Page 35 of Souls of Steel
As August and I started to move in and out of Selene, Brendan and Pollux joined us. The angle made it awkward for them to reach her. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to overwhelm her like that anyway. We had another method that would be just as good.
Brendan’s tachyons coursed over my body, burning off the remnants of my uniform. The tempered flame licked over my skin and Selene’s, but it didn’t hurt us. Beneath me, Selene sobbed, but the scent of her arousal deepened. August and I slowed down our thrusts just long enough to give Brendan and Pollux time to move in.
Brendan didn’t bother with preparation. He simply spat in his palm and pushed inside me. The entry burned, but that was the way it had always been between us, from the moment we’d met.
It wasn’t the first time Brendan fucked me. Usually, when I lost my temper, it could go both ways. I couldn’t physically hurt him, not in a way that wouldn’t heal, at least, so it didn’t matter to us. August and Pollux had been in a similar relationship since before they’d joined the academy. As members of the Grand Chimera Unit, the four of us had fucked in all possible combinations. I hadn’t thought we could add another element, but Selene just seemed to fit.
In front of me, Pollux slid inside August, his motions somewhat smoother and gentler than Brendan’s. He kissed August’s shoulder and his eyes met mine. There was a secret grief in him, the same shadow and desperation that he’d carried all his life. I wanted to chase it away, to chase away reality altogether.
Maybe Selene felt it too. Her body went still, almost slack, and the luminous particles she emanated swept through us like a fiery tidal wave. My head cleared and the beast that lurked at the back of my mind settled, leaving behind the man. The lines of strain vanished from the corner of August’s eyes. The tension in Pollux’s stance dissipated and Brendan’s grip on me loosened. It was like the touch of a goddess. Was this the Terran magic I’d heard so much about? No, Gaia’s Gift didn’t manifest like this and even if it had, Selene had already said she didn’t have it.
Did it matter? Whatever it was, it felt like a gift too and I embraced it. This time, when we started to move, the pace was gentle, almost kind. It was sex, but not just that. Selene didn’t moan again. She didn’t let out a sound, but I could smell the scent of her tears. There was no grief or pain in them, only acceptance, something so powerful I’d never thought I’d find in any woman, let alone a Terran who’d come out of nowhere to shatter our lives to pieces.
“This is a mistake,” Brendan mouthed against my shoulder. I couldn’t see him speak, but I heard and felt the words anyway.
He didn’t stop it, though. Chimera royalty or not, he couldn’t stop the unavoidable. In Selene, we might have just met our match.
Brendan craved her as much as I did. He might not be able to reach her directly, but he reached her through me. By now, he knew my body as intimately as he did his own, so his every thrust hit my prostate dead on, echoing into Selene. She shook beneath me, but still held on, her flesh as welcoming as it had been when we’d started this crazy thing between us.
August reached down and caressed her temples and bright sparks flared around their bodies. In the light he emanated, Selene’s hair seemed to turn into liquid fire. She looked like a shard of the sun, like a star we’d stolen from the universe. And when she came, she dragged us along with her, like a quasar, a supernova absorbing everything around her, merciless, brutal, and yet so beautiful.
I couldn’t hope to resist it. I was paralyzed with the intensity of her allure and her emotions. I’d been the predator all my life, but this time, I was the prey, and I happily surrendered to it.
As the four of us followed her over the edge, the pleasure consumed us whole, wiping away all traces of who we were, bringing our individual selves together in one single, cohesive entity. I reached out, feeling like I was on the verge of something momentous.
The sensations melted away before I could find that elusive state. I came back into cognizance, shaking and breathless. My body was still vibrating with the aftermath of my explosive climax. I felt more dazed than the time I’d been thrown out of the Cerberus during a botched mission and had suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Brendan wasn’t doing much better. He pulled out of me and slumped against my back. “What just happened?” he muttered.
It was unlike him to display such uncertainty, but these weren’t regular circumstances. I’d have tried to reassure him, to answer him in some way, but nothing that came to mind seemed good enough.
As I collapsed onto the bed, Selene curled against my chest and smiled. Her expression was brighter than the fires of Tartarus my Cerberus emitted. “Thank you.”
I had no idea what she was thanking me for, so I just nodded silently and felt stupid and inadequate.“Oh, dear,”Cerberus said at the back of my mind. “That escalated quickly.”
I ignored him. I didn’t need him to tell me what I already knew. I didn’t need him to point how fucked I was, and not just because of Brendan and the others pounding my ass on a regular basis. As Selene finally fell asleep in my arms, sandwiched between our larger bodies, I wondered what the hell I was supposed to do.
The Bet
Selene
After I had sex with my fellow Grand Chimera tamers, life at the academy became very different for me. The other students and teachers still gave me ugly looks and made disparaging comments, but there were no real incidents of note. Maybe it was because I felt more confident and more secure in my path.
I’d changed, although I only shared the reason for it with my chimera. To make sure it was safe, I waited until my next flight training lesson to explain. Sphinx took the news better than expected.
“So, they want to seduce you and break your heart.”Sphinx hummed thoughtfully.“That’s disappointing, but unsurprising.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to let them do it. My heart isn’t so easily broken.”
Something had happened between me and my lovers when we’d all been together in bed. Leaving aside the amazing sex, I’d caught a glimpse of their minds. It had only been for a moment, but I’d seen some of their scattered thoughts. The clusters of incoherent images and the bombardment of disjointed messages had been too powerful for me to distinguish too much, but I’d pieced together a few things anyway.
They didn’t think I belonged at the academy. They were afraid I’d get hurt. They wanted to turn me away, using a method that wouldn’t physically harm me. But they also needed my help.
“It’s not your job to save every single person in the world, my Selene,”Sphinx chastised me.
“I’m a chimera tamer. That’s precisely my job.”
“Don’t be cheeky,”she replied, unimpressed.“You know what I mean. This isn’t like fighting alien entities. Didn’t I tell you? Your soul isn’t prepared for what you need to become to survive this place.”
