Chapter 126: Normalizing the Forbidden (R-18)
Max soon made his way outside. Luckily, this remote army post might not have been as large as a city, but it was still big enough to have a taxi service.
After everything that had happened, Max was in absolutely no mood to walk all the way back to the laboratory.
He’d had enough exercise for one morning.
But alas, Max was thrown straight back into work, spending the entire day in the laboratory without even getting a single squeeze of Zerena’s breasts.
Once again, Zerena had been away all day, only returning that night.
When she finally came back and saw that he’d only managed to brew three batches of potions, she raised an eyebrow.
"Just three batches?" she asked, a faint note of disappointment in her voice.
Max was slightly annoyed by the question. He’d been working all day, and it was already dark outside.
Looking exhausted, he decided to give her an excuse before she could start pushing him to work faster.
"I could’ve made them faster and probably finished another batch," he said, "but doing that would’ve required me to spend a lot more System Points..."
As she picked up the potions, inspecting their glowing red color one by one, Zerena nodded.
"No, three batches are more than enough. You still have enough points left for another three batches, right?"
Max nodded, though a faint sadness crossed his face.
He already knew what that meant.
No more Forbidden Points for him today.
And, as usual, he was right.
"Since you seem tired from making them all day," Zerena continued, carefully placing the potions back into storage, "let’s skip earning more points tonight and just sleep."
Max’s expression immediately sank.
’Damn it...’ he thought.
He’d spent the entire day making potions, and now that he was finally done, he’d been hoping for a much more enjoyable way to spend the night.
Instead...
He was being sent straight to bed.
"I’m not that tired..." Max muttered, his face carrying a faint, almost embarrassed look as he fiddled with one of the instruments on the table.
Zerena turned toward him, already looking irritated.
"Well, I am."
She folded her arms with a tired sigh.
"Let’s just wash up and sleep."
Max’s expression immediately fell.
’Sleep...? After wasting the entire day making potions? Fuck me...’ he thought.
Still, there wasn’t much point arguing with a woman who looked ready to murder him with a pillow.
He followed her out of the laboratory.
Once they reached their room, Zerena began undressing, and Max did the same.
He watched as she slipped out of her checkered shirt and pulled off her tight blue jeans, revealing the curves beneath them.
Max had to admit, Zerena actually had surprisingly good fashion sense.
Even though Max preferred seeing her without clothes, he still moved to help when Zerena asked him to unhook her bra.
"You’ve eaten, right?" she asked.
"Yeah. I ordered something in. There’s some left for you too," Max replied.
A moment later, he unhooked the white lace bra he’d bought for her.
The moment the clasp came undone, the tension from the straps disappeared, and the heavy fabric quickly slipped free from his fingers.
"I already had dinner..." she said.
Zerena took off her panties herself, tossed the rest of her clothes into the laundry bin, and headed toward the washroom.
Max followed behind her, already painfully hard.
He couldn’t help hoping she’d notice.
After all, Yennefer had at least shown him some sympathy that morning and helped him deal with the problem.
Maybe Zerena would do the same.
And as she saw him entering the shower with it, zerena looked at his face in a mixture of shock and disgust.
"I’ve been ignoring it, but for God’s sake, Max, I am your grandmother—and I’m more than three times your age..." she said.
Although she looked genuinely angry, she turned on the shower as though she’d just been reminded of an important rule—or was giving him a lecture after he’d failed some kind of test.
It was almost as if Max wasn’t standing there with a hard penis at all.
He was just another employee who had somehow managed to disappoint her again.
"Do you have to get hard every time I take off my clothes..?"
Max either didn’t catch the hint or simply chose to ignore it.
He followed her into the shower, rubbing some soap between his hands as he stepped closer. His body pressed against her as he began washing her chest.
"I know..." he said with a slightly embarrassed sigh. "I didn’t want it either, but I guess I can’t really help it when the System keeps throwing these quests at me."
He paused, glancing at her with a faint grin.
"Maybe it’d be easier if I completed some of them with other women..."
Zerena seemed to have completely forgotten about it.
She was simply too tired to think about Max’s ridiculous suggestion after spending the day dealing with other matters.
While Max had been stuck in the laboratory making potions, Zerena had been outside trying to negotiate deals with several other people. The army was practically guaranteed to back her, so she needed to make use of that support when negotiating with others.
After all, the way Max produced potions was anything but normal.
Most potion makers could manage only two to four batches a week, depending on the recipe and their skill.
Max, on the other hand, could produce several batches in a single day.
At that rate, calling him a one-man potion factory wasn’t even an exaggeration.
But alas, she couldn’t simply reveal the truth about Max.
So she had to come up with one bullshit explanation after another—claiming she’d hired additional potion makers, expanded the laboratory, and was preparing to increase production.
For the past few days, she’d been running between government offices, meeting officials, signing paperwork, and dealing with all sorts of other tedious nonsense.
Apparently, expanding a potion business was considerably more complicated than simply having a ridiculously talented potion maker locked away in a laboratory brewing bottles all day.
Still, Zerena was determined to make it work.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Zerena had forgotten one important thing:
She couldn’t treat Max exactly the way she used to anymore.
He had options now.
And knowing just how horny he could get, Max probably wouldn’t think twice about going to other women to let out all that pent-up lust if she wasn’t the one willing to deal with it.
The realization made her sigh.
Apparently, keeping Max under control was becoming a lot more complicated now that he had alternatives.
With another tired sigh, Zerena reached down and grabbed his penis.
"It’s not good for you to get aroused this easily."
But then Zerena thought about everything that had happened.
The System was the one that had given them those quests in the first place. Even if they’d eventually chosen to complete them themselves, the System had still been the one pushing them down that path—and Max had been affected by it more than anyone because he was the one it had attached itself to.
She let out a quiet sigh.
"Though... I guess it’s not entirely your fault either. Just try to control yourself a little."
As she spoke, she began stroking his penis with her soap-covered hands.
Max’s expression became unusually serious as he nodded.
"Yeah... I’ll try."
Inside, Max couldn’t have been happier.
Today alone, he’d somehow managed to get two soapy handjobs without even having to ask for either of them.
’Maybe I should pretend to be tired more often.’
Zerena continued, and she didn’t just keep moving her hands. She leaned closer and captured his lips in a deep kiss.
Even she couldn’t deny that she’d missed kissing him.
After weeks of continuously completing System tasks together, kissing Max no longer registered in her mind as something she was supposed to avoid. Somewhere along the way, it had simply become another familiar part of their strange routine.
She still knew it was complicated.
But apparently, her brain had stopped treating it like something forbidden.
All because of the System—the so-called Forbidden Act System.
The name was almost ironic at this point.
Things that should’ve felt forbidden had somehow become as normal as eating a meal.
Even kissing had become routine.
That morning, Max hadn’t even bothered asking for permission before kissing her and sucking her tongue, and now Zerena was doing the same without hesitation.
She kept herself pressed firmly against his chest, and Max could feel her hard nipples against him as she continued stroking his penis with the back of her hand, rubbing its head along the side of her stomach.
Somewhere along the way, all of this had stopped feeling like something they shouldn’t be doing.
It had simply become normal.
Zerena didn’t even seem to realize how much things between them had changed.
Max, however, noticed every little shift.
And he couldn’t have been happier about it.
If something that once felt completely forbidden could become normal between them, then perhaps he could slowly make other situations feel just as ordinary.
Even now, while Zerena remained close to him, Max was already wondering what he should aim for next.
What other perverted thing could he gradually turn into just another normal part of their relationship?