Take Back Worlds (Diamond Universe: Sierra Walker #3)

Chapter 8

I vaguely hear yelling, like it’s coming from a long way away.

It feels like something punches me in the gut, and I gasp, but there’s nothing there, it—

“She’s human , you winged idiot, you can’t fix her with magic—“

A scuffle, shadows over my eyes.

A snap in front of my face and the familiar words in a cold tone, “Sierra, drink.”

I obey on reflex. I’ve disappointed Evram, and I won’t compound it.

A potion pours down my throat, and my vision goes black again.

“ W here were you,” I hear Nariel snarling.

“Protecting the city from collateral damage from your unrestrained magic,” Evram snaps back. “If someone had called me —“

“You felt the angels in your city and went to work,” Destien replies coolly.

“And what about you ?”

“If the grand magi had approved my proposal regarding Sierra’s access to communication I wouldn’t have needed to waste my time coordinating—“

Nariel’s hand on my face cuts him off. “Sierra?”

I open my eyes and see him looking worriedly down at me.

He’s holding me.

I blink.

“Did you catch me when I fell out of the sky?” I ask, then wince. “That sounds like a bad pickup line.”

Nariel’s whole body relaxes. “Yes.” A moment. “And yes.”

I should ask him to put me down, but I’m still feeling a little fuzzy so instead I just say, “Sorry about that.”

His whole body goes tense again.

I guess that wasn’t the right response?

I turn and see Destien and Evram around us, the battered statue of the grand magus behind.

“What did I miss?” I ask, then: “Ow. Why does my stomach hurt?”

Evram snorts. “Because your demon tried to shove magic at you through it.”

Nariel’s arms hold onto me tighter.

Oh. I look back at Nariel. “Would that work if I did it to you?”

Jaw firmly clenched, he nods tightly.

“Good to know.” I consider Evram again. “Thank you for the potion.”

“Don’t thank him,” Nariel growls.

“What—“

“What you have missed,” Destien cuts in, “is that while you and Nariel collectively killed three angels, when Nariel caught you, the final angel you’d been fighting retreated.”

Oh, no. My stomach drops.

I feel dizzier, and given the pain already in my stomach, now I feel like I’m about to vomit.

“So Bright Earth knows Nariel is out,” Evram says sourly.

Damn it. I couldn’t even finish the job.

Now I want to cry, too.

When was the last time I lost a fight? The one thing I’m good for, and I fucked it up.

I take shallow breaths. I didn’t kill Nariel, though. So I did something right.

“So now we can expect the angels to descend in force next time—“

“Can I take a moment to point out that there are, in fact, angels involved?” I interrupt, looking at Evram. “Does the Council of Grand Magi acknowledge that?”

Not him specifically, so he actually answers, “Yes. We’ve identified the center spell in Sarenac City. It’s being used as a repository.”

Holding all the magic they’re stealing from High Earth in High Earth, so it doesn’t destabilize their own world but they can still access it all they want.

“Can we return it to the people it came from?”

“Believe it or not, people have been working while you slept,” Evram snaps, and I bite my tongue. If I hadn’t lost consciousness—

“The short answer is ‘not easily’,” Destien says. “We have people working on it—“

Evram puts in. “ I will take care of it as soon as—“

”—but the spell is a lot more complicated than the anchors.”

It would have to be, to hold that much power undetectably.

To suck High Earth dry and then make them fight for scraps amongst themselves, too desperate to fight the angels.

No doubt Evram will tell me that’s why you shouldn’t upset the status quo, so I look at Destien. “And the plague?”

“Gone here,” he says, which is the first good news. I let out a breath. “If you can show me what you did to the anchors—“

I dig into my pocket for the cube. “I recorded it.”

“Then if Nariel and the spirits can assist, we can coordinate throughout High Earth and find and remove the other anchors as well. But we believe the repository we’ve located in Sarenac is the primary one.”

I look up at Nariel to find him watching me with black eyes.

“The spirits will begin searching,” he finally says.

“Then you—“

“Later,” Nariel says with finality.

I frown. “But—“

We disperse.

And an instant later, we’re in our guest bedroom.

Nariel carefully sets me on the bed, then steps back, clenching his fists at his sides.

Oh. “I know you have to go, I’m fine—“

“I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you,” Nariel snaps.

What?

