Chapter 844: Nitocris Is Surprisingly A Tease [Bonus - ]

Chapter 844: Nitocris Is Surprisingly A Tease [Bonus Chapter]

Silas didn’t hesitate as he tapped the glowing Y with one finger.

At that exact moment, Nitocris snapped.

Maybe it was the indignity of having her belly brushed… Maybe it was the lavender… Maybe it was the unbearable humiliation of having purred like a common alley cat in front of a peasant who was now smirking at her.

Whatever it was, her royal pride finally boiled over. Her ears pinned flat and her golden eyes narrowed into furious slits.

“You dare smirk at me after everything you’ve done to my royal body, Nyaa~?” she shrieked.

She coiled up like a spring and launched herself straight at his chest.

Her front paws slammed into his collar, and her back claws hooked into the waistband of his jeans with savage, vindictive leverage.

Silas was leaning over the edge of the tub with his finger still raised and he was caught completely off balance.

“Whoa, hey…!”

His socks slid on the wet bath mat. His weight tipped forward over the rim, and before his Mythic Gold Core could even think about rooting him in place, the two of them toppled over the edge together.

SPLOOSH!

A wave of warm lavender-scented water crashed over the sides of the tub and flooded across the floor, soaking the towel on the counter’s edge and the mat and everything else in reach.

Silas went under.

His hair plastered itself to his forehead, and he came up coughing on a mouthful of floral bubbles, scrambling to sit upright.

“You little gremlin…!” he sputtered, wiping the water out of his eyes however he didn’t finish.

Under the churning water, a blinding light burst out of the cat’s chest.

It swirled outward in a vortex of deep gold and vivid violet, so bright he had to throw his forearm up over his eyes.

A heavy hum vibrated straight through the porcelain and into his bones, and the air thickened into a hot crackling mist that smelled of desert nights, crushed lotus and sun-warmed stone.

VWOOOOM!

Beneath the surface, the small eight-pound body was dissolving into light.

He could see it through the glare as the shape was stretching and lengthening with the smooth grace of poured glass.

The short fur melted away into warm, flawless skin the color of rich mahogany and the golden eyes, the fierce amber eyes of a hunting cat, drank in the mana of the upgrade until the gold deepened, brightened, and settled into a radiant luminous violet.

HUMMM!

The light shattered into ten thousand glittering motes that drifted up through the steam and faded as the water settled with a soft lap against the porcelain.

Silas slowly lowered his arm, and his breath caught in his chest.

Sitting across from him in the overflowing tub, leaning back against the sloped end with her knees drawn up and her arms resting lazily along the rim, was a woman.

…She was breathtaking.

Her skin was a deep warm brown, beaded with bathwater and glowing under the bathroom lights like polished jasper after desert rain.

She had the long lithe build of a predator, with a flat defined stomach, wide hips, and a full chest that rose and fell with slow unhurried breaths.

’E-eh…?’

She was also completely naked.

Thick curls of steam drifted lazily around her, parting just enough to tease before rolling back into place.

What the steam didn’t hide, her hair did.

It was a waterfall of ink-black silk that poured past her waist and floated around her in the water, streaked through with thick ribbons of vivid violet that shimmered when she moved.

Gold drop earrings banded with blue swayed against her slender neck, and a gold armband hugged the toned curve of her upper arm though they were the only things she was wearing.

She opened her eyes.

They were pure violet, framed by long dark lashes, and they held the lazy majesty of a woman who had once commanded armies without ever raising her voice.

She tilted her head.

A long black-and-violet lock clung wetly to the curve of her collarbone as she studied Silas, sitting there soaked to the bone in his clothes.

“You ruined my dignified exit, you crude barbarian, Nyaa~” she purred.

The squeaky feline screech was gone as her voice had become a rich, velvety alto that slid through the steam like warm honey.

“Dunking an empress into the bath twice in one afternoon,” she went on. “The gods of the dunes would have flayed you alive for such insolence, Nyaa~.”

She lifted one long, dripping leg out of the water and watched the droplets trail down the curve of her calf before she let it slip back in.

“Though I suppose I have to admit, your strange bubbling potions did get rid of that alley stench,” she continued, and her lips curved into a slow feline smile. “My skin feels like fresh silk… My hair smells like sacred oils… I may even forgive you… Eventually, Nyaa~.”

Then she paused, and for the first time since the light faded, she looked down at herself.

She lifted one hand out of the water and turned it over slowly, studying the long fingers, the dark skin, the faint shine of water on her knuckles.

She flexed them, she touched her own cheek, then her lips, then the gold earring dangling from her ear, as if checking that it was really there.

“Hands,” she breathed, and some of the teasing slipped out of her voice. “I have hands again… Hands of my own, not borrowed ones. I haven’t had my own hands in over two thousand years, Nyaa~.”

She looked up at Silas with something raw and startled flickering behind her violet eyes.

“What did you do to me, Nyaa~?”

“Upgraded you,” Silas said hoarsely. “To SSS-Rank… You had the potential for it but I didn’t know you’d… turn into this.”

“Into what?” The startled look vanished, and the wicked smile came sliding right back. “Say it properly. Into what, Nyaa~?”

“Into a person…”

“Into a gorgeous person,” she corrected, and the purr was back in her voice. “You may say gorgeous… I give you royal permission, Nyaa~.”

Silas sat frozen in the water. His soaked shirt clung to his chest, and water dripped from his bangs into his eyelashes.

His brain, which could calculate the angle of a sword strike in a fraction of a heartbeat, had stalled out completely.

’She’s… she’s gorgeous…’ he thought, and his throat went dry despite the gallons of water surrounding him.

Plus why did she speak like a cat…? Even with that, where was her tail and cat ears…? He would have preferred to be able to grab it as well

Nitocris noticed his silence immediately as her violet eyes narrowed with slow delight.

