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The light in the room now came from the strip rimming the interrogation room floor, as well as another ring around the four corners of the ceiling. As I watched, someone raised those lights, restoring full illumination to the room.

I still fought to breathe, to control the tendrils of myaleimisnaking around us.

I felt the others start to recover.

Despite the number of them watching us, the pain I felt from the group frightened me enough that I clamped down harder on Revik’s light.

Embarrassed, I took my hand off his groin, but I couldn’t make myself let go of him entirely. I gripped his arms through the long-sleeved shirt he wore, fighting to slow my breathing without looking any of them directly in the face.

Once I had my body more or less under control, I forced myself to turn and slide off his lap. I felt him not liking that any more than I did, but he made no move to stop me.

I landed on my rear on the padded bench next to him.

I couldn’t make myself move any further away from him than that, even knowing all of them were staring at us, and why. My fingers wrapped around his thigh instead, and promptly began massaging the muscle there, even though I felt an immediate reaction in Revik’s body and light when I did.

I fought to focus my eyes, still concentrating most of my light on shielding us.

Because of that, I couldn’t feel their lights very well.

I could see their faces, though.

Even as I thought it, Revik wrapped an arm around me, from behind that time. Pulling me flush against him, he gripped me diagonally across the chest, holding my shoulder firmly, holding my back against his side and part of his chest.

There was absolutely no mistaking the possessiveness behind the gesture.

More than anything, I found it a relief.

They continued to stare at us, but now most of them looked embarrassed.

I saw Chinja glance at Raddi, even as Poresh glanced at Neela. I knew the latter two were dating, but I’d also heard Chinja was dating one of the females in the crew, although no one had given me a definitive answer as to which one.

Anale? Illeg? I had no idea.

In any case, the heat in those stares didn’t really dim, even after the four seers looked away from one another’s faces. I saw a guilty, flushed Loki glance at Dante just long enough to turn even redder. Dante herself looked a lot pinker than usual.

I didn’t feel anything untoward in Loki’s look at her, though.

When I looked at Loki, all I could see was his new girlfriend, Gina, all over his light.

Coupled with that feeling of entanglement between the two, I also got a lot more information about the current state of Loki and Gina’s relationship than I really wanted, including the fact that they hadn’t had intercourse yet, despite a number of close calls and some preliminary oral sex.

Again, more than I really needed or wanted to know.

More than that, the sheer level of frustration in Loki’s light hardly did my own pain any favors. I could feel that the lack of sex was still mostly to appease Dante, who both Loki and Gina, separately and together, had been trying to convince of the authenticity of their relationship. They’d done that in part by slowing down on the physical end of things, and by sleeping in separate rooms.

I got the strong impression Loki didn’t think it was working, though.

Moreover, Gina was getting royally pissed off at him about it.

So, yeah, Loki’s sexual feelings weren’t aimed at Dante.

Rather, Loki was deeply uncomfortable with Dante being there at all. His relationship with Gina confused the issue, making some part of him want to slide into the role of pseudo-parent. That same desire to protect the offspring of his lover made him struggle with whether he should attempt to order Dante out of the room, due to her age, her inexperience with sex––and the very clear direction this experiment had taken with me and Revik.

He really, really wanted to order her out of the room.

He wanted it badly enough that it was causing a kind of crisis in his light as he struggled with what a bad idea that felt like to him, in terms of his relationship to Dante herself.

That probably came from the part of his brain that actuallyknewDante a little.