I’m so taken aback by an ultimatum like this from him—when so much is going on—I just gape at him as he glares furiously back at me.

I blink a couple times, looking around to make sure I’m not still dreaming, but we do appear to be in reality as best as I can tell.

“I’m confused,” I finally say.

And he snaps.

Appearing before me with his hands clenched on the edge of the bed he leans over and demands, “ Why didn’t you call on me?”

“When I lost consciousness?” I ask, baffled. “Because I was unconscious?”

His eyes go black. “ Before that .”

“You mean when you were occupied fighting an angel?”

Nariel practically growls, “I wasn’t so busy it was worth you getting this hurt.”

“Did you expect me to never get hurt again once we bonded? I’m a human taking on two angels at once and you needed your full power to fight the other one.”

“No, I didn’t,” Nariel snaps. “I took on the strongest angel, but the only reason I wasn’t finished with him was that I was making sure you had enough power for two.”

Okay, now I’m getting angry. “Well if you’d said that, maybe I would have made different choices!”

“I assumed you understood,” Nariel bites out, “that if you need more power, you can take it .”

“You mean like when I took your power and almost killed you yesterday ?”

“I was fine,” Nariel snaps.

“And so am I,” I snap back. “I don’t lose fights.”

“Not when you use all of your power, you don’t,” he growls.

That hits me like a blow to the chest.

Nariel is still glaring down at me and I say flatly, “Move.”

He moves.

I leap off the bed, heedless of my dizziness. I’ll be fine.

“Sierra—“

I slam the bathroom door behind me.

I get myself to the toilet first, but as I wash up my hands are shaking.

I didn’t kill Nariel, and he’s mad at me for it.

Because I lost a fight.

My visions clouds with tears, and I hunch over the sink, willing myself to get a grip.

I lost .

Not just a fight, but a fight that mattered . Now Nariel is in even more danger—they’ll send angels for him in force, and I couldn’t even handle two—

Nariel coalesces behind me.

Not now.

“I closed the door for a reason, give me space!” I choke out.

Nariel spins me to face him and crushes me in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I shove against his chest even as tears spill out of my eyes. “You don’t have to be sorry for being honest with me!”

His arms tighten. “I can be sorry for not understanding. I can be sorry for making you feel lesser, even for a moment.”

“My feelings are not your responsibility.”

Nariel just rests his head on mine and holds me. “I think maybe this time they are.”

I bury my face in his chest and try to breathe, but they’re deep, sobbing breaths.

And Nariel just holds me, one hand soothing up and down my back, until I finally manage to make a sentence.

“I don’t think you understand,” I tell him, “that me killing you is the worst thing that could ever happen to me.”

His hand on my back freezes.

“I thought,” Nariel says carefully after a moment, “that would be losing your magic.”

I swallow and whisper, “I thought so too.”

Now there are two things that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt would destroy me.

Nariel’s voice is strained when he says, “Sierra, that’s how I feel when I see you falling out of the sky .”

I look up at him. His expression is heartbreaking—intent and desperate and tender all at once.

“Oh, no,” I say weakly.

Nariel lets out a choked laugh and hugs me tighter to him.

This time, I don’t resist, wrapping myself around him in turn.

After a minute I ask softly, “Was the bond a mistake?”

Nariel is quiet for a minute before finally saying, “I don’t know. I want to say no. I don’t think you can take on as many angels as we’re going to have to without it. But if it’s going to hamstring you in battle because you’re worrying about me—“

“That’s not what I mean, I think,” I say slowly.

Nariel pauses. Waiting.

Listening.

That .

“I don’t really understand the bond,” I say. “But are we relying on it too much? I can feel some of your emotions now, but that doesn’t tell me what you’re thinking , and vice versa. I’m not upset about tying my soul to yours, but did we rush into this before we had enough foundation between us? Like you assumed I’d take your power, and I assumed you needed it—“

“It’s our power, now,“ Nariel says.

“Yes, but it’s not my lifeforce , Nariel! I have food for that!”

“Do you,” Nariel says dryly. I bite my lip, and he cocks his head to the side. “What?”

“I get that’s a joke about how much sex we’re having now,” I say, feeling my way through what I’m actually feeling. “And like. Maybe it was good at first to get my nerves about that out of the way when I was more focused on not dying, and then I was too exhausted to think about it, but—“

“Magical as our first time was, I strongly prefer not having to worry about whether you might die during sex,” Nariel says. “What are you nervous about?”

