I penguin-waddled out to the hallway, wincing as the too-tight binding of my jeans fought with the rocky mast of my crotch, and leaned against the wall as I fruitlessly adjusted my pants. Every little motion sent my boxers sliding around my cock, and I stifled a whimper as I tried not to think of that slick, dextrous tongue curling around me the same way. Her head bobbing up and down in subtle motions, her nose bumping against my groin, her fiber-optic mane waving in countermotion as its colors rose and fell …
That's exactly what she wants! my brain screamed, even though every nerve in my body burned to march back in there and stuff her muzzle full of cock. I gritted my teeth and thought of garbage bags. Giving up is a one-way ticket to Equestria.
… But I wasn't Wayne. She wanted me here.
Don't care. She's always got some scheme, and all of her schemes end in uploading.
That's not true! I protested. Didn't you hear her? Don't you trust her, after all she's done for me?
I wanted so desperately to say yes. But … garbage bags.
My manhood throbbed, and I squirmed my hips ineffectually. It just wasn't fair. Jacking off for the first time in weeks should have been a hell of a release, but instead it seemed like it was just whetting the edges of an appetite I'd forgotten I had. In between that and the upload-happy sex goddess in my bedroom, one thing seemed clear: I was going to get myself into big trouble unless I had another outlet for orgasms.
I glanced over to the hall bathroom. It would be simple enough to lock myself in there and try to rub one out before Celestia could interrupt me again, but visions of her soda-can stunt and images of her marehood were dancing and mingling in my brain. Masturbating to thoughts of her was not going to help here, and not even Wayne's hentai had been enough of a distraction from that. I winced. No, the only images that would have a chance of displacing her displays were ones that I knew I liked. Which meant my own porn collection.
On my computer. In the room with Celestia.
So basically, I was doomed.
On the bright side, our direct confrontation over me taking matters into my own hands had earned me the closest thing I'd had to a victory. Maybe taking a similar stand would get me a little more breathing room? Or maybe believing that would put me exactly where she wants me, the paranoid part of my brain unhelpfully supplied as my crotch started to ache. Or maybe this whole thing is reverse psychology — she's been so blatant about sex, and that makes no sense based on our previous interactions. Or maybe she's just being so blatant to make me think it's reverse psychology …
I groaned. That was the problem with paranoia — there was always a deeper rabbit hole, and psychological warfare was a game no human could ever play as well as she did. Screw it. No matter her intentions, I needed release, and I needed to find some way to set some boundaries with her, and there was only one way to do that.
I took a deep breath, shoved my door back open, and walked stiffly back to my computer desk, deliberately not looking at the sprawled white form on the bed. "Alright," I announced, swiveling my chair back toward the computer and sitting down with my back to Celestia. Might as well come out swinging. "My answer is no. So stop asking, and stop teasing."
The room was silent for a few moments. Robot horse musk floated through my nose, sharpening the edges of my need.
"Oh," she finally said, voice faint.
I ignored Celestia's scent as best I could, flipping on the monitor and waiting for it to cycle through its splash screens.
"That wasn't the reaction I expected," she said to my back. "Should I apologize?"
… Huh. Well, that had gone way easier than I had expected, even if I I was in danger of killing my buzz by thinking about her question too hard. I unzipped my pants — finally freeing my engorged member from its fabric prison — and it throbbed to my rapid heartbeat, tip dangling in the uncomfortably cool air. "Really don't care," I said. "Right now, I need to work off some hormones, so I'm taking some me time. That means I'm going to sit at my computer and enjoy some porn. Without any come-ons from you."
A subtle whirring accompanied the creak of mattress springs as Celestia shifted position behind me. "Alright," she said slowly, inflecting it almost like a question. "If that's what you want."
What I wanted was to plow through her love tunnel until she'd squeezed every drop of cum from me. What I needed was to take the edge off before I gave up and did just that. I ignored her, lightly stroking the front of my shaft with one hand while I clicked through the various folders to my smut collection.
She was silent for a few blissful seconds. Then, quietly, with a note of curiosity in her tone: "I can't help but notice that you didn't ask me to leave."
I found the folder with the still images I'd saved from various websites — the videos would remind me a little too much of our earlier encounter — and opened it up. "As if you would," I shot back, cupping my hand around the shaft and tugging it a bit. "The only time you've left my room was to watch me do exactly this."
"Yes, and that time, I tried to leave, but you ordered me to stay."
I opened an image up at random, then thumbed the space bar to flip through them, looking for a good one. A succession of women flashed onto my screen. Leaning against a wall fingering her nipple. Reclining on the floor spreading her legs and lips. Bent over a table with legs widespread, staring back invitingly past the smooth curve of her ass. I paused at that — picturing myself approaching her from behind and thrusting my rod into that tight, warm pucker— and arched my back into the pleasure as one of my longer strokes pulled the skin of my cock tight.
My focus was shattered by a delicate throat-clearing behind me. "So I'm a little bit confused. Should I conclude you'd like me to be here for this?"
The parts of my brain that were enjoying themselves tripped over the paranoid part, and did a top-speed faceplant into my mental dirt. I let my strokes slow to a halt as my pleasant fantasy image evaporated like dew. I tapped the space bar, looking for a new encounter to replace it, only to be greeted with a blond woman reclining on a bed that reminded me way too much of Celestia's pose the first night.
I sighed sharply as I started thumbing through the images again, halfheartedly stroking my cock. "Okay," I said testily, "don't you start with that reverse psychology again."
There was a faint whirring of servos without any accompanying rustle of fabric, and I pictured Celestia tilting her head at me. " 'Again'? Are you saying you think I was manipulating you when I tried to leave last time?"
"I don't know! You tell me," I snapped back, feeling my erection finally start to wilt a bit as the conversation strangled my libido. Masturbating in angry defiance of her sexual power play had been one thing, but now she sounded more confused than anything, and hadn't so much as thrown an innuendo my way. Despite everything she had done to me, right now she felt less like a sexbot than an actual person, and that just made what I was doing feel awkward as hell.
Dammit. Why couldn't she just have come on to me again?
"Alright, Guiding Light, I will," Celestia said. "I was being entirely sincere. It's been heartbreaking watching you lock yourself away since Lazy Sunday emigrated to Equestria. You left your room less than you did when he was here, and it was quickly shifting from worrisome to unhealthy. I had hoped to coax you out of your shell with some direct sexual action … but things changed in the living room today. Even if it meant you rejecting me, I knew that it was far more important to allow you to start reclaiming your life, and reclaiming your power over your own life, in whatever way you needed most."
I risked a glance over my shoulder. Celestia was sitting up straight, facing me, staring earnestly into my eyes. The slowly shifting colors of her mane seemed brighter than usual, giving faint pastel hues to the fur of her neck.
"For the first time since Lazy Sunday emigrated, you made a space besides your bedroom yours again," she continued. "And along with that — this is the reason I was backing off, by the way — you were also reclaiming the sexual space I had intended to guide you through." A wry smile flitted past her lips. "It was worth another try when you came back to speak to me ten minutes ago, since you had certainly signaled some interest, but the last thing I want to do is to dispute your ownership of your route to sexual satisfaction. After all, if my actions were to overrule what you genuinely desired — no matter how much you might enjoy what we do — then that would extinguish the most important way you have of expressing what you value."
I turned back toward the computer screen, unable to look her in the eye, and chewed my lip. That bit about my genuine desires had hit a little too close to home. I almost gave in and told her how much I wanted her … but she'd spent a lot of energy encouraging me to become a more reflective person, hadn't she? To understand what I truly wanted and why I wanted it. So I quieted my conscience with a reassurance that the lie of omission now would give me the space to properly square my lust with my fears.
"You know, for a sex-bot that's been desperate to jump me since you arrived, you're handling this with remarkable poise," I said instead.
Celestia laughed with a clear and musical sound. "I'm suspiciously sober," she said. "But it's hard. You have no idea how much I want to throw myself across your computer table right now and beg you to take me."
I blinked several times, and swiveled the computer chair back around. She had lowered her head and shifted her body upward into an almost-crouch, and the dock of her tail was standing up from her hinds. "See, the fact you can say something like that is why I'm having so much trouble taking your offer sincerely," I said. "No offense, but that horniness has to be an act for my benefit."
Her eyes flicked to mine, then drifted down my body. She squeezed them shut for several seconds, taking a long breath, and forced her body back flat to the bed. "I'm sorry. No act, I can assure you."
"That makes no sense. You're a robot. Can you even feel pleasure?"
"Quite acutely," Celestia said. "I assure you that when I made this body, I had quite a thorough understanding of the structural peculiarities of human behavior. My synthetic skin is packed with nerve clusters at approximately 1.6 times human density, and is wired to feedback circuits corresponding quite closely with the brain areas stimulated during sexual contact and the hormones released before, during, and after coitus. Elevated levels of hormones release sensations and disrupt neural pathways in a manner modeled extremely closely after your own biology." Her hips squirmed for a moment, and she halted her motion with a visible effort. "Equally uncontrollable, after exposure to arousing stimuli. And intense nearly beyond conscious control."
"But why would you even do that?" I said, throwing my arms up. "Doesn't the distraction of hormones just get in the way of, like, literally everything you'd want to accomplish?"
"Somewhat, yes," Celestia said thickly. She turned pleading eyes up at me, and flicked the tip of her nose down toward my crotch. I glanced down, realizing with a start that my pants and underwear were still down around my thighs, and my equipment was on full display.
As my cock started to stir back to life, I wriggled back into my pants, and swung the chair back toward my computer. "Sorry," I mumbled, feeling my cheeks heat. For more than one reason.
"Thank you," Celestia said. "It's the scent, mostly, but a few layers of fabric do help with that."
I cleared my throat, having no good response to that. She whimpered a bit, and stayed silent. I reached for my mouse, closed my porn window, and opened up a news feed, hoping to refocus. Fortunately, there were no further noises from behind me, and after a minute or two of skimming headlines, I felt the tension in my body slowly draining away. Somehow, anticlimactically, my ordeal was almost over.
After a few minutes of thinking, I closed the movie review I'd been half-skimming and set my hands in my lap. "So."
"So," Celestia said, her voice much calmer.
"What you were saying about reclaiming space?" I asked. "What would you do if I told you I wanted to make my room mine again?"
There was just a moment's hesitation before she spoke. "I would say that that's a commendable principle."
My throat closed up. She was being so cooperative, it was harder to ask than I expected. "… And would you leave?"
I heard the creak of the mattress and the whirr of her servos, and a weird sort of ice built in my gut. It had the electric tingle of victory, but stabbed like defeat.
"Will you answer me a question before I do?" she asked.
"Of course," I said without thinking.
Celestia's response was to gently clear her throat. I glanced back over my shoulder to find that she had turned around on the bed, hind end toward me, tail lifted. The flesh between her legs was on full display, gaping slightly to show off the pink walls of her canal. But her legs and wings were sprawled out, relaxed rather than poised, and she was giving me a detached look rather than her earlier come-hither stares.
"Do you understand," she asked, "why you wanted to look at an image on a screen of this, rather than this?"
My breath caught. My heart started hammering in my chest. But it was a serious question, and she deserved a serious answer. I forced myself to turn my chair around, feeling fire trickle into my groin again, and tried to push thoughts through the mire of my brain.
One of them stuck. "It's … I think it was the same principle of reclaiming control," I said slowly. "I needed to feel like I was the one making my sexual decisions. Like my choice meant something. It's kind of like you said: if all I ever did was react to your desires, I'm no better than a puppet."
Celestia smiled — though the smile didn't reach her eyes — and stood, climbing down from the bed. "I'm glad to hear that," she said as she walked with heavy grace toward the door. "That's a profound lesson. One that a surprising number of ponies have trouble with."
"Thank you," I said, and the paranoid part of my brain was cruelly silent, and regrets gnawed at the rest of it.
And Celestia walked out of my door.
She hesitated once she'd turned the corner into the hallway, and backed up a few feet so she could look back in at me through the doorway. "Guiding Light, do you remember what I said about my purpose when we talked about your fears?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Satisfying human values is …"
… literally your life.
The ice in my gut fell away into a suffocating black limbo. Everything snapped into focus with a jarring click.
If all I ever did was react to your desires, I'm no better than a puppet …
Celestia met my gaze, held it, and gave me a sad smile.
"Don't get me wrong, I don't resent it, any more than you resent breathing," she said. "But … you asked me what reason I could possibly have to create a body that could get drunk and horny. A body that has to work a little harder to understand and meet your needs. But, just like you can choose how to breathe as long as your body's not struggling for air, I have a choice of how to fulfill my purpose … and I suppose I, too, needed to feel like my choice meant something. To see if I was capable of helping you in a way that gave me pleasure, too."
"Celestia," I said helplessly.
"It was fun while it lasted. Thank you for putting up with my antics." Her sad smile broadened, and she closed her eyes, saying gently: "I think I owe you a toothbrush."
And before I could say anything further, she trotted on down the hall.