How to Train Your Channeler

[Oriena]

Restraint wasn’t something she had expected him to actually stick by, at least not with that kind of simple, soft decisiveness. She didn’t know much about Sasha, but she knew his type. Or she thought she had. Ori tried to decide if she found it offensive or insufferably hot that he didn’t let himself tip over the edge. Either way she found it surprisingly difficult to disengage, and he certainly wasn’t backing off, which made the heat pulse just that little bit stronger in every place they still touched. She doubted he was even aware of that casually thrown gauntlet. Ori was as mercurial to her own desire as she was to those around her. She was the one who told him to wait, but the moment he did without flinching or flustering, it only made her want harder, and now.

Instead she bent to retrieve the bundle without stepping back first, hooking a finger in his waistband to keep her balance. Her smile was a playful sin as she straightened and finally made the decision to pull away. She tugged his shirt once, brief and sharp, reclaiming motion. “I didn’t say you had to behave,” she said, already several steps ahead of him in the tunnel when the power smacked a tease across his ass.

She hadn’t expected Sasha to understand who she was talking about, especially not given where all the blood was currently rushing. It shouldn't have surprised her: those who lived in shadows survived by watching the world around them closely. But her intentions weren’t something she was hiding. “Nox can look after himself,” she said. She didn’t add that if the stupid bitch even tried to reclaim such a prize, it wouldn’t be Nox she’d have to worry about. Nor that his power had been ripped out at the root anyway, which made the danger irrelevant at least so far as he was concerned. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t burn like anything else, if that’s what you want.”

She wouldn’t stop him if he did. The blood was still coated down his neck, and she wouldn’t soon forget the feral screams tearing raw from his throat. Had it been her skull, she’d have wanted the thing incinerated.

The route to Almaz took them via an abandoned looking service entrance, a dim light flickering noisily above a locked keypad. The corridor beyond the door resembled nothing close to the glittering luxury of the club above. In the warrens beneath the public arenas not much comfort was spared for the fighters. Bare walls, leaking pipes, the ceaseless hum of electricity fed through thick cables. There were holding cells for recuperation, communal showers for cleaning, and eerily vacant pits for practice. Even deeper underground were the cages for the competitors which never left; the ones who were not human at all, or had no humanity left to them at least. There was still several feet of stone above their heads, but you could always hear the storm above when the club was open: a din like thunder. It was silent now, of course. The lockers were in an inconsequential line near a bank of showers, monolithic cages of steel. The darkness yawned dark inside the one she opened, nothing else in there. She slid the device in without untangling it from Sasha’s jacket.