I look up at him. “Can I still do it without the magic? Would it still be good? For both of us?”

He blinks. “You’re worried not about the quantity of the sex as a distraction, but the quality?”

I sigh. “I feel like I’m worried about everything. But yes. I want magic in all parts of my life, but because I’m incapable of making anything easy for myself, now I’m also worried that the magic is interfering in what I feel for you, and I hate that. The idea, and the not knowing. Can the bond make us feel things we wouldn’t otherwise? How would we know?”

That’s it. I hadn’t really put my finger on it before, and saying it aloud now makes it feel realer. And scarier.

But I want our relationship to be founded on what’s real, and that means sharing my thoughts intentionally, not just leaving it to the bond. Even if I’m afraid it will hurt him—

But Nariel is frowning thoughtfully down at me. “I think we’re having a cultural miscommunication here.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Are we?”

“Bonds are so endemic in both angelic and spiritual culture that it’s hard for me to communicate what no one ever explicitly says,” Nariel explains. “But bonds don’t make us feel things we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Encouraging, but—“My recent libido implies otherwise,“ I say wryly.

Nariel grins. “But you were still attracted to me before the bond. And wanted to have sex. The bond is amplifying those feelings because it’s something we both want, that draws us together. And that’s why you feel more magically energized after sex, because we’re tending to each other, and the bond reinforces that.”

“That... still sounds like the bond is making the feelings to me,” I say.

“Hmm.” Nariel scoops me up in his arms bridal-style and carries me back to the bed. “This I think we can resolve.”

“With sex,” I assume.

Nariel smiles as he sets me down on the bed. “Yes. But without magic.”

I blink. “But the bond—“

“You already know how to keep the bond separate. You distanced yourself from it this morning. Do that again now, and I’ll do the same on my end.”

I frown, but I know what he means.

When I resolved not to take any of his power, it was like I constructed a mental wall blocking me from that well of power. I didn’t realize he’d felt it on his end, too. No wonder he’d been on edge with me—he thought I was pulling away from him . The opposite of what I wanted.

We really do have a mess here, and I’m not sure sex is really up to the task of fixing it.

“Now, cast a spell around the room,” Nariel says.

“I thought we weren’t using magic.”

“We’re not using magic for sex . This spell is to hold all of our magic in here.“ His lips quirk. “So make it a strong one.”

Oh boy.

I close my eyes and think on that for a second. When I open them, watching as silvery lines of magic fill the air, Nariel’s shadows spill out of him, too.

He smiles at me. “We’re in this together, Sierra.”

Something in me relaxes at that. It’s not all on me.

But I’m also a competitive bitch, and I won’t lose to him, either.

“Okay,” I say. “What’s next?”

Nariel’s smile widens, taking on a predatory edge. “Now,” he says, “you don’t use magic. You hold it in. I want you to feel me without it.”

Oh. “So I know how it’s different.”

“No,” Nariel corrects, as he takes off his shoes the old-fashioned way. “So you know it’s the same .”

I purse my lips as I reach down for my boots too. It’s already different, though. I’m still attracted to him, but I don’t feel like I need to have him inside me this second or I’m going to die.

Nariel laughs softly, as though he knows what I’m thinking. He catches one of my feet and lifts it, turning his still amused face to press a kiss to my ankle.

Heat spikes through me, and I jerk.

What the fuck? Am I a Victorian now?

Nariel grins wickedly. “Patience, Sierra.”

Ohmygod. He’s finally going to take his time with me.

“Shouldn’t we—“

“If you’re about to say something about helping High Earth, it will take the spirits and Destien time to search and sort information before I can contribute anything useful. This isn’t Low Earth, and there are other mages here. So no, there is nothing else we should be doing right now.”

Nariel’s hands begin working their way up my legs, and I just kind of stare at him as my heart pounds, not totally able to believe this is really happening.

I can actually have him.

Or can I?

“I can practically see you thinking,” Nariel notes idly, his hands still warming me through the cloth. “We’ll work on that, too.”

”I like thinking.”

“Worrying, then.” His hands smooth up my thighs, tracing the crease where they meet my center, but he doesn’t go any further. “There’s only one thing you need to be thinking about right now.”

