The leaf-bedroll was spread beneath the lowest bough, the air thick with midday heat and the scent of crushed ghost-pears. Nephis dropped the sling of heart-fruit beside it, then turned to face him.
"Strip."
One word. Flat. Final.
Sunny's grin was all teeth. "Make me."
He expected the usual dance: a smirk, a taunt, maybe a rough shove. Instead Nephis moved like a flame given form. One moment she was three paces away; the next her hand was fisted in his hair, wrenching his head back so hard his spine bowed.
"I said strip."
He tried to twist free. Nephis simply lifted. His feet left the ground, her grip iron in his hair, and then the world spun. His back hit the bedroll hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. Before he could roll away she was on him, knees pinning his biceps, the full weight of her body bearing down. One hundred and eighty-five centimetres of lethal, beautiful fury.
Sunny bucked, hips snapping up, trying to throw her. Nephis leaned forward, breasts pressing against his chest through the seaweed strips, and let a sliver of her Aspect bloom. Heat rolled off her in waves, not enough to burn, just enough to remind him that she could reduce him to ash with a thought.
His cock, traitor that it was, throbbed harder.
"Still fighting?" Her voice was quiet, almost gentle. Terrifying. "Good. I'd be disappointed if the cockroach rolled over on the first try."
She released his hair only to seize his wrists, slamming them above his head. One hand was enough to hold both; the other tore the shirt of his [puppeteer's shroud] open with a single rip. Fabric fluttered to the leaves like dying birds.
Sunny twisted again, managed to free one arm. His palm snapped toward her throat, shadows coiling for a strike. Nephis caught his wrist mid-air, twisted until the joint screamed, and forced it back down. Then she leaned in until her lips brushed his ear.
"This is my will," she whispered, the words carrying the weight of mountains and raging seas. "And who dares to stop me?"
A pulse of pure, incandescent power flared from her soul, not an attack, a declaration. The air itself bent. The leaves around them blackened at the edges. Sunny's shadows withered like smoke in a furnace.
His resistance cracked, not from pain, but from the sheer, overwhelming certainty that radiated from her. Changing Star of the Immortal Flame. The girl who had walked through forgotten shore and made it kneel.
He went still beneath her, chest heaving, cock straining so hard it hurt.
Nephis smiled. Not kind. Victorious.
"There you are," she murmured. She released his wrists only to drag her nails down his chest, hard enough to leave five perfect red lines. "Stay."
She rose just long enough to strip away the seaweed bikini in two economical motions. The scraps fell aside. Naked, glorious, she straddled his hips again, letting the slick heat of her cunt drag along the length of his trapped cock without allowing him inside.
Sunny's hands flexed against the bedroll, itching to grab her, to fight, to flip her over and take back control. Nephis leaned forward, breasts swaying, and pressed one finger to his lips.
"No."
Then she reached down, freed him from his trousers with impatient efficiency, and lined him up. No teasing, no mercy. She sank down in one slow, inexorable glide until he was buried to the root inside her scalding heat.
Sunny's back arched off the ground, a strangled sound tearing from his throat.
Nephis planted both palms on his chest, nails digging in, and began to ride him with the same relentless precision she brought to battle. Every roll of her hips was a command. Every clench of her inner walls was ownership.
He lasted less than a minute before his hips jerked helplessly, the first pulse of release ripping through him. Nephis didn't slow. She ground down harder, forcing him through it, milking every drop while her own breath stayed perfectly even.
When he was spent and shaking beneath her, she finally leaned down, lips brushing the shell of his ear once more.
"Next time you make me repeat myself," she said, voice soft as silk over steel, "I won't stop at one round."
Sunny could only groan, utterly conquered, and know, deep in his stubborn, cockroach soul, that he would absolutely make her repeat herself again.