Page 94 of Failed State

“Please, Sebastian. Let Rory make me come and the scent of you all fills the air. I want it.”

If that son of a whore doesn’t let her, I’m going to?—

“You may come, kitten. Scream the roof down for us, and it will send everyone over.”

I don’t know about the logistics of that, but a tingle hits me like a bolt of lightning and I have to clamp down on myself so I don’t blow my load before she does. “Holy fuck,” I mutter, but it’s drowned out by the wail Sydney lets out as her body locks in the middle of us. The heat of her skin doubles and I twist the nipple I’ve been toying with hard, hoping to wind her up more, so she yells again.

Luckily for me, that’s exactly what she does and, like magic, an orgasm smacks me in the face like a ton of bricks.The shouts from the other guys join the chorus with hers, and I hold on tight as the entire room is one vibrating climax that rocks us until we finally calm.I pant as the fluid fills my fucking pants—something I haven’t done in so long that humans drove goddamn coaches—and flop backwards on the pallet when my limbs cannot hold me aloft.

“What in the three faces of Eve wasthat?” I ask as I damn near melt into the blankets. “Did you do that, sweet pea?”

A low chuckle breaks the silence and I look at Sebastian as he smirks, despite also having destroyed his sweats like the rest of us. “No, that wasme, demon. Vampires can do much of what our Cubi cousins do if we use the voice.”

“Son of a bitch,” Rory mumbles as he finally sits up, his face looking like a glazed donut and his pupils blown to hell. “I forgot about that shit.”

Thad leans back on his elbows, his eyes hooded and grin goofy as he comes down from the ride with the rest of us. “We promised to clean her up. We should do that when we can move.”

I think that’s going to be a group activity now, and I’m looking forward to it immensely—Happy Thursday to me.

LAST THURSDAY NIGHT

SYDNEY

The incessant beepingthat wakes me up is an unwelcome intruder. I stretch carefully, my brain committed to believing I’ll be sore when, in fact, I’m more relaxed than I’ve been in… ever. My muscles are loose and there’s not a single hint of the aches and pains present when I walked in the door of our dorm last night. My face flushes when I think about the way the guys relieved that issue, and I roll to my back to look up at the ceiling as my mind races with the implications of what happened.

I let them touch me, kiss me, even command me—and I’m surprisingly not sorry.

Because of my father’s rigorous dislike of the world—both supernatural and human—I was isolated and indoctrinated to think that withholding myself strengthened me and made me morally superior to those around me. I wore those convictions like a superhero cape, even when reality crashed into that belief so hard that it knocked me flat during the Sweeps. Sure, my father was killed trying to ‘work’ within the two groups for peace in the end, but now that I’m able to see his rhetoric clearly, I don’t think it was for heroic reasons. He was part of the peacebrokering supes because he wanted both sides to fuck off and leave us alone.

I don’t knowwhy, of course, except that he was adamant that my mother left because they were forbidden. Yet he vacillated between trying to develop my magic and keeping me focused on the more human ways to defend us when it wouldn’t work. My understanding was he was simply magical, and Ithoughtmy mother was human, then maybe a shifter. But neither makes sense when you add to his insistence that intermingling was so taboo that we had to stay on the fringes of all the societies.

Was he just crazy or was there an actual reason he was the supe version of a doomsday prepper?

Unfortunately, I don’t know and I also have no idea how much the rumors of the elders of the major supernatural species being confined in some secret locale plays into his nuttiness. Was he on the ‘we can all live in peace’ side because he feared such a thing happening? He wasn’t religious; he didn’t encourage me to believe in higher beings skewed toward any pantheon or species’ favorite deity. That means his absolutely feral conviction that we weren’t safe and I would be hunted if people knew about him and my mother didn’t follow some Flavor-Aid drinking, body of a holy man eating sect scripture.

Sighing, I close my eyes for a moment, pushing away my concerns about why I was so rigorously taught to avoid everyone, to keep myself strong by not allowing others access, and most importantly, why withholding things that gave me joy or pleasure were such a huge part of honoring myself. I’ve been able to enjoy things here and there since I was tossed into Tempest Seven—my two best friends, books, embarrassing assholes, etc. But even the occasional physical ‘boost’ I gave myself wasn’t enough to truly bring me more than physical relief, which is simply biology.

Living like a monk without faith in anything didn’t do me any favors, but that’s what he wanted for me.

The lingering questions will not be answered this morning, and certainly not while I’m lying in the ridiculously luxurious sheets of the comfy bed provided by my true enemies. No, I need to get my ass up and go face the men who just showed me what kind of true elation can come from defying my father’s whacked out bullshit. And, of course, to make sure that they haven’t changed their minds about what they said now that I’m not naked and willing to help them slake their own desires.

I frown at that knee-jerk reaction, sitting up to scoot off my bed and onto my feet. That’s my internal trauma talking, I guess, but it’s hard to push away. It was drilled into me that my mother left to protect me, and then my father died claiming he was trying to do the same. The truths I held to be part of my core being are in question, and I already didn’t trust people not to leave. Now I have to contend with my brain’s desire to insist that they will also lie to me and I’ll be left floundering for purchase after they’re gone.

“Get it together, Sydney. Why do you keep having to tell yourself that? For fuck’s sake, stop letting intrusive thoughts ruin everything. You’re doing fine and the guys will not abandon you after one session of oral sex and magical hand jobs. Stop thinking about how you will gut them and get dressed.”

The last part is necessary because the trickles of unfamiliar blue and red and black inside of me whisper, too.

I pull the stupid uniform out of my drawer and don it, then braid my hair in the tightly wound coil that serves as armor. It takes a few moments to do the basic skin care and makeup routine I’ve been advised on, then I load up my bag with the things I need for today’s sessions. Stopping to look in the mirror before I go out, I note that I don’t look any different, but I feel like a slight weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I don’tknow if that weight is named self-denial, oppression, or anger because none of those are small enough to completely lift. It might be a tiny slice of all of them, and as I navigate the world as it truly is, more will flutter away.

Regardless, I check myself one more time, then something catches my eye. The damn tattoo for the team they scarred me with looks a little brighter. Not totally, but just a smidgen brighter than it was before. It might be the scarring healing, and I’m just imagining shit. My brain is so crowded with questions and worries that it’s possible I’m hallucinating a little. Even after the guys took me to the bathroom last night and helped gently get me clean and warm again, I still felt fuzzy from the strength of that release. I was barely awake when Rory—I think—carried me to my room and tucked me in.

Maybe I’m still high on orgasms and their attention that fed me like a starving stray on the streets?

Who knows what crazy shit I’m going to have run through my mind today as I come to terms with yet another major change in such a short amount of time? I’m a woman on the edge, and trying to predict what will happen as I process life-altering shit day after day is like trying to predict the weather accurately. There might be sciences dedicated to it, but they’re mostly pattern recognition and data-backed guesswork. No one can tell me how I’m going to react, not even me.

I let that deep thought go as I open my door and stride to the kitchen. My stomach flutters with fear as I face them for the first time since last night. I’m trying to be strong, but I can’t stop the lump from forming in my throat as I wait to see what they’re going to do. Before I can open my mouth to speak, Elias comes over to me, handing me a mug of coffee and a burrito with a stern expression.

“Eat, little rebel. Our days are long and we were quite late when we retired last night.”

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