“What’s that?” I ask as his hands stroke up my sides, then cup gently under my breasts. Then back down again, over my stomach, but then back to my hips.

Nariel kneels in front of me and whispers, his breath ghosting across my lips, “How I’m going to touch you next.”

Then he’s kissing me.

Kissing is another thing I don’t really feel like I know how to do—I am confident in things I’ve trained in, dammit, and this was very much not on my spellcraft curriculum—but Nariel isn’t worried, and already his lips feel like home, so I follow his lead. Follow his lips, and his tongue, and his hands, gripping my hair as I bury my hands in his in return.

He kisses me slow, like we have all the time in the world, and inexorable, like he can drink the taste of me forever and never have enough, and unending, like we can keep kissing until there are no more stars in the sky and then more still.

His hands tense for a moment, and then he slides them to my sides and lifts me up to move me farther onto the bed so he can climb on after me.

After a moment I realize the hitch was because normally he’d use his shadows to lift me, so he didn’t have to stop touching me.

But I can’t complain, because now while he keeps kissing me his hands move down my sides and over my belly and then to the undersides of my breasts again, where he strokes. My nipples tighten in response, in anticipation.

Nariel lifts his head up just long enough to smirk at me.

But before I even scowl, or laugh, or say anything at all, he drops his head back down to suck one cloth-covered nipple into his mouth.

I suck in a breath.

We’re not even skin-to-skin, but something about the barrier, the friction, makes it even more erotic. The knowledge that there’s still more .

Nariel’s hands massage back down lower to my belly, then pause.

He looks at me again, and this time I narrow my eyes at him.

And he smiles brilliantly as he lowers his head down to my other nipple, and as I feel heat pooling in my core, one of his hands finally moves lower, massaging circles over my mons, and I let out a breath.

Then his other hand reappears, stroking up the crease of my thigh, and I squirm against him.

But Nariel just says in a low voice over my breast, “Patience, Sierra,” and goes back to what he was doing before—working me up and taking his damn time.

And maybe that’s fair, because while I want him to touch me, I don’t need it. I could walk away now and go think about spell diagrams if I needed to. It’s not like bond sex.

That doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere, though.

I move my hands to lift my shirt, because while he may want to make this a slow torture, that doesn’t mean I can’t hurry things along. I didn’t agree to just passively let him have his way with me.

When I get my shirt over my head, though, Nariel holds my arms together before I can finish removing it, my arms trapped in the fabric.

Which under other circumstances I might object to, but not when he’s staring down at me with a smile that’s... it’s not even sexy, it’s just so warm , like he’s so happy to be here with me, and that makes me pause.

If seeing me spread out before him makes him happy, I’m not going to object. It’s not like I really know what to do with my hands, anyway.

Seeing that I’m not in any rush to free my arms, Nariel’s eyes drift down my front.

This time, when he flicks his gaze back to mine, his smile is wicked.

And that’s enough to make my libido sit up and take notice, like a bolt of lust straight to my core.

Then Nariel leans down, his gaze never leaving mine, as he closes his mouth around one of my nipples.

I’m not even breathing, just watching as he suckles me slowly, our eyes locked together. He pulls sharply, and my breath hitches, my legs jolting as if of their own volition and wrapping around him.

Nariel makes a hmmm sound around my breast that I feel the vibrations of, as one of his hands makes its way back up my body, slowly, letting the anticipation build even though we both know where it’s going—

But not what it’s going to do, because a pinch was not what I was expecting, and I gasp.

His fingers tease me and so does his tongue, and okay, now it would probably be harder to just disengage and go about my business—

And then his other hand strokes a line straight up my slit.

My leg muscles lock around him.

He does it again.

The third time, I manage to let go of my grip enough to widen my legs, and am rewarded when he strokes over more of me.

Nariel’s fingers at my breast pick up and so does his tongue, flicking lightly, a tease, faster and faster, as his hand down below keeps the same slow pace no matter how I squirm beneath him.

My pants aren’t even off yet. None of his clothes are off yet! The outrage makes me tear my shirt off my arms at last and reach for his, trying not to interrupt what he’s doing at all.

Nariel—infuriatingly, blessedly—releases me long enough to help me get his shirt over his arms—this is definitely an advantage of magic over the old-fashioned way—but the view of him shirtless and totally focused on me has me catching my breath.

