How to Train Your Channeler

[Oriena]

She braced him harder against the cold tiles and laughed softly under her breath. Not warmth. Not reassurance. Her mouth found his jaw, his throat – claiming rather than soothing, pressure instead of comfort. She wanted him to understand exactly where he stood: not rewarded, not forgiven, not paying a debt. Just chosen. For this. For now. Whatever meaning it might have, Ori stripped it away with heat and presence. She didn’t explain herself. She didn’t slow. She let him feel the truth of her instead: force, appetite, and a will that didn’t require permission or justification.

The sound he made at the end was raw enough to satisfy something sharp and vindictive in her chest. Her hands stayed where they were, fingers still slick, still tracing for just a moment longer. It would have been a mercy to stop, and Ori wasn’t feeling charitable. She kept Sasha pinned there while the water steamed hotter around them, letting the aftermath roll through him, letting him come down under her hands and the weight of her body. She liked the way it left him – open, spent, helplessly honest. She liked feeling the proof of it against her palms, the way his body still chased sensation even as it betrayed him.

It left her wanting.

And that, perversely, pleased her. Right now unsated meant uncomplicated. It meant she could keep this where she liked it: sharp-edged, contained, something she could walk away from without carrying more of it under her skin. Just sex. Just heat and friction and impulse. Nothing that demanded examination.

Afterwards Ori lifted her hand, slow and deliberate, and licked her fingers with an insolent, knowing ease, eyes never leaving Sasha’s face. Her grin was all provocation, all teeth. “There’s nothing holy here,” she said, with a delicious purr of laughter.

Only then did she step back, not retreating, just shifting to take herself fully under the stream, water cascading over her shoulders and down her body, heat blooming where cold had bitten before. She slicked the hair back from her face and watched him under her lashes. If he fled now – if he mistook release for conclusion, or safety for permission to retreat – she’d let him go without a word. That would settle something. But her mouth still curved, not quite a smile. There was challenge there, and appetite, and a glint of something dangerously pleased. She shifted her weight, unhurried, unapologetic, letting the heat roll over her as if she had all the time in the world.