Her hand came to a stop when Zefaris approached, making no attempt to hide her intentions as she crawled onto the bed. “I’m no coward,” she uttered.

“Oh really?” came a laughing response. “Prove it, coward.”

The Tablet landed on the ground beside the bed with a thud, its projection flickering away just like both their pretensions of restraint. At first, it was no more than Zefaris acting out in an attempt to regain some sort of control, perhaps to try and establish dominance even, and her musclebound counterpart did little to impede that. She explored every trail of silver-inlaid skin, every inch of rock-hard muscle, and even as her hands went places she hadn’t intended them to, Zelsys maintained that aura of unassailable smugness, wordlessly goading her to try and break the facade, and… With her ring and index fingers in the right place and a thumb a little further up, a small motion elicited a brief twitch and an utterly uncharacteristic yelp out of the towering beast-slayer.

The facade slipped for but a moment and she was right back to that insufferable smirk, but Zefaris wasn’t blind or deaf. She heard Zelsys breathing more heavily, saw her face flushing red and her fingers briefly grasping the damp bedsheet as her nipples stood on end. She felt the wetness surrounding her fingers as she slowly worked them in a well-practiced motion, her gaze locked to Zel’s, their bodies pressed together.

“Come closer,” Zel commanded in a breathy whisper, chest heaving with every breath she took. Snow-white skin slithered against chocolate-bronze as she shifted in place, and soon she was staring into those silver eyes at point-blank. Silver Fog rolled out of Zel’s half-open mouth like smoke. Before she knew it they had locked lips, her lungs filled with Fog that banished what few inhibitions she had left and amplified the senses tenfold.

Every touch, every movement, every probe of Zel’s tongue in her mouth was felt more clearly than she had ever felt anything before. Zefaris lost herself to the Fog-breather when she felt the fingers of one hand in her hair, just as the other slipped between her legs.

The concepts of personal boundaries and even time itself melted away in their Fog-drunk, lustful stupor. As far as they were concerned the world was this room and them, and they took great care in exploring as they pushed each other over the edge again and again in a bizarre contest of endurance. Zel’s Fog-breathing eventually filled the room with Fog so thoroughly that merely breathing at all renewed the Fog-drunk state, and in their intoxication fingers gave way to tongues, legs locked around each other's head. By the end of the night, their mutual understanding of one another’s bodies was more thorough than many people’s understanding of their own would ever be.

He had done it. He had to weather some slurs and act far less patriotic than he was, but he had done it. Makhus had secured a rental contract of Riverside Remedies, and with money to spare from the down payment!