But only for a second, before he’s back at work.

Now, though, his hand down below drifts up, then under the top of my pants.

And then he stops.

I snarl at him, and Nariel immediately dips his hand down below, exactly where I want him.

At the first touch of his fingers on my skin, I let out a sound like a mewl.

And that sound sends a shock through Nariel, and abruptly both his hands vanish from my skin, and I’d be mad about it except that they’re immediately yanking my pants down my hips and off, tossing them aside.

Then he kneels on the bed and drags my knees over his shoulders.

I widen my eyes as he strokes his hands down my inner thighs, making me shiver.

The look in his eyes is dark and predatory as he meets my gaze and arches his eyebrows.

Hardly daring to breathe, I nod.

Nariel’s eyes go black.

And then his tongue meets my folds, and I yell.

Nariel draws back long enough to murmur against the most sensitive part of me, “Don’t drop your spell, Sierra.”

The absolute fucking gall—

Then his tongue is back, and I’m squeezing against his hands with my thighs while clamping hard on my spell—I can focus, dammit—all the while my core tightens, and tightens, and—

He presses the pad of one finger against my clit, and for a moment I go utterly still, like my entire being and his is focused on that one tiny, gentle point of connection between us. A direct line from him to my sex, and for the breadth of that moment there is not a single other thing in my mind.

And then my orgasm crests over me, and Nariel strokes me through it with tongue and fingers until I’m twisting away from him in the aftershocks, abruptly too sensitized.

Nariel rolls away from me, but my eyes are open again now and I can see it’s only to take off his pants.

I thought I was staring before, but Nariel completely nude is a sight to behold. And he’s hard and thick already, my pleasure enough to arouse him on its own.

There’s only one thing that could make the view better.

“Show me,” I breathe.

And perhaps it’s the wonder in my gaze that causes his breath to hitch for a moment.

But then his wings unfurl behind him.

I reach for him, and Nariel steps back up to the bed and kneels before me.

“I can’t lie on my back with my wings open,” he warns me.

“Oh, no,” I say as I sit up. “How in the world will we manage.”

He grins. “I just meant—“

“I’ll ride you another time. Maybe in the sky, where there won’t be anything under your wings.”

He growls.

“Ah,” I murmur. “But which of us will hold us aloft?”

I stroke a finger down the velvety smoothness of his wing, and Nariel shudders. “Sierra—“

I cut him off with a kiss as I do it again, and Nariel wraps his hands around me, clutching my sides. And then my other hand moves to his cock, stroking it in time with the hand on his wing.

Nariel goes rigid, just for a second, and then bucks against my hand once, twice.

I wrap my whole hand around him and squeeze.

Nariel lets out a growl around my lips as he pumps into my hand, and I smile, delighted. Maybe I’m not so bad at this after all—

But I’ve barely finished the thought when Nariel’s growl turns into a snarl, and for a second I think I have overstepped.

Until his hands on my sides lift me up and then hold me right over the protruding tip of him.

My breath catches.

Nariel’s gaze catches mine.

He holds me with his eyes and with his hands and with anticipation, heat gathering inside me again just at the feeling of this moment, suspended, the tip of him barely touching me.

“Sierra,” Nariel rumbles, and only then do I realize he’s waiting for permission.

“Yes,” I whisper.

And he begins to lower me down.

And this isn’t like bond sex—I don’t just slide right over him, a perfectly seamless fit. My muscles are still tight after my last orgasm, and Nariel isn’t small. I want him inside me, but even this much, at this angle, feels almost painful.

“Hold yourself up on my shoulders,” Nariel murmurs.

I do, but I frown, because having to bear my own weight makes me more tense, so I’m not sure this is going to work.

But once I’m pressing down on him, Nariel moves his hands, one wrapping around me, and the other snaking underneath to touch my clit.

Instantly my knees widen, and I lower myself down a little more before freezing again.

“I think this angle is too deep,” I whisper.

Nariel kisses me. “We can do something else. But you can take me like this.”

“Appealing to my sense of spite is low,” I tell him again, and Nariel lets out a crack of laughter that warms me from the inside out and has me relaxing further down on him.

“I know you, Sierra,” Nariel tells me, his smile fading to something tender but fierce. “You’re wrapped around every part of me, body, heart, and soul. Let me be wrapped in you, too.”

