3.30 – Early Camp


    Jordan''s coughing and hacking session was even louder, this time, and Natalie winced as she watched their friends sleeping nearby. Nobody had woken. That was some sort of miracle. Her illusion had, once again, helped keep them safe. Natalie had gotten way too involved to have been capable of keeping quiet.


    She sat there, surrounded by the eerie environment of the Wispwood, looking at her coughing friend, her wet, growing-soft dick, and the camp of her delving team, not a dozen feet away, who could have at any moment woken and seen Natalie pping her hips into Jordan’s face.


    That probably hadn’t been the greatest idea.


    Cheeks heating, Natalie tucked her equipment away, then knelt down next to Jordan, who was still recovering. Natalie had gotten pretty enthusiastic at the end. Jordan had clearly not been fully able to handle it, for all that she’d reciprocated eagerly.


    “Uh,” Natalie said. “Sorry about that, Jay.”


    “Sorry?” Jordan asked between coughs and clearings of her throat. “You mean how you used my throat like an actual toy?”


    “Um.”


    “Though, it is,” Jordan said. “It is your toy. But I’m new to this, yeah?”


    “Sorry,” she repeated, face zing.


    “It’s fine. That was fun.” More cleared throats. “Definitely not the best strategy for keeping quiet,” she nced toward their friends, “but I like seeing you lose control.”


    “Your turn?”


    “No, that’s okay. Tonight was just for you.”


    “Really?”


    “I can wait till we’re not in the dungeon. We’re already pushing our luck.” Another nce. “The sound dampening was pretty good, but you were having some fun. What happened to having some restraint, like I told you?”


    Natalie blushed. “When it’s you, I can’t help myself.” She really, genuinely didn’t stand a chance.


    The response had a blush appearing on Jordan’s own cheeks. Natalie would have figured it would’ve been the violent throat-fucking and degrading talk that would have colored her friend’s cheeks, but apparently not—just a simple statement that Natalie couldn’t help herself around her.


    “Well,” Jordan said. “Try harder, next time.”


    They returned to sitting on the log. Jordan still needed to clear her throat, here and there. Natalie had done a number on it.


    “I shouldn’t keep you up any longer,” Jordan said. “You need to get some sleep.”


    “No rush.”


    “It’s fine. Long day ahead of us.” Jordan sent a sideways look her way. “Do I get a goodnight kiss?”


    Natalie’s heart skipped. Kissing was hardly something rare between the two of them, but it was always in the middle of their … heated events. Or at most, directly after. But they’d already cooled down.


    That said, Natalie was hardly going to say no.


    She scooted closer, then cupped Jordan’s cheek with one hand. Leaning in, she captured her friend’s lips with her own. They kissed. Not desperate and impassioned like most times before, but soft and gentle. Exploring. Her lips were tender and yielding beneath Natalie''s, but with a surprising strength beneath the surface. Jordan had always been like that. Her rock.


    The kiss had a warm glow suffusing her, intoxicating and radiating, spreading from deep in her chest and across her entire body. A sensation that said everything was right in the world. An almost overwhelming contentment. Or something more. Something she couldn''t afford to look too closely at, but which she basked in nheless.


    Finally, they pulled apart. For a while, they panted at each other, exploring each other''s eyes but not saying anything.


    "Okay," Jordan said, lips quirking. "Good night, then."


    "Good night," Natalie echoed.


    ***


    There weren’t any awkward looks from Sofia, Ana, or Lize morning, so miraculously, they hadn’t been found out. Her sound barrier had held, at least whenbined with how they’d all been sleeping like rocks, exhausted from the previous day.


    Today was going to be even longer, though. More than having sixteen clear hours to focus on nothing but bashing monster faces in, they intended to push themselves. Hard. She could see the determination in each of her teammate’s faces, a solemn and unstated pledge. She could even read it on Ana. Natalie thought she was getting better at deciphering the stony woman.


    “We can’t go too hard,” Natalie announced. Huddled around the smoldered-down fire and eating breakfast in silence, the statement came seemingly out of nowhere. “Gotta ration ourselves. Our stamina. And we don’t have the firepower and defenses we used to.”


    “What is this?” Sofia asked. “Natalie, being the voice of reason? <em>My </em>Natalie?”


    Her stomach flipped several times at the phrase <em>‘my</em> Natalie’, which caught her off guard. She brushed past it.


    “I’m just saying,” Natalie shot back. “Don’t want any of us getting hurt.” She was saying it as much to herself as any of them. She <em>was </em>the one who set the pace of the delve. “We got kind of fucked yesterday, but that doesn’t mean we should get ourselves hurt trying to make up for it.”


    “We should backtrack,” Ana said. “Get closer to the spawn-in point. So the monsters are weaker.”


    “I think that’s smartest,” Natalie agreed, however much it grated her. Being sent backwards in progress was hard to swallow. “We especially need to find Liz a weapon.”


    “I’m not awful casting with just my hands,” Liz grumbled, “but it’s not a strength of mine. This sucks.”


    “Can you use orbs?” Ana asked.


    Liz blinked in response. “Huh?”


    “We need a healer more than a mage.”


    “Oh.” Liz sent a panicked look around at the rest of the team, though why she was <em>panicked </em>Natalie didn’t wholly get. “I don’t want to take <em>your </em>weapon.”


    “If it’s best for the team, then it’s what we should do.”


    There was something amusing about how matter-of-fact Ana spoke. She wondered if there was some limit to it. Something she <em>didn</em><em>’t </em>act rationally about.


    “I’d feel awful,” Liz said, continuing to shoot looks to Natalie, Jordan, and Sofia. “Delves are as much for practice as anything. I shouldn’t take that from you.”


    Ah. Natalie understood now. <em>That </em>was why Liz didn’t like the idea.


    “I won’t have us with a crippled healer,” Ana said. She rummaged out the thick crystal orb from her weapon pouch, then passed it over to Liz. “It’s the logical choice to make.”


    “Well … if you’re sure …” Liz seemed far from happy about the development. Natalie sympathized to some extent, though she did think Liz was being a little <em>too </em>empathetic. There was nothing wrong with leaning on a teammate for help. And Natalie had already made it clear that what happened yesterday wasn’t her fault, so if Liz had lingering guilt over that, then Natalie wasn’t afraid to set her straight for a second time.


    “Besides,” Ana said. “I can cast with my hands. It’s not a specialty, as you said, but I’m not much worse, either.”


    “That’s good, I guess,” Liz mumbled. “Thank you.”


    At a serious nod from Ana, and the dark-haired girl returning to her meal, Liz sighed and tucked the orb to her side, then did the same.


    Natalie didn’t think it was a big deal either way. She wouldn’t be reckless in today’s delve, but she <em>did </em>intend to set a good pace. And if the dungeon had any pity in its cold heart at all, then it would provide them a mage’s weapon to make up for thrusting Liz’s arch-nemesis straight into theirp, on their first delve of any note.


    Though nning on the dungeon being nice … that wasn’t usually a great idea.