Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1814: Paragon of Virtue

Seraphiel, meanwhile, had appointed herself a new duty. With one of her man’s hands devoted to his tea and the other, by all appearances, resting innocently on his lover’s hip, someone clearly had to keep him fed, so she buttered a slice of bread, leaned across, and held it up to his mouth.

"Say aah~"

Quinlan bit into it without so much as glancing away from the sermon, and chewed like he was being handsomely rewarded for his crimes.

"Still, would you please tell my hopeless lover more, Eli?" Seraphiel propped her chin on her palm, eyes dancing between Elisabeth’s sermon and Aurora’s slowly unraveling posture. "He desperately needs your guidance. Spare no detail~"

"Don’t call me that," came the instant scoff, followed by a satisfied smirk. "But at least someone at this table respects doctrine."

It took everything the cheeky elf had to keep her laughter back.

Kaelira made a strangled sound into her plate. "This can’t be real..."

"As I was saying." The Arch Priestess straightened, warming to her audience. "Temptation withers before discipline. Proper conduct begins at the table. A shared meal is a sacred..."

"Ahn!" Aurora shuddered, gripped Quinlan’s wrist with both hands, and pressed it closer.

"...a sacred act of communion," Elisabeth pressed on, granting the feverish interruption a charitable pause.

Emily drifted by and, without a flicker of expression on the head maid’s face, replaced the napkin beside Aurora’s untouched plate with a fresh, considerably larger one.

"Say, Aurora dear~" Seraphiel’s voice turned silken. "You’re our scholar. Surely alchemy knows a cure for fevers like yours?"

Aurora’s eyes cracked open just enough to aim a dying glare across the table. "It’s not good... anhnn... to drink potions... for every illness... mmnnmm... some are best left... to run..." Under the table, two fingers curled against the exact spot with slow, merciless precision. "...t-their course. Hnn. Naturally."

"Fascinating," Quinlan said, and accepted a honey-glazed morsel straight from Seraphiel’s fingers.

Kaelira stood so fast her chair squealed against the terrace stones. "I have work. At the forge. The runes won’t-"

"Breakfast isn’t over, Kaeli~" Seraphiel’s hand landed on the smith’s shoulder and guided her back down without negotiation. "It’s rude to leave before all participants finish, isn’t it, Eli?"

"Yes, that is exactly right." The Arch Priestess nodded. "I’m happy at least one member of this household seems to know how to act civilized."

"I try my best~"

Then, having secured her prisoner, Seraphiel slid the pastry basket in front of Kaelira. "Here, Kaeli. Our man is starving and both his hands are occupied. I’ll make him a sandwich, can you meanwhile..."

"O-okay..." Kaelira murmured, shy. The tomboy elf observed the basket, ears twitching. Was she really about to feed her boyfriend? Excitement swelled in her chest as she picked out a pastry, turned to Quinlan with all the stiffness of approaching a live monster, and held it out at maximum arm’s length. "H-here. Eat."

Quinlan leaned in slowly, eyes on hers the whole way, and then struck like a shark, one enormous bite claiming the entire thing to within a hair of her fingertips.

"Hyah!?" Kaelira’s yelp sent a bird off the terrace railing. She snatched her hand back, counted all five fingers, and her face flamed. "Y-you...! You beast! Eat like a person!"

"That’s exactly what I’ve been saying," Elisabeth nodded along sagely.

"No promises," he said, catching a stray flake with his tongue.

"..." The adorable smith sat there fuming, redder by the second and failing completely to look displeased, and after a few moments of furious silence she picked out the next one and raised it to bite range, braced for teeth this time.

Under the table, matters were leaving diplomacy behind.

The soft, wet rhythm of his fingers was climbing dangerously close to audible, so Aurora coughed, twice, with impeccable timing.

Her thighs trembled around his wrist, and every muscle in her lower body wound itself tighter around the pressure building where his fingers worked. She had stopped following the sermon entirely. She was mouthing numbers against his neck, actually counting primes, the best defense her scientist brain could improvise, and losing track somewhere after eleven.

Elisabeth’s gaze snagged on the platinum-haired woman trembling against the villain’s chest, and her sermon faltered into a frown of honest concern. "Her fever is worsening by the minute. Have you people truly done nothing for the poor thing?"

"There’s nothing to be done," Quinlan said gravely. "It comes and goes in waves."

"It’s chronic~" Seraphiel added, sparkling.

"I’m fine," Aurora announced to his collarbone, in a voice two octaves above her usual register.

That did it. Elisabeth set down her cup, rose from her chair, and rounded the table at a brisk stride, patience with heathen medicine finally spent. "Enough. You’ve all clearly given up on this poor woman. The Goddess mends what herbs and excuses cannot."

Aurora’s eyes flew open. "No. W-wait. That’s really not..."

The Arch Priestess laid her blessed palm flat against Aurora’s forehead with all the tenderness of her office. "O Goddess, grant your suffering daughter relief."

Golden warmth flooded down through Aurora’s body, gentle, holy, and aimed with divine precision at muscles already wound past their limit.

Relief was granted.

Aurora came undone on the Primordial Villain’s fingers with an Arch Priestess’s hand upon her brow, thighs locking around his wrist, back arching off his chest, wave after long wave rolling through her while she pressed her mouth shut against his shoulder and drenched the hand that had spent the entire breakfast earning it.

It went on for a small eternity.

Quinlan drank his tea through all of it, steady as bedrock, and did not stop until she had wrung out every last tremor against his palm.

Then the alchemist sagged, boneless, faintly glowing with residual blessing, and let out one long, shivering breath that fogged no glass but should have.

Elisabeth withdrew her hand and observed her patient with deep professional satisfaction. "There. See? The trembling has stopped."

"The Goddess is truly merciful," Quinlan said solemnly.

"Amen," Seraphiel managed from somewhere inside her teacup.

"...amen," Aurora whispered bashfully.