hold over my torso again before pulling back, all the way to the point where she rested her back against the edge of the wooden bail, inevitably forcing me upon the cushion of her own skin and flesh.

"Do you promise to stay still as I explain what happened?" Claire asked in a tired voice as if way too exhausted to mind something as small as this strangely intimate session.

"Sure do," I was slightly too quick for my own comfort with my positive response.

As exciting as lying with a goddess-level beauty was enticing, my thoughts already moved to the thing so out of the perception of the world I was used to, I just couldn't put it aside even for a slight moment.

Right now, while I was in this herbal bath, its water thick from all the spiritual energy it was infused with… And yet, Qi continued to move at a rapid pace around me in two circles spinning in opposite directions.

And just like one could create a spark of electricity by moving magnets over a wire, the flow of clearly Claire's Qi was somehow agitating my inner state, allowing me to absorb the power within the water with much greater ease.

'Is this why she wrapped her hands and arms around me like that?' I thought, trying to reason the details of the situation all on my own.

Then again, no matter how interesting cultivation was, a youthful beauty was wrapping her soft, warm thighs lower over my hips, squishing them against my waist in her attempt to keep me still and… relaxed?

"First off, I'm sorry. If only I was a little bit faster…" Claire started from an angle I actually didn't expect.

We have yet to sign the deal, so there was no legal reason for her to bear any responsibility for my health or safety…

'But on the other hand, losing me would be surely a big loss of a potential investment, I guess?'

"When I saw you walk out of the rubble, perfectly fine and unharmed… I didn't want to believe it. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, really."

This time, Claire squeezed only her arms, letting her legs drop and rest against my own thighs.

"But then, you fell, and…"

Claire's hold grew so strong, that she actually started to choke me out.

"And?" I asked, refusing to let the girl fall into silence right as she reached the part I was actually interested in!

"They infused you with Bolka, an anti-cultivator tranquilizer. It's strong enough to put a polar bear to sleep in an instant. And while it's just strong enough to put most of cultivators out of commission for a while…"

"I'm not a proper cultivator, at least not yet…" I filled in the details on my own. Then, after a moment of silence, I raised my head.

Understanding that there was some sort of purpose in our current situation, I no longer tried to look back. Even if it was just a matter of Claire worried about me seeing her in her birthday suit, it was a wish of hers I decided to properly respect.

"And then?" I asked, only to feel Claire moving around a bit as if just recalling the memory made her uncomfortable.

"Your heart was about to stop. Against pretty much a normal person, that tranquilizer was more than enough to push you into a cardiac arrest. And while that we stopped as soon as we got to you…"

This time, the silence that followed Claire's words was different.

She wasn't trying to hide stuff from me, just…

It felt as if she wasn't all that comfortable speaking about it.

"Aren't we in a pretty compromising situation already?" I asked, obediently keeping my hands still despite a great desire to just raise them and point at the two of us. "What else there is that you can tell me that could top the two of us taking a healing bath together?"

Claire, at first, twitched a little. A moment later, however, she ended up relaxing a bit, even going as far as to utter a small chuckle.

"Yeah, you are right," her arms moved as she hugged herself into my back. "There are not many steps left for us to go any further, so why am I so bothered?" she whispered in a cheeky manner before leaning back as she laughed out.

"Without Qi, you wouldn't survive. And after whatever it was that you did to the car, you've clearly sapped what little spiritual energy you've gathered before. So, we had to substitute for your lacking Qi and find someone powerful enough to take on the burden of this drug."

This seemed like some sort of a great piece of the puzzle designed to explain the whole situation to me.

Which made it all the stranger when I failed to piece it together.

"And just as you asked, here we are, stuck in the medicinal bath with spiritual Qi all around and with me driving my cultivation over you to bait all of that nasty drug out," Claire explained before heaving a sigh and leaning back against the edge of the bail… which inevitably pulled me even further back, nearly nailing my back down on her hard nipples.

'Hmm?'

Why were exactly her nipples… hard?

Was it just my imagination, or maybe a reaction to Qi-rich, warm water?

Or maybe…

'No, this is not the time, place, or occasion for that,' I quickly lashed out at myself in my own thoughts, reining in the weird train of thought before it could derail on its own.

"You see when I saw you first walk out only to then suddenly collapse…" Claire tightened her hug once again.

'I see… I've got it all wrong.'

Ever since the meeting started, I ended up looking at Claire through a different lens than usual. Rather than the slightly nerdy shopkeeper that I knew, she appeared as this rich and cold lady of high status, all titles full of thin, velvet restraints that imposed certain sets of behaviors and priorities upon her.

And it was this impression that now clashed with the much more cozy, natural, and outright warm feeling of Claire's current version.

She wasn't worried about a potential investment or about the loss of what she already invested.

She appeared to be genuinely worried about me back then!

'Damn…' I suddenly relaxed, taken aback by the warm feeling filling up my gut. 'I didn't know it would feel that good to have someone give a…'

Following this train of thought, I hung my head with a knowing smile, only to realize that the feeling good part wasn't exactly limited to the soothing warmth of my soul!

"Hey, I've now woken up so isn't it time for us to… move out of the bath?" I suggested, suddenly finding myself in a great hurry when I realized how just a fraction of an inch separated us… No, separated me from a disaster.

"What are you talking about?" Claire protested as she yawned before dragging me right back into a tight hold… And only accelerating the progress of the issue when her chest rubbed all over my back again, squished by my weight only for her nipples to pierce right into my skin.

"We are here an hour at most," Claire revealed with a strange… and worrying nonchalance. "It's going to take at least two, three more days before I will allow you to get out of the tub, two or three days at the very least," she dropped a bomb that rendered me too stunned, too senseless to react to it in any way or form.

'Two, three more days of… this?!'

Sensing that there was something troubling me, Claire moved again, this time climbing over my back and rubbing herself against me in the process, all for the sake of popping her head out over my shoulder, all in a bit to take a look at my face.

In the process of her move, however, the angle of her hips and thus legs shifted. And as her thighs dragged over the sides of my waist, her shins…

Her shins happened to turn at just the right angle to push against the erection I was desperately trying to stuff between my legs without dragging Claire's attention to it!

Claire thankfully ignored my openly desperate attempts, satisfied just by hanging her lips just off to the side of my ear.

"So, you better get yourself comfortable, for we are going to stay here together for quite some time."