It was impossible to define what had changed, but Envoy sense read it out for me and the absolute knowledge behind was like an elevator dropping through my stomach.

Nadia Makita was back.

She was there in the narrowing of the eyes and the deep quirk in one corner of her mouth that didn’t belong to any expression Sylvie Oshima owned. In a kind of hunger that licked around her face like flames, and in breath that came in short, harsh bursts as if the orgasm, once spent, was now creeping back in some mirror-image replay.

“Hello there, Micky Serendipity,” she husked.

Her breathing slowed and her mouth twisted into a grin to replace the one that had just melted off my own face. She slipped off the table, reached down and touched me between the legs. It was the old, confident grasp I remembered, but I’d lost a lot of my erection with the shock.

“Something wrong?” she murmured.

“I—” She was using both hands on me like someone gently gathering in rope. I felt myself swelling again. She watched my face.

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said quickly.

“Good.”

She slid elegantly down on one knee, eyes still locked on mine, and took the head of my cock into her mouth. One hand stayed on the shaft, stroking while the other found its way to my right thigh and curled around the muscle there, gripping hard.

This is flecking insane, a cold, mission-time shard of Envoy selfhood told me. You need to stop this right now.

And her eyes still on me, as her tongue and teeth and hand drove me into the explosion.

SEVENTEEN

Later, we lay draped wetly across each other in my bed, hands still loosely linked from the last frantic clasping. Our skins were sticky in patches with the mixed juices we’d spilled, and repeated climaxes had stung our muscles into lax submission. Flash images of what we’d done to and with each other kept replaying behind my eyes. I saw her crouched on top of me, crossed hands flat on my chest, pressing down hard with each movement. I saw myself slamming into her from behind. I saw her cunt descending onto my face. I saw her writhing under me, sucking wildly on the central cord of her own hair while I thrust between legs she had crooked over my hips like a vice. I saw myself taking the cord, wet with her saliva, into my own mouth as she laughed into my face and came with a powerful clenching of muscles that dragged me down after her.

But when she started talking to me, the altered lilt of her Amanglic sent an instant shiver down my spine.

“What?” She must have felt the shudder go through me.

“Nothing.”