Chương 966: Day Nine Hundred And Sixty-Four

Dear Diary, Really glad I talked to Saffron last night. Kind of stupid of me not to realize that talking to her was exactly what I needed to do. My brain's flying in every direction at once right now, but so many things I'm realizing because of last night's epic Shapeshifting Bedroom session. First and foremost, I've been incredibly stupid waiting so long to talk to Saffron about things in the past.

I guess now that I've got multiple partners, it wouldn't have to be Saffron specifically, but at the same time, I think it usually will be. Seriously, Marie and I are way too similar to really have wildly differing opinions on core stuff. Tallulah has a lot of the same Skills and proclivities Saffron does, so I guess for most stuff I could go to her, but Saffron definitely has a more visceral understanding of things.

Wait, no, her understanding is just as intellectual as Tallulah's, but Saffron is better at describing things in ways that I understand them viscerally. Last night is a prime example. Siobhan is better at Healing than any of us, and she's also the kindest and most thoughtful. Not the one who thinks things out in super fine detail thoughtful, but the one who is best and paying attention to and understanding others on an emotional level.

Okay, Marie's pretty good at that, but she's not great with communicating fine details in a way that I understand them if I really didn't already. But I think I need to keep in mind that if I have a decision or doubt, I have four intelligent, caring women who are willing to listen to my problem, then help me solve it. Even if part of that solution requires removing my head from my own ass. That's a huge part of why I love my partners.

I really hope they feel that way about me, but I'm not sure, given how I think I'm the least mature out of all of us. I guess I just hope they know they can come to me with whatever they need help with, and I'll do whatever I can to help them out. So weird for me to realize that my five person polycule has less to do with sex and everything to do with family. With mutual support and understanding and caring.

Of course, I also realized that whether a Revel is dusk to dawn hardcore hentai or quiet talks and singing people to sleep, it's also not about sex. Not for me. Maybe it was for Aphrodite. But for me it's about intimacy. Weird, what with the whole 'Passion and Ecstasy' thing, but then I don't think a person can really be Passionate about something and not have it touch them intimately. Ecstasy, again... Wow, I just realized that maybe I owe Vickerson an apology.

Not for being a shitty mentor, although I probably owe her one for that too, but I'm talking about that one time when I pulled her back to the Bedroom and had my way with her. Not because she didn't Consent, because Kitten made sure she did, but because I'm pretty sure neither of us wound up as Ecstatic as the least successful rendezvous on my Altar. Of course, somehow I wound up her Patron despite that, so maybe the lack of Ecstasy was one sided. Either that or my standards are way higher than hers.

Again, holy fucking hell, I have fucking standards. I mean, literally, although I've got some others now too. Food. Sex. Furniture, maybe. Behavior, definitely, especially talking about the kind of standards I hold myself to. Or try to anyhow. Yesterday was pretty par for the course, tracking wise. One surprising thing, Lemmy managed to body check Silk away from an ankle trap he'd nearly stepped into.

Probably would have started some kind of fracas had Silk not been surprisingly cool with it, all giving Lemmy a hug and slapping him on the back and thanking him. Makes me wonder if he's stepping in those holes just to have me lay hands on him.

Tempted to pull him onto my Altar just to get that deep secret sauce thing going on to see if that's the case, but I'm not sure how I'd fulfill that need on my Altar, nor am I sure he deserves it more than my Temple volunteers who are feeding people and building community and doing productive constructive shit like that.

Okay, yeah, he's been out here freezing his ass off without any meaningful untoward complaint, and technically with the speed and power of the Spartans he's kinda risking his life to do it, too, because if we caught up to them by surprise he's a big fuckin' target.

If he's stepping in those holes on purpose just to get me to lay hands on him to Heal him, I'm still tempted to get him all worked up then hand him over to Saffron, Marie, and maybe even Raven with explicit instructions to addict him to regret, and make him enjoy the process enough to thank me. Gotta own my darker impulses, and that one is the kind that resonates with my Kitten enough that now I'm tempted to snag him and her and see if he Consents after both of us describe what we're gonna do to him.

Restraints and fascina will likely be involved. Anyhow, the himbo coalition in our little force has now coalesced, which can't be a bad thing from any perspective other than the wanting to take turns with either of them in front of me. Kept up the tracking until midnight, hopped everybody back to the Dining Room, then said, "okay, everybody. Get food, get soaked, get sleep, we're off to New Amsterdam to my Temple, I'll be back by morning." Didn't notice any negativity amongst them.