She’d seen that look on men’s faces before, a very long time ago, across throne rooms and banquet halls… She had missed it.

She shifted her hips with agonizing grace, and the water parted around her waist as she crawled toward him on her hands and knees through the tub.

Her long hair trailed through the water behind her like a royal train and shifted over her chest, covering her by a few strands of wet silk and a curl of steam.

Nitocris stopped with her face three inches from his.

“What’s the matter, boy?” she whispered, and her breath smelled of sweet lotus as it brushed his damp cheek. “Did the sudden arrival of royal divinity steal the tongue out of your mouth, Nyaa~?”

Before Silas could come up with anything resembling an answer, she leaned in.

SLURP!

Her warm tongue swept from the angle of his jaw straight up to his cheekbone.

Silas flinched and his whole spine snapped rigid as a jolt of pure electricity shot down his back.

“Whoa, hey…!” he gasped, jerking his head back an inch. “What are you doing?”

Nitocris didn’t retreat.

A deep rumbling sound rose in her throat that he could feel vibrating against his wet collarbone.

“You had a little bubble of foam on your cheek,” she murmured, her eyelids drooping half-shut with lazy shameless pleasure. “A proper cat returns the favor of grooming… You brushed me… Now I clean you… It’s only polite, Nyaa~.”

SLURP!

She licked the bridge of his nose next and finished with a teasing little flick of her tongue at the tip that sent heat rushing straight into his ears.

“Mmm,” she purred into the crook of his neck, rubbing her cheek against his soaked shoulder with lazy familiarity. “You taste like rain, Silas Graves… Much nicer than the noodle cook’s scraps, Nyaa~.”

Silas’s ears were on fire.

He could feel every single place her skin touched his through the soaked fabric of his shirt, and there were a lot more of those places than there had been a second ago.

…She was enjoying herself enormously.

This was a queen who had ruled over millions, who knew exactly how powerful her beauty was and wielded it the way a cat bats at a mouse.

“I-I’ll get you a towel,” he said, already trying to twist toward the counter.

A warm hand landed flat on his chest and pushed him gently back against the porcelain.

“Stay,” Nitocris purred. “I’m not finished. You missed a spot behind your ear, Nyaa~”

“…I really didn’t.”

“You did. I can taste it, Nyaa~.”

“Hold on, that’s not how tasting works!”

SLURP!

“It is now, Nyaa~.”

Silas pressed his hands flat against the bottom of the tub and fought with everything he had to keep his composure.

’I need to calm down…’ he chanted silently, his knuckles whitening under the water. ’She’s an ancient empress. Half an hour ago, she was a cat. She’s literally part of a dead sand god so just calm down.’

What if she was a catgirl…? Silas could endur—

His body had absolutely no interest in his internal monologue.

He was sitting in a steaming bath with a gorgeous naked woman whose bare knees were pressed against his thighs, whose wet hair was trailing across his lap and whose tongue had just been on his face… It was pure torture.

The Mythic Gold Core in his chest hummed, and the mana surging through his veins only made his heart beat faster as sudden undeniable rush of heat went straight down through his stomach.

Nitocris felt the shift.

She felt the tension snap through his thighs, she heard his breathing turn quick and shallow and she felt the heat radiating through his soaked jeans where her knee rested against his hip.

Her violet eyes lit up with unholy glee.

She leaned back on her heels just far enough to glance down at his lap through the drifting steam, and her lips curved into a slow devastating smirk.

“Oh my,” she drawled, her voice dropping into a husky, scandalized whisper. “It seems the stoic Lord isn’t nearly as composed as he pretends to be, Nyaa~.”

She tilted her head, and her gold earrings clicked softly against her collarbone as her gaze slid back up to meet his.

“The water’s getting quite warm down here, Silas,” she teased, trailing one dark fingertip slowly down the center of his soaked chest. “And it isn’t coming from the pipes… Such a lively reaction to an innocent afternoon bath. Should I be flattered? I think I should be flattered, Nyaa~”

Silas felt his whole face go hot.

“You’re the one sitting in my bath without clothes,” he managed, his voice rougher than usual. “Most guys wouldn’t be reciting math right now.”

“Most guys?” She laughed, a warm, musical sound like water over stones, and her chest shifted under its curtain of black-and-violet hair in a way that made his throat close up all over again. “You flatter yourself… Most guys wouldn’t still be breathing, Nyaa~.”

Somewhere in the back of Silas’s mind, a small voice reminded him that Harper had said twenty minutes on the phone, and that at least fifteen of those minutes had already passed.

’If Harper walks in right now…’

He pictured it in perfect detail.

Harper in the doorway, fresh from her shower, glasses on, staring at a soaking-wet Silas and a naked brown-skinned goddess in his bathtub.

There was going to be lightning and screaming for sure…

“Nito,” he said carefully, “Harper’s on her way here.”

“I know,” she purred, completely unbothered. “You told me on the street, Nyaa~.”

“…So maybe we should get out of the bath.”

“Why?” She blinked her violet eyes at him with exaggerated innocence. “Are you worried what she’ll think? How sweet, Nyaa~.”

She leaned in again until her lips brushed the shell of his ear, and the purr vibrated straight into it.

Harper had talked about this boy for weeks.

His eyes, his shoulders, his voice, his hands… She’d sighed about him in the bath and mumbled about him in her sleep and now here he was, red to the ears and doing his very best not to look anywhere but her face, with his body betraying him anyway.

She’d been a cat for weeks and now she had a body again, and a handsome flustered boy sitting in front of her who blushed every time she breathed.

A slow delighted smile spread across her lips.

’You’re very horny, Nyaa~’ Nitocris thought. ’I’ll tell Harper.’