"—anticipatory arousal. Shall I enter low-observation mode?"
"Please."
"Acknowledged. Estimated duration?"
I send Krilly a very specific estimate based on what I have planned. Her cheeks go scarlet.
"Three hours," she says faintly.
"Ambitious but historically supported," Bebo confirms. "Low-observation mode engaged."
The door to Room 314 barely closes before my hands find her waist.
Six months has not dulled this. Six months hasrefinedit.
In the beginning, sex was discovery. The canyon, the claiming, learning each other's bodies through urgency and wonder. Then it was joy: the gym, the freedom, the delight of having a locked door and no predators. Now it's something else. Mastery. Six months of data, of experimentation, of Krilly's engineer brain applied to the systematic mapping of every response my bodyproduces and my arena-trained focus applied to every response hers provides.
We are very, very good at this.
Her jumpsuit's magnetic seals release under my hands in the sequence she modified for exactly this purpose, the fabric parting collar to hip while I walk her backward toward the bedroom. Her anticipation is a bright, specific heat that doubles my own.
"Partnership renewal celebration?" she asks, already pulling at my shirt.
"Thorough celebration. Extensive. Possibly structural."
"We already owe maintenance for two benches and a couch."
"The bed has held for six months. I trust its engineering."
Her laugh vibrates against my mouth as I kiss her, and six months of practice has taught me exactly how she likes it: firm at first, the pressure that makes her soften against me, then slower, deeper, letting the bond carry the sensation back and forth until the kiss becomes a feedback loop of its own. The taste of her registering through the jade patterns on my tongue and transmitting data back to me: her arousal levels, her readiness, the specific neurochemical cocktail that meansnow, soon, please.
"You're reading me," she says against my mouth. "I can feel you doing it."
"My tongue has opinions about your current state."
"What opinions?"
"That you've been thinking about this since Mother's office. That your arousal has been building for approximately forty minutes. And that you want something specific tonight."
The pulse of what she wants. Not words. Sensation-memory: the stretch, the fullness, the lock. The specific, overwhelming intimacy of being knotted.
"Yes," I say, answering what she hasn't spoken. "We can do that."
"I love that the bond means I don't have to ask."
"You can still ask. I enjoy hearing you say it."
She meets my eyes. Six months of boldness, of discovering her own desires and naming them without flinching. "I want you to knot me. I've been thinking about it all day. The way it feels when you lock inside me and we can't separate and you have to grind instead of thrust and the ridges hit—"
I kiss her to stop the sentence because the bond is amplifying every word into shared sensation and if she finishes describing what the knot does to her while I can feel what the description is doing to her body, we won't make it to the bed.
We make it to the bed. Barely.
Her clothes are gone, and mine, and the first full-body contact sends the bond surging. Six months of calibration means my skin temperature adjusts to her preference automatically: hot enough to make her gasp, not so hot that it's uncomfortable. The natural lubrication has already begun, my body reading her pheromones and preparing.
"Slow first," she says, climbing onto the bed, pulling me with her. "I want to feel the buildup."
Slow. We've learned slow. In the beginning, everything was urgency; now we know how to let the bond carry anticipation until the wanting itself becomes a kind of pleasure.