Didn't look real hard as I took Marie's hand and stepped us both to the New Amsterdam Temple's Altar. Amusingly, given my earlier pondering, when we arrived the Altar was occupied by Brat, Vickerson, Citron, and Hildegarde, who were all just finishing up. Dana turned to me and gave a little half bow.

"Apologies, Goddess. I told them," they very pointedly did not glare at the foursome kinda staggering off the bed sheepishly.

"That you would return soon, and to hurry things up." I hugged them, then turned to the foursome as they found seats.

"Nah, I ain't even mad. I'm kinda sorry I can't be here all night, but those damn Spartans are still on the loose, and I can't really spend any time away from tracking them except the time the trackers are sleeping." I'd said all that in that tone to project to the Temple, and felt a wave of appreciative Worship rolling in, as if to tell me that they were just happy to have me here at all. I caught Vickerson's attention and said, "I thought you three would still be in Phileo though?" She smiled sheepishly.

"High Councilman Lancaster requested I be posted here at Alliance HQ in order to continue teaching me strategy. My partners," if she wound up sounding a little confused and pleasantly surprised by that word, I totally understood, "requested to transfer along with me. We're all taking a few courses at the New Amsterdam Academy, but we've all already got Senior Cadet standing, so..." I stepped over, picked her up, and hugged her.

"Go Vickerson!" I picked up her partners and pulled them into the hug.

"I'm so proud of you guys." I shot Citron a little smiling side eye.

"You converted?" Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Yeah, he's still a Dan, still can do the rectal kumquat look, even butt ass nekkid and smelling vaguely of sex funk.

"Of course not, but I wish to be part of every aspect of my partners' lives they'll have me in." I gave him an extra squeeze.

"My man. Good on you for staying true to whoever, and for supporting your ladies here. I ruffled his hair, then sat them all back down on the pews and stepped back to the Altar. I turned to Dana and asked them, "so, who's up first?" Marie's claws slid over my shoulders, and she breathed into my ear, "My Turn." So funny. Even my High Priestesses have those little hidden desires.

Even funnier, Marie did not let me get to hers for at least an hour or so, because she started us out with that one leg up scissoring position I'd used to dislocate her hips. The angle wasn't quite right for that, and neither of us really wanted that level of violence in our lovemaking tonight.

I think I just broke something in my brain, both realizing that what I do with my ladies does indeed qualify as 'lovemaking', that it getting violent sometimes, especially with Marie, doesn't disqualify it from being that in the slightest, and that my appetite for raw balls to the wall violent fucking isn't infinite. Okay, maybe that's not quite true. Maybe my appetite is infinite, which only makes sense if I'm supposed to consume all of reality, but I'm supposed to consume all of reality. Not just some parts.

Which means I've got appetites for lots of different things, and tonight's appetite was for something quieter. Okay, word salad was achieved, and the acoustics in the Temple are awesome, so not quieter, but gentler. Maybe more precise, 'cause I felt like my Murder Mittens was makin' cornetto rather than mochi. Okay, maybe closer to croissant than cornetto, because while there was folding involved, I did not wind up full of cream.

My Murder Mittens remains persistently resistant to the idea of Shapeshifting, although now I want to make her Mini Murder Mittens to pet her again. At any rate, after a while doing that, long enough I lost track of how many servings of word salad I distributed to the ears of the crowd, Marie wanted that gloriously exposed position I still thought of Siobhan's birthday position.

Facing the congregation, arms held behind her, my legs spreading hers wide, riding me until I worried a little about folks getting some hearing damage from the volume of her roar when she came.

I mean, not a lot, because along with forcing yet another serving of word salad out of me, the reason I'd been thinking cornetto was because the entire Revel up to that point, while she'd absolutely been the focus of the crowd's Worship, every iota of it pouring into her until her fur sparkled with it, she had absolutely been pumping me full of it almost as fast as she got it.

After that echoing roar, she laid back across me, twisting herself to kiss me, a long, lingering thing that left both of us laughing just a little, giddy with power and pleasure. Of course, we still had a couple hours until we had to leave, so I turned to Dana and asked, "who's next?"

"That would be Brat, Goddess." I smiled, laughing softly, and reached out to her as she stood and skipped over to the Altar. I almost didn't believe what I saw inside her, but reminded myself that I was here for my Worshippers, to connect to them. Fortunately I had my Murder Mittens with me, because I kinda needed some help on this one.

"Who's after her?" Dana nodded at the Terrible Trio.

"That would be Cadet Hildegarde, Goddess."