I want to say that he already is, and that I want that too but I don’t know how without hurting one or both of us, but what my body does is slide all the way over him, sheathing him fully inside me.

And abruptly I know what it feels like when Nariel’s eyes turn black, because I know my own are lit with lightning magic.

Nariel’s blooming smile is beautiful. “No magic,” he reminds me, as he rocks shallowly into me.

That’s all the leverage he has, but the angle, with me sitting draped over his lap, means that I feel even the smallest movements inside me like they’re everything, and I moan as he does it again.

I feel the wall I placed over our bond cracking, but while the rest of me is liquid, my will is iron.

Nariel challenged me, and I will not lose.

I won’t lose this.

I won’t lose him.

Already feeling the waves of climax beginning to stir slowly, I rock back against him.

But I want him to enjoy this, too, not just for my sake, but for his.

Touching his wings feels weirdly like cheating—yes, I know they’re reactive to me, but any angel’s would be in a sexual situation, right?

So instead of going for the wing again, I snake one arm around him, between where the wings meet, and just slowly feel up his spine.

Nariel’s hips stutter for a moment, and he draws back to look at me.

My other hand smooths up his chest and presses against the beat of his heart.

A dam bursts in him—I see it in his gaze, feel the pulse leap under my fingers, and he rocks back faster and faster.

A surge of exultation fills me.

And, okay, wow, when Nariel goes off, that’s— really fast.

Actively using magic or no, he’s still a demon.

The tiny movements increase the friction, though his length barely leaves me. It feels so good, but my budding orgasm still falters, drifting back.

I widen my legs, trying to take him deeper, and Nariel’s hand goes to work again between my thighs, but it’s not enough. I climb to the precipice again and then it backs off again.

On one hand, this all still feels great, but I’m beginning to feel bad, like Nariel’s doing all this work and I’m still not going to be able to come again without the bond, which is... well, I knew this wasn’t bond sex—

Then Nariel squeezes my clit between his fingers and harshly sucks on my nipple at the same time, and I rocket straight into an orgasm with a shout.

Then , while I’m still seizing around him, Nariel pushes me back against the bed again and pounds into me. My aftershocks are still clenching around him, but it feels like I can’t grip him hard enough, my legs have fallen wide.

But Nariel feels my scrambling and uses his hands to push my knees higher, wider than I could do on my own, and I cry out again as somehow I take him even deeper, arching off the bed.

Magic rolls over me in waves of pleasure. My will is ironclad, but we are still bonded even if I’m blocking the emotions associated with it, and I feel lightning rolling over my skin and streaming off me into the room.

Hold the magic.

Hold Nariel.

Nariel’s shadows are spilling out of him, too, clouding the room, and both shadow and lightning crackle against the shields we’ve placed, making it look and feel like we’re in the center of a lightning storm as Nariel drives into me as deep as he can.

We’re in this together. Inextricably entwined.

“I love you,” I breathe.

And that’s enough to push him over the edge, chasing his finish as our magic billows around us in a dangerous cocoon. With a final burst Nariel comes with a yell, and to my surprise a third orgasm rips through me.

For a bright, shining moment, all I can see is lightning behind my eyes, all I can hear is the sound of our combined shouts, and all I feel is us together, surging to a new height.

And at that moment, I consciously let the wall between us fall.

I’d thought I was climaxing before, but the pure, fierce joy that surges through me sends another crest breaking over me. And I know Nariel feels it too, because he’s still moving, but now his mouth covers mine and I’m not thinking about how to kiss him anymore, just reaching for him in all the ways I can touch and feel and know.

When I can finally breathe again, I say breathlessly, “Nariel. Three orgasms.”

Nariel shakes with laughter on top of me. He rolls over onto one wing, while the other wraps around me and holds me against him on our sides.

“I love you too,” he says, kissing me on the temple. And then: “I think we can do better than three.”

I don’t think I’d have anything left on my own, but with the bond back and clear between us I feel a pulse inside me where Nariel still sits. Softened, but—

“We really don’t need to make sex a competition,” I tell him. “I’m already winning.”

Experimentally, I take some of that lightning that’s dancing over my skin and run it along my walls.

Nariel’s cock jolts, hardening in an instant.

“However,” I say, “you know I’m always up for a magical experiment, and if you’d like to test those shields just a little more—“

Nariel seals my challenge with a kiss.