I did choose to hug her, of course I hugged her when she was crying, but not out of any domination instinct but rather genuine sympathy and affection for her, a human need that she has been denied all of her life, and I do enjoy not treating her as a Queen but as a woman, and I have no need to dominate her to this end, her letting down her guard to be close to me is enough already.
Of course, I did enjoy stepping over protocol to treat her not as the Queen of Zeta but as a woman that I feel sympathy and affection for, that still doesn't justify why stopping midway only to disappoint and frustrate both her and me.
Weather she feels comfortable or not, that's up to her, not to us, she has to be the one to stop us if she dislikes anything we do, because proposing something to her only to withdraw it when she was clearly enjoying it is a plain jerk move which made me feel that I was training her to make her beg for more the next time, which I strongly disliked because I don't feel threatened by women and I don't feel an urge to assert dominance over them to feel secure about my manhood, I enjoy treating women as my equals, I treat Emily as a family member more than a family's slave, I did my best to heal Fairy to restore her free will instead of taking advantage of her broken mind to make her my bitch, therefore it doesn't make sense for my character to dominate Merneith.
But more than anything, I hated it because that was not even my choice as I didn't even have a choice in the matter, it was imposed on me without any other option, which defeats the point of playing a visual novel because it is an interactive story where my input matters and I am not a passive spectator of the creator's whims.
I appreciate all of the choices that you have been giving to involve me into your world and I don't understand why you did NOT involve me in this scene and made me a passive spectator of your whims by not giving me a choice of how to experience it this time.
I was hoping to kiss her at the same time as I was fingering her to bond with her both physically AND emotionally because she doesn't need me only for her physical needs since she has her own harem of slaves to make her cum whenever she wants, what she desperately needs is what she has been denied all her life:
And actually, now that I just launched the game again to take this screenshot above, I replayed the scene which disappointed me to check if my memory of Zaton and Merneith kissing before fingering her was correct and not only it was correct, which strengthens my point that kissing at the same time as fingering her would suit this scene nicely for bonding physically AND emotionally, but there is another detail in this scene that I had forgotten and which defeats your claim above.
You claimed that you made Zaton stop midway because "we don't know if she would be comfortable or not with what we're proposing" which doesn't stand since, I had forgotten it, she actually tried to touch Zaton's dick on her own initiative and Zaton denied her even this much, which is unfair since he fingers her but he denies her reciprocating, and at the same time defeats your justification to make him stop midway "because we don't know if Merneith would be comfortable or not with what we're proposing" since she actually proposed more of her own initiative and you denied her.
Conclusion: No matter how you try to justify this scene, there is no point to it other than training Merneith to be submissive, denying her initiatives for the sake of being in control then leaving her hanging to make her beg for more next time, did I misunderstand anything?