"Okay. Mittens?" Marie oozed herself upright, just like a cat do, her attention focused on me. I nodded to Brat.

"She watches everything. Sees. Hears. Smells, if at all possible. Every sensation except touch. Which she is not allowed to do." Marie made a noise somewhere between a snicker and that sound cats make when they see a bird. A moment later, Champion of New Amsterdam or not, Brat dangled from Marie's claws, arms and legs pinned behind her. I turned away, looked at Hildegarde, into her, and smiled.

"C'mon up, you three." When Hildegarde got there, the other two flanking her, I took her hands in mine, and looked deep into her eyes.

"You want to show off, huh?" She nodded.

"Wanna show me how much better you are than him?" She blushed, and nodded again, and Citron had a moment of rectal kumquat insertion before I finished with, "just as much as you want him to show me how much better he is than you?" She looked kinda like part of her would rather chew ground glass than say it, but also like a weight had been lifted by me saying something she couldn't bring herself to, no matter how much she tried.

"Yes."

"You mind Brat there observing?"

"No." I looked at Vickerson.

"You mind helping out with this?" She was still staring at Hildegarde like she'd grown another head.

"Sure?" I looked at Citron.

"You okay with this?" He looked at Hildegarde.

"Truly? You want me to defeat you in this?" She growled out, "no point competing with weaklings." I laughed, suddenly understanding, and seeing one final thing.

"And then you want a go at him right here in front of Goddess and everybody, huh? A duel to the little death?" She nodded, and I pulled Vickerson to me, whispered, "play along," into her ear, pushed my Blend up enough to blur their perception of both of us, and Mimicked her. When I dropped my Blend back to normal, the two of us lay there on the Altar, indistinguishable from each other.

"Well?" Like she was finishing my thought, Vickerson said, "we're waiting." Funny, in a heartwarming way, which is really odd to say about a Revel, but if both of them were way less skilled than Marie or Saffron, they were more Passionate than I realized they would be. Also, 'less skilled than Saffron or Marie' is a bar set somewhere in orbit, and I wound up having to engage in some serious liplock with Vickerson at the climactic moment in order to avoid giving the game away with more word salad.

Funny, she seemed surprisingly okay with it. Had to do it the second time when they switched partners, too, although that time she kissed me, both of us smiling as she did. As the aftershocks settled, our lips slipped apart, and she sighed out, "tie?" I nodded.

"Tie. Time for a tiebreaker?"

"I think so." Hildegarde and Citron looked confused until I scooped Vickerson up, scooted to the side of the bed to make room, and nodded at the two of them.

"Well? Get to it. I have to leave before sunrise." I never realized that two people forcing each other to be gentle, to be slow, to be precise, could be so fuckin' hot. I didn't actually do anything with Vickerson other than hold her there in my lap, but about halfway through I caught the edges of something, then whispered, "go ahead," into her ear.

She got really loud with her self-servicing, and if she shot Brat all the side eye while she did, I figured with all the grief Brat had given her as her roommate, she deserved a little Vengeance. Especially the kind that played into Brat's own secret desire so well. As the trio shuddered to stillness, I looked over to where Brat struggled and whined to no avail. Well, struggled and whined and dripped with sweat and not-sweat.

Once I was sure I had her attention, as much of it as was available at the moment, I asked, "how many?"

"Fo... Fff... Faaa... Fou..." She stuttered, then screamed out, "FIVE!" as she convulsed with yet another hands free orgasm. Yeah, not my thing, but fuck it, she's literally not hurting anyone, and I swear each consecutive one hit me with a bigger wave of Worship than the prior one. I smiled around at the congregation. A lot of them had zonked out right there on the pews, but the rest were all cheering or applauding, and all of them were still Worshipping.

I hugged all four of them on the Altar to me, kinda ignored Brat's muffled, drawn out, "six!" and made sure I had Marie's attention.

"Think you can get started Co-Located?"

"Minutes?"

"Yeah, or less." She just grinned that big toothy grin at me, and both of us Co-Located to the Dining Room, dressing as we did. The trackers were all waiting, finishing their breakfast carbo-load, and we picked them up and Translocated them back to where we'd left off the night before. None of them said anything when, as the sun crested the horizon, Marie and I both snickered a little bit.

She'd managed to envelop the trio and Brat along with me in her Holy Garb's sunrise aura, and listening to Brat's voice cut off like a switch as she passed out in the middle of 'seven' was both cute and hilarious. Yeah, I gotta remember to listen to my wife more.