Chapter 210: Two distinct advantages
Here's the passage with grammatical corrections, preserving the original meaning, word choice, and style exactly as requested:
"I know I said I will be doing it today, but..." Claire's voice broke a bit as she hesitated, not sure how she was supposed to proceed.
She then gulped her saliva down before looking directly into my face.
"I'm sorry, I know this breaks the flow and immersion, but..." she bit down on her bottom lip with a look of unease on her face. "How do I begin?"
Looking up into the girl's face, I...
I actually wasn't sure how to react.
A part of me wanted to just laugh out. A different part of me heavily protested against doing so, fearful of having Claire feel bad about her attempt just because of a failed start. Then, there was a part in me that wanted to just hurry her up while yet another part was rushing to help her out.
"To be honest, I don't think that really matters," I replied after taking a moment to consider all possible angles from which I could approach this topic. "And well, it's only the two of us here, so..."
This time, I was the one hesitating.
"So, does it really matter all that much? Whether whatever you do works or not, I'm the only one who will witness it. And, by now," I raised my hand only to gently place it down upon Claire's cheek before gently rubbing the bottom of my thumb over her soft, slightly blushed skin, "by now, I hope I made it abundantly clear that I'm the last person to mock you or your attempts."
I took a small moment to just caress Claire's cheek, letting the emotions build up in peace, undisturbed by unnecessary words.
"The only reason why you are giving this sort of thing a try is to make me feel good. So, just what kind of an awful man would I have to be to belittle you over it?"
"I..." Claire attempted to say something, only to end up pursing her lips and looking away. She then gulped her saliva down, giving me the privilege of watching how her throat moved as she did so, only to then slowly lower herself over my chest before reaching with her lips towards my right ear.
"I'm going to begin now~~~"
Claire's hushed voice, while designed to be a whisper, somehow pierced me straight to the core, giving rise to a wave of chills that started all the way down at my feet only to quickly cut through my entire body and end at the very top of my head.
From there on, I ended up subjected to all sorts of different sensory experiences, from just the sound of her calmly breathing as she laid by my side, through the rustling on the bedsheets as she slightly moved in place, all the way to when she brought her head a bit closer...
Only to blow some air into my ear.
Before long, Claire started to involve her hands more, be it by snapping her fingers all over my face and letting me figure out which direction the sound came from, or simply reaching out over my head with her arm only to cuddle the other side of my head while she continued to whisper some sweet nothings into my other ear.
'Dang,' I thought as I fell deeper and deeper into a state of absolute relaxation, soon breaching the border of a state of semi-meditation—something that I'd failed for five long years to achieve with training and discipline.
And here I was, breaching the border between introspection and cultivation out of the sensory experience of having a girl speak and act softly all around me.
This experience was vastly different from the ASMR I was used to. And by every means, I was a connoisseur of this kind of content, often escaping to its warm and soothing embrace to ignore and forget about the loneliness that prevailed through the better part of my entire life up until today.
The experience now was nowhere near the quality of some of the better audios I'd managed to dig out, ones that either approached the limits of creativity of how one could manipulate one's voice or ones that cast all limitations aside and, in a bid to compete with really talented ASMR artists, opted to reach for the easiest marketing trick in the book—using sex to sell more of their content.
When it came to Claire, however, she did neither of those things.
She clearly was nowhere near the level of the greatest ASMR voice actors who could do wonders with just their voice alone. Heck, she was far worse than most of the ASMR artists that just did it for a long time and thus mastered all sorts of techniques and methods to get a rise out of their listeners.
On the other hand, she wasn't even trying to make this experience any sexual, failing to match those girls who would do things to their microphones that an average man would be too scared to let be done to their sensitive parts or even their ears in real life.
No matter what approach, angle, or direction I took, Claire simply couldn't compare to any of the good ASMR artists that I knew and, as a fan, absolutely loved.
At the same time, however, none of those artists could match up to her, given the two distinct advantages that she had over them from the get-go.
First off, Claire wasn't just some random, no-name artist that I would know by their nickname at worst, and the body parts they'd shown on the camera in scantily covered clothes at best.
No.
Claire was my fiancée. Someone I came to deeply like, appreciate, and greatly enjoy my time with. She was someone who put a lot on the line for my sake and someone who I put equally as much on the line for her sake.
In other words, even before she uttered her first whisper for the night, she was already equipped with the advantage of familiarity so massive, hardly any of the ASMR artists I knew could hope to even compare.
Then, for the second thing... As opposed to just sound in my headphones, Claire was here. She was here, right by my side, taking advantage of all the new ways of affecting my perception that others, with just their sounds alone, could never use.
When she moved, I could feel the mattress shift to offset the change of the weights pressing it down. When she reached out, I could hear something as fine as the rustling of her light, see-through clothes. When she breathed, the air she exhaled actually struck my skin, as opposed to just creating the illusion of such experience.
All in all, Claire was as real as it could get, merely mimicking the experience designed to invoke the sense of presence.
Those two advantages, Claire didn't hold herself back from using. Heck, she couldn't just put those advantages aside even if she wanted to, as they were just the inherent qualities of the time, place, and circumstance we found ourselves with.
And those very two advantages made it so that her determined yet clumsy attempts, rather than falling short of my expectations, ended up greatly exceeding them.
"Nom."
While I was lost in my thoughts for a moment, Claire continued to play around, soon moving on from just whispers and silent breathing to actively trying to massage my ears or blow air into them.
And now, she went a step beyond and collapsed her lips down on my earlobe, munching on it for a bit while feeding my brain sweet, incomprehensible noises she made while at it.
"Puhaaa!"
Letting her lips slide off my earlobe, Claire then opened her mouth and took a deep breath, only to freeze when my entire body trembled, taken over by a constant, surging wave of exciting chills.
"Oh," I finally uttered a first word in quite a while as the realization finally struck me. "I get it..."
Rather than accepting this invitation to a conversation, Claire opted to chomp down on my ear again, this time taking her sweet time munching on it with the passion only a proper lover could exhibit.
A moment later, she finally gave up and pulled her lips away... Only to then blow some air into my ear, as if in an attempt to dry off all the saliva she might've left on it.
"What did you figure out?" she then asked, still staying in her role by using an extremely soft, affectionate whisper.
"Why I was so into ASMR in the past," I explained, opening my eyes and then turning over on my side so that I could face the girl properly. "While me using it to stave off the extreme loneliness was something I was aware of even back when I was using ASMR, I never really realized what sort of thing it was supposed to imitate."
That point, one could argue to be extremely vague.
There were Role Playing ASMRs with sounds taken straight from a hair salon, nurse's office, or even a busy bar. Then, there were others based on the so-called trigger-words and even fully artificial ones, based on sounds researchers believed to have the best, chill-inducing effect.
Regardless of the type of the ASMR one enjoyed, however, they were all designed to mimic three things:
The unpredictability of another human.
The sense of belonging and attention stemming from the listener being the one addressed by actions, words, and sounds of the ASMR...
And finally, the sense of intimacy born from the two above.
"In all honesty, screw ASMR. Now that I've figured it out, even if it's you doing it for me, it still feels like cheating, which I hate the very idea of," I proclaimed only to shake my head and raise my upper body up, openly resisting the idea of letting Claire keep going.
"Huh?" Startled by the revelation, Claire could only sit back and stare at me wide-eyed, clearly confused about how she was supposed to take my weird takes. "What do you mean by that? What do you mean by cheating?!"
Although she kept her face relatively calm, there was no hiding the sparks of panic and confusion in her eyes. Enjoy new adventures from mvl
"ASMR, ultimately, is all about cuddling and personal attention," I revealed my discovery without even a moment of hesitation. "And it's you yourself that I want attention from, not some imaginary character you are trying to play here. As for cuddles..."
I shook my head while breathing out an exasperated sigh, only to then turn my face and look Claire properly in the eyes.
"As for the cuddles, I would much rather just cuddle with you like we always do than try to get excited by the imaginary scenario of having to cuddle with someone else."