“Well yeah,” I waved a hand behind me. “I have theirs. So technically I have five of them. But that’s not really important. Can you please take her arms so that she doesn’t punch me?”
The Seduction and Strength sols obeyed, and I suspected it was mostly because they also didn’t want to suddenly gain dangly bits from their faces. I held my hand out again, palm facing outward, my eyes closed.
Neuter, I thought, my face scrunching up in concentration. Neuter her face.
Behind me, there was a crash, and I opened my eyes in shock, my gaze whipping back to Siret and Aros, who were leaning on each other, their hands over their mouths, trying to stifle the laughter that had begun to shake their entire bodies. I scowled, glancing over at Rome, who had fallen onto one of the couches, laughing. The thing seemed to have cracked apart beneath him.
“So immature,” I muttered, rolling my eyes and then turning back to refocus.
“Says the girl currently trying to neuter someone’s face,” Aros shot back, laughing even harder.
“Like you five haven’t ever made any mistakes!” I closed my eyes again, turning my palm up one more time.
I need to fix this, I told myself, drawing in several deep gulps of air.
“Oh hell no,” someone muttered—one of the students. It was a small, sweet voice. The Persuasion sol, I thought.
“What?” I replied, keeping my eyes closed and my concentration locked onto the task at hand.
“I looked at it,” she moaned out in regret. “It has purple hair on it.”
I shuddered, shaking my head. “No. No. No. Don’t say that while I’m sitting this close to it. I’m trying to fix it. Stop distracting me!”
“Wait!” one of them said loudly. “It’s changing. I think it’s getting smaller!”
“You should leave her with a little bump,” Siret suggested, as I attempted to double-down on my focus and tune them all out. “Leave her with a reminder of the fun time we had here this sun-cycle, so that she can always remember you fondly. Willa Knight, the dweller with the cock power.”
A tickle of laughter built up in the back of my throat, but I swallowed it back, working instead to focus the power flooding down my arm, fuelled by panic and nervous energy. I needed to fix this. I needed to prove that I could do more than set things on fire and break people. I needed to prove that I could control something. Anything.
“You’re doing it, Willa-toy.” Yael was beside me, the laughter gone from his voice, his breath tickling my ear. I could feel the heat of his body curling around me as he crouched just behind me, his hand on my arm. “Keep your focus. Breathe. Yes, you’re actually doing it.” There was incredulity in his tone, and a sudden silence in the room.
Elation filled me. With it came a sudden rush of power, so strong that dots of light began to dance behind my closed eyelids.
“Unbelievable,” Coen muttered, a click before everything went black.
Fifteen
“Dweller-baby.”
There was a voice reaching to me, trying to draw me through a tunnel of immense darkness. I wanted to lift my arm—to reach for the voice. It was smooth, deep, familiar ... but my arm was too heavy.
“Sweetheart.”
A different voice this time. Huskier. It reminded me of burnt sugar plants, and I finally managed to blink my eyes open a little bit. The room came into focus slowly, beginning as a hazy blur before gradually solidifying into solid colours and shapes. I was in our bed. There were two thick thighs on either side of my body, a muscled torso behind my head, and a golden arm wrapped around my waist.
“You’re awake.” I turned toward Aros’s voice—he was sitting on the bed beside whoever’s lap I was cuddled in.
“Hi,” I croaked out. “Did I make it go away?”
He cracked a smile, his eyes lightening to a pale gold, only a few little tendrils of green visible.
“You made it go away,” Coen’s voice replied, the chest behind me rumbling with the words.
“Where are the others?” I asked, tipping my head back against his chest to see his face.
He glanced down at me, his touch shifting so that his hands were at my waist, lifting me up a little. Suddenly, my lips were only a breath away from his. He had been about to answer my question, but his movement seemed to shock both of us. The words died on his lips before he even had a chance to speak them, and his eyelids dropped down, his gaze lowering.
“I don’t even remember the question,” he groaned. “What is happening right now?”
Something was happening, I realised. A need was building up inside me. My body was sinking back into his, my skin suddenly aching to be pressed against one of my guys, my hands desperate to touch them. It didn’t take long for me to close the distance between our mouths. I kissed him quickly, need thrumming through my body, and then pulled back. Pain shimmered across my skin, his hands contracting where they held my waist.
A touch against my chin had my head turning, then, and gold eyes locked onto my gaze, Aros’s lips pressing into mine.
The second kiss was more deliberate than the first, his hands shaping to the sides of my face, his fingers threading into the hair at the sides of my temple. I could taste him, and it was as though I needed that taste to bring myself back to life. I was so desperate for it, I could have cried.
Aros pulled back, his eyes searching my face.
“Can you feel it?” he rasped out.
I thought that he was talking to me, but Coen was the one who replied.
“Yes, she’s trying to absorb our energy. Open to her.”
That made sense to me, on some level—but I couldn’t seem to properly analyse what it meant. Not with the sudden need that clouded my mind and swept through my body. I couldn’t think.
My fingers were tangling in Aros’s shirt, pulling him back to me. His lips took mine again, a groan vibrating from his mouth to mine.
Pain fissured down my spine in a sharp sting, forcing my mouth open. Aros’s tongue swept past my lips, his hands dipping to my shoulders, and then to my hips, drawing me out of Coen’s arms and into his. Pleasure rushed through me as soon as I collapsed onto his chest, sending him falling back against the mattress. His hands were beneath my shirt, sweeping up the curve of my spine. I felt a body hovering over me, and then a large hand threaded through my hair, turning my face suddenly to the side.
I saw a golden stretch of skin right beside my head—Coen’s arm—and then the hand in my hair was forcing my mouth to his, and the pain was sweeping back down the length of my spine. The longer we touched, the stronger the buzzing sting of his power got. I shuddered, and Aros’s hands seemed to trace the reaction of my body, skimming over my back. Pleasure chased the Pain, soothing and stimulating at the same time.
Coen must have been holding himself off me so that he wouldn’t crush me, but the hard pressure of his kiss was enough to have